A few days in the Wilderness

Craig and I went to the Big Horns 10 years ago.  We had been married two years at the time and had zero children.  We went as a place to look and stay at on our way to Teton National Park.  We enjoyed the Tetons (of course) but developed a great love for the Big Horns.  They are definitely an underrated park and I am grateful that they are underrated because part of the appeal for me is the lack of tourism and people.  Most of the time you have the hikes almost to yourself and it is just a quiet place to go and just be.  We vowed that we would bring our children back to the place someday and so 10 years later it seemed like a great time to bring the children back to a place we loved.

Day 42:  Saturday, July 16th.

The mountains are calling.  Craig and I both love to head to the mountains once a year....we took an 8 year hiatus but have enjoyed dreaming and planning up trips we want to take our kids on these past few years.

We went to the same camp site we stayed at 10 years ago.  To say it is off the beaten path is an understatement.  You take a rough gravel road 7 miles back to a campsite and a trailhead.  The campsite has 10 sites in it and a vault toilet (port-a-potty) and that is it.  The trailhead leads off into the Cloud Peak Wilderness.  There are no roads past the trailhead and into the Wildnerness...it is all trails.  An airplane crashed in the mountains years ago and you can still go hike up to the crash site since they had no way to bring the plane out.  It is honestly one of Craig and my favorite places.  We knew the lay of the land better this time so I was able to reserve a pretty sweet site.  The kids immediately began playing on rocks and on some trails and found this boulder that they coined "Spitman's rock" because they spit on it whenever they ran by.

Our homestead for a few days:

After setting up shop we decided to do what we always do and explore our new area.  Do a walk around.

We came back for an afternoon of fishing for Craig.

But the kids got bored with that and found some great rocks to jump on so they jumped, I sat and enjoyed the scenery/kids laughter and Craig fished.  We were all pretty content.

After some fishing, we played in the lake a bit as it was getting hot (80s).

And whittled sticks with pocket knives to form good tips for picking up watermelon.  Some supper and fire time and we were ready for bed.

Day 43:  Sunday, July 17th.  It was COLD in the mountains overnight.  Like 36 degrees.  I forget how cold it can get at 9100 feet elevation when the days are 80s and the nights are 30s.  Brrrr....we woke and cooked breakfast over our fire to warm us up inside and out and then it was time to hike into the Wilderness.  We saw 4 people on this entire hike and it was all when we were coming back.  Love it.

We decided to take a trail we hadn't taken 10 years ago and I am glad we did.  The trail followed a mountain stream.  We had great views of the meadows and the mountains.  Very easy but rewarding little hike.

The kids did their first legitimate stream crossing.  Put all that rock jumping practice from the day before to good use.  We came to the stream and they wondered where the trail went.  We pointed to the other side and said "see that sign....there it is"  Their eyes got big as they realized to continue we would have to cross the stream and they were excited at the adventure of it.

So cross the stream we did and all made it with relatively dry clothes although some of us (Craig) had wet shoe.

After some time hiking we came back to camp and Craig caught his first trout!  He is a novice at cleaning fish but he got 5 chances to practice on some rainbow and brook trout that day.  He does not like to eat fish but I love them.  So he caught them, cleaned them and then I cooked them up and we had a nice fish fry that evening with 4 trout  (we ate one for lunch so he could practice his cleaning skills).  That is part of what I love about here....we were able to catch our dinner, find our firewood, eat dinner over the fire.  I love how simple/pioneer it all is.

So the sun was going down and temperature was dropping.  We would warm ourselves by the fire but kept running back down to the lake because we didn't really want to miss these views:

Yep:  Already want to go back.  Our time in the Wilderness was both fun and refreshing.  We did a good amount of activity but I never felt like we had to entertain the kids or be entertained.  We just enjoyed the space we were in the what nature had to offer.  Still one of my favorite places.