Out west adventures III and Home!

Up north really... not much west anymore, in Sandy's home town of Ely MN.

Grampa is always a willing ear-scratcher.  I love that!

I got to meet the whole gang! Sandy's family was all Trail Mutt Approved.

You know I love to be in the middle of all the girls!

Oh ya.

The next day at Sandy's folks' home, some people just couldn't take
all the excitement.

Ya Bobbie, right there.

Put that clicker down, and scratch me!

Oh, the best is when you can get both ends rubbed at the same time.

After we left Ely, we headed to camp near Brule WI.

We're off the grid!

We camped here so we could hike the NCT.

The camp at Winneboujou Bluff.

One of several scenic vistas.

The Brule-St Croix chapter really does a bang-up job keeping the
 trail up.

However, there were a few "off" blazes...

We finally found a water source!
This is the headwaters of the Bois Brule River.

I recommend it!

There is a view of the valley not visible in the photo.

Back at camp, we relaxed.

No mosquitoes to swat, but plenty of ticks to pick.

It was cool enough that it felt good to have a fire.

We hunt together. I heard a chipmunk!

They had salad, hummus and chips....I had lame kibble as usual.

The morning was as nice as the day before.

Today, we hiked to the south.

Such a quaint trail.  We'd never hiked this section before.
It was nice!

A bit of a view.

We drive out on the narrow logging road.

Home and my own yard at last!
I love vacation, but I love to get back home too.

Out west adventures II

Oh ya. I love being on vacation!  This is part II.

After our SD adventures, we headed across the Powder basin to
Sheridan WY.

This is the Tongue River.

We hiked up the canyon. This bridge was a CCC project from the 30's.

We spied wild life on the way up.

This mountain snow melt river is refreshing!

I think we should camp here one day.

It's getting dark out! And rumbling...

We better head back down.

Rain! Let's duck in here.

Good thing! It rained HARD.

And blew hard.

It even hailed for a while.

OK, now it's letting up.

The rain was still washing down the trail as we hiked out.

That's the Eye of the Needle in the distance. It's soooo pretty here.

We had such a nice hike here!
Next, we got to visit and stay with Curt & Linda and their pack.
But we managed not to get any photos...my pack is lame!
It was so fun to see them again and get a whirl-wind tour of the edge
of the Bighorns.
They are promising to be tour guides and we hope to take them up on it!

On Wednesday, we were heading to western North Dakota.
This was at the tourist trap near the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Custer's Last Stand, ya know.

We arrived at our camp - the Burning Coal Vein campground,
at the Maah Daah Hey Trail's southern terminus.

Looks like trail work has been in progress!

What a nice camp ground.

This is the newest section of trail.  We'd not been here before.

Let's hike around!

It didn't take long to get up to a nice view.

This is near where the coal vein used to be burning.

We hike up the very old trail.

We spied a rose bush growing out of the rock.

Supper! Salad and smoked Lake Superior fish, mmmmm.

It was a beautiful calm starry night.

Hunting was excellent here.

Time to pack up. Can we come back next year?

Next we stopped in to visit Dan in Dickinson!
He's got a swanky new pad....

And ample garage space for his many, many bikes.

This is Dan's Swiss Army bike. 

We got a tour of Dan's work place, Steffes. Then we hit the road again.

On Friday, we stopped in for a hike on the NCT in western MN.

This was west of Park Rapids.

Trail ends here but will continue, the sign says.

This was a nice section of trail, skirting some fields.

Later, we stopped to hike a different section of the NCT, near
 Remer MN.

Maybe it's better here...

Let's go see.

Well it didn't take long to find more uncleared blow downs.

Too bad to see this trail uncared for and unusable.