my travels in pixels

Waterton Lakes NP, Alberta Canada All that fuss over nothing about taking food over the border. You don’t need to declare any food going into Alberta, only British Columbia and some other place. They didn’t even ask us about our alcohol. Did we have firearms, bear spray or any other personal security device. Did we own our truck and trailer and where were they registered and why?, Did we have flights booked to leave the US? Now that we don’t have the i94 visa stapled into our passport, I’m not sure what the procedure will be if we want to officially leave the USA at the end of a six month period driving across a international border. When we arrived at our campground just outside of Waterton, there was a sign on the office window to say the campground was closed due to flooding, but the Fraser’s are to go to site 47 and just follow the map! Good thing we booked last week. They had 11”/28cm of rain in two days! Older Canadians still talk in inches. Dave told us that the campground...

Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana Photo courtesy of VisitUSA Driving along the i90, I found a note I wrote last year to remind myself about the Battle of Little Bighorn if we were travelling through Montana. It was on our way and we got there just in time for the morning Ranger talk with his rendition of what happened. He was an ex-history teacher and was very enthusiastic about delivering a history lesson that would keep us all engaged for an hour. In a nutshell, gold was found in the Black Hills which was part of the Indian reservation set up with the Fort Laramie treaty. Gold seekers rushed to the area, contravening the treaty, so the army tried to buy it from the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho for $6m. The Indians understandably weren’t interested. They wanted to preserve their way of life, which wasn’t living on reservations. The money was taken off the table and they were told to leave anyway or be treated as hostiles. They resisted and a war ensued that ended with Col. C...

We had to be careful what route we entered Custer State Park as two of them had low tunnels that we would not have fitted under. We were told that this was a mini Yellowstone. In that there are bison, pronghorn and prairie dogs, that is true, but it’s nothing like Yellowstone. Our first campsite was in Blue Bell which reminded us of Jasper as our site was nestled in around the Ponderosa Pines and green grass in between. A sign at the entrance to the campground, says that if you haven’t booked, then you need to before going any further! The sites are electric but a storm that morning had knocked out the power, so we didn’t have any for the first few hours. We went out on the wildlife road for a few miles and saw a few bison and two pronghorn. There were traffic jams for prairie dogs which Lindsay thought was hysterical and he would get frustrated at being caught behind them. He forgets that we thought they were cute when we first encountered them. The next day we move...

Mt Rushmore, South Dakota It was a novelty to be in an RV park with full hook up and wifi. Even though we were planning to go and see the night show at Mt Rushmore, we decided to go in the late afternoon to get a few pictures just in case. When we got up there it was in shade as the clouds had started rolling in and just before dinner we were shown a radar screen of the weather that was on it’s way – thunder and lightening, so we didn’t get to the nightshow. For some reason Lindsay suggested that we book our next stop in Custer State Park which was just as well as we found out it is extremely popular. We couldn’t get three nights in a row, so I decided to do one at a time, securing three different sites in two different campgrounds. Lindsay had been hoping that our front tyres would have lasted a couple more months, but one of our fellow campers pointed out that there was a spot where the metal was showing through. So instead of doing an early morning shoot at Mt Rushmore, Lindsay h...

The Badlands are another name for mounds of mud that has hardened I’ve decided. Some of them had colourful sediment lines while others were just one boring colour. These though had areas of green grass around them instead of the usual dirt.   We left a day earlier than planned as they were resurfacing our campground loop and we managed to get a refund after Lindsay complained, so we moved onto Mt Rushmore. Luckily we had been out and about at 4.30am anyway, so had seen all that we really needed to.

The Devil’s Tower is a large rock in the middle of nowhere; there are numerous theory's about how it was formed, but I don't think they've settled on one. Many people climb it and even though they are asked to refrain for the month of June because of Indian traditions, some people like the ones we saw, still do.  The day we arrived, the weather closed in, which we don’t mind as it’s a good excuse to catch up on a few things and veg out. We are in the National Monument’s campground which is really nice – lots of green trees and grass. There is a walk and talk at 10am led by a university student who is paid by the park which was interesting. Black tailed prairie dogs are everywhere all around here, they even close one of the campground loops at a certain time of the year as they move in there!  

Cody, Wyoming Cody is named after Buffalo Bill – William Cody. The Buffalo Bill Museum is about five museums which cover Buffalo Bill, the Indians, Wildlife in the area and firearms. Your ticket covers you for two days but we didn’t need that long. During the morning we were at the right place to be ushered outside for a showing of the local raptors, so we got to see some of them very close. The red tailed hawk, Osprey, Great horned owl and the US version of our wedge tailed eagle. All of them had been injured in some way, rescued and now lived at the museum. The photographic section of the museum was disappointing, whereas the photos depicting the pronghorn migration were fantastic. A group followed their migratory habits by foot to see what obstacles they encountered and have rallied to have land (only a mile in width) put aside for them. The bottom barbed wire on the bottom of fences has been replaced in many areas to be bar-less so that they can crawl under without harm. And wher...