Jeep Trail Ride Photos & Stories

Northeast of Tucson AZ, near the town of Mammoth

 

The abandoned Mammoth Mine, at the ghost town site of Tiger

 

This was a nice ride over the Caruthers Lake Trail out of Deerlodge Montana.

 

Hmmmm.....that may be a bit much for this format. lol

 

It is just a cheap ( <$250 ) Fujifilm FinePix. Nothing fancy. I commonly need to take photos while driving and with short notice. The simple auto-focus cameras make that easier. And given the dust, rain, and general abuse, the cheaper ones keep me from having an infarction when it bounces onto the floorboards. lol

 

A great trail ride put together in honor of a friend visiting from Washington about a week ago. We had 8 full sized rigs and 5 ATV/UTVs along for the trip over Rock Creek. So we were certainly not lonely. lol What a fun group. - And of course, we did the tunnel on the way back too...twice. The trail, the weather, and the company were all perfect. Thanks to everyone who came out to play.
Rock Creek is a great trail just north of Butte Montana which runs along the Continental Divide Trail for about half of it.

 

A trip to Cow Bone Lake (and camping with friends) Summer 2015

The weekend certainly did not turn out “as planned” but was a great time just the same. When John P. of the Beaverhead Back Country Pioneers 4x4 club asked me to join them for another trip to Cow Bone Lake, I thought it would be a great trip to get my folks out camping on. The trail to the lakes is just rough enough to keep things interesting but gentle enough not to rough up or hurt my mother. So much for best-laid plans.

Joe and Daryl were also supposed to join me from Helena but the Army took Joe out of play and a fuel pump put an end to Daryl’s plans to join in. Heck, then my parents would leave the campground before I even got there Friday. They could not find an item they needed. Oh well. The guys from BBCP were great, as always. Willie Worthy would join us for the first night and the Saturday trail ride. He is working on another book about Montana’s 4x4 roads.

Saturday was spent heading for Dark Horse Lake and then on to Cow Bone Lake. The color of Dark Horse Lake was like something out of the Bahamas with a great turquoise color you would not believe. What a beautiful spot. The fish were rising and the lake was mostly like glass with very little wind. We would have lunch here. We did not even have issues with mosquitos here or anywhere for that matter this weekend.

Then on to Cow Bone Lake. Again, it is not a really hard road and even the harder spots mostly had by-passes but it did get a little twisty in the trees. It gets a bit tight in there for a 4 door JK Wrangler from time to time. Again...just enough to keep it interesting but not “hard”. I did not debark any more trees.

I have a photo or two of one of the fish up at Cow Bone Lake in this album. I would say he was around 13 or 14 inches long. That was a surprise for such a high lake. I would have thought “pan-sized” would be the norm clear up there. I was wrong. Clearly this lake is deep enough to support fish year round. I hear they ice fish on that sometimes so it makes sense it would have some larger ones.

After wondering around the lake for a while, we headed back to camp. Willie and his wife would leave us to head for other adventures but John and his wife Chandra, Brian & Tammie, Tammies son along with Brian W and his wife Lydia and I would have an evening of telling stories, a few bad jokes and WAY too many marshmallows.

Sunday morning we were off again to see some new sites. John did a great job as trail guide and showed us some wonderful scenery and a great old mine. Over the two days Brian B. said we covered a little over 80 miles of trails if I recall correctly. Maybe I heard him wrong. We did get to see some of those places most people will never have the opportunity to. Even better, we got to spend some time with some old friends and even a few new ones back in Montana's great forests. Great stuff. Check out the photos....I am not much of a photographer but the beauty of these places is strong enough to come out even with my poor pictures.

 

This was a run to McKelvey Lake off North Meadow Trail. It was a great ride with good friends.

 

This was another trip to McKelvey Lake a few years apart from the other I posted.

 

I would guess the average is 6 - 7 or so. This last one I posted photos from had 10 or 12 rigs if I recall. There were members of three different clubs from 3 different towns on that run. I leave tomorrow for another 2 day run with a 4x4 club about 4 hours south of me. It will likely be a good weekend.

One of those "you know you're in Montana" things is we give distances in hours instead of miles. lol

 

Skinner Meadows, Jackson Montana

 

Some new friends I made on Saturday....
Mom and her twins were looking good.