We can't seem to get anything finished!

It got down to 36 degrees last night, but we were snug and warm in our motor home even without any hookups. Being too chilly in the month of July was a nice problem to have. We were boondocking at Shell Creek forest service campground in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming at 7,500 feet in elevation. The plan for the day was to explore our new neighborhood. We took a picture of our campground with our motor home tucked in amongst the trees. Shell Creek was babbling in the trees behind it, and Snow Shoe Mountain was overlooking it.

The only hike in the area was just a few miles down the gravel forest service road 17. We started down the Adelaide Trail that wove its way among the wildflowers. 

If we continued 6.5 miles down this trail, we could see Adelaide Lake; or 7.5 miles of hiking would get us to Shell Reservoir. We were hiking parallel to Shell Creek, the same creek that was running right behind the motor home at our campground.

We watched as fishermen below us on Shell Creek pulled two fish out of the water.

It's no secret that Denisa loves wildflowers, and she was seeing some unusual ones here in the Bighorn mountains. She took more pictures of some of her favorites.

The wildflowers were evidence that we were wandering among God's wonders.

While we didn't see many hikers today, we could tell that this was a popular horse trail. We saw the big horse trailers parked at the trailhead, and we could tell from the horse shoe prints and horse poop that they were ahead of us. We hate to complain, but horses can make a mess of a hiking trail.

We had several creek crossings before we entered the Red Cloud Wilderness Area. 

After 1.7 miles, we decided this was a good turn-around point, and so we headed back to the pickup. Going all the way to Adelaide Lake would mean a 13-mile hike by the time we got back. We didn't want to hike that far, so that was the first thing that we didn't finish this day.

We wanted to see more of forest service road 17, and we thought we might be able to drive to Adelaide Lake and Shell Reservoir. The problem was that the roads to the lake got worse and worse. After driving up two miles on a narrow-one-lane-gravel-road, then bumping along a rocky road for 3 more miles, and making hair pin turns down a steep rutted road for 2 more miles . . . we finally gave up. Sometimes we can't seem to get anything finished. We parked the pickup beside the road right before a particularly bad section of road, and took off walking.

We walked for another 1.5 miles, enjoying the wildflowers much more than when we were bumping by them in the pickup.

We finally got to a viewpoint where we could see Shell Reservoir. 

To stand beside the lake would take another 1.5 miles of hiking straight down. That means another hike straight up three miles to get back to the pickup. We decided that view was good enough for us, even though it felt like we can't seem to get anything finished. 

We felt a little defeated that we didn't seem to finish anything today, and didn't ever get to a "destination." But we knew we still had to bump and rock and roll up and down those eight miles of narrow muddy bumpy dirt roads back to our campground.

Back at the motor home, Mark started a fire. We had a camp fire meal of bratwurst and sauerkraut and beans for dinner. 

We were just eating the last of our bratwurst, when the rain came and snuffed out our fire. We didn't quite finish our planned meal, because the rain came before we got the marshmallows roasted for the smores. Oh well! Sometimes we can't seem to get anything finished!

We ran into the motor home for cover and watched the storm through the windshield. We saw a streak of lightning hit a tree on the mountain-side in front of us. The tree instantly turned orange and then red as the lightning ran the length of the tall pine. What a sight! After the storm, we looked out to see one of the brightest double rainbows we have ever seen!

It was so bright that we could see each one of the colors of the spectrum in a separate band.

That double rainbow arched all the way from the mountain-side on the left, to our motor home tucked away in the trees on the right.

On a day when we couldn't seem to finish anything ourselves, God put a perfect finish on our day with that brilliant rainbow arched across our campground.