Ugh!.... I was up way to early this morning in order to meet up with my nephew Brian and go do some fishing. Drove into Chadron and picked him up at 6:30 at his house. From there we went west to Fort Robinson and turned north for a couple of miles. We pulled in at the end of the road and hiked in nearly a mile from there. Our goal was a couple of small ponds up on Soldier Creek that hold some amazingly large trout. Today however; we didn't catch any of them. It might be because the ponds are overgrown with moss, or that the temperature is just to darn hot, maybe they weren't hungry or maybe we just have no clue when fishing. We had fun anyway, saw some very large trout, 16" to 24" long, and even had the thrill of seeing several of them approach our hook.... but then didn't actually bite. We have had a lot of fun at those same ponds before, and we will again at some point in time, but today was just not our day.
    We hiked on back out of there and went over to a couple other ponds, Greybull Ponds, we know of on the south side of the park. But we really had no better luck catching anything else there. We both caught a couple small ones and threw them on back, but the bite was very slow and eventually we got hungry ourselves and headed out to find someplace to eat.
   We started out in Crawford at the Western/Cowboy themed place there. It's good food, but I can't remember the name of it right now. It wasn't open on Sundays anyway, so we ended up backtracking back to the restaurant out at Fort Rob. Their specialty there are meals featuring buffalo, as they have their own herd at the park. Not sure if the meat they use is from their own animals, but it is pretty good stuff. We both had bison cheese burgers with bacon, copies glasses of ice tea and fries. The whole meal was delicious!
   We spent an hour driving the back roads all the way back to Chadron. The only animals we saw along the way were some huge bull elk that were laying up on a hill under the pines. Of course they are all on a fenced in elk ranch, so they were not too skittish.
  I'm just about ready to get out of here now and head back to the trailer. I feel a need for a shower and then a nap coming on. Unfortunately, it will be another early morning tomorrow. I made reservations to drive up into the Black Hills of South Dakota and ride what is known as the 1880's Train. I have ridden on it several times before, including once several years ago when a set of trailing trucks, (wheels), on the engine, a 2-6-6-2 mallet, broke in half and nearly derailed the whole train. That engine was fixed up long ago and is back in service and I am hoping that it will be the one pulling the train tomorrow.  It should be a fun time.
 






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