I spent a couple of weeks in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming recently, celebrating a 40 year friendship that began in the summer of 1984, when I took a job at Yellowstone National Park as a cook at Old Faithful Inn. It was there I met Kurt and we fell in easy with each other as we discovered that each of us loved to go backpacking. So, to celebrate our 40th year of friendship, we went back to Yellowstone for a visit, with stops in Idaho and Montana along the way. Post Yellowstone, we drove to the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area, in the Bighorn National Forest, to the east of Cody, Wyoming for a 6 day backpacking trip. It was simply stunning and physically challenging. I have a lot of photos to post, some taken with my iPhone and others with my old Panasonic Lumix GF-1. We met people, saw animals, reminisced about life back in 1984 and just how different it was then. Overall, it was a great trip. We hope to do it again in 40 years, as well. 😉

Wallace, Idaho & the story of Ed Pulaski and how he saved many firefighters from death in the Big Burn fire of 1910. Wallace used to be the only town in Interstate 90 that had a stop light between Seattle and Chicago. It has since been re-routed, so that the stoplight through town is now missed, but it’s a beautiful little town. The story of Ed Pulaski is that once the fire was over, he went home and started metal smithing firefighting tools. He came up with one and it is still in use today and is called the “Pulaski.”

A Pulaski along the trail. The trail had many interpretive signs and I only posted one, but it’s a lovely hike.

The interpretive sign about the Pulaski.

This is the mine shaft in which the firefighters were saved by Ed. The timbers that are there are ones that replace the original burned timbers.