PORCH PONDERINGS

Big Horn Canyon

Yesterday I had an awesome opportunity to tour a little known National Park - the Big Horn Canyon in southern Montana. Our SE Montana tourism group had our meeting at the headquarters, then went on a boat ride in the Canyon. Canyon walls are 2500 feet on either side of us, the depth is unknown, as the water rises and falls with the rains. Fish are wall-eye, carp, some trout,

https://www.nps.gov/bica/

Big Horn Canyon walks a tight rope through private land and tribal land. The Crow Indian reservation is nearby. The Canyon was flooded in the 1960's for hydroelectric power. The Yellowtail dam was named after Robert Yellowtail, chairman of the Crow tribe. It took 12,000 acres of Crow land.

Now the Big Horn Canyon is a popular fishing and boating lake. We accessed this lake from the North, near Fort Smith, Mt. Our two-hour boat ride took us back through the huge canyon walls. The parking lot was full of trucks and trailers, but not a boat was seen.

The marina, Ok-a-Beh, Crow for bend-in-the-river, is the launching area and run by the Crow tribe, as is the little snack bar and gift shop.

The superintendent of the park spoke to us. He oversees this park, Littlehorn National Battlefield and Devil's Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

So we laughingly titled this picture: Yogi, Boo-boo and the Ranger.