Crazy Woman!

We are getting tired of long hikes so we decided to check out the river below the Tie Hack Reservoir.  We walked down hill through the woods until the path opened onto a lovely open field.  Just then a whole herd of cattle started stampeding out of the woods and across the hillside!  I guess we are pretty scary people!  There must have been about 50 head but a couple of heifers got left behind and began bellowing as we walked past.  Poor things, scared of us??

The walk back upstream toward the dam was enjoyable.  The stream gurgling along, the trees shading us from the sun, and I’d like to say the birds were chirping but it was very quiet. We thought about crossing the dam and walking along the far side of the lake but the trail had washed out so we back tracked back down stream. The cows were all gone.

We have read a lot about the Crazy Woman Canyon so we drove through it and then took the back way into Buffalo. There are numerous stories about the name ‘Crazy Woman’.  One tells of an Indian maiden who was crazy, another of a very young St. Louis girl who dressed as a fur trapper and hiked the canyons and another of a woman pioneer lost in the canyon and forests. Anyway, the canyon is well named as it is very narrow with high, rugged walls and a fast flowing Crazy Woman Creek down the middle. As we came out the south side, the walls of the canyon made for a very rugged looking mountain backdrop. 

We took time to go to the library to catch up on our FB, email and news then had a drink at the famous Occidental Hotel where Butch Cassidy, Teddy Roosevelt, Ernest Hemingway, Buffalo Bill Cody, Clamity Jane, and other famous wild west characters have stayed.

As we were shopping we overheard people talking about a wild fire in west Big Horn Nat. Forest  that had closed Hwy 16.  Since that is the direction we intended to travel, we were very interested in what they said.