After breakfast coffee and a heartfelt goodbye to out friends Ken and Ivy we hit the road towards our house Washington thinking that we would spread the 500+ miles remaining over two days. But as often happens at the end of a journey the heading for home syndrome hit us and we drove throughout the day arriving at our house just before midnight. A total of 18 hours and 500+ miles representing an exceptionally long day in our truck. The early part of our route from Eureka to Libby, Bonners Ferry to Sand Point was really pretty and we noted it for future explorations. But in truth today was a "get home" day. It was also a day of mixed emotions as it brings to an end almost 5 years of traveling around the world in our big yellow beast. And we are not sure at this point when or where our next travels will be. We were last at our house in WA with the yellow truck in January 2013 just before we shipped to Vladivostok, Russia.

We passed through a lot of interesting scenic country today as we made our way to Rexford MT (near Eureka) to visit our friends. It is pretty clear that had we not been so close to the end of this journey we would have spent more time traversing this interesting route.

Yellowstone National Park really is a scenic treasures. Even on a grey wet day like today the animals, the mountains and the rivers make it a feast for the soul. This morning we crossed the Northern part of the park from the junction with 212 to the Northern Entrance and while we were really only transiting on our way to Bozeman we could not help but want to stop and take photos. As you can see the animals conspired to feed our temptation.

Today promised to be a scenic day and did not disappoint. The first leg out of Sheridan took us to Dayton and then west along Alt14 and a spectacular climb through the Big Horn National Forest before an equally spectacular descent to Lovell. There after a brief interlude following the Sidon Canal and we arrived in Powell MT. The final stretch of the day was Highway 296 also known as Chief Joseph Scenic Byway which connects with the Highway 212 (The Beartooth Highway) at the North Eastern entrance of Yellowstone National Park.

We could not help but notice that Angostura Reservoir had a number of really nice campgrounds - spacious and well maintained. A few photos below don't really do the place justice. Once underway we headed north and west through the little town of Hot Springs SD and then into Wyoming through the town of Newcastle. This route took us through the picturesque Black Hills. I show my age by admitting that I cannot think of the name "Black Hills" without hearing Doris Day as Calamity Jane singing "The Black Hills of Dakota" in my head.