Chief Joseph Scenic Highway

We left the Big Horn National Forest and the Big Horn Mountains, traveled across a long flat, dry valley and then back up into the mountains west and North of Cody in the Shoshone National Forest. We chose to travel on the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway which follows the Nez Pierce Indian trail. Shortly after the disaster at Little Big Horn, the calvary tried to capture and move the Nez Pierce Indians but the Indians had other ideas. There were about 300-400 Indians with about 2,000 horses traveling through the Beartooth mountains and canyons with the calvary only a day behind. In one valley they scattered all the horses to obscure their path then backtracked through another canyon and lost the calvary.

  

We will have gone over three high passes today. We are camped at Crazy Creek National Forest Campground near a very large and noisy waterfall. We are only about 10 miles from the Montana border. We took another nice hike today, following the river that makes the waterfall then we keep trying to get to the top of the next ridge but every time we think we are at the top, there is another ridge, and then another one. Thank goodness it is easier to come down.

After supper we thought we would drive into the small village of Cooke and have an ice cream but before we could get there we had to turn around because of fire fighters on the road staging to fight a forest fire. Right now its a small one but the smoke and flames are visible from the campground. I pray these very tired firefighters can get it put out and go home for a rest. They came here from the Fort Collins fire.