Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Casper to Sheridan July 4- 11th, 2013. Pictures Added


We had planned to find parking for a day in Kaycee and drive the jeep over to see the Outlaw caves and The Hole in the Wall, but weather was bad in that area, with flash flood warnings, so we just spent the night at the rest area in Kaycee and headed for Buffalo in the morning. We got into Buffalo and pulled into a truck stop and took the jeep for a drive.  We saw a ton of neat old houses but not much else.

Our next stop was a gravel parking area I read about on the internet.  The parking is right on the northern edge of Lake De Smet. It is one of those really great places to park.  It’s free and very dark and quiet at night. 


 

 



 From here we  took the jeep and went over to the Fetterman Massacre Monument. We walked along the ridge were the battle took place. 
 
 



It has information plaques all along the trail explaining what took place during the battle.  It was pretty interesting.  We also went to Fort Phil Kearney and to the memorial sight of the Battle at Wagon Box Corral.  We were both really surprised to see the name of 1st Lieutenant John Jenness as one of the casualties. We were able to take a picture of the monument which has a picture of him.




  I will definitely be doing some genealogy research on him to see where he ties into Jim’s family.  Chances are good that he does tie in, as all of the Jenness’ families trace back to a Francis Jenness who came to New Hampshire in the 1600’s.

I mentioned that we are currently parked at the edge of a lake, it was so hot and muggy yesterday that we ended up going wading in the lake, and boy did that feel good.  Jim actually did some swimming while I was happy just to walk around waist deep in the water.  We had a heck of a rain storm go through shortly after we got done playing in the water.  The sky turned dark, the wind started blowing and the temperature dropped like a rock from 89 degrees to 59 degrees.  There was thunder and lightning and so much rain you couldn’t see the far end of the lake. It lasted about an hour and then the sun came back out.  My only regret in being here is we don’t have fishing licenses or fishing gear.  We have seen a lot of people fishing and some of them have caught some pretty good sized trout.  Jim talked to one fisherman that said they catch a lot of wall eye out of the lake. 


There was a storm one day complete with thunder, lightning and a downpour of rain.  We were lucky.  We heard that just over the hills from us they had gotten golf ball sized hail.  I can't imagine what that would have done to the MH.





 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Almost forgot to mention the wildlife.  Jim couldn't get a picture of all three but there was a doe and buck sharing the field one day with a pronghorn buck.


 

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