Cooke City, Montana—What A Trip

We drove to Cooke City, Montana Tuesday taking the long way around—that’s a story for the next blog!!

Arriving just after 5:30pm on Tuesday we found a boondocking spot a little too close to the road for us but the weather was starting to look a little iffy—we unloaded the ATV and started up the road looking for better boondocking locations when the skies opened and dumped both hail and rain on us.  In spite of the roof, we were all (including Emmi) soaked to the skin!!  That’s not snow in the below photo although in Cooke City at an elevation of 8000 feet, you never know!We enjoyed a quiet evening in our little truck camper listening to the rain on the roof.  Wednesday dawned cool and sunny—Sarge, Bob and Frank were driving over from the Livingston area to meet us.  During his career as a game warden, Sarge spent a lot of time in the Cooke City area and was our tour guide for Wednesday’s ride to Goose Lake.  The lake is located in the Absaroka/Beartooth Wilderness area—we parked the ATVs and hiked about a 1/4 mile to spectacular Goose Lake. 

We do indeed have some awesome, beautiful country in Montana but this trip showed us just how lucky we are to live in this area!  The trail to Goose Lake is about 10 miles of rugged, rocky (very rocky), steep ATV riding through some of the most breathtaking scenery—with lakes around every corner!

I took 124 photos Wednesday during this trip—I won’t load all 124 of them, I promise!

On the last ATV trip we took with Sarge, his friend Bob mentioned he had just purchased a new Yamaha ATV.  This trip to Goose Lake was Bob’s first ATV ride—he’s done some ATVing with his Kawasaki Terex side by side but not on a 4-wheeler.  And he had never done anything as rugged as this trail to Goose Lake—and as a matter of fact, neither had we!  When we got to this particularly steep part of the trail, Bob wasn’t sure he wanted to see Goose Lake all that bad—but with some encouragement from all of us, he headed down the trail—great job!

And then there’s Sarge with his hands in his pocket letting Bob and Mike do all the work!

This video is of the trip back up that steep, rocky section—again Bob did a great job!!

 

That’s probably way too many photographs so I will save the rest for a later blog—as we were enjoying our lunch at Goose Lake, dark clouds began building and we all decided we didn’t want a repeat of Tuesday and made a bee line for the rigs!  We almost made it back to the RV before it rained—at least this time it didn’t rain hard—it saved that for later in the evening when once again the skies opened dumping lots of rain and hail.

Today, Thursday, we were to have taken another ride—it rained most of the night and was raining this morning—so we all decided to pack up and head for home.