Day Six: Slough Creek with Cody

Whew...what a day!  Day six was quite an adventure.  We had made arrangements to have a wrangler take us up into a fairly remote part of Yellowstone Park on horseback.  The wrangler was a young guy named Cody who worked for Ronnie Wright, owner of Beartooth Plateau Outfitters.  In addition to guiding horseback trips Ronnie's main business is as an Elk hunting outfitter.  He does it the old fashioned way with horse trips up to remote Elk camps with the high walled tents, etc.  Pretty cool deal.

By 9:30Am Jon, Cody and I along with our three horses plus a pack horse started up the trail to Slough Creek.  We had about a 2 hour ride ahead of us and it took us through some beautiful country.  I think Jon was a bit apprehensive about spending hours on a horse and yet, he did great.  His horse was a bit goofy acting...it would hang back, look around and then bolt to get back to us.  Not the most comfortable ride.  But we eventually arrived at the "second meadow" of Slogh Creek, had a nice lucnh on a shady rock outcropping, got rigged up and headed down to the creek.

Slough Creek is know for its Cutthroat Trout and usually has some really good insect hatches...but alas, it was not happening today.  We were about to take a few fish on stimulators and ant/beatle patterns, but the fishing was slow.  Sensing that Jon was getting frustrated with things, I decided to call for an early quitting time and we headed back to our base camp.  Cody was already saddling the horses and in a few minutes we were back on the trail.

By 5PM we were back on the road and had about a 90 mile drive to Livingston, MT.  Most of the drive was through the park and we saw a ton of Buffalo and  even saw a Grizzly...pretty unusual.  The drive was again breathtaking.  Huge views of the Lamar Valley, the Yellowstone and Gardiner Rivers...after a while it became almost mundane.

We checked into our hotel and had a nice Mexican dinner in Livingston and I told Jon all of my Murray Hotel stories (Ask me about Sam Peckinpah, Margot Kidder and Parks Reese sometime).  Back to the hotel where I did a load of wash and then passed out.  Tomorrow we'll be on the Yellowstone River.  CYA!!