This was a very busy month of traveling. We started in Buffalo, Wyoming and went to Cody where we toured the town and made day long trips to Yellowstone National Park. We next drove to Bozeman, Montana and to the old ghost mining towns near Philipsburg. From there we went to Glacier National Park, then crossed into Canada and spent nine days touring the five Canadian National Parks in the Rocky Mountains. From the hundreds of pictures we took we selected a few (probably too many) to put on this month's page. Thank you for visiting our website.

In Buffalo, Wyoming we stayed four days in Indian Campground as we needed time to rest after the Newmar International Rally in Gillette. The campground owners allowed Norm plenty of time on their phone line to update our website. Thanks. We spent most of our stay cleaning the motorhome and repairing the air conditioner cooling fins that were smashed in the hail storm a week earlier. On July 3rd we met a nice couple, Warren and Corinne Liberty, from California and we had a two- couple B.Y.O.M. (Bring Your Own Meat) pot-luck supper. (When we arrived at a campground in Cody we found they were our neighbors there.) The view of snow covered peaks of Big Horn Mountains was beautiful so we decided to take a closer look. Outside of Buffalo we took a dirt and gravel road into Crazy Woman Canyon until it intersected with Crazy Woman Creek. (No one knows where it got the name Crazy Woman.) As we descended into the canyon the wild flowers and species of trees changed with every drop in elevation. We stopped and looked at the many species of wild roses by the roaring creek. Then suddenly after a few miles the road shot upward and became a flat road where we could see level ground for forty miles.

Route 16, a two-lane road, from Buffalo to Cody took us over the Big Horn Mountains through Powder River Pass, a road feared by many RV drivers. The road rises from 4645 feet at Buffalo to 9666 feet at the Pass. It is 24 miles up the mountain with many 5-7% grades, then 21 miles down the other side with 5-7% grades and curves as slow as 25 mph. On the final curvy descent the road is very narrow and is chiseled into the side of the canyon with switchbacks. Getting three feet too far to the right will drop you and the motorhome into the canyon below. Norm thought the drive was beautiful but Linda didn't start breathing again until we had bottomed out. A few miles later we encountered a herd of cattle being driven down the road as this is open range country. We eased the motorhome slowly through the cattle and waved to the cowboys on horseback.

Cody, Wyoming was named for William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody who helped found the town in 1892. He built the downtown Irma Hotel in 1902 and named it for his daughter Irma Louise Cody. At the hotel restaurant we ate their speciality, prime rib that melted in our mouths. Emerging from the hotel we saw a mass of people and wondered what was happening. In the street we found a 45 minute performance and shoot-out by Buffalo Bill, Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday, Calamity Jane and a group of bad looking scoundrels. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center, located on the west side of downtown, is one of the best history museums we have visited. We spent the entire day there and rushed to see the last exhibits before they locked the doors at 8:00 p.m. Buffalo Bill was born on the Iowa prairie in 1846 and took part in many events that shaped America and the West - Pony Express rider, Civil War Union cavalryman, scout in Indian wars, mine owner, ranching, and town building. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his performance as an Indian scout. In 1883 he put together a show called Buffalo Bill's Wild West - which toured the U.S. and Europe for thirty years. The show had an entourage of up to 600 people including Indians, cowboys, soldiers, horses, buffalo. Wild Bill Hickok toured with the show several years and Indian Chief Sitting Bull, a friend of Buffalo Bill, toured most of the thirty years. By the turn of the century Buffalo Bill was the most famous American in the world.

In addition to the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Historical Center includes the Plains Indian Museum, the Whitney Gallery of Western Art, the Cody Firearms Museum, a Western Research Library and a Special Exhibitions Wing. The large Indian Museum depicts the life of the plains Indian and includes a theater. In the Western Art Gallery we found original paintings of Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. The Firearms Museum contains over 4000 firearms. We found a special treat in the Special Exhibitions Museum, original drawings and paintings of John James Audubon. In the 1840's Audubon traveled the upper western plains and mountains and completed his finest works called of the study of the Quadrupeds which he later named Mammals of America. More than 150 years later we got to feast our eyes on his original work. (Wow) Cody is a place we recommend you visit and be sure you eat in the Irma Hotel and visit the Buffalo Bill Historical Center.

Yellowstone National Park was established in 1872 and it was the nation's first national park. The park encompasses 2.2 million acres in the northwest corner of Wyoming. It has flat plains, rolling meadows, mountains, canyons, rivers, geyser fields, and can best be described as awesome. We spent one full day in geyser fields where water bubbles from far below the crust of the earth and emits a strong sulphur smell in its steam. There are actually four types of thermal features, geysers, hot springs, fumarole (steam vents) and mudpots. The hot, sometimes boiling water, turns the surrounding areas into multi-colored spectacles. Emitted minerals and growing bacteria paint the pools and flowing water shades of red, yellow, blue, green and brown. Old Faithful, the most famous of the Yellowstone geysers, is not the prettiest of the lot, but is the most reliable as it spews upward every seventy-two minutes. The northern elevations of the park contain thousands of acres of beautiful wild flowers - balsamroot, fireweed, lupine, rabbitbrush, yellow monkeyflower, paintbrush and many others. In the mountains and plains we saw buffalo, pronghorn, elk, deer, coyote, a grizzly bear and many other small animals. In one large field we saw a herd of buffalo in the distance and park visitors had stopped to take shots of the far-away animals. We took a gravel road and circled the animals ending up behind and just feet away from the large mammals. We broke out a picnic lunch and dined on the tailgate of our Honda while buffalo grazed and played a few feet away and the Yellowstone River was flowing several feet away in the other direction. Hey, retirement and fulltime traveling is great.

One day we drove to the northeast entrance of Yellowstone and stopped at the Soda Butte Hotel and restaurant for lunch. This route took us over Dead Indian Pass, elevation 8200 feet, on Route 136. A warning sign at the top of the pass says "7% grade next 8 miles." We looked down at the road below and made a picture to keep our memories alive. There are many 20 mph switchbacks the entire descent of the mountain and it was a beautiful and most interesting drive.

The Yellowstone River gently flows across the park with occasional rapids, then it enters the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone with Upper and Lower Falls. The canyon is twenty miles long with a river depth up to 1200 feet. The Upper Falls descends 109 feet and just down stream Lower Falls drops another 308 feet. There is a trail from the top of the canyon to the bottom of Lower Falls, a drop of 500 feet. The trail begins with a cris-cross steeply descending walkway to the steps - 385 steps straight down. At an altitude of 8000 feet breathing is difficult climbing out of the canyon. Linda made it two-thirds of the way down and had to sit as she is afraid of heights. It might be more accurate to say she "freaked out." Norm left Linda setting on a bench at a landing and he descended to the bottom for a look at the beautiful falls. We are happy to report Linda did make it back to the top. Before we hit the road fulltime we both had medical checkups and were given a clean bill of health. (At least we were healthy for grandparents.) Norm has had an irregular heart beat several years and he passed the stress-test with flying colors.

Both of us needed haircuts and we found a small one-woman barber shop in downtown Cody and got good cuts for a reasonably price. Norm refuses to go anywhere except a plain old barber shop. We have learned if you need to make an appointment that adds fifty percent to the price and if the shop says something like styling that doubles the price. There are even some shops that want to wash your hair before cutting and of course that adds more to the price. We always wash our hair before getting it cut so why should we pay someone to wash it again?

After spending a week in Cody and Yellowstone it was time to hit the road again. With no destination in sight we pointed the Dutch Star northwest into Montana and when we reached Bozeman we decided to stop. Being retired and fulltiming is great as we don't need plans. Bozeman is a beautiful and growing town with friendly citizens. At Spanish Peaks Brewery we ate brick oven pizza, complimentary hot wings and sipped locally brewed beer. The clientele consisted mostly of students from Montana State University, but we were joined by several other gray headed customers. The Museum of the Rockies is one of the nicer and more interesting museums in this country. They have displays explaining the formation of the Rockies, the earliest plant, fish and mammal life, but most interesting are the dinosaurs. We learned dinosaurs lived in present-day Montana and many are on display with their histories. The museum also contains rooms on the American Indian, fishing and local history. In a theater-in-the-round they show interesting movies on the Sun and other topics. Another Bozeman museum that interested Norm was the American Computer Museum. After a short movie we saw displays of the earliest forms of calculators, tabulating machines, the first computers, large mainframe computers and finally personal computers. Norm repaired computers for the Air Force four years and for IBM thirty- two years. The museum contains mostly IBM computers, and not telling his age, he remembered working on most of them. The museum, to be renamed Compuseum, has grand plans - to build a 20-acre complex for the display and study of computers and related matter.

After leaving Bozeman we headed northwest through the town of Three Forks. It is located in a valley between mountains and is at the headwater of the Missouri River. On July 28, 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the site and were the first white men to stand on its soil. Three rivers join to form the Missouri and they named them Jefferson River, Madison River and Gallatin River, in honor of Thomas Jefferson, President; James Madison, Secretary of State; and Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury. On our way north we exited the dreaded interstate and took Route 1 through old mining country. In Philipsburg we found an overpass that said 12 ft 6 inches. Not knowing the height of our Dutch Star we proceeded slowly and didn't scrape anything off the roof. (Later, shortly after crossing into Canada we found a clearance of 4 meters and something. After a quick conversion we knew we could scoot under.) Wanting to stay in a forest campground we left the Dutch Star beside the highway and drove the Honda into Flint Creek Campground in Dear Lodge National Forest. We found a spot large enough for the Dutch Star and brought her in. Our campsite was nestled in trees beside a babbling brook. (Brooks babble don't they?) We read the campground entrance sign and it said nothing about paying so we camped for free. (Later we learned most state and national parks in the area are free.) Nearby we found the old abandoned mining town of Granite. The unmarked and unchartered dirt and gravel road ascended a large steep mountain. The one lane road was chiseled into the mountain side with a terrible drop-off - thank goodness the Honda is 4-wheel drive or we might not have made it. The silver and gold mines of Granite were established in the 1880's, then closed for a few years, re-opened and closed for good in the 1890's. In its heyday Granite had 5,200 citizens, but when the silver doom hit, 3,000 people left in twenty-four hours. (The Government ceased purchasing silver in 1893.) Today the town stands much as when the people left. Some buildings have rotted, some are rotting and the few brick and stone buildings show only their skeletons as the roofs and interior walls are long gone. We hiked around town and dug in rocks at the mines hoping to strike it rich, but only found pretty rocks. Before leaving the ghost town we connected our computer to our cell phone and sent e-mail. If any ghosts were watching they would be amazed at what we do today.

Wanting to strike it rich the next day we drove eighty miles to Crystal Park. The park has been set aside on national park land for amateur rockhounds to seek their fortunes. Armed with a bucket, butcher knife and hammer we ascended the hill and started digging. After one hour we had a cup full of quartz crystals and Linda had blisters. It is much like looking for a needle in a haystack and gets exciting when a crystal is found. From our dig we headed south thirty miles to the ghost town of Bannack. Gold was discovered there in 1863 and the population swelled to over 3000 inhabitants. The town had the state's first jail, hotel, Masonic Lodge, hard rock mine and commercial sawmill. It served as Montana's first Territorial Capital. The sheriff, Henry Plummer, was secretly the leader of a gang of thieves, murders and robbers called "The Innocents." His gang murdered over 102 men and robbed countless others. A group of town's people hanged Plummer and many of his gang on the very gallows that Plummer had built to hang horse thieves. When the gold dried up so did the town. The entire town has been preserved, not restored, and most buildings are open for walk-through viewing. We arrived the third weekend in July during Bannack Days. There were cowboys in the street, men and women displaying candle making, quilting, gold panning, spinning, roping, blacksmithing, saddle making, soap making and much more. Before leaving we bought a large bag of kettle corn. At fairs and festivals through the mid-west we had seen long lines of people waiting to buy kettle corn so we had to try some. For those not familiar with kettle corn it is popped in a kettle then stirred in caramel sugar by a paddle. It is something like Cracker Jacks, but the taste is much different.

On our way to Glacier National Park we ran into road construction on the east side of beautiful Flathead Lake as we drove by miles of cherry orchards in full fruit. The pavement had been ripped out for twenty miles and the former highway was now deep loose rock. At 25 mph our motorhome left a blinding trail of dust and spewed gravel over the Honda. When we stopped and dusted of the Honda we found chips all over the front and there were even a piles of gravel on the windshield wipers. The paint chips are a nice match for the dents we got in a hail storm last month. In Glacier National Park we drove over Going To The Sun Road. The view from the road is breathtaking, if you can bear to look. The road is sixteen feet wide from the side of the mountain to the drop-off to the valley floor. One foot to one side and your car scrapes the mountain, one foot too far on the other side and your car drops over the side. At the peak, Logan Pass, we took a long walk through the snow covered mountain side with wild flowers peeking to the sun and wild goats grazing. There were numerous streams and waterfalls as the snow in upper elevations was melting. We drove about 150 miles through and around the park and enjoyed the mountains and lakes from several angles. Our campsite between Coram and West Glacier had a telephone hookup so we decided to stay four days and use the phone line to update some computer programs.

Before crossing the US/Canadian border we picked up our mail in Eureka, Montana. Knowing we would be in Canada at least two weeks we answered our mail and paid some bills before crossing to our neighbors to the north. At the border a Canadian Customs Agent entered out motorhome, asked a few routine questions, and wished us happy travels in Canada. We drove up the British Columbia side of the Rockies and settled in Radium Hot Springs for the weekend. There are four adjoining Canadian National Parks bordering British Columbia and Alberta. For $70 (Canadian) we bought an annual Parks Pass that allows us to visit the four parks, plus seven other western Canadian Parks. With the Parks Pass we received a coupon book with discounts for camping in the parks. From Radium we drove through beautiful Kootenay National Park and into Banff National Park. The highway out of Radium began with an 11% grade for one mile, tapered off to a 6% grade for a few miles, then rose to 8% for a few more miles. After that we encountered many 5-7% grades, but the Dutch Star performed flawlessly and the temperature gauge never rose. At Lake Louise we found a nice National Park campground with 100 foot long pull-through sites. They only have electric hookups but we are self-contained so we paid for three nights. Our first stop was the lake at Lake Louise. It is a beautiful blue lake fed by snow covered mountains and a glacier at the end of the lake. The water temperature was 34 - 36 degrees. We rented a canoe and rowed the entire length of the lake. It was beautiful, quiet and relaxing on the lake. Next, we visited the Lake Louise Ski area and ate lunch in the Lodge of the Ten Peaks overlooking ski slopes and snow covered mountains. Then we rode the Friendly Giant, a Gondola ride to the top of the mountain. Actually, the ride had enclosed gondolas, enclosed benches and open benches. We chose the open bench and ascended to the top, cruising through the open air with our legs hanging down. The view of Lake Louise, the mountains covered with snow and the glacier was magnificent. Linda is scared to death of heights and the ride up the mountain caused her to panic. Norm gave her the option of which car to ride down the mountain and she chose the open bench again, but should have chosen the enclosed gondola. We won't talk about Linda's trip down, but we'll just say she is still alive.

We had heard many people talk about the village of Banff so we drove down for the day. What a rip-off town. The streets are bumper to bumper traffic, the sidewalks are elbow to elbow people, and the stores are so expensive it hurts the eyes to look. Many of the businesses are owned by Chinese, Koreans and Japanese and fifty percent of the tourists are non-English speaking. We found one parking place, then drove and drove through downtown and could not find another place to park. Even all the large parking lots were full. The town is reminiscence of a small New York City - so we left. We had driven down on the crowded Trans-Canada Highway #1 so we returned to Lake Louise by scenic Route 1A. Along the way we stopped for deer, elk and bighorn sheep. Now this was more our lifestyle. The next day we left Banff National Park in Alberta and crossed into Yoho National Park in British Columbia. After lunch in Field (they have two small restaurants) we visited beautiful Takakkaw Falls, one of the highest falls in Canada. The road to the falls had switchbacks so steep Norm turned the steering wheel all the way on each curve and went through the curves at 2 mph. From the falls we drove to Emerald Lake the bluest and most beautiful lake we have ever seen. After a breathtaking trip along a canyon wall to the town of Golden, we returned to Lake Louise.

On our way to Jasper we stopped at the Columbia Icefield - a mass of ice 130 square miles. It is the largest icefield in the Rocky Mountains and one of the largest in North America. At an average elevation of 10,000 feet it receives 27 feet of snow each year. It is estimated to be 1,200 feet thick at its deepest section. There are several glaciers flowing out of the ice field, the largest being Athabasca Glacier. This glacier is 2.5 square miles and is 3.75 miles long. We rode a Snocoach out on the glacier and walked around on it. Much of the ice is blue and is so pure you can drink it. Linda took a cup and we drank some of the water. Snow from recent years carries airborne pollutants, but the ice melting from the glacier is from snow that fell 150 years ago and is very pure. It sure was windy and cold on the glacier and difficult walking on the ice. We wore our heavy winter coats, hats and Linda wore gloves. The road through the icefield area (about 100 miles) is named Icefields Parkway. In the summer the ice and snow melts and causes slow flowing rivers and swamp-like land. From October until the middle of May the water freezes and causes hundreds of acres of icefields. We have always heard about the Continental Divide being the highest elevations of the Rockies from Alaska to Mexico and water from the divide flows in two directions - to the Pacific Ocean and to the Atlantic Ocean. Well, Snow Dome is on the north side of Athabasca Glacier and it is the third divide. All water from Snow Mountain flows to the Arctic Ocean. As we left heading north we noticed the water was indeed flowing north to the Arctic.

After spending nine days in the awesome Canadian Rocky Mountain National Parks we headed to the town of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta. Along the way we stopped at beautiful Abraham Lake for a picnic lunch. Sitting in the sun and looking at the mountains across bright aqua-color water, we reasoned a person can add ten years to their life by traveling fulltime in a motorhome. Below are are few more pictures of Yellowstone National Park and wildlife in the Canadian Rockies.