Busy Birthday for Josie

It was a full day for Josie's birthday. We got a fairly early start to drive out to the South Fork Road again where we had to end our first trip as a result of work schedules. This time, we traveled up the Carter Mountain turnoff to the very end of the road, which was about 7.5 miles of dirt road that winds through the countryside up to the base of this mountain. It was a spectacular drive. We stopped to take this picture looking back to Cody where you can see the reservoir in the distance that is created by the damn we had visited previously just outside Cody:

The drive was half open grassland and half forest land with lots of trees. Here are some shots taken along the road:

Among all the pictures we took, many were of the fields of wildflowers that were everywhere once we got into the forested area of this drive. Below is just one example of these beautiful fields of flowers:

There were purples, yellows, blues, pinks, whites and just about every kind of wildflower you can imagine. Josie was in heaven.

We saw only a few animals while on this drive, but the pronghorn (below) was spotted several times while we were driving up the hill, but he always stayed far enough ahead of us so that we couldn't get a good shot. We spotted him again on the way down, and the picture below represents the closest we were able to get. The deer was actually bedded down and we startled it as we passed by and she stood up for this good shot:

After coming out onto the Southfork Road again, we turned to go to the very end of that road which was a total length of 42 miles, with 7.5 miles being unpaved, but decent.

This was the portion of road that Bill Gates supposedly was looking at to purchase land. It was certainly beautiful country. These pictures were taken of the unusual mountain formations and of a ranch that was just one of several along the road:

We returned home about 5 PM to get ready for dinner which we planned to have with Karen and George at QT's. That is the restaurant that is part of the Holiday Inn at the Village here. We had a great dinner of BBQ'd ribs and a glass of wine and then decided to go to the Concert in the Park, which is held every Friday evening during July and August:

 

Unfortunately, we arrived a little before 8 PM and the concert was concluding. We didn't know it was conducted between 6 and 8 PM. So, we went next door and played a round of Putt-Putt at the mini golf course that Josie and I played earlier in the week:

It was a wonderful day and we came home and crashed shortly thereafter.

It's the start of another work week today so we are getting ourselves in the proper state of mind to do it again for another 5 days. Maybe we can break away sometime during the week to do some some more fun stuff. We hope so...