Fishing Montana & Yellowstone
Jan has known Steve Abercrombie since her time as a CRNA in the Navy. He and his wife Joyce came to visit us in Hawaii in 2018, just a month before the big eruption started. They have been asking us to visit them in Helena ever since.
We were only there a couple days, but we certainly enjoyed our time with them! The first two days we went fishing on the Missouri River.
I caught a 5# rainbow, but he got off the hook just as I got him to the shore. Jan was so excited she had him in the frying pan already! The exciting part was as soon as he hit the lure he was doing flips in the air! Steve lost one near the shore. I landed a 12” brown trout, but she got away before Jan could get her on the stringer. Jan had one on, but it got off almost immediately. Overall, good fishing. Next time we’ll get them in the frying pan!
On the third day we did a fast trip to Yellowstone Park. We left at 6am and arrived at the park entrance at 9am. We spent the whole day exploring. We didn’t have a lot of time, so carefully chose which places to visit. The Fall colors were just amazing!
Our first stop was at Mammoth to see all the elk, which were everywhere! The rangers had to keep telling people to back up, because some tried to get up close. Yeah, during rut, not a very smart move!
One elk was a real camera Princess! She practically posed for everyone. One photo I took was of her right after she licked the wet mineral deposit in front of us. You can easily see her reaction to the taste.
The salt deposits at the Mammoth hot springs were amazing, almost like spider webs all over the rocks.
You can see the scale of the deposits behind them in the photos.
The next stop was a valley filled with hot ponds and springs. Just think, right underneath causing all this is a big pool of magma! No worries, eh? Just as we were leaving we saw two ravens in the top of a tree. Being Jan’s favorite bird, I had to get a photo of them.
Next was Old Faithful. Right now, it’s blowing about every 90 minutes. We arrived about 20 minutes before the next eruption. All of a sudden, the geyser behind blew. We had a pretty good view from where we were standing. It went about 100’ in the air, and lasted about 4 minutes. 5 minutes later Old Faithful blew. I gotta say, the other geyser was more impressive. It went higher and lasted longer. Still pretty spectacular event, not to be missed. We will definitely come back to see it again.
During our visit we saw a lot of elk and buffalo, some pretty close to the road. Big animals! Not to be messed with, especially in rutting season. It was a great day. We got back to the house after 9, tired from a fun day. We plan to go back again for fishing, visiting, and maybe Yellowstone again. Oh, and get more lovin’ with Emmett & Boomer!