Into the Big Sky Country

We have been slowly making our way north the past few days and have finally reached the “Montana Big Sky” country.  We have been in no real hurry and are trying to keep the miles to under 300 per day.  The first couple nights we found great boondocking spots in the forest and the other nights have been in state and county parks. 

As usual we have found the state parks to be way over priced and not very nice.  One outstanding gem was the Bingham County Park just south of Idaho Falls ID.  Tonight we are at a BLM Campground near Holter Lake which is just north of Helena MT.  We are only about 200 miles south of the border but plan to spend one more night before crossing.

Unfortunately the sky has been very hazy and smoky from all the forest fires in Montana so we are missing the beautiful Montana mountains views.

The beautiful Marble Canyon area near Lee’s Ferry, AZ

Twin bridges across the Colorado River

The mighty Colorado river right before it enters the Grand Canyon

A quick drone video of House Rock Valley near the Vermillion Wilderness in northern Arizona.

The joke was on us as we had planned to do some kayaking on Yuba Lake UT but no one told us there was no water.  Oh well there are lots of lakes up north.

Montana is hiding all it’s beautiful mountains behind a veil of smoke….

Track Logs:

Day 1 – July 26, 2017, 141 miles

Day 2 – July 27, 2017, 212 miles

Day 3 – July 28, 2017, 236 miles

Day 4 – July 29, 2017, 313 miles

Day 5– July 30, 2017, 197 miles

Day 6– July 31, 2017, 135 miles

Time to Hit to Road…

The day we look forward to every year has finally arrived and tomorrow we head out on our summer trip. This year we are doing something a little different in that we are breaking up the trip into two parts.

Part 1 will be about 5 weeks long where we will explore the eastern part of Northwest Territories in the far northern part of Canada. Our ultimate destination is Yellowknife which is basically as far as the road goes north in that part of NWT. Last year we visited Fort Liard NWT which is in the south central part of the territory. We liked what we saw so decided this year we would go back and spend more time exploring this beautiful remote area. On the way up we will basically go straight north up through Utah, Idaho, and Montana. We will enter Canada at the Sweetgrass crossing and head north toward Edmonton before veering west to connect up with the Mackenzie Highway which goes to Yellowknife. On the way home we will revisit the Jasper and Banff National Parks traveling along the Ice Fields Parkway. We plan to re-enter the US at the Roosville MT crossing and then will spend a few days on the Flathead Lake near Big Fork MT before heading for home.  All total we expect to cover around 6000 miles.

Part 1 Route

We plan to spend a week or so at home to regroup and reload before heading out on part 2 of our trip. This part will involve driving to Seattle WA where we will catch a cruise ship and take a week long cruise up the inside passage up to Skagway Alaska. After returning back to Seattle we plan to follow the pacific coast route down to southern Cal before heading home. All total we plan to be out about 3 weeks.

Part 2 Route

We plan to update this travel blog every few days and also hope to add a few videos to our YouTube channel along the way (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4X3qCJGZx9GEYERZ_3R9xw)

You can follow along on Twitter @deanboman and on Instagram at deanboman_az.