On a very beautiful and very mild day about two weeks ago we took a long drive through the North Fork.
The East Gate of Yellowstone National Park is located 52 miles from Cody.
Beyond Cody is the Buffalo Bill Dam and the very isolated community of Wapiti.
Beyond Wapiti is the area known as the North Fork, which is named for the North Fork of the Shoshone River that parallels the highway all the way to the park.
The North Fork is also enveloped by the Shoshone National Forest. A forest which weaves its way throughout the entire north west quadrant of Wyoming.
It seems that no matter where you roam, the Shoshone National Forest is there to greet you.
It is a very isolated and extraordinarily beautiful area.
Filled with endless views of the river and mountains.
Late in the year it is also filled with big horn sheep and bison, mule deer and antelope, all of which call the mountains home through most of the year.
But once the weather begins to get cold they all come down out of those mountains and settle into the low lands for the winter.
Winter is our favorite time of year to explore this place.
Tourists are long gone.
The park is closed.
Most of the seasonal residents and most of the outfitters have boarded their buildings for the next six months, and have relocated to other places south and warm.
The winding two-lane highway is empty of traffic.
There is only us...........us and the animals.
The day we went it was 65 degrees.
Still far too early to see the animals, but we headed out anyway in search of quiet adventure and beautiful places.
Our first stop was at a empty campground just on the far end of the reservoir, so woman and puppy could both answer calls of nature.
The picture above is looking back in the direction of Cody. In the center of the picture is the back side of Cedar Mountain and in the foreground is the tail end of the reservoir and the entrance to the river.
Pictured below is the Shoshone River.
The trees are completely bare now, and as I write this it is snowing outside.
The wet, sleeting, half rain-half snow of November 1...............
Wapiti is an interesting place.
Unlike the national forest that begins 10 miles or so further down the highway, Wapiti is a wide open place.
Surrounded by rugged rock bluffs and filled with 100 acre fenced pastures.
There are huge and very expensive homes out here - some on flat land with many acres of grassland for horses and bordering the river.
There are also huge and very expensive homes that dot the mountains.
Many haul water up to those homes and some that DO have running water fight over water rights.
They are expensive homes, more often than not built by newcomers to the area and their homes are built on the top of bluffs in order to enjoy the views.
Some locals scoff at that, because when the wind blows it can rage in Wyoming, and those more familiar with the area tend to build their homes among protected rock bluffs.
Regardless, it is a wide open, and unendingly beautiful area................
One more look back towards Cody before leaving the town behind for a few hours.
The mountain in the center of the picture is the back side of Rattlesnake Mountain..............
Between Cody and the East Gate of the park there are a series of pull-offs, day use areas and campgrounds.
By mid-October (when we took this drive) many of the campgrounds were closed.
LC and I had debated right after we arrived in Cody, whether or not to camp in the North Fork for a while until our in-town cottage opened up.
Although the area is beautiful and quiet, it is notorious for wolf, black bear and grizzly bear activity.
We decided against camping there for that very reason.
This late in the year bears in particular are focused on putting on weight and we just didn't want to have to spend every moment being on guard.
And so we ventured out onto BLM land instead.
In hindsight, that turned out to be the right call because there have been a number of grizzly bear encounters recently.
Just in the past few weeks a woman saw grizzly bear tracks on her property right outside of town (the first time for such a sighting), an off-duty game warden shot and killed a grizzly bear that charged at him (the bear had three cubs with her), and two hunters (a man and woman) were attacked by a bear.
Those two were attacked just within the past week and both are hospitalized.
More on that incident here:
The interesting thing is that a few days after we arrived in Cody we took Kory for a run on BLM land just on the outskirts of town.
She found the vertebrae and two legs of a deer that was laying in the grass and instead of running spent most of her trip gnawing on these unexpected treats.
A day later we stopped at the same place to let our adventurous pup run again.
This time there was half of a dead deer laying in the ground close to where we had found the other deer parts.
We mentioned the finds to a Fish and Game guy when we ran into him a few days later and he told us that hunters were known for dumping carcasses in that area.
And then he advised us to be very careful because the dumping was beginning to draw in bears and mountain lions.
This was close to the home we used to rent when we lived in Cody a few years ago so we were used to keeping watch for mountain lions.
Mountain lions.
But not grizzly bears.
The entire interaction with the F&G officer caught us off guard, and now we will be more attentive than ever...............
Pictures taken at one of the day use areas along the highway...............
A few miles beyond the river-walk, we made one more stop.
This time at Wayfarers Chapel.
When we first came to this place (back in 2011) LC and I both looked at the wooden sign that was standing silently on the edge of the highway, and assumed that there was an actual church located at the top of the little uphill gravel road that we impulsively turned onto.
We had expected perhaps a small wooden structure.
Maybe an aging and historic log building.
Maybe even some touristy, upscale log sculpture.
We were wrong on all counts.
Looking down at the river from the small gravel parking area at the top of the hill...................
And the mountains adjacent to the river..............
Kory enjoying the continual short drives, frequent stops and frequent walks.............
And I am enjoying watching someone walk more since we moved to Cody than he has walked in a very long time................
So after driving up a short but very steep hill, and then climbing out of the Tahoe and walking a short but very steel single track trail further into the mountains, what did we find?
We found this....................
Wayfarers Chapel is an outdoor place.
A place filled with wooden benches, a stone podium, a large wooden cross, that is surrounded by some of the most beautiful national forest that you will find anywhere.
For a non-spiritual woman, I find this to be a spiritual place.
I love it here.
And so does LC.
It is also the place where I had a very up-close and wonderful interaction with a cow elk.
An interaction that was once in a life time.
Here is what I wrote about that interaction back in 2011:
One more brief stop along the way............
A memorial to the fire fighters who were killed and injured during the Blackwater Fire of 1937:
On this day we did not drive all the way to the East Gate, although we did drive about 40 of the 52 mile distance that separates Cody from the park.
It was a day for exploring, for enjoying the mountains and the river, for walking alone and with each other, and for continuing to become reacquainted with this area that we had not seen in a few years.
As with the city itself, the forest felt both strange and familiar at the same time.
Kory loves this place and everything is just one long and continuous new for adventure for her.
LC and I both worried about her - how she would adjust to all this......newness.
She's doing fine...................
And this man is doing fine as well.
We're trying hard to not let the search for a home and a way to make a life here cause stress.
Sometimes it takes very conscious effort to look at each other and say "Enough for today."
Sometimes it takes conscious effort to just say "It's time to take a drive into the mountains"..........................
We DID find one.
Even though it was still warm both LC and I were excited to find this one lone bison happily grazing a few hundred feet from the highway.
We pulled off the highway and watched him for over five minutes.
Intent on grazing, he didn't raise his head for even a moment throughout our entire stop..............
Kory mesmerized by this very strange creature.................
Click on the picture to enlarge.
A small herd of big horn sheep.
LC pulled the Tahoe off the road, I quietly climbed out of the vehicle and then quietly walked along a fence line in an attempt to get some decent pictures of these guys.
I can zoom my camera in a couple of steps but beyond that it doesn't work. By the time winter takes a hold of this place in earnest I will have a new camera.
In the meantime, our one big horn sheep sighting.................
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things...........Mary Oliver
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things...........Mary Oliver
No comments:
Post a Comment