Sunday, September 9, 2007
Lovell Camper Park, Lovell, WY - Aug 19-21
Since we REALLY needed to dump our black water, we finally left John's yard. THANKS JOHN for a great place to park! We stopped at a nice city park in Powell, about halfway between Cody and Lovell, where they have a nice free dump station. We did not camp there, because they have a 2-day limit, and we wanted to stay 3. We went on to the less pleasant but more shady Lovell Camper Park, which is also free. It had so many trees, it actually seemed gloomy. We managed to park our RV where we got enough morning sun to keep the batteries charged.
Lovell is home to the Hyart Theatre, a restored & refurbished 57-year old theater with state-of-the-art sound and projection equipment. First-run movies play every weekend, with a $3 matinee on Saturday. "Hairspray" was playing, and this was the perfect venue for it. We thought we'd enjoy it, but we were surprised at how much we enjoyed it. It is lots of fun and has an interesting message, with a nice transition from the 50s to the 60s mentality.
Directly between Cody and Devil's Tower (our next destination) lie the Bighorn Mountains, a huge range of solid granite surrounded by steep cliffs. Since we tend to avoid driving our trailer over places with names like "Omygod Pass", we are going to take the scenic route through Montana. Still, we wanted to investigate the Bighorn Mountains, and this was the place to start our loop drive, which took us up the mountain (REALLY UP with 10% grades a lot of the way -- another road to avoid with the trailer!) to Burgess Junction, down through Shell and Greybull (pronounced Grable) and back to Lovell. Along the way up we visited a remote location called Five Springs, which was a steep valley with lush vegetation and a lovely waterfalls. There were about 10 other people around during our brief hike. Burgess Junction consists of a lodge, restaurant & service station with really expensive gas. We decided to eat our picnic lunch here and forgo handing over any of our money to them. On the way down, we stopped at Shell Falls, a gorgeous waterfall etched through granite cliffs that was very non-remote. There were probably 100 people here during our stay, including a senior tour bus. 
It was still worth a stop, and the continuation of Shell Canyon, all the way down to the valley, was a lovely drive. We also learned about several interesting places to visit for future reference. We could see the smoke all along the way from a small new lightning-caused fire back in the wilderness. With fire crews stretched to the limit throughout the country, there are few left for these more remote fires that aren't threatening homes.
While in Lovell, we also wanted to make a return visit to Bighorn Canyon NRA, since we hadn't brought the camera on our first trip -- and also because it is a lovely area worthy of a second visit! 
The weather started out with a heavy haze of smoke, which luckily cleared up a bit by around noon. We got photos of the bighorn sheep and wild horses and enjoyed all the overlooks. We took a short hike to the Carolyn Lockhart Ranch, which is the best surviving homestead in the area. Lockhart owned the ranch from 1926 through 1955, eventually controlling more than 7,000 acres. She was a newspaper correspondent, author and famous newspaper editor, a liberated lady long before her arrival in this area. She wrote for the Boston Post and the Denver Post and also wrote freelance as an investigative reporter. 
She exposed political corruption and abuses of women & children in public institutions. She moved to Cody and purchased the local newspaper, which she ran for 5 years before she purchased the ranch. She wrote several novels, two of which were made into movies. She was involved with many men but never married. After she sold the ranch, she lived in Cody until her death in 1962.# posted by Doug and Willie @ 10:22 PM 
