Month: June 2018

By Jim & Ginny.

“However orderly your excursions or aimless, again and again amid the calmest, stillest scenery you will be brought to a standstill hushed and awe-stricken before phenomena wholly new to you. Boiling springs and huge deep pools of purest green and azure water, thousands of them, are splashing and heaving in these high, cool mountains as if a fierce furnace fire were burning beneath each one of them; and a hundred geysers, white torrents of boiling water and steam, like inverted waterfalls, are ever and anon rushing up out of the hot, black underworld.”  John Muir, 1898.

Every word is still true, 120 years later.

Everyone has heard of Old Faithful, but there are 465 active geysers in Yellowstone National Park in an average year, plus an estimated 10,000 geothermal “features.”

As we discovered, you can be driving through a green-treed forest along a clear stream… and, suddenly, there’s a “feature” – such as a formation of steaming, bubbling rocks and pools, in colors that look like a bad science fiction movie.

Monday, we explored (and marveled at) Porcelain Basin…

…which includes our favorite moment of the day, seeing a drab, fetid, bubbling cauldron of mud named “Congress Pool.”

Then there was  Mammoth Hot Springs…

which are only a couple of blocks from the town of Mammoth Springs, where we saw elk chilling on the village green.

Our last stop Monday was at the Artist Paint Pots (where we arrived after being in a traffic jam caused by a bison ambling down the road).

Tuesday, we discovered the other-worldly Midway Geyser Basin…

on our way to see Old Faithful,

and the Old Faithful Inn (that’s the clock that Dick Dysart helped restore, on the right!).

We also went to the north end of the park to Lake Yellowstone, where we saw not only a 136 square-mile lake… but a variety of geothermal pools emptying into it and percolating underneath it.

Then we had a big scenery shift, visiting the magnificent Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.  

That day, we also crossed the Continental Divide for the fifth time of our trip, but for the first time when we had enough warning to get a picture of it.  It’s the principal hydrological divide of the Americas, running from the Bering Strait to the Strait of Magellan.  To its west, watersheds drain into the Pacific Ocean; to its east, they drain into the Atlantic.  

Animals are an exciting part of sightseeing in Yellowstone.  Bison and elk are commonplace…

bears are seen occasionally (you have to look really hard here)

and wolves are rare.  No scarcity problems with mosquitos – they’re all over (as are their bites).  

Sadly, we had to say goodbye to Yellowstone and to Gwen and Coley on Wednesday.

Our trip to Yellowstone coincided with news that the Trump regime is going to allow mining of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah.  It’s the largest “reversal” – i.e., rape – of national monument protections in U.S. history.  Trump previously announced, with characteristic dishonesty and disingenuousness, that this action would return control of the land “to the people, the people of all of the states, the people of the United States.”  In fact, the mining rights to Grand Staircase-Escalante were acquired by Glacier Lake Resources Inc. – a CANADIAN company.

Our national parks and natural monuments are part of America’s soul.  They are beloved – every park we’ve visited is teeming with visitors.  If you haven’t been to one, go.  If you’ve been to one, go to two more.  You will see the magnificent landscape and feel  an emotion that’s hard to describe.  The experience will change you.

Trump has made it clear by his words and deeds that he has no respect for the environment.  We must resist him and his steam shovel cronies with all our might.

Donate to the National Parks Foundation (www.nationalparks.org), or the Sierra Club (www.sierraclub.org/giving).  There are even things to do that are both fun and productive (https://www.backpacker.com/stories/10-ways-to-support-the-national-parks).

Most of all, VOTE this fall for candidates who will PROTECT our natural treasures.

By Jim.

All sagas have an occasional plot twist, right?

Here’s ours.

The seed was planted when we had Mike and Lisa Foster over to the rig for a drink in Jackson Hole a couple of weeks ago.  It was, shall we say, snug with the four of us in our “living room” space.  Then, when we were in Missoula a week later, our next-door neighbor Tracy, a delightful old gentleman, invited us over for a drink in his 42-foot-long rig with slide-outs on both sides.  We walked in and did a double-take – waaay more spacious.  

Last year, when we planned this trek, we weren’t sure we’d like RVing and we had no experience living in something like this.  Since we’ve hit the road, we’re loving what we’re doing and we’ve learned a lot about RV’ing and RVs.

Just for S&G’s, I called a couple of RV dealers to find out what The Iz would be worth in trade.  They both said we could get almost 90% of what we paid for it – pretty much a  do-over on our initial purchase.  With some down time ahead of us due to bad weather in Glacier, we went back to Missoula, where there’s a big RV dealer, and did some shopping.

We found exactly what we were looking for.  However, we found it online at a dealer in Bend, OR (yes, back to Bend!).  I contacted the dealer, did a tentative deal and made the two-day drive to Bend last weekend.  My route included going down the Columbia River Gorge, which would have taken me to Portland (and gotten a lot greener en route) if I hadn’t turned left and headed south to Bend a few miles after taking this pic.

Mount Bachelor was resplendent in Bend while I was there.After all the paperwork and dealer prep, I was back on the road back to Montana Thursday morning.  In the meantime, Ginny (plus Sting and Roxy) spent some quality time with Greg in Pullman, a big bonus for her since he couldn’t join us in Yellowstone as originally planned.She then resumed our itinerary without me by going to Livingston, MT to visit her uncle, Dick Dysart, and his utterly delightful wife, Priscilla.  They’re a renaissance couple (they headed to France the day after Ginny’s visit).  Coley joined them when she arrived Thursday.One of Dick’s life-long passions has been clocks.  

He even played a role in the restoration of the enormous clock at the Old Faithful Inn in Yellowstone.

I pulled into Bozeman, MT Friday afternoon in The Iz 2 (Too?  II?  Two?) – a new Tiffin Phaeton 40, as in 40 feet long (by comparison, the model number of the original Iz is 33 – the math is compelling).  As I refueled Friday, a trucker in the bay next to me said, “That’s a beautiful bus, Brother!”  Ah, instant validation.

It’s a pretty bitchin ride.

Fun fact – Tiffin is an Alabama company.  Van, the son of the founder, kicked the most famous field goal in the history of the Alabama-Auburn rivalry in 1985…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2z8-i2YYQg

…and his son, Leigh, kicked for the 2009 National Champions.  They now run the eponymous VanLeigh division of Tiffin, which produces fifth-wheeler trailers.  Not incidentally, Tiffin is the consensus RV industry leader in quality.  We’ve already learned from a couple experiences, including The Steps Caper, how important reliability is.

I arrived in Bozeman just in time for a rollicking dinner with the Dokkens family, former across-the-street neighbors in Weston of Ginny, Gwen and Coley.

Saturday, we made the beautiful 90-mile drive to the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park, where we (including Gwen and Coley) will be until Wednesday.

The town of West Yellowstone, where we’re staying, is as nice a tourist town as we’ve ever seen.  And it has traffic signs you don’t see every day.

Glacier National Park and Waterton National Park, its Canadian counterpart across the border they share (no Wall between them…yet), were designated in 1932 as the world’s first International Peace Park.  Ironically, we arrived there as Donald Trump was tweeting insults at Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau after the infamous G-7 conference.

We repeated our de facto drill when we arrive at a national park – first-day driving tour, second-day dog-friendly hike and a serious hike on the third day.

Lake McDonald, located just inside the park’s western entrance, gives the place a powerful first impression.  The lake is 10 miles long and 500 feet deep.

We were only able to drive a few miles past the lake, because the famous Going To The Sun Road is closed due to snow.  In June.

So we settled for lunch at the Lake McDonald Lodge, one of the hotels built throughout the park 100 years after the War of 1812 (there’s no evidence that Canada has ever tried to burn them down) by the Great Northern Railway to promote tourism.  Their designs mimic Swiss chalets and were supposed to be the centerpiece of the railroad’s vision of promoting Glacier as “America’s Switzerland.”  We ate Montana food (elk) and drank California wine – sorry, Great Northern (which long ago merged into Burlington Northern anyway).

While driving out of the park, we had our first bear sighting.  Ginny was beside herself with excitement, but fortunately she stayed beside me…in the Jeep. 

As we drove to our hike Wednesday morning, we noticed cars suddenly pulling off the road.  Luckily for us, we followed the crowd.  We walked down to the edge of Lake McDonald, which was perfectly still and provided us these stunning mirror images.

Our hike Wednesday was to Avalanche Lake, so named because it’s at the foot of a bowl of mountains, and snow slides down the mountains into the lake during wintertime.  
One striking feature of the terrain on the hike was the large number of fallen trees in the woods near the trail.  

We asked a park ranger about this (wondering if it was due to some tree blight or other disease) and were told this is a natural phenomenon, and all the park does is keep the trails clear and remove any trees or debris that could endanger visitors.  The Park Service has a little unfinished clean-up business adjacent to the trail we were on!

Many of the parts of Glacier we wanted to see were affected by the recent snow, so we weren’t there as long as we’d planned.  However, it’s prominent on our list of places to return to!

By Jim.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming seems to have been custom-made for sightseeing and recreation.  

The Grand Tetons form the area’s western border; the Gros Ventre Range is to the east.  They frame the “Hole” – a lush valley that is virtually flat and punctuated by the Snake River.  The combination of rugged mountains and tabletop valley almost looks fake, it’s so perfect and pronounced.

There’s a lot of pleasure to pick from, including horseback riding, golf, fly-fishing, biking and hiking, plus great restaurants and a pretty good brewpub.  The winter skiing is reportedly superb (we even encountered some skiers Sunday, who had gotten themselves up the mountain we were hiking to ride some of the remaining snow).

Our five days there weren’t enough to do everything that’s available, but we had a blast trying.   Our only disappointment was never seeing an elk or a moose (or squirrel, or Boris or Natasha…I blame Trump), except some droppings during our hikes.

Sunday, we drove through an elk refuge in the valley up to the Gros Ventres.  Snow blocked the trail, preventing us from getting to the top, plus we forgot to bring bug spray, so when things started sounding like a Luftwaffe attack around us, we headed back down.  That didn’t stop us from admiring the Tetons (and the ski trails, carved out of the trees) across the valley.

After our hike, we explored the town of Jackson, which has everything from arches of elk horns…to tourist bars…to a municipal softball field with its own Green Monster.  The little ski mountain literally abuts the street grid in downtown Jackson – imagine being able to ski on your lunch hour!

Monday, we continued disrupting the vacation of Mike & Lisa Foster by teeing it up with them near Teton Village.  That’s Mike’s Sparty head cover photo-bombing the pic, trying unsuccessfully to extract some revenge for the 2015 Sugar Bowl shutout.

In additional to Spartans and the Crimson Tide, there were Beavers on the course.

Tuesday, we did a serious hike around Jenny Lake in Teton National Park.  (Yosemite spoiled us for waterfalls – this one was relatively ho-hum.)

Wednesday, we got in some downtime.

Thursday, we got out of our comfort zone (literally and figuratively) and went horseback riding.  The poor  horses must get bored having to plod around carrying city-slickers.

Friday, we said goodbye to Jackson Hole and Wyoming and headed to Montana – our tenth state of the trip, so far.  We’ll be back in Wyoming later this month, after Yellowstone and on our way to Mount Rushmore.

After spending a couple of relatively quiet days in Missoula (we’re getting our first rain of the trip since early April), we’ll head north around the magnificent Flathead Lake, the Lake Tahoe of Montana (image courtesy of Google)…

and up to Glacier National Park.

How do you top the scenery we’ve described in the Utah national parks?

By spending time with wonderful old friends, that’s how.

The evening after Memorial Day, we arrived in Heber City, about an hour outside Salt Lake City and a few miles from Park City.

One footnote on the drive up from Zion was that we enjoyed the all-time best gas/service station experience, at Beaver (Utah) Chevron.  Jeff proved that friendliness and attentiveness aren’t lost arts yet!

We spent Wednesday with Karyn Barsa, a friend of Ginny’s since middle school, culminating in a superb meal at one of the many restaurants on Park City’s Main Street.

Thursday we teed it up with Rusty Martin, my old friend from NFL days, who moved to Park City in the 90s and has had the good sense to never leave. 

The golf scene in the Park City / Heber City area is amazing – five public golf courses , all good, all (shockingly) affordable and none of them crowded.

We also joined Rusty and his lovely wife, Sally, for lunch on Friday… and a hike in their neighborhood that gave us views of the general scenery of Park City and the Heber Valley……plus a view of the bobsled run from the 2002 Winter Olympics. 

And where else but in America could you see the Winter Olympics ski jumps framed by an outlet mall (which we discovered while doing some shopping after saying our goodbyes to Rusty and Sally)?  

Saturday, it was time to say goodbye to Utah and head north.  It didn’t take us long to feel like we were in Cowboy Country, with lots of ranches and wide-open spaces, plus some interesting street signage. 

We did a lot of border-crossing during the drive – from Utah to Wyoming, back into Utah, back into Wyoming, briefly into Idaho, then back into Wyoming, all in the span of about 90 minutes.

Once we were in Wyoming for good, the terrain got mountainous (and snow-capped) again, as we skirted the Snake River and climbed towards Jackson Hole (the valley surrounded by the Tetons) and Jackson (the main town in the valley, where we’re staying this week). 

Our first night in Wyoming was spent enjoying one of those You Can’t Make This Stuff Up coincidences.  We discovered via Facebook that our friends Mike and Lisa Foster arrived here from Connecticut (after a stop in Yellowstone) the same day we did, so we ended up having dinner together at the Mangy Moose Cafe in Teton Village.  Cheers!