This blog entry is long past due...sorry guys. Bjorn and Erik came out for a "guys" trip while Emily was away visiting family in the south. We ended up doing a "tour de sheridan", fitting in everything from Tongue River caving, biking, hiking in shorts, camping in snow, baking an Italian feast, fishing, and I guess that's about it. Hope you guys had fun. Sorry about that snow...I should've checked the weather!
The caving was a blast, we were in the dark for about 2 hours, hiking and crawling through limestone caverns to an underground crystal-clear decent size river. Lots of fun, and I'm not sure where else a person can explore a cave without guides/maps etc...thank goodness for all the graffiti on the walls!
We took a trip up into the Bighorns, with the destination of some high glacial lakes that recieve little or no pressure during the short high altitude summer. The plan was to bike as far as possible--the wilderness boundary--then hike a few more miles to put us in striking distance for the next day...spending 2 nights before packing out. We picked up an extra bike for Skunk courtesy of Buffalo's cop shop...a beautiful wally-world special used in a recent hit and run. I cleaned it up for Skunk, but we didn't figure out that the seat was broken until we were about 10 miles into the 2 hour bike ride...sorry about that...we were wondering why he was going so slow on the way up....hope you can still have kids...if not, sorry Kiki.
After ditching the bikes, we hiked for a few hours, much to the Bear's dismay. He tried multiple times to set up camp and get situated for the night, he must have known that winter was fast approaching...we probably should have trusted his animal instinct, but we didn't. We woke up the next morning to about 3 inches of snow, with more heavy wet flakes falling. The clouds had rolled in, and at times you couldn't even see the trees 50 feet away. We decided to stay in our sleeping bags, play some cards, and relax until the clouds lifted...after 4 hours, we made the tough decision to call it quits and head back down the mountain. It was tough to do, but the hike was going to be more of a straight-up, straight-down scramble on ice and snow...we'll have to make another attempt at that one. After 7 hours we were back in town eating Mexican food.
Emily returned late Sunday, and we all day monday on the North Tongue, about an hour or so from Sheridan. It's a catch and release section for cutthroats, and everyone managed to catch a few fish, either legally or illegally (great work on the "channel squeeeze" team!)
Bighorn mountains (13,000) view from a 10 minute hike from the cabin!
Holt Hideaway treated us well...thank you Holt's!
South Fork of Clear Creek which ran right past the cabin...
Here's Emily and Brian demonstrating the main source of heat during our cabin stay! We had to open the windows...Brian how many pairs of socks are you wearing? Nice slippers!
Playing some Euchre, or smoking Meg and Brian in some Euchre!
