Road Trip Log Day 5

Devils Tower, WY to Philipsburg, MT

Woke up to an awesome sunrise at our campground at the base of Devils Tower.

Loved this sign that was found in the park - they have a little prairie dog town. I could've stayed there for a half a day watching these critters.

Not the best photo, but you can tell there's a little prairie dog there.

I've never seen as many deer as I had in Wyoming!

I heard wild turkey gobbling the night before when we were setting up our camp and sure enough, we found a few walking around in the park the next morning. This guy was pretty funny. We couldn't figure out why he was standing by the ranger office with his feather all spread out. Bear would make a gobbling sound and the turkey would gobble back. They did this for quite awhile. It was upon seeing our car reflection in the window that we realized that the turkey was feeling threatened by the "other" turkey he saw, which was simply his own reflection LOL.

This was our breakfast below - some freeze dried scrambled eggs with ham, bacon and bell peppers. I'm pretty impressed by how well these dehydrated meals have come along! Not bad at all actually. And since there are no espresso stands nearby to grab a coffee, we brought along some packets of Starbucks VIA instant coffee and that held us over :)

Once we got into Montana, Bear found a scenic drive (Pintler Scenic Loop) for us to drive through and we decided to stay in a town called Philipsburg, MT. This area was absolutely gorgeous. The photo below is of a lake along this drive that still had some portions covered in ice, in mid May! I guess Montana does have a short summer.

It seemed a bit on the chilly side, so we decided against setting up camp and checked into a little inn instead. After checking in, we found that there was a ghost town up in the hills of this town, so Bear got to check out the 4x4 in our newly acquired vehicle.

This ghost town was the old mining town of Granite. Photo below is of the miners union lodge.

The road getting up was pretty scary, as we climbed up over 1000ft in elevation to get to this ghost town. I realized that my fear of heights has increased somewhat when we got to parts of the road where you see the valley below and how high up we were on a narrow road.

We came back down from the mountainside and enjoyed one of the best chicken fried steak dinners I've had ever in the town of Philipsburg.

Other trip notes: Wyoming wins hands down for the muddiest cars we've seen on the road. Cowbows in WY can be pretty fashionable too - saw a young cowboy wearing yellow cowboy boots. Bear and I were also excited that it was in Montana that we finally see our first roadside espresso stand (yippee!). Can you tell we really like our espresso? :)