Memorial Day kicks off the summer

The first summertime adventure I had in Montana was my three day Memorial Weekend trip with my friend Fern. 

 We started our trip by driving up through White Sulphur Springs to the some national forest land to camp.  It was the first camping I had done that year and Fern was a great camping companion.  We did all the normal things, set up our tent, made dinner and saw some wildlife.  I only saw birds and rodents, but Fern saw some sort of large canine, either a large coyote or a wolf!  The next day we went to the hot springs in White Sulphur, a little too late in the day to be truly enjoyable that time of year. Plus the springs were in pools in the courtyard of a hotel surrounded by murals that portrayed the landscape around the area.  Or at least what the landscape used to be.   On three sides the mural was full of animals, and the forth depicted Native Americans standing along, wading in and otherwise enjoying the hot springs. The mural was probably not intentionally designed to offend, rather probably just show an idyllic scene, but I personally was just constantly reminded of America's sordid history where the native people are concerned.  Beyond that, the mural seemed to say "this is beautiful, this is lovely, so we decided to put a bunch of concrete and walls around it."


After White Sulphur Springs we decided to drive through Yellowstone National Park.  But we didn't want to just "drive" through so we asked for a hike recommendation at Mammoth.  We somehow missed where the actual trailhead was so we took what appeared to be a "locals" trail, that led to a little fire ring behind some cabins.  We eventually found the trail that we were looking for, and took lots of jumping and flower photos, only a few of which I will subject you to.

I have a lot of pictures of Fern looking at the ground, she is as fascinated by plants as I am, if not more so!

Yay Yellowstone!