Our site in Gros Ventre is smallish but truck and motorhome do fit and it is level.  We are on a busy road which is not the best thing for noise or for when Willa and Hazel visit.  Still, it will work.  We are in sagebrush plain along the Gros Vontre River and as it turns out, there are frequent moose visits to the campground.  We check it out every morning and often sight them right out of the motorhome windows.

Before the kids arrive and after they leave, Kent and I explore a bit on our own. We grab dinner out one night, pizza at Hand Fire pizza.  The place is a cool remodel of an old theatre and they have space-ship-like giant pizza ovens out in an open kitchen where we can watch our dinner come together.  Plus, the pizza is delicious.  The brownie dessert isn’t quite as good as I envisioned but we did eat it all.

We carve out time for an early wildlife viewing run.  Up well before dawn we are at the first recommended site by 6:15AM, between first light and sunrise.  We spot our first elk in the park as a band of females are just stirring along the river’s edge at Blacktail Pond.  Next, we make our way to the top of signal mountain (the road just reopened) and spot two beautifully antlered bull elk, a bison bull and a mule deer with a rack like neither of us have ever seen before. Check it out.  It is an amazing view of a broad rolling valley brought to us by fault uplift, glaciers and the powerful Snake River.  We continue to several suggested moose and bear viewing sights.  They are not as productive but the drive is still lovely.  Near home at antelope flats we see the local bison herd.  It is a great morning.

We hike around Phelps Lake in the Roosevelt Preserve.  A doe and fawn tolerate our presence long enough for a good look and there is a report of a bear near the visitor center.  We must have walked just feet from him on our way in off the trail.  We check out the soundscape rooms.  In one room, wildlife and wild setting images rotate on four screens accompanied by a sound track.  My mind scrambles to match them.  In the second space, only the sound track plays.  I close my eyes and block out all but those sounds.

One last stop, a living history demonstration.  We stop in at Mormon Row, a preserved and partially restored 1880s settlement.  We make rope, try on period clothes, and play some of the kids’ games. It is a fun stop.  I even get the bug to maybe get involved in living history here or somewhere as we contemplate a more settled life in the coming few years.