Monday, December 31, 2012

Petrified Forest hike



Saturday night I drove up to the trail head of the Petrified Forest and slept there. In the morning I woke up with a ranger knocking on my window. He was cool and talked for awhile. Then I got ready and started out on the 10 mile hike. There’s a log book that people sign into when they start there hike. The last log was dec 1, so the only tracks out there are mine and the creatures. The hike was much more intense then I was expecting. I forgot what winter hiking is like. The colors here seem to swirl together with a yellow, orange, brown look. The hike takes you through a few valleys then up onto a huge plateau area that overlooks the main river valley. I still can’t believe how many animals there are. I saw about 100 buffalo, 40 elk, and 15 mule deer. There was also 3 times I had to walk way off the trail just to get around buffalo herds. They are strange animals, once they see you they just stop and stare at you until you leave. One time I was hiking up to a point. Half way up I looked towards the top only to see about 4 of them up there, directly in my way. I sat down and waited about 10 minutes, when I looked around the corner they didn’t move an inch. I had to climb around the point to a different spot, which I thought would be past the buffalo. I was wrong. I started to climb over the crest and there he was. I was about 15 feet away from one. So I climbed down a ways and continued further down the point. When I made it up this time I was past them but I looked back and my friend must have called in the re-enforcements. There were 3 or 4 of them staring down at the last spot they saw me. The next part of the hike was walking along the overlook of the valley. On one side you have a very flat grass plateau. On the other is massive rolling hills with the river snaking along the bottom. Very cool to walk along.  After this section I started to realize I was running out of day light and needed to hurry things up. the rest of the hike was on that same plateau. At one part you dip down into a valley for about a half mile. By the time I got back to my car I was exhausted and pretty much out of water. So I drove back to the Americinn to shower up and refill on water. From there I drove to Billings, MT and slept at a holiday inn express.
This morning I was able to grab a continental breakfast, and some info from the lady manning the food. Then I headed into town to do some laundry, all of the cloths I wore hiking were pretty discussing. While I waited I stopped at Cabelas for some fishing details. The guy looked at me like I was an idiot. The Big Horn River, pretty much the number one trout fishing spot in the world, is about an hour and a half away. He gave me some really good advice and I will have to stop back in if I end up catching anything. So when my laundry was finished I drove straight to the spot he told me about. It took me awhile to actually find the right spot so I ended up with about an hour to fish. No luck yet but I am hopeful for tomorrow. I had a few on the line and several bites, I don’t think I’m setting the hook correctly? I came back to this small town, Hardin to use the internet but there’s nothing around for about 80 miles. So New Years Eve will consist of drive back down by the river and give it another shot.



some of the color of Teddy Nat. park
 weird rock formations
 petrified stumps
 all the animals stare at you. these are some elf from about 250 yards
 what some of the valleys look like

 the post in the middle is a trail marker. the 3 on the left were the ones looking for me that i had to skirt around
 the river valley over look


 this was the sun set near where i was fishing on the Big Horn
this got out of order but there is a 4X4 post right of center that is a trail marker i was supposed to hike to

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