We didn't get stuck in the mud!

After five nights (and five pieces of pie) at Bear Lodge Campground, we were sad that it was time to move down the road. When Denisa went to the lodge to buy a farewell piece of pie, she noticed that the resident moose had just arrived at the pond.

Denisa only had her cell phone with her, but still managed to get pictures of the moose reflected in the water. We loved living among the animals in the Bighorn Mountains!

Even though the roads inside the campground were the worst we have ever taken our motor home on, we enjoyed the convenience of electricity and water hook-ups. It was also nice to drive down to the lodge for wifi to check weather forecasts, emails, texts, and even publish a blog or two. After lots of rain the day before, we were a little concerned about the motor home sinking in the mud when we tried to leave. Our neighbor got stuck and made some awesome ruts earlier. 

So we were happy when Mark eased the motor home out of its spot, and bumped his way down that awful pot-holed road to make our exit. We were excited to report that we didn't get stuck in the mud!

We moved the motor home only 19 miles south down Highway 14. We have been camping at an elevation of  8,200 feet, and we had to drive over the pass at 9,000 feet, and then back down to our new campground at 7,500 feet. If that sounds like a roller coaster ride, it was.

The highways in the Bighorns are lightly traveled and wide. So if we saw a moose, we could easily pull to the side of the road. We were used to seeing cars pulled over on the side of the highway, but in the motor home we didn't even stop for moose-sightings.

 We drove 17 highway miles down the pavement, then two miles down a winding gravel forest service road . . .

to our new site at Shell Creek Campground. We had looked at many of these rustic forest service campgrounds, and we wanted to stay in one before we left the Bighorn mountains. Besides, we got half-price because Mark had that new senior pass.

We had no hook-ups at all--that means no electricity, no water, no sewer, no television, and no phone signal. We are off every type of grid! But the sites were nicely spaced, and we had a roaring creek in our back yard. Shell Creek was running hard right behind our camping spot.

We could sleep to the sound of a roaring river for the next three nights.

We fixed lunch, and then we had a little nap to enjoy the bubbling sound of the creek and the crisp mountain air. 

Then it was time to go exploring. We found almost no hiking trails in this section of the Bighorn mountains, so this was a driving day. We drove first to Shell Creek Waterfall.

With nice cement walkways and viewpoints, we thought everyone that stopped here was on their way to or from Yellowstone. We exchanged picture-taking with a family from Kansas heading to that national park.

Situated in a deep canyon, we could look towards the large rock formation in the distance known as Copman's Tomb. What a beautiful view! We have wandered into another of God's wonders!

We decided to continue down Highway 14, as this was new territory for us. We like to find forest service signs that point out the names of peaks and mesas that we can see from the highway. According to the sign, we were looking at Elephant Head Rock, Sunlight Mesa, and Pyramid Peak.

The picture we took at that pull-out looked exactly like the sign! We never could see the resemblance of the elephant head, but sunlight mesa was in the sunlight, and pyramid peak definitely looked like a pyramid.

We continued down Highway 14, and steeply down in elevation. It was amazing that we drove from our campground where we were wearing jackets, all the way down in elevation to temperatures in the mid-70s in just 17 miles. Highway 14 is steep, and this is the direction we'll be driving the motor home in a couple days when we leave the Bighorn Mountains. These narrow roads were squished between the canyon walls and Shell Creek. There was no room for road shoulders in that narrow canyon!

One of our stops today was at Chimney Rock. But we soon found out that this tall red rock was on private property, and the owners made it clear that visitors were not welcome. So we had to settle for a distant picture from the highway of this bright red stacked rock.

We drove all the way to the tiny town of Shell. It had a post office, a mercantile (that sells cold beer but not cold milk), and a church. We will have to do some serious grocery shopping when we get out of the mountains. After suffering through hot temperatures all the way up into the 70's at Shell, we were ready to head back up into the mountains in search of cooler weather. We started counting wildlife as we drove. 

We found 21 moose. After five days in the Bighorns, we finally learned to only take pictures of the animals closest to the road. These two guys were laying in the middle of a field of wild flowers, and didn't mind when we stopped to take pictures.

In the national forest, most of the highways were lined with wooden fences. But obviously the moose, deer, and elk have no problem jumping over them. 

But those fences actually seemed to keep some of the animals off the road. We saw few of these big guys on the highway or in the bar ditches.

We had seen a lot of moose in the last week, but it was still thrilling to find them and take their pictures!

Mark was good at spotting elk, that usually hang out in large herds on the hills further from the road. Using his cattle-counting skills from being raised on a ranch, he counted the size of these elk herds. 

This day he counted herds of 22, 43, and 210. It was hard to take a picture of a herd that big, so we zoomed in on just a few of the elk grazing in the meadow.

We also found a few elk that were traveling in smaller herds. We counted an additional 24 elk in small groups today, including these that were actually close enough to the road to get a better picture. While moose will stand and graze for as long as you want to take pictures, the elk were more skittish and watched us momentarily before they ran for the cover of the forest.

Last winter was tough for the animals because these mountains got more snow than usual. But the elk herds seemed to be doing well this spring, with lots of baby elk among the herd.

We seldom took pictures of deer because there were so many, and they're just not as unusual for us. But we do tally their numbers and counted 47 individual deer this day. While Mark was counting elk, Denisa was counting wildflowers. 

We saw a field of purple that stretched all the way to the forest. Have we mentioned that wildflowers in the mountains were stunning this year?

We've had no television signal for a week, so we had no idea what was going on in the world. But driving mountain roads and spotting wildlife is our new favorite hobby. Instead of watching a television drama to see how the plot unfolds, we watched a herd of elk through binoculars. It was fun to watch the males fighting for dominance, or to see a deer trying to infiltrate the group while the elk cows kept lowering their heads and pushing the deer to the edge. Now that's real drama and good clean entertainment!

This day we were glad to still be camping among the animals and more of God's wonders. We also were relieved that we didn't get stuck in the mud at the last camp site, and we had no mud at our new camping spot at Shell Creek Campground.