What a long drive it was today (about 300 miles or so from Vernal). But it started out really interesting, because the dinosaur museum in Vernal gave us a flyer showing us the different fossil layers we'd be driving through as we headed north on 191. You go back in time as you leave Vernal, and they have roadsigns posted to show you when you are in the Dakota Formation or the Morrison Formation or whatever. The flyer tells you what was alive then and what fossils are found there, and when it occurred. It was interesting and would have been fun to do with a geologist, to stop and look for fossils by the road and stuff.
Later in the day, we stopped in Jackson, Wyoming for a few minutes to look around. I love the antler arches they have in their little town square:
The place is very touristy, with upscale western tourist shops everywhere. One shop specialized in stuffed game and skins. Here are a few of the animals you can buy for your home:
They had a rack of skins you can buy (such as otter, mountain lion, or bear), if you want to, I don't know, sew them into coats or something. It was wierd seeing all their little dried-up faces.
Mark came to this area with his family when he was about twelve. His family decided to go rafting one day. Mark wanted to do a whitewater trip, but his mom wanted it to be less dangerous. They have "whitewater" trips and "float" trips. So they did a float trip, and Mark remembers it as being easy enough for Katie to handle. We'll try to do one while we're here.
Our park is in the pine trees and feels like we are in one of the parks, instead of just between them. It doesn't feel like a private campground; maybe it's considered part of the Tetons, I'm not sure. There is a lodge here with a gift shop and grocery; maybe we'll eat breakfast in the lodge sometime.
We rode our bikes around and met a local firefighter who was taking his kayak out of a stream nearby. No fires for him to fight right now (but he says he could use the money). Housing prices are ridiculous up here, and the work is only seasonal, even for the park rangers. It's pretty, though, but the views are not as spectacular as the Rockies, so far.
I can't wait to drive up to Yellowstone Park tomorrow. The last time I was here, I was Katie's age. My one memory is standing on a wooden walkway (near geysers), and a park ranger next to me is telling me that if I fell in, I would be cooked, "like a little hot dog." Maybe they'll have railings these days so Katie won't have to hear that and remember it for thirty years.
Thursday, September 8
Well, this morning, Katie woke up wanting breakfast at the lodge. It sounded good to me, and Mark agreed too. But they must have been short-staffed or something, maybe because Labor Day is over and folks are on new schedules, because the service was not only slow but also not very polite. Mark got tired of waiting to be seated, and called our breakfast off. Katie started crying and didn't want to move, just bawling in the lodge lobby. But Mark was not to be swayed. So we sort of ushered Katie out of the building, crying all the way, and rode our bikes back to our RV and ate here, and I hoped it wasn't a sign of how the rest of our day would go.
What a beautiful day to be here. Look at the blue sky we had, above all the burned trees:
There was a big fire here back in 1988, and already the new lodgepole pines are ten feet tall in places. Apparently they are a tree that needs fire to open their tight pinecones, so they do really well after a fire comes through.
Soon after taking those shots, we hit a traffic jam. Mark said, oh there must be an animal nearby. It turned out to be our first moose sighting. Here he is:
We could see him nicely, thanks to the fire thinning out the trees. And here are just some of the people gawking at him:
One Asian woman got really close (maybe 30 yards away) to take a picture. Later in the day, we saw a film showing cars getting knocked by angry elk and a little girl getting stomped by a buffalo that her family got way too close to. But for now, we just hoped the Asian woman wouldn't frighten the lone moose away. We didn't have to worry. He didn't even bat an eyelash at her.
We got to Old Faithful about 20 minutes before it was scheduled to erupt, and it just happened to be happening at the same time as three other geysers. We decided to see Old Faithful first, and maybe see the others in action later if we were lucky. Here are Mark and Katie waiting for the event:
And here is about half the audience, waiting too:
It must be insanely crowded on summer weekends (we're here on a Thursday after school is back in session). There was an obnoxious, loud guy standing right behind me (with a wierd waxed moustache) so I was hoping it would go off early, but it was actually almost 20 minutes late. It is supposed to go off every 92 minutes these days, but this eruption was about 110 minutes since the last. I think when I was a kid, it went off about every hour. Guess it's getting old. But it's still a good show:
After seeing Old Faithful, we walked around the boardwalks and saw a few geysers, before lunch. Some areas have railings, like this:
...to keep folks from falling in. But most don't, like this:
Katie wasn't as impressed with the geysers as we were. She mostly liked playing with the signs, practicing her letters:
But I really liked the pretty blue waters of some of them. It turns out, the blue waters are the hottest ones. Here are a couple pretty ones:
I got Mark to take a picture of me, by the river, which runs by the hot springs and geysers (many of them empty water into it):
There are two old lodges beside Old Faithful (Old Faithful Lodge and Old Faithful Inn). Both are the early 20th-century style, with big logs holding up doorways, antler chandeliers, stuff like that. I really think they're pretty, but didn't get any good pics, partly because the Inn was being re-roofed (it has a six-story main room inside with lots of wood balconies overlooking it). Here's one shot of the porch for the lodge:
The porch stretched down for maybe two hundred feet, and there must have been hundreds of tree trunks used just to make the roof for it. It was impressive, and I wish we could have stayed there. Maybe next time.
We took so long for lunch (we brown bagged it in the lodge's lobby) that we got to see Old Faithful erupt again just after eating. Here it is from a different angle, this time:
Then we took a little one-mile hike around the nearest geysers (Katie thought it was too long, but she enjoyed parts of it).
Here are a couple last shots of today: Katie in the window of the Old Faithful Lodge:
...and me standing by a geyser pool:
Friday, Sept. 9
Today we headed down to check our mail (thank you Mom and Judy!!!!) and then over to use the free wi-fi at the Jackson Lodge in the Tetons. Here is a picture of one of the incredible, jagged peaks, with Aspen trees starting to change colors in front:
There is a whole range of the peaks--it would take about five shots to get a panorama of them all. I'll try to put one together later.
For lunch, we tried the Jackson Lodge, and boy was it a nice surprise after the bad service back at Flagg Ranch. It is a 50s-era counter restaurant, complete with the original formica and fixtures, and old pictures on the walls, showing this area a hundred years ago. Here are the great folks who helped us. The first guy, especially, directed Katie to some yummy fish sticks and I got the homemade chili.
After eating, we looked around some more. Here is a picture of one of the peaks:
Here is a ranger we found, who was giving a talk about animals found in the park. She is holding up a wolf skin:
Katie has its paw:
Mark had some fun with the stuff too. Here he's making Katie half bison, half bighorn sheep:
There were so many pretty views. Here's just one, looking over Jenny Lake:
John Rockefeller came through here and saw the ugly saloons and whorehouses in the early 20th century, and decided to buy up the whole area and donate it to the government. He's responsible for most of the park, I believe.
On the way back, we stopped along the road because we saw the telltale sign of wildlife, a traffic jam. It turned out to be for a moose and her baby. Here's the little one:
Before returning to the RV, Mark signed us up for a float trip for Monday afternoon. It should be a lot of fun. As we approached the campground, we could smell the smoke from a wildfire, and wondered how close it is. Someone said they figured it was as far away as Montana. I hope no one's in danger. Tonight there have been thunderstorms, while we did laundry and ate some odds and ends. We plan to see some more of Yellowstone tomorrow. Boy, this whole area is so incredibly beautiful, I'm happy doing anything here. Just put me in a meadow with a book and I'm happy.
Saturday, September 10
Well, when we woke up, we discovered that our electricity was out and the temperature has dropped about 40 degrees since yesterday. We were hot in jeans and t-shirts yesterday--it must have been in the 80s. Today--it snowed. Here it is, our first snow since Albuquerque, last December:
Katie enjoyed it:
We drove around the west side of Lake Yellowstone, where there are geysers right on the banks:
Then we drove by some bison on the sage-y plains, and then we found the "Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone." I expected it to be kinda hokey, but actually it was pretty dramatic. You can't see it from the road, so you hike over and then see this:
Here is Katie, refusing to wear her coat (the high today was 41 degrees):
I feel bad about the tree growing out of Mark's head there. Here's a shot to give you an idea of how steep and deep the canyon walls are. You can see the river at the bottom, and the road (if you look) behind some trees along the top. We could also see tiny tiny people over there, looking back at us:
There are lotsa waterfalls in Yellowstone (I think there's like 300 of them with over 20 feet drops). We've seen only a couple, but this one was really nice:
Throughout the day, we saw a few traffic jams and we'd slow down to see what wildlife it would be. The only animals near the road today were elk and deer, but we saw over a hundred bison out across the high plains. But the last traffic slow down turned out to be something really different. A car had driven off the road and was turned on its side, laying on the driver's door. The winshield had a big hole in it, someone had been ejected. It must have happened very recently, because there was no traffic jam yet and no ambulance yet (about ten minutes later, the ambulance passed us). We didn't see another car involved; maybe they were trying to avoid an elk in the road, or something like that. I asked Mark if his book (about deaths in Yellowstone) mentioned car crashes. He said that the author left those out, since they were so common. yikes.
Our electricity was back on when we returned (yea). So it's supposed to be even a little colder tomorrow (shiver), and not so great on Monday either. I wonder if Mark will still try a hike tomorrow, or if we'll end up rafting on Monday. I don't want to sit in a raft with snow falling on me for two hours, no matter how pretty the scenery is.
Sunday, September 11
Well, it's cold this morning, but we have our electricity back, and so far we're just doing stuff here in the RV, baking muffins for breakfast, listening to the radio, updating this. I'm not sure what we'll do today; Katie just wants to play here.
Mark just announced he'll take Katie to Jackson, and he'll look for a new pair of shoes, and let me stay here and read and stuff. While they were gone, I watched Kill Bill 2 (which Heide gave us) and made Katie a little stage for her puppets (from a Cheerios box):
Monday, September 12
Today is our raft trip, but the weather is still really cold, and overcast. It may snow or rain, and the trip could get cancelled, but it's too late to get a refund (I think it's about $150 for all of us). How will Katie do sitting in a raft for two or three hours, in sleet? I sort of hope they cancel the trip.
We drove over to Jackson Lodge and called the rafting company, and the trip was on. It was sleeting on us as we drove to the pick-up spot. The trip is ten miles of floating down the Snake River, beside the Tetons. It starts at 4pm and should take a couple hours or so.
Here is Katie, beside the van and our guide, just before we put into the water:
Here we are, at the start of the trip:
The water is only three feet deep, but it's so cold that if Katie was to fall in, it would be a bad thing, even with her life jacket on. So I spent the trip worrying about that. But the rain cleared up, and we started to get some views of the peaks:
Our guide was funny and is the lead guide for his company, which has been doing this trip and others for forty years. So he told us all about the animals we saw, and some stories about famous people who have rafted the river. President Carter and his family rafted it in 1979; their only protection was a disguise that the President wore: sunglasses and a floppy hat. But when Dick Cheney rafted it recently, he had two Blackhawk helicopters following along, two horseback riders with diffibulators (for his heart), AWAC planes crossing at 30,000 feet overhead, and even two scuba divers (which is insane, since the river is only three feet deep).
Here's the guide, pointing out an eagle I think:
Katie wouldn't stay over next to me and Mark for long in the raft. She liked wandering over to the other side, where there was a really nice older couple. Here she is with them. Notice she's wearing my gloves now, over hers (it was pretty cold):
We saw osprey and bald eagles and elk, but the highlight of the trip was seeing a moose in our path. Here she is in front of us:
And here she is as we got closer. She pretty much ignored us, which is nice, because she probably could have gotten us really wet if she wanted.
Katie did really really well on the float trip, and Mark and I had a good time hearing the guide's stories and looking for wildlife.
Tuesday, September 13
Today we left the Tetons behind, driving north through Yellowstone one last time, to get to Montana. On the way, we saw lots and lots of bison. Here is the one we got closest to:
Here is Katie watching him through our window:
We stopped at another hot spring area, and parked next to this guy, who seems to have found a cheaper way than us to live out of a vehicle:
Maybe next time!
Here's Mark; after driving by about four or five herds of bison, he no longer stopped the RV for them:
We pulled over and ate lunch soon after passing these guys, and then stopped at a pretty waterfall and took a quick snap or two of the RV and the water:
Finally, we stopped at the Mammoth Hot Springs visitor's center, at the northern entrance (the original entrance, it turns out, surprisingly) to Yellowstone. This area was built before the Park Service took over the park, back when it was under the military instead, and the original stone and wood buildings are preserved, and they have grass that they water and keep up, to make it look like it did "way back when." This goes against their philosopy of "don't mess with nature" but the elk like it a lot, and apparently the elk show up this time of year every year, for the green grass. It's rutting season, so folks get to see some fights and hear some bellowing (we got neither). Here are the elk and the area:
(Martha is the RV way in the back)
The buck in front of the medical clinic had a really beautiful rack on him. He was the only male in the herd, which had about twenty females, it looked like. A couple rangers were posted to keep people far enough away, so that the big guy didn't get riled and gore somebody (we've seen movies of bucks attacking cars, so we didn't do anything too stupid).
Katie managed to sneak one of her little finger puppets, a little bear, into the visitor's center and over where the elk were, and then left it someplace. Maybe the elk have adopted it; hopefully they didn't try to eat it.
Well, that's it for Yellowstone. After driving out of the park, we headed to Bozeman, to see it for a couple days before heading up to Missoula and Glacier National Park (if it's still open).