Wow, I promised I'd be 'back' in about 10 days at the end of my last blog but I just noticed it has been a whopping 24!!
Time really flies when you're having fun!

We've arrived safe and sound in Texas after a beautiful 10 day ride on the I-25 south through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.
Although we're to big of a combination to take the smaller and often more scenic country roads we were able to enjoy lots of beautiful and variegated landscapes that we could see right from the Highway.
I made a gazillion pictures, too many to show them all without boring the heck out of you so I've made a small selection. Enjoy!

We had a little bit of a slow start out of West Yellowstone since James still had some cleaning up to do and than when we finally brought the slides in, the bedroom one was stuck. Fortunately we can hand crank it and after a few inches of that we were able to bring it in normally. We think it might have been frozen since it was only 20F!




The weather was gorgeous otherwise and the snowfall of the last few days had turned the Gallatin Natinal Forest we first had to drive through into a beautiful winter wonderland!

After turning onto the I-90 East at Bozeman we encountered this small mountain pass.

 

On the other site we slowly came into some lower elevations where we got rid of most of the snow.  

After arriving in Billings we stocked up on groceries at Walmart and got new batteries at Sears. We spent the night at the KOA where we had a free stay (compliments from our manager in West Yellowstone who's brother is running this one!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning James changed the batteries. We had a little problem with the old ones on our drive up in the spring where they wouldn't charge enough to get us through the night (to run the heater and bring in the slides the next day) so we needed some new ones.

 

                     

 

 

We had only 170 miles to go that day so we could take it easy.

The weather was great again (48F is a lot better than 20F!)and we followed the Yellowstone River for a little while until we turned onto the I-25 South.

 

 

On our schedule for today was a visit to the Little Bighorn Battlefield Monument, but we had overlooked the little word that said 'National' in front of  'Monument', so guess what? Yep! It was closed!

@#$%^&#!

At least the rustic Trading Post was open, and the Indian Taco's we'd read about to be very good here were indeed on the menu, although they were just OK in our opinion. The Fried Bread with honey we'd also ordered was much better but I have a sweet tooth so that was an easy one.

 

                                  

 

 

I guess there was nothing else to do than drive on so that's what we did and it wasn't long before we entered Wyoming.

 

 

 

 

Just before Buffalo we turned off the Highway and drove to the

Lake Desmet campground on, you guessed it, Lake Desmet.

 

 

 

 

We were the only ones at this beautiful lake so we picked a prime spot, right on the water's edge and enjoyed a peaceful and quiet happy hour and the beautiful sunset.

 

 

Well, I guess we were not completely alone:

 

 

 

 

The next day we drove all the way through the Great Plains, and towards the south, through the High Plains, of Wyoming.

The region is known for the steady, and sometimes intense, winds that prevail from the west and that's what we got! Besides that we still saw a lot of snow here from the storm that passed through a couple of days before but fortunately we had nothing but sunshine and clear roads ourselves!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We camped at a truck stop in Cheyenne and left early the next morning to drive into the next state, Colorado.

 

 

 

Although we kept the Rocky Mountains on our right hand side all the way through we didn't get close enough to get better pictures than this.

As we knew beforehand, we couldn't drive the Peak to Peak Byway west of Denver, due to the flooding of lately and although we'd hoped the National Parks might have reopened when we arrived here, they didn't, so we kept driving south on the I-25 instead of detouring through Utah .
We're no 'city-people' so we also quickly drove around Denver.




It was another windy day and it's also getting warmer now we are a little more south!
I think these are the rocky hills and interesting formations of the Rampart Range:

                               

                                

A little snow on them again when we got to the area around Colorado Springs:

 

        

 

 

We kept seeing big herds of Pronghorn Antilopes. They were like cows! Grazing totally at ease right next to the Freeway despite all the traffic whizzing by at close range!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We overnighted at the Walmart in Pueblo where we picked up some more 'stuff', a couple of jeans and a screen room we had on our list 'to get' already for a while.

 

The next day we crossed the border into New Mexico via the 7834' Raton Pass:

 

 

And after a little drive we left the I-25 for our little detour through the Sangre De Christo Mountains and a visit of Taos.

 

 

 

 

 

OK, phew, that's long enough for this post. I 'll continue in the next one!

(take a bathroom brake, walk the dog and grab a cup of coffee) ;-)