Bighorn Canyon

Bighorn Canyon is the third largest canyon in the states, after The Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon.

The canyon is where the Bighorn River and the Shoshone River meet. A 400 foot dam was constructed to make the lake. It sank a lot of Native American sites and some sites from people who were here about 7,000 years ago. Everyone, including the Native Americans needed the water. The western side of the canyon is owned by the Crow (at least the part that isn't national park). The eastern side is owned by other tribes.

We started at the marina, where it actually looks like a lake.

About a mile later, we entered the canyon and it just looked like a river, but it is considered part of the lake. The dam is in Montana, at the top of the canyon. The water doesn't back up to look like a lake until Wyoming.

The land around the marina looks red. It has a lot of iron oxide it in, just like Mars.

That white layer at the top is from the last Yellowstone eruption. It is all fine volcanic ash. It even has it's own name, Bentonite. It is a clay that is widely used. It is even used as a food additive to make things creamy (like chocolate). They also use it in make-up and as a polishing agent.

We hoped to see lots of wildlife on the trip, but nature was against us. We saw a lot of birds (pigeons, gulls, herons, and one peregrine falcon), but larger animals were hiding. The website for the tour says they see bighorn sheep, mountain goats, deer, elk, and wild mustangs. I took lots of picture of things far away that could have been animals, like this rock.

From the boat, it looks like a sheep laying down on a rock. If you zoom in, it is just another rock. I also took a lot of pictures of tree silhouettes thinking they might be animals, but they weren't. I deleted all of those pictures. Finally, near the end of the trip, I took another picture of a possible silhouette and this time it was a female bighorn sheep. Zoom in to see it better.

I was the only person who saw it. It disappeared just after I took the picture. Here is my next shot. I zoomed in on that same bush.

Gone.

The rocks are soft sedimentary rocks and so the water erodes out lots of caves. Some of the caves were occupied by Native Americans and some by people who died out or moved on to the South West by 5,000 years ago. They found pictographs, arrowheads and even a stacked rock wall from them. These 4 caves were occupied 7,000 years ago. The wall is in the second cave, but you can't see it from the river.

The wild mustangs that we didn't see are descended from horses stolen from the Spanish Conquistadors. They can tell by the markings. We couldn't tell, because we couldn't see them.

We saw a lot of birds, mostly birds you see every day like pigeons and gulls. There was one peregrine falcon that we saw. I guess the morning tour saw a lot of pigeon feathers floating on the water. The falcons dive down and smash the pigeons on the back and break their backs in midair and then catch them before they hit the ground or water. Since the tour saw a lot of feathers, the falcons were done hunting and not flying around anymore. Bummer for us. I did get a quick shot of a falcon, but all you can see is a silhouette.

The lake was very low. The tour guide said he will take the boat out of the water around the first of August. After that, it will take a crane to get the boat out of the water for the winter and he doesn't want to pay for that. In a lot of the water pictures, you can see the white water line and it is about 20 feet above the current water level. The remaining water is pretty gross.

It holds a lot of fish, but I wouldn't swim in it.

That's enough about the trip. More pictures on the Wyoming page.

On Wednesday, we went and had lunch at Buffalo Bill Cody's Irma Hotel. He built the place back in 1902. The bar back was a gift from Queen Victoria when he took his Wild West show to England. it is an impressive bar.

The food was only okay. My sandwich was good and cooked. Jan's nachos were warm at best. The cheese wasn't melted. No Michelen Stars for this place.

Beer news:

I bottled my Northwest Pale Ale this morning (Friday July 23). I tasted it to make sure it was fermented enough. It tasted ok, but hot flat beer is never going to catch on. This new yeast is supposed to carbonate the bottle in 3 to 4 days. I will give it a week before I put one in the fridge and try it. The good thing about brewing your own beer is that if the first bottle doesn't taste that great (a sweet taste or it's kind of flat) just let it sit for another week or two and let the yeast keep working. In one case, I let it go for 2 more months and that fixed it.