Boats, Animals and just plain beautiful country!

for 2 weeks we were in Yellowstone with no connection. This is the second part of a larger yellowstone piece so make sure you read the one before this (older than this one) before you tackle this one)

We had a late breakfast and headed down to the post office. Stan’s glasses came but my medicine (for which I authorized special overnight shipping) was still a no-show. I figured that I would go back when the afternoon delivery came in.

When we left the post office, we headed across the parking lot to the Yellowstone Lake Hotel and got coffee. We sat on the benches on the front porch for a while and then walked down to the lake and sat on benches right on the water. It was a beautiful sunny dry cool day. The sun felt really warm on the body and the coffee tasted good. As we left to return to the parking lot, Stan saw a poster for a photo safari that peaked his interest.

We left Lake and headed for the Marina. We were interested in checking out both the lake boat tour and the boat rentals. The tours were sold out for today but we started thinking about tomorrow. They had a pretty wide open schedule tomorrow so we booked the first tour of the day; 9:15. They do not take reservations for the boat rentals so we figured that we will take the boat tour first and then if our interest is on the increase after that we will rent a boat for a couple of hours. We sat by the water and went over our options for the rest of the week since Stan was really interested in the photo safari and we still have to go up to the Lamar Valley on our last animal search of the trip.

We settled on the boat tour and rentals tomorrow (Friday) then the Lamar trip on Saturday. Stan will take the Photo Safari on Sunday (5:30 to 11 with breakfast provided) leaving us with Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon available for whatever we feel is the most important. Sunday has to contain some time to ready the ship and the troops for transport on Monday AM. We hope we can get an early start on Monday and drive over to Rapid City. If we get there in a reasonable time we might try to redo the Mt. Rushmore evening ceremony that we got rained out of.

While Stan was signing on for the Photo Safari, Cheryl and I took a swipe at the gift shop. We bought some t-shirts and on our way out found some other things that we just had to buy so we returned to the register and cashed out some more. I had joked with the man at the cash register when we went through the first time about the amount of change I had in my pocket. I paid for part of the first items with change and joked with the guy that I wasn’t going to leave until he took all of the change including a bunch of pennies. When I came back the second time, I started with the change and when the smoke cleared, I had no more change.

Stan took a walk along Fishing Bridge and part of Yellowstone Lake. Cheryl and I decided o over to the Lake Lodge for lunch but when we got there, we discovered that the lodge cafeteria was closed from 2:30 to 4:30. That didn’t make us real happy but we left and headed back to the Marina to see if there was anywhere to eat there. Finding none, we headed for Fishing Bridge and found a lunch counter in the back.

We looked over the menu and tried to order hamburgers but were told they would only cook them well done. Once again (this is by far not the first time for this puppy) we told them that well done was not satisfactory so we ordered the beef brisket sandwich. GOOD CHOICE! The brisket was nicely cooked and when mixed with the BBQ Sauce provided a delicious meal.

We headed back to the camper with the express desire to sit out on our deck and soak up some sunshine. Just as I got settled, I remembered that I still had to return to the post office before it closed to check on my medicine again. I jumped in the car and headed over to lake arriving at the 5 minute to closing mark. Alas, no mail. Exasperated, I drove back to Fishing Bridge and stopped at the pay phone and called Medco. After a bit of time, I talked to someone there. We went through all of the information and he told me that UPS had been trying to deliver the package for 2 days.

After much discussion, he called UPS and put me on the phone with them. I talked with UPS for quite some time and learned all of the reasons why this whole thing didn’t work. It seems that the delivery went to some universal park mail system and no one would take the package. I gave all of the information that they mail mistress gave me to give them telling me that this system is foolproof (I ain’t seen a system that couldn’t be cobbled up). No one would accept the package so it went back to the UPS site at Bozeman, Montana. The UPS elf tried to contact Bozeman but didn’t have a working phone number (??).

She said she could email the information to Bozeman and the elfs at Bozeman would call me to make the arrangements. “Did I have a phone number where I could be reached??”

“Actually, no. There is no cell phone reception around here.” I gave her the phone number of the pay phone and she said they would call me within the hour (it took about a half hour). They agreed to change the address on the package and deliver it to the campground. I crossed my fingers for luck and thanked her profusely.

Back at camp, we prepared for the next day. We went to the ranger talk. The ranger was a school teacher in Seattle. He taught science in high school and was a ranger here for 37 summers. He talked about Yellowstone Lake. He talked about the lake itself and the volcanic eruption and glaciers that created and sculpted it. He was really interesting and it was obvious that he must be a really good teacher. We heard from another ranger that the seniors fought to get into his classes when most seniors are only interested in sliding through their senior years. He told us he was leaving to back to Seattle some day next week and would get home the day before school started. As much as he loved teaching kids in high school, he loved Yellowstone more and did not want to lose a day that he could spend here.

As his talk went on, he noticeably kept looking towards the sky. At the end of the talk, he told the audience that this was a special night. The sky was so very clear and the stars were so bright that he wanted to run a special impromptu talk on the constellations. He told the people that were interested to follow him down to the beach and told everyone else thanks for attending his lecture. Just about 90% of the attendees headed for the beach. Those smart enough to bring along a flash light stood to the side and lit the path for the rest of us who were confident enough of the path to dare do it without a light. When we all reached the beach, he said that he figured about 50 people would come to the beach not everyone at the lecture (he even hinted that we had picked up a few more people on the way).

He used a bright green laser pointer to point out the constellations and told stories about them (the pointer didn’t really reach the stars but there was enough moisture and dust in the air to show a green line in the direction he was pointing). I live away from town and get more stars than you see in town but this was spectacular! Every star was bright and crisp and the spiral of the Milky Way was clear as can be. We saw the big dipper just as it looks from our front door (except waaaay brighter).

We headed home from the lecture and went right to bed. We got up, had breakfast and set about to make a lunch. Our plan was to take the lake tour when the marina opened at 9 and then to rent a motor boat and explore the lake ourselves.

The tour was ok. Not much better. It was a one hour tour. The boat came out of the marine, rode across the front of the Yellowstone Hotel passing by the lodge, gas station and general store the passed by the oldest ranger station in the world, sort of checked out the Yellowstone River outlet (over to Fishing Bridge) and took a loop around Stephenson Island and returned to the marina. We got coffee in the store and sat out watching the boats come and go.

Then we rented our boat. It is an 18 foot aluminum boat with a 40 horse motor; basic but nice. They gave us the usual lecture (common sense) and told us where we could go and not go. This is a very large lake and we had a very small area to explore. It was just about the same area as the tour took us except that we did get some area beyond the Island. A chop had begun to develop but it wasn’t bad. We headed out to a point of land that demarked the furthest left we could go then headed for Steamboat Point across the lake which demarked the other right side boundary.

We passed along the island disappointed that the 2 moose that had lived on the island all summer had swum to the shore 2 days before. We had hoped to see the moose but that won’t happen now. We missed everything. The Obamas were here last week but only for a couple of hours and over at Old Faithful. We may have seen Martha Stewart but weren’t close enough to know for sure. We saw this boat with a bunch of people on it and inquired as to its availability. We were told that it was a park service boat that was used to gillnet the lake trout and it was never used for civilian rides. The people on the boat certainly weren’t park service people. Later we heard that Martha Stewart was in the park and went out on the park service boat. Coincidence?? I think not!

I did question why they would take Martha S. on a gillnetting boat. Gillnets do not require any bait?

Along the far shore, we were sheltered from the wind. The water was calm as glass so we turned off the motor and prepared for lunch (they would not allow us to beach the boat to have lunch). We drifted in the warm sun, got lazy and almost fell asleep. Eventually we fired up the motor and headed down the shoreline. Cheryl took a turn at the wheel and drove her first (but I am sure not her last) boat. We found a large rock formation in the water that was covered with birds. I had thought it was another of the park’s rental boats fishing but as we got closer, Cheryl pointed out to me that it was a rock. We avoided it…big time. If you damage the prop on the boat, you pay for it. I certainly didn’t want that. We had what looked like a brand new prop (the fin under the prop was broken in half so I assume that the original prop was destroyed too).

On the way back in, we found a log floating in the middle of the lake and pulled it into the boat. We continued back doing the “Top Gun” buzz of the Yellowstone Hotel. Of course, when you have to stay 300 yards off shore, it looses something. The people on the deck by the water didn’t even know they were being buzzed.

When we arrived at our slip, the girl on duty tied up our boat and remarked: “Oh, you brought me a log!!” She seemed happy that we had cleared the lake of this obstacle but offered no medals or free meals.

Afterwards, I headed away from camp to get a picture I have been coveting since we got here. It is a picture of a small evergreen tree on a little tiny island off the shore. I clambered over the bankings and driftwood and got my picture then returned to camp. After supper, we headed over to the ranger talk and heard all about the family of birds that contains ravens, crows, jays, magpies and nuthatches. She told us all about these birds without ever once using the word “Nevermore” or mentioning Edgar Allen.

We got up early today and headed up to the Lamar Valley. This is the only section of the park we haven’t covered. In fact, in three trips here, I have never been there so off we went. First we had to maneuver through the biggest buffalo jam we have yet seen. The buffalo were coming out of the woods down a steep banking and collecting on the road. A ranger in a car with the siren blaring was trying to drive them off the road. As soon as he went by, they would return to the road. Unfortunately, he had a large number of them running down the road trying to get away from the noise. Those of us in cars were a little worried that the bison would turn on us to relieve the frustration brought on by the ranger. It did not seem like the best solution to the problem.

One female was running down the centerline between rows of cars looking over her shoulder at the ranger car and was coming right at the front of my car. At the last second, she turned, saw me and almost fell over trying to avoid a collision. It was mayhem on roads and the trouble was created by the rangers; protectors of the wildlife. We ran into a similar situation in Custer and eventually all of the buffalo came out of the woods, crossed the road and began to graze in a large field. Believe me, no one minds being held up by a buffalo herd, especially when you are in the middle of it and the buffalo are no more than 2 or 3 feet away.

Lamar valley is a really nice drive. There are vast open areas with trees and some of the most beautiful rivers you could imagine complete with an overabundance of fly fishermen. If you ever saw the movie “a River Runs Through It” you would appreciate the type of rivers that abound here. Part of the park in this area is actually in Montana and that is where the movie was filmed (if I remember right). We saw a few animals but nothing new. We met up with some birders who tried to point out a sand crane (I don’t think that is the Vlasic Pickle Bird) but they had big spotting scopes and we had measly binoculars and could not find them.

We drove out the Northeast Gate of the park and drove through a couple of small towns that seemed to specialize in guiding fishermen and outfitting them. We did find a small café that advertised trout on the menu so we did what every tourist should do…bought the trout. It was pan fried just like I remembered doing as a child and was just a delicious. They served it with a nice salad and eventually brought us some homemade white bread that was equally as good.

It brought back memories of my childhood. We used to camp in places that were out of the way (and I mean out of the way). My favorite thing to do was sometime we were there, I would get up early and take the boat and go out fishing. When I got back, I would clean and scale the fish, wrap them with bacon then cover them with aluminum foil and drop them into the coals of a fire I had built. I would also make biscuit dough and put that in aluminum foil and cook it in the fire. I would then get everyone up and hand them a plate with a foil packet of fish and a packet of biscuit.

Well, we ran into another buffalo jam on our way back and were delayed. We are back now and will clean up the leftovers of the last 2 days for supper. Tomorrow is our last day and I am sure that getting ready to go will take up much of it. I do hope to get out for one last tour but I may not. I have not felt well the last several days. I think the altitude is getting the best of me and some sinus problems are making everything worse. One good thing about getting on the road is that I will be able to upload this. 12 pages are too much for one chapter. Bye

Ok, I haven’t had much of a chance to upload anything here. We have no signal!!! None whatsoever! Nada! That is why this section is so long. I apologize, I don’t like it either but what can one do??

Our time here is at an end. Stan is out taking the photo safari. He was up at 5 and out by 5:20 so we climbed back into bed and napped. Once we got up, we made coffee and breakfast and started to get everything ready to leave tomorrow. The addition of an extra person and a stay of 2 weeks with basically no rest days left everything in somewhat of a mess so this morning was a good time to get it back into shape. As we usually do with company, we gave Stan the bedroom in the back so he could have a place of his own. We lived in the front section which is also the living room, kitchen and dining room. The bed clothes went into the cab when we weren’t sleeping and my clothes went into the entertainment center leaving Stan with a closet and 2 drawers. I will continue to live out of the entertainment center on the way home rather than move things around again.

We had to reorganize things. I had 2 pair of cowboy boots, 2 pair of sneakers (one good, one for wet muddy days) and a pair of hiking boots (I had a second pair of hiking boots as I had bought a new pair and have not yet used them). Cheryl had sneakers, hiking boots and one pair of cowboy boots. She kept the sneakers for the ride home and we stored everything else under the back bed along with all of the literature and maps we picked up along the way. Now that the time is done, I am anxious to get home. I do enjoy the drive and the feeling of being on the road. We have a good time counting off the miles and the states. Watching the navigation system march us across the computer screen. I installed the Delorme software upgrade for the trip home. I was reluctant to run the program while we were driving out and didn’t know just what would happen to my library of routes. Last years upgrade had some things that people didn’t like and I didn’t see the bulletin boards about this years upgrade.

I like all of the changes they have added since I bought my version in 2006. I pretty much know where I am going but it is always nice to see your progress. That has always been a problem as mile markers go down heading west and south letting you know just where you are in each state. North and east are problems though as you start at mile 1 and there is nothing to tell you where the end is. It has improved. If you have a good road atlas, it will give you the exit numbers which now in most cases are the mile markers of that exit. The interstate system has been changing the exit numbers to reflect the mile markers. You have probably noticed that on the Maine Turnpike.

The nav system also helps when you have a bunch of turns in a short time. The screen tells you what your next turn is and the turn after that as well as how many miles and how long. The screen can be set to different scales. I like a fairly small scale. The computer then shows you all of the towns, lakes, rivers and roads along the way and you can follow them on the road. You can also use it like the smaller dash mounted units to find your way to places you don’t know how to get to. I usually look up the directions at home and then leave the computer at home. In the motorhome, I have a table set up in between the seats for the computer. Both Cheryl and I can see it and use it. In the car it is very difficult. My computer is very large and there is no where to put it except on the passenger seat or on the passengers lap (that is also the person we refer to as the navigator so I guess it is appropriate).

Well, we made it through the day. The deck is cleaned off and everything put away, the interior is cleaned up and everything stored away and we are about as ready to go as we can be.

Stan came back from his photo safari so excited it was fun to watch. Not only had the guide been a photographer that has spent his last 12 summers taking tourists on photo tours but he helped his “guidees” to better understand the art of photography and also great insight on how to use their cameras. Stan had not had his camera very long and the guide showed him a lot about how his camera worked and how to use it. They saw a lot of different animals. The guide seemed to know where everything could be found and took them to a lot of places. Only 4 people signed up for the tour so everyone got the personal touch.

After he told us all about his photo session, we drove over to Old Faithful for one last time. We got there just in time to see it erupt then walked over to the Old Faithful Inn. We had an “End of the Trip” celebration and imbibed in their lunch buffet. The menu was a little limited and basically the same price as the buffet so we buffeted. They had a soup du jour and a buffalo chili with great huge chunks of buffalo and no heat whatsoever. They had a nice salad bar with spring greens but NO ONIONS. The salad bar also included cole slaw and macaroni salad (both good). For entrees, they had a rice pilaf, bbq shredded chicken (on a 7 grain roll if you wanted one) and pan fried trout (it was not pan fried but institutionally prepared but still very good). They had tartar sauce but it didn’t show up until after I had finished eating, excellent corn muffins (that were only replenished as we were finishing up (didn’t stop me from trying them...excellant. Warm and moist…the lateness of the corn muffin made sure that my butter was nice and soft). There was a very nice apple crisp for dessert. All in all a great meal and Jeff, our waiter from Texas (with the accent to prove it), and a very nice Bulgarian college graduate keeping us in water made the meal a true enjoyment.

Then we conducted some business over the phone and called my mother to see how everything back home was doing. She told us another tale of woe about how hot and humid it was. She does not like the hot/humid weather but is glad she has air conditioners. She has been using them throughout this heat wave. We told her that it had been 61 when we drove over but had increased all the way to 75….everyone was complaining about the heat.

During dinner we talked about the things we missed when we were on the road (the hot humid weather was not one of them). Tuttle’s corn came to the top of the list along with seafood. The rule of thumb is to never repeat NEVER order seafood in the middle of the country. Trout is not seafood but locally caught and delicious, obviously not to be included in the rule. Corn is not revered around the country as a table vegetable like it is back home. Yes, you do find some farm stands that sell corn but they are few and far between and no matter how much they are revered there, their corn does not hold a candle to either of the Tuttles (Red Barn or Riverside Farm).

Things are winding down around here. The summer people are leaving one by one to return to their jobs. Many of them are teachers (who else can take the summer off to go off to the woods). We find many rangers that have been here for many years. Many of them leave at the last minute because they just don’t want to leave. It is easy to love this place. I first came here in 1984 with Marianna, Ivy and Brad. We had a bad experience as a grizzly attacked a camper in our campground. We woke in the morning to see all of the rangers carrying guns and a large bear trap on a trailer. We tried to sleep in the car but that didn’t work; 4 people in a car when you can’t open any of the windows is pretty stuffy. The next night, Marianna and I slept in the tent and the kids slept in the car but unlike the other times they slept in the car, they were restless, kept calling out and opening the door. We left after 3 days and finished our vacation in Jackson Hole.

3 years ago, Cheryl and I spent 6 days here on our way back from Alaska. We had a wonderful time but didn’t have a car requiring us to break camp every day and drive the camper around the park. We knew we had to come back so this time we came for 2 weeks. Guess what? It still wasn’t enough. We didn’t take much time off but continue to come up short. I guess the only way to handle this is to become rangers and come here for the summer. Sometime.

catching up...part I. The cowboy dinner and trail ride

Time is growing short. This is Tuesday morning and we leave Monday morning for home. It doesn’t seem possible that we are in the portion of this trip where we have to start making lists of the things we haven’t done and plan out our final days here to see as much as we can. Once again, we will not do everything we wanted to but then do you ever?

Today we go up to Roosevelt Corral and take a horseback ride ending up at the cowboy dinner. That was a real ball last time and we couldn’t get the horses. We are taking a kind of slow day but have some things that we need to do on the way. We didn’t check on the buffalo carcass yesterday so we will today. It is on the way. We also need to find some computer connection so we can make arrangements for Stan’s flight home so we may stop at Mt. Washburn (where we saw the coyote 2 days ago) as we had pretty good cell connections there and should have computer connection. We didn’t think of it yesterday when we were at Old Faithful actually doing some computer and phone connections.

We had a nice day yesterday. We got up leisurely since we had the early morning banzai run looking for the early morning animals. We spent the day walking amongst the geysers of the Old Faithful Geyser Basin. It was quite crowded. I talked to one person who had been here 8 years ago and was bemoaning the crowds as being way bigger. It was hard to walk around in some areas. We started out with a closeup of Old Faithful. We got there early and got seats in the front row (where else?). A lot of people got there early to get good seats. At the last minute, just before the eruption, hundreds of people showed up and jammed their way into the front area standing between the rows and in front of the people who had been there for half an hour.

We spent the rest of the day walking around the geyser basin and checking out all the different pools, geysers, vents and streams. It was a nice day. If you were taking pictures (which I always am) people would walk right through your picture or even stop in front of you and take pictures of their own. Occasionally, someone would realize that they had done that and apologize and some people would even stop until you had finished but the large majority ignored everything but their own interests and just stood in front of you.

One tragedy in the making concerned Morning Glory Pool. This pool has been a beautiful pool that showed up in all of the pictures of the park and had a post card of its own. According to the ranger, people have been throwing things into the pool and have blocked some of the passages causing the water to not flow correctly thereby killing the beautiful blue color of the inner pool and leaving it a murky green. It is still pretty but the park doesn’t know what to do to fix the problem and they are afraid that they are going to lose one of Yellowstone’s premier attractions.

I had hoped to take in more than one basin but when the dust cleared, we only got one basin in. The ranger talk last night was named Hook Line and Sinker and was about the history of the park and its fishing attraction primarily the cutthroat trout. It was interesting and they had a lot of old pictures of the park. In the early days of the park, the fishing was the premier attraction and drew sportsmen from all over the country. Of course, they abused it and caught hundreds of fish just to catch a lot of fish in a single day.

The park tried to bring in sport fish from around the country to attract even more fisherman. This didn’t work so well and led to some disasters. In some of the smaller lakes, the introduction of other types of trout let to cross breeding and some hybrid fish. The Lake Hotel hired professional fishermen to keep the hotel’s dining room in cutthroat trout. All of this led to the establishment of fish hatcheries. 20,000 cutthroat trout were caught and their eggs forcefully removed. These fish were raised and sold around the world and the country. None of these fish found their way back into the parks waters.

As you would expect, the catch began to deteriorate. The fishing arm of the park service blamed it on the predatory animals and the osprey, bears and pelicans became the park’s enemy. One year, they organized an egg stomp out on the island where the pelicans nested and raised their young. Half of the parks birds and their young were destroyed. It wasn’t long after that that scientists with no axe to grind proved to the park management that this was not in the least bit true and the animals were off the hook. As we all know, the real problem with the fish was over fishing and more care about the fishermen than the fish or their future.

I don’t want to give you the whole story, you need to come here and see this place for yourselves. It is magnificent. Eventually, the park got the fishing under control (they discovered that Fishing Bridge (a popular place to fish because the fishing was always good) was actually the spawning grounds for the cutthroat trout). Now Fishing Bridge is known affectionately as the No Fishing Bridge and the cutthroat trout have their spawning grounds back.

This park has a long history of saving species. At the end of the great buffalo extinction there were 23 buffalo remaining in Yellowstone. There had been a lot more but poaching in the park decimated the herds. The army was brought in to put an end to the poaching and the rebirth of the buffalo began. The army did some good things but they also abused other aspects of the park.

At one point, the wolf was totally exterminated in the park to “save” the other animals that the public liked to see. It wasn’t long before the imbalance in the park’s ecosystem began to show and the decision to return the wolf to the park began. Now with the wolf back, the ecosystem is in much better balance and the visitors have another predator to search for.

Well, that about covers that. I’ll see you again tomorrow. Top thing on my list when I get home is to get the heater in the camper fixed. I haven’t used it since the first trip to Alaska and it no longer works. We wake up each morning to temperatures in the 40s. Kind of reminds me of the ice storm power outages of last fall.

Today is the day I have been waiting for since arriving. We have our horseback ride and cowboy dinner this afternoon. We stayed in bed late and got a slow start saving our energy for tonight. We decided that it was time to do something about Stan’s airline ticket out of here. That gets a little difficult since we do not get any computer service or cell service here in our campground. We did get good cell service when we were on that parking lot up on the side of Mt. Washburn so we planned our trip up to Roosevelt Corral to stop at the site of the buffalo carcass and to stop on Mt. Washburn to get Stan a ticket online.

We drove over to the post office and I got my envelope full of bills (oh great!) from my mother and Stan mailed another package of souvenirs home. His glasses didn’t show up nor did my medicine. We headed up the road and soon arrived at the carcass site. We didn’t go there yesterday. The 2 days before that, there was little damage to it. We were all waiting for the big predators to discover it. Yesterday, we headed out to another section of the park so when we arrived today all that was left seemed to be the hide and some other unidentifiable scraps. A woman we met there said she had been there late yesterday and the carcass still seemed intact. Wellllll, today it was pretty much gone.

We did observe a coyote wandering the hillside and speculated that it was the same one we had seen other times we had been there. It hunted up and down a couple of the hills catching and eating several small animals. Then it circled around by the water and when it reached a certain point, it turned up the hill and went right for the carcass. There must have been something left as it nosed around the pelt and found enough to eat to keep it busy for several minutes. We left and headed up the road.

Just around the corner, we ran into yet another buffalo jam. There were several park rangers diligently working to keep the traffic moving but every time they began to succeed, buffalo would wander into the road and walk down the middle of it. We lost about 45 minutes there. People were taking pictures from their cars, from the sun roofs of their cars and from the road outside of their cars. One couple had pulled into a turnout and was sitting on a blanket on top of their pickup truck. The males were getting more serious about the females coming into heat and had paired up. They followed the females around showing off for them and growling and making sure other males didn’t intrude on their territory. The females did not seem to be impressed and pushed the males away whenever they got too close.

I’d like to say soon we were on our way but it wasn’t soon in fact it was way too long. Buffalo had ceased to be the prime interest of our trip after spending a lot of time in the middle of buffalo herds both here and in Custer. We eventually broke loose and headed up Dunraven Pass. We were moving along pretty well noting several instances of cars stopped to photograph buffalo along the road.

I came around one corner and noticed out of the corner of my eye a small herd of bighorn sheep lounging on a prominence of rock about a hundred feet above the road. We slowed and took some pictures and continued on towards Mt. Washburn.

Once we got to the mountain, we turned onto the dirt road and ascended. Once at the top, we set up the computer and had all kinds of trouble logging on. The wireless modem kept telling us that it was logged on but all attempts to gain websites came back with the message telling us that no connection was possible. Eventually, I just turned everything off and started over. This time it worked and we looked for several choices of flights. Cody was the closest airport but all of the flights out of Cody started at $600 and went up to $1100. We found a possible flight from Rapid City but could not get the program to let us in. We were running out of time so we packed up and headed to Roosevelt Stables. Everything work out well and we were there about 15 minutes early (you cannot predict how long it will take you to get anywhere since the traffic is such a dynamic problem).

We had paperwork to fill out and bathrooms to visit and soon the wrangler was calling us together to give us the mandatory safety talk (as well as how to handle the horses). There was nothing about seat belts and tray tables so I figured that we really were in the old west. One of the rules was NO CAMERAS ON THE HORSEBACK RIDE. That was the only disappointment of the trip but I understand the issue. You have a moderately large group of people (many of whom have never ridden) on horses; the last thing you want is these tenderfeet leaning over the side ignoring the horse to take pictures (I know I would do that). So they took our cameras away from us and loaded them into one of the wagons so we could have them at the dinner.

The ride out was a little tame. It was fairly flat out through the sagebrush and over into the valley. The horses tried very hard to dominate you to let them do whatever they wanted but most of us carefully kept them in line. One of the don’ts was “Don’t let them stop to eat. Whenever they try, pull their heads up and give them a good kick in the sides.” My horse (Dooley) was careful to follow my lead whenever he tried to eat. He would respond to my little coaxes with the reins. A couple of times, he would see a patch of grass that just looked too good to pass up and would make a fast hard move towards it forcing me to take the reins in both hands and pull straight up while kicking him in the side. I always forced his head up but most times, he came up with a mouth full of something. The first time he made the big move, he almost took me with him. That was the only time; later I was waiting for him.

Stan rode Winston and Cheryl rode Big Ed a huge palomino horse. Cheryl always seems to draw the biggest horse in the stable. She always is curious as to why she always gets a big horse and I always draw a smaller horse. The explanation usually is that they give her a gentle horse and I being bigger (and potentially stronger) am given the more spirited horse that is traditionally harder to ride. They obviously don’t know how much of a creampuff I am unless of course you cut in front of me on the road.

Dinner was just as good as I remembered it from 3 years ago. Rib eye steaks (or chicken) with potato salad, cole slaw, corn muffins, beans (a multi kind of beans), a corn dish, soda and apple crisp for desert was the fare of record. Oh, did I mention the cowboy coffee? They had these great pots of coffee over the wood fire. This coffee was really good with the appropriate amount of grounds in each cup. Near the end of the evening, the singer gave us the recipe: equal amounts of water and coffee boil over the fire for 2 hours and serve it when the spoon you put into it dissolves (nah, it was much better than that).

There was a western singer there (better than the guy 3 years ago) and a good time was had by all. 3 years ago, the horseback riders rode back in the wagons but this year we rode back on the horses. This part of the ride was the best. We climbed up a big hill and rode along a ridge. We descended and crossed the road to finish the ride. This was a much more challenging ride than the ride down. We got to use the things we had learned and practiced on the first half of the ride. The horses behaved much better and if you weren’t careful, you would think you had mastered horseback riding.

OF course that wasn’t true, you just felt that way. I have ridden 4 or 5 times now and I still feel that the horse could lead me whenever he wanted. It was really fun though.

We returned to the mountain top and finally got Stan’s airline ticket straightened out. He will ride with us to Rapid City and we will stay over night. We will drop him off early in the morning and make a serious effort to get home. My birthday party has returned to its original date. Sandra has swapped work days with someone who desperately needed another day off badly enough to take Sandra’s shift. Now the pressure is on to get home for the 30th.

Rapid City fits in pretty well with our “travel” schedule. When just driving, we try to get 500 miles per day. We usually come close and sometimes get as many as 600 miles. That should get us home on the day before my birthday. Hopefully there won’t be any problems.

Well, I am tired and smell something like a horse (I won’t say that of the people around me BUT!). Showers in the am then we will figure out what to do. We only have 5 days left!

Yellowstone out!

Grand Tetons back at ya!

Another great day. Not as cool as it has been in the morning but still cool. Yesterday, we ran the heater in the truck as well as the griddle on the stove. This morning it was not cold enough for that. We got up late had breakfast and hit the road. The post office was a let down today; no packages for anyone. Stan called about his glasses and was told that they had been mailed so we should see them this afternoon or tomorrow morning (with our reputation for getting back late, tomorrow morning should be the best bet).

We headed for Jackson Hole and the Grand Teton National Park. This is one of the prettiest drives around. The mountains are very large and jagged. They are the youngest mountains on earth and have not had time to erode.

Our animal list is growing smaller. We only have a few separate animals although we would like to see more of some of the others. The biggies we have left to see are the moose and the grizzly bear. We would like also to see some more male elk. We did see one but it was in the trees and we didn’t get a clear look.

It is a fairly long drive to get out the southern entrance to the park. We left the park and were soon in the middle of a construction zone. It seems that there are a lot of construction projects around here this year. This was slow going as there were a lot of motorhomes and the road was quite rough. Eventually this ended and we set out on asphalt. We were getting along and got near to the place where we had seen a moose in the water 3 years ago. There was a moose in the same body of water. She was on the back side of the pond this time and was feeding on the bottom. She was feeding in water that seemed to be over her head. When she went down, she was completely under water and when she came up only her head showed. When she went down, her back would come to the surface and arch like someone surface diving.

A short distance down the road, we found traffic signs and a large crowd of people and several rangers. We couldn’t see what they were looking at so we stopped and asked the ranger directing traffic in the other direction. She told us there was a grizzly bear feeding on a carcass. We parked along the road and took the hike back to the action. There was a rail fence and behind it right next to some bushes was an elk carcass. The grizzly was in the bushes eating and standing guard over the elk.

The ranger there told us that some wolves had brought the elk down but the grizzly was in the neighborhood and immediately toook the carcass away from the wolves. The bear had been sitting on this carcass for 3 days and there seemed to still be quite a bit of it left. The bear was not a big one; the ranger estimated 200 lbs probably making it a yearling. Grizzlies can grow to 400 to 700 lbs. Every once in a while, the bear would make an appearance. Once it came completely out of the bushes, walked around for a while and returned. You could see its face over the elk and just before we left, it came out again to chase some birds off the carcass.

We continued down to Jackson Hole stopping periodically to take pictures and ooh and ahh over the Tetons. Jackson was a busy town. It had changed considerably over the 3 years we had been away. One business was closing after 62 years. They have been having a going out of business sales since May and would close at the end of the season.

We headed back to Yellowstone and upon arriving in the area of West Thumb; we found some elk out on the roadway with the usual elk jam of traffic. People were running through the woods trying to get pictures. I am amazed that there are not more accidents between the elk and the people. People run right up to them.

We drove into the West Thumb Geyser Basin. 3 years ago, Cheryl and I had a close encounter with a whole herd of elk so we thought we would try that again. Dusk was beginning to settle over the park as we turned into the parking lot. Over by the woods on the side we saw several elk working their way into the basin. One was the male that we had seen on the road. He had a moderately large rack. There were several females and youngsters and one other male, a yearling with a small velvet covered rack. We watched them for quite some time. Eventually people found them. The large male had walked over to a fenced in area and was grazing. People went right up to the fence barely 5 feet away and started snapping pictures. One man let his little daughter sit on the fence with nothing between her and the elk while he took pictures. A Japanese man tried to climb over the fence (the elk was still 5 feet away) but changed his mind halfway across. I do not understand people. They have no fear of these animals who could do them great bodily harm.

Dilemma of the day: If someone stupidly gets close enough to an animal to get attacked, is it required of those that stayed safely away to risk their own bodily injury to save them?? Fortunately that decision wasn’t necessary.

Well, back at camp after a long day’s drive. Supper is cooking, Cheryl is cooking it, I seem to have developed a sinus problem and am just going to take something for it and lay on the couch. See you tomorrow.

I slept a lot last evening and therefore did not sleep all that well. I was stuffy but not nearly as bad as I had last night. I have kept taking the medicine and hope tonight will be better yet.

buffalo jam, elk jam, bear jam just plain traffic jam.

MOVING DAY! We seem to have a bunch of them coming up. Today we drive up to Devil’s Tower, then Cody the next day. We spend 2 nights there before heading into Yellowstone. Let’s see, that’s 3 days of driving in 4 days then 2 glorious weeks at rest. I don’t think we have ever done 2 weeks in a single spot. I am looking forward to that. We moved around something like that during our Alaskan Adventure but did spend a little more time in places. We spent 2 to 5 days anywhere we went unless we were on a real geography mover. We are just hitting the highlights on this brief jaunt. A day to drive to Devil’s Tower leaves enough time to walk around the Tower and there isn’t enough else to do there to warrant more time unless we take up rock climbing and we all know that isn’t going to happen. I’ll leave that to Brad and his friends.

We woke up to rain in Hot Springs so we got off to a slow start. We headed across country to get up to I 90. Stan had really enjoyed Wind Cave so when we passed by Jewell Cave, we pulled in and signed on for another tour of duty. Jewel cave was several degrees cooler than Wind Cave but we headed down the elevator and out on the tour. We skipped the natural entrance tour and went right for a longer tour. It contained 750 steps so we figured we were in for a climb. It wasn’t all that bad. The cave is filled with crystal formations and had a good example of cave bacon. This my third time here and this tour is not one I have been on. We enjoyed it a lot but soon were back on the road. Eventually we pulled into Gillette and stopped at WalMart to pick up a few things. We had lunch filled up with gas and were back on the road.

We drove up to Sheridan and took Route 14 through Bighorn National Park. This was a beautiful road but was severely up and down and around. The roads were narrow with tight winding turns. We drove up to 9.000 feet and encountered miles and miles of gravel road and were eventually faced with a sign that told us of 18 miles of descending road. We were told to use lower gears. It was a rough descent but we passed into a gorge that was nothing short of spectacular. We drove through several small (tiny) towns and watched the plains morph into a more cattle range environment. As we were pulling into Cody, Wy, I saw a sign noting the KOA Cody.

I pulled over to the side of the road and just stared at the sign. This was definitely not what I expected! Cheryl and I had stayed in Cody 3 years ago. I thought it was a KOA but obviously I was wrong. I pulled in and sure enough, they had my reservation. The campground I was thinking of must have been named something else (later investigation proved I was right and wrong). It was named something else and I was wrong.

We stuck around camp and ended up sleeping late the next morning. We headed into town with some errands to do. We started off at Bubba’s BBQ then I dropped everyone off at the Buffalo Bill Museum and headed off to do the errands. I found the post office and mailed some stuff then drove back to the campground to take my insulin and buy the rodeo tickets for that night and went to WalMart to download my pictures to disk. They had 4 Kodak machines and 4 Fuji machines and everyone was busy. Eventually, one freed up and I started to process my chip. After about 30 minutes of processing, my machine froze up and wouldn’t move. The clerk said she would have to reboot the machine. I knew that would take quite a while so I left.

I caught up with Stan and Cheryl and Stan at the museum and we looked at the Lewis and Clark exhibit and the natural history wing before heading off to a gunfight at the Irma Hotel. The Irma is where Buffalo Bill stayed when he was in town. They have this group that puts on a gunfight every afternoon. It was ok but the Brazos Bottom Cowographers were W A Y better when we saw them down in Bandera Texas last summer.

Soon we were on our way again, got back to camp, changed into our rodeo gear and headed out to the Cody Night Rodeo (every night from the first of June to August 31). We had a ball. We met the Rodeo Clown. He is retired but came back when the normal rodeo clown left. He kept the show moving when it slowed down and was really funny. We saw him again afterwards.

The next morning we got up late (again) and headed to the Buffalo Bill Museum about
Noon. We looked around the rest of the museum and hit the road for Yellowstone. The ever-changing landscape got more and more rugged. We passed through a large section with lots of very picturesque streams and rivers. In them were quite a few people fly fishing. It looked like the cover of a Field and Stream Magazine.

Soon there were cliffs of rocks just covered with hoodoos (a crack develops in the rock and lava forces its way up into it. Eventually, the surrounding rock erodes away leaving towers of the harder rock). We drove up to the East Entrance to Yellowstone, gave them my Senior Pass, got a bunch of brochures and informational papers and proceeded down into the Caldera (Yellowstone National Park is situated in the cone of a volcano. A long long time ago (in a galaxy far away…..no, no that is a different story) the volcano that is now Yellowstone exploded leaving this shallow caldera or cone). Since then everything that is now Yellowstone has developed. It is this volcanic activity that gives Yellowstone its geysers, mud pots, and hot pools. Eventually this will happen again but none of the scientists think it will be anytime soon. One woman in an information place told us that there were more than 10 earthquakes each day. You won’t notice them but they are there. Earlier this year there was a larger earthquake that everyone did notice. The epicenter was located deep underneath Yellowstone Lake.

When we reached the base of the entry road, we came to Yellowstone Lake and stopped at a large stone beach. We drove onto the beach (carefully but there were already some campers parked there and walked along checking the water and skipping rocks and just unwinding a bit before covering the remaining distance to Fishing Bridge. We turned into the road and registered. While we were there, we found a day we could sign up for the Cowboy Dinner and also the trail ride to get to it. We also attempted to get reservations for dinner at one of the restaurants to celebrate Stan’s Birthday. They had nothing but the woman at the desk said not to worry, she would keep on it and was sure that she would be able to accommodate us. She also said she would make arrangements for a cake to be brought to the table at the end of the meal.

We set up. This was not easy. The sites were very small. I studied it for several minutes before trying anything. We unloaded the car then had no place to put it so we left it in the middle of the road blocking traffic so no one would pull up on us while we were trying to park everything. I tried to put the trailer in the site from the wrong side (the road was one way). Soon I realized that this just wasn’t going to work so we moved the car and I drove away letting the backed up campers go on their merry way.

Through a series of crossovers, I turned the rig around and drove the wrong way down the one way street. I was then able to back the trailer into the edge of the space then unhooked it. I was now at completely the wrong angle to get into the other half of the space so I drove down (wrong way) to the next crossover again letting the line of campers through, got turned around and drove up the right way easily backing into the remaining tiny space.

There were posts sunk into the ground to keep the campers from going too far back in the space. Fortunately they were low and I could back over them (the rear of the camper not the wheels). With the trailer pushed way back and the camper pushed way back, we had room for the car in the front. Unfortunately there was no space left for us to have chairs or anything. We had filled every last inch of the space allotted to us (and more). We set our patio up on the trailer. It looks funny but does work. Several people have stopped and told us that we have the only raised deck in the park. It has been a good way to meet people and we have cooked out there and eaten out there. The only down side is that it is on the wrong side of the camper so we have to walk around everything to bring food and drink.

First full day in Yellowstone! We celebrated by getting up late and having breakfast. Today is Stan’s 62nd birthday so we will help him celebrate. I headed down to the store and picked up some eggs. There was a Kodak digital chip processor. I was kind of excited to see it until the clerk told me it didn’t work. He also said most of them in the park didn’t work. We ate and drove over to the Old Faithful Geyser Basin. We had to be back in the middle of the afternoon to get our reservation information so we planned a low key short day. As we approached the basin, we saw Old Faithful erupt over the trees. It erupts about every 90 minutes so we had some time to kill.

We pulled into the parking lot. There is a big lot then a road then a smaller version of the lot. I went for the smaller version of the lot and found that there weren’t any parking spaces available there. When I tried to go back to the large lot, I ended up on the exit road….not what I had intended. I turned into a road that went to a lot behind the Lodge and found a place. Now, this is the confusing part. I wasn’t quite sure where to go. It didn’t look anything like I remembered it from even 3 years ago. There were 2 distinct construction zones going on here where before there were only paths and trees.

The first was a brand new education building. In its “under construction” look, it seemed to replicate the look of the Old Faithful Inn but was not a log building. It had a similar shape but was covered in Tyvec so you had no idea of the final look. The second construction area was a demolition area where they were knocking down several one story buildings. Both areas were fenced off and forced you to walk around which we did and ended up in front of the lodge.

We went inside and marveled once again at the architecture of the building. It is a huge log building with a lobby that was 3 stories high. All of the wood is log and it is all very dark giving the room a dark feeling. The lights are chandeliers mounted on large metal bands with deer horns mounted all around. There is a resident artist painting in the lobby and lots of things going on to give the place a bustling feel.

The large clock on the wall did not seem to be working (it has a large pendulum and is built right into the wall). There is a gift shop which was jammed to the hilt with tourists looking for the great Yellowstone souvenir. We avoided that for the moment and headed upstairs. There is a large deck on the second floor of the front of the lodge which gives you a great view of Old Faithful. We gathered up cappuccinos and a pastry and settled in on the deck to await the next outburst.

That was when I noticed people using their cell phones all over the place. I checked mine and I had a strong signal so I checked in with my mother to see how she was doing. Soon the hour approached and we all waited excitedly. The first signs of water spurting out of the cone brought everyone to attention. It was only a couple of minutes before Old Faithful let loose with a column of water more than a hundred feet into the air. There were some oohs and ahs but mostly people were intent on not missing a bit of the eruption.

I, on the other hand, had my camera battery go dead after the first small splash. I fumbled in my camera bag for my other battery, inserted it into the camera, closed the little battery door and turned on the camera……that battery was dead also?? What did I do, change batteries and forget to charge the other one? I repeated the process using one of the commercial batteries that I keep just for this type of emergency. YES! This time it worked, oh wait, the eruption is on its last legs. The column of water is only 50 feet high and falling. I missed it!!

The good news is that we still have 12 days left and we will return here to see the rest of the basin. There is a great trail around the basin and lots of geysers so we will definitely return and I will get a second shot.

We headed downstairs and were greeted by a ranger circulating through the crowd telling everyone that the Beehive Geyser would be erupting within 10 minutes. The Beehive erupts twice a day. It doesn’t necessarily have a schedule but starts doing some distinct behaviors just before eruption so the rangers have time to notify everyone in the area that it is about to go off. We hurried (along with a couple of hundred other people over to the beehive. There was a small vent to the right of the geyser that was spurting a steady stream of water away from the cone (Beehive has a large thick cone that somewhat resembles the old round beehive. It is 3 feet high and 2 or more feet across the opening.

In a couple of minutes it went off. It produces a very thick column of water that sprays very high. It also makes a loud roaring sound and erupts for a long time (relatively). That over, I suggested that we walk through the lodge to get back to our car. WRONG! I forgot that Old Faithful Lodge has many large wings and soon we were lost in the corridors of the lodge. We ended up in a lot to the right of the hotel when we needed to be on the left. I left everyone there and went in search of. That was when I figured out the layout of the construction zones as I saw plenty of both of them as I circumnavigated both of them. Eventually I found the car and rescued my passengers.

We saw a few animals on our journey. There was a young buck elk with velvet covered horns along with what we assumed was his mother grazing alongside the road. We also saw some buffalo far off in the distance which didn’t stop the normal buffalo traffic jam. The woman at the activities desk in our campground told us that our reservations at Lake Lodge were for 8:00 PM and that the birthday cake for Stan was all arranged.

We returned to camp and had a light lunch then read and otherwise enjoyed the late afternoon. Then we dressed for dinner and popped open a bottle of champagne and started the celebration. We drove the couple of miles to the Lake area of the park. Lake Lodge is an impressive building. It is long and high. You enter through the back as the front faces Yellowstone Lake. We found the dining room in the far right end of the lodge. It has large windows facing the lake but that is somewhat muted by the hustle and bustle of the large dining room. As the sun sets, you lose the feeling of the lake and it is like any other nice dining room.

Everything is nice there. The walls are a light yellow with white. The wait staff is dressed in dark pants with white shirts and a black apron. The floors are wood and each table is draped with a stiff off white tablecloth. It gives you the feeling that everything is just right; really nice but not overdone.

Ready?? We weren’t on the reservation list. This is a big operation and we were a last minute addition but that was not a good start. They reacted like it was an everyday occurrence (which I expect is true). They wrote our name in on the list and immediately took us to a table. (When we first arrived, there was a couple that didn’t have reservations that were told they would try to work them in). We were taken to a table and almost immediately our server arrived welcoming us to the hotel and placing this wonderful dish of crusty bread and fresh crackers on the table with little ramekins of butter and soft goat cheese.

Our server was Edyta, a student from Poland (notice the theme of this trip). She was really nice and soon we had drinks. We had a cheese plate that had cheddar and blue cheese with some glazed walnuts and a fruit compote (not the Flagstones kind but a glazed dried fruit that was very sweet but tasty). I moved the survivors from the bread plate onto the cheese plate and in the end, there were no survivors of either plate.

Our theme of impending disaster continued. Cheryl order a white Russian with raspberry vodka and had to settle for a plain old white Russian as they did not have raspberry vodka in their bar. Then we ordered dinner. Cheryl ordered the halibut special. Edyta once again returned to the table with the news that they had just sold the last special (?).

To avoid later problems, I took our server aside and told her that the same person who made our reservations that were not on the listing also ordered a cake for Stan’s birthday. She said she would check on the cake but that if that also had fallen through the cracks, she would take care of it (that’s what you like to hear rather than the old “we didn’t get the message, the cakes are frozen and there isn’t…you get the picture”.

The dinner was very nice; the medallions of lamb were tasty and perfectly cooked, the surf and turf was nicely presented and the bouillabaisse was good but very delicate rather than hearty and robust (Julia (Child)) would definitely not have approved. The meal was good and the wait staff (Edyta and Christina with the water) was right on the button and very friendly.

When the meal was over, Edyta kind of snuck in and deposited the cake on the tray behind Stan and within a minute several members of the wait staff (including the dining room manager) started to gather around the table. Stan doesn’t like to be singled out and was quite embarrassed when they all began to sing to him. They sang a birthday song based on “Home on the Range”. It was unique and cute and all I could think was “Mission Complete with the embarrassment thrown in for good measure.

We all kind of staggered back to the car and traversed the 2 miles back to camp successfully. It was late but there was still an hour before the scheduled start of the meteor shower (I didn’t mention that did I?) This is the day in August when there is a meteor shower in the night. It was supposed to run between 12 and 5 am. We stayed awake and caught the first hour of it. It was quite good. There were great bright shooting stars with long tails that lingered for seconds before fading. Any other time I have tried to see this shower, it has always been cloudy or rainy or I fell asleep so this was pretty good. Sometime after 1, we gave up, put the chairs away and hit the rack.

I awoke in the middle of the night and opened the window by my bed to see what was going on but was met by a really bright moon that outshined the corner of the sky out my little window.

Wednesday has arrived….well I guess all of the stargazing happened on Wednesday but it seemed like a continuation of Tuesday. We got up really late. No one was hungry so we headed out to West Yellowstone to see if we could get Stan’s glasses fixed. This is a really big place and it takes a long time to get anywhere. We arrived in West Yellowstone (Montana) and found that there was no place to get glasses fixed. Stan made some inquiries at the police station and found that everyone there drove up to Bozeman every couple of weeks to shop and take care of business. We did manage to find a hardware store/home center and bought a piece of PVC gutter to make our sewage system work. The sewer drains around here are very high off the ground and surrounded by cement to protect them. I have wanted to make a trough system to hold the sewer hose. You don’t need it often but when you need it, you need it.

I could do without but you end up with your sewer hose along the ground then up in the air causing sewage to always be in the hose. Should something happen to either the hose or the connection between hoses, the liquid will leak out onto the ground. This trough will support the hose and let it drain constantly.

OK, here comes the notable part of the day. We took route 20 south out of town and within 10 minutes were at the Montana Idaho Border. My last state! I have now visited all 50 states. We documented the occasion with pictures. I have to admit that the “Welcome to Idaho” sign was kind of plain and uninteresting so we walked across the street and did the same thing to the Welcome to Montana sign which was much more colorful and fun but certainly less meaningful.

We reentered the park and took the northern route back to camp. We visited the Artists paintpot basin and the Norris Geyser Basin (or at least part of it. It is quite large). Then we visited Mammoth Hot Springs and saw the massive built up area there before driving back to camp. We didn’t return to camp until after 10 and missed the turn into camp. We caught that in less than a mile and recovered. We fixed a quick supper, reviewed the day’s activities and crashed.

Well, that brings us right up to today. We have driven so much in the last few days that we are going to stick close (geographically). The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is near here so we just might hike the south rim of the canyon and check out the falls close up. First, I have to install my new sewage hose management system. Wish me luck!! See you in a while…Yellowstone out!

Slick! That worked really well. The PVC gutter made a great trough for the sewer hose. I dumped the black water tank and then the grey water tank and not a wiggle. When I used the slinky thing, the whole system used to fall over so this is a great improvement.

We declared a day off. We were all pretty much traveled out and needed to catch up on some stuff. We did laundry. That is always an adventure but hopefully that is our last laundry until we get home. This trip seems to have a totally different feel than our other trips. We have a distinct timetable for the entire trip; all of our stops once we reached South Dakota were reserved before we left home. We pretty much knew where we would be at any time during the trip. We have also had company for nearly 2 weeks with more to come. It has been a lot of fun but not something we are used to. The entire pace of the trip has been more hectic since we only have 6 weeks.

The laundry room here is very nice although they only had single machines. We have gotten used to going out the laundramat and using the double and triple sized machines. It takes about the same amount of time but is easier to manage. There was one place in the laundry room where they had a couple of chairs against the wall blocking the door of the first machine in the row. I moved the chair to get at the machine. Later, a woman from the registration area came in and moved the chair back to block the machine. I moved it again and a few minutes later, she came back in, looked at the chair and moved it back in front of the door. Then she put a basket of wet laundry in the chair as if that would keep the chair from moving. I left it alone until it was time to take the clothes out of that machine and move them to a dryer.

A few minutes after I finished, she came back in and moved the chair in front of the washer’s door once again. Then she tried to open the washer and found she had to move the chair out of the way in order to put the clothes into the machine. When she finished, she put the chair back in front of the door. You guessed it, when the washer was through, she tried to open the door again and banged into the chair. Go figure!

Later in the afternoon, Cheryl and I headed back to Cody for another night at the Rodeo. It was a nice drive but the sky over Cody got darker as we got closer. Then we noticed that the road was wet. We pulled into the rodeo arena just as the sky opened up. The flags were out straight and the wind was howling. We picked up our tickets and sat in the car catching up on our phone calls. As we were climbing towards Sylvan Pass, we seemed to come into a small (very) window of cell phone reception. It was just big enough for us to get our voicemails and to return the first one before the window closed and our friends were left wondering what happened to the call. Just outside of Cody, the phone came alive again. We called our first call back to apologize for dropping them but they forced us to go to the answering machine to leave a message.

The rain started to let up but the wind continued to howl. We headed into the arena when the gates opened but we sat in the normally second class seats. The advantage was that these seats had their backs to the wind (both grandstands are covered). The people who went over to the Buzzard’s Roost sat way up near the middle to keep the rain from hitting them in the face. Soon the wind died down and the rain let up so we headed down and over to the Buzzard’s Roost. The front row was still completely empty so we grabbed what we thought were the best seats, right over chute 4. This was in the middle with the return tunnel just to the left.

These seats gave us a great view of the cowboys preparing for the bareback bronco, saddle bronc and the bull riding. Most everything else happened right in front of us too. After we arrived, the seats in the front started to fill up. More and more cars came and the busses started to arrive. They had a fair crowd but less than they had the last night we came. It was Friday night but they had fewer participants in every event but one; the bull riding.

The cowboy that won the bareback bronco riding was a high school student from Cody. He will be a senior this coming school year and was the 2008 World High School Champion. He won the bareback bronc riding both nights we were there. He got thrown on the saddle bronc both nights and the bull the first night. He didn’t ride the bulls the second night.

They did have a dozen bull riders last night (only about 8 the other night). The first night only one cowboy rode his bull. Last night 9 bulls were ridden. It was a fun night. The losers last night were the ropers. The rope and tie folks were almost a complete washout, the girls roping was the same as was the team roping. I think there were only 1 or 2 good times in each category whereas the other night almost everyone got a time.

After the rodeo, we sat in the parking lot and did some things on the computer. Not having a connection is not a good thing. I had some bills to pay and some medicine to order. Then we checked our email and set off on our return to Yellowstone. The road from Cody to Yellowstone is a dark and dreary road. There are no lights along the road and it is just dark and hard to drive. Fortunately, I followed someone who drove to within a mile of the entrance to the park. Then I was on my own. The road up over Sylvan Pass was a long uphill battle. As I reached the top, I came up on the back of a double tanker truck. I suppose someone has to deliver gas to the park but running up on this double trailer truck carrying gasoline is a little disconcerting.

He pulled right over and let me pass. As we were descending the other side, I went around a hairpin corner and looked over at the truck just a few feet from me but on a different switchback. It was a much longer drive home than it was going but eventually we arrived at the campground, made a quick bite to eat and went to bed. Stan had had a relatively quiet evening. He walked down to the ranger talk and helped the woman in the store chase a bat out of the store.

GOOD MORNING YELLOWSTONE!!!!

Its 6 am (I remember when I got up this early every morning) and we are headed out to see the latest chapter in the drama that seems to have started yesterday morning. We got up at the usual time and headed up into the Hayden Valley to see what we could see for wild animals. It was late to start but we had the opportunity to maybe see something. We checked a couple of areas and found some buffalo (too big to hide) but we did find a buffalo carcass about 300 yards off the road. It was a mother (with a calf). The thought was that she had been hit by a car and wandered off the road to die. The calf stood steadfastly by his (or her) mother for more than a day.

We returned in the afternoon to find 2 coyotes hanging around the carcass. One was trying to get by the calf to get at the carcass and the other was hiding amongst the sagebrush watching very closely. The calf kept between his mother and the coyote. The coyote would back off when the calf came towards him (once again either he or she) and circle around to try from another angle. Finally the calf charged at the coyote and he decided that there was easier food to be had elsewhere.

We watched the coyote leave the carcass area and walk directly towards our vantage point. He circled below us following the edge of the Yellowstone River. At one point, he stopped, stayed perfectly still and then ambushed a small rodent eating it in on bite. He continued on munching down a couple of more of these small animals until he disappeared over a hill to the right.

The calf continued to hang around his mother but would graze in the grasses. As he grazed, he wandered further and further away from mom. He got about a hundred yards away and the coyote hiding in the sagebrush started to make his move. He circled around so that the carcass was between him and the calf. He kept a close eye on the calf while he started to chew on the carcass. He continued to eat the carcass until the calf started to wander back. Once the calf noticed the coyote, he moved toward him. Naturally, since coyotes are cowards, the coyote began to back away from the carcass. The calf checked his mother out and found that there had been some serious chewing (for about 45 minutes).

The calf then returned to grazing and started to wander away from his mother and towards the main part of the herd (about a half mile away). The coyote returned to the mother and no further confrontation took place (at least while we were there.) We eventually left as it was getting dark and we had not eaten for quite some time.

Back to this morning. We got up at 6, packed a portable breakfast and headed up the road. When I got to the car, there was ice on the roof. It had hailed during the evening and was cold but this is ridiculous. The temperature when I started the car was 36.

We arrived to no parking places but used our creative forces and made one. The river had a smoke rising off it and the hill where the carcass was could not be seen at all. There were a lot of people there most of whom had watched the day before at one time or another. People came in and left when there was nothing to see. Many people who didn’t know what was happening there arrived, got out of their cars, took a quick look and moseyed on in the best Griswold tradition.

One van full of Orientals (not trying to be racial here) and tried to park the van where a small car had been (parallel parking). Half of them got out of the car and screamed at the other half who were trying to park the car. Then they came over the place where everyone was trying to see what was going on with the carcass. They talked to each other in very loud voices yelling from one end of the area to the other. People kept sshhssshhhing them but they ignored everyone’s request for quiet and continued to make noise and all of a sudden ran back to their van and pulled out.

All I could think of was the 1960’s book; “The Ugly American” only this time it was the Japanese Tourists turn to take the brunt of the ugliness.

Soon, the fog began to clear and we got our first glimpse of the carcass. It had been chewed on some but looked pretty good. When we arrived, the temperature at the site was 31 degrees. The carcass was fairly hard to find with the binoculars as it was covered with frost. That seemed to be fairly reasonable as the animal was cold and not warm enough to melt the frost. Just as a note: later on we were driving north and came across the main herd and found several buffalo with frost on their heads so warmth is not the only criteria for melting frost (mid august and we have had a frost on the car…..whoa!

Te carcass was pretty quiet. It seemed obvious that the bears and wolves had not found it yet. We waited for quite some time for something to happen but all remained quiet. A ranger arrived on the spot at some point. She said she figured to be there all day to watch what happened and keep the tourists from doing their stupid best to disturb the site and get hurt or worse. She offered the theory that the buffalo (bison to the people in Yellowstone and buffalo to those in Custer State Park) had been hit by a car and wandered over there to die (have I said that already?). She said the big predators (bear and wolves) did not seem to have found the carcass yet. The cold and the freshness of the carcass had slowed the decomposition and since the predator’s best tool is their sense of smell, they hadn’t found it yet. That would eventually happen (different opinion than a later ranger we met but more on that later).

We headed off in search of the very large animals (bears and elk). We drove up towards Tower. We had been told that Dunraven Pass was a good place to look for bear. We had also been told that the elk had migrated up to the northern part of the park to avoid the wolves so that seemed like a good place to go. We drove and drove and went up through Dunraven Pass and started down the other side. The bears have gone to the higher parts of the park looking for white pine nuts and Dunraven Pass is one of the highest parts of the park (with a road at least).

Well, we didn’t see a thing so I decided to change our approach. I found a dirt road that purported to climb up part of Mt. Washburn. We took the road up to its top where a trail took you up the last 1100 feet of the mountain. There was a beautiful view of the surrounding mountain peaks and we were totally enthralled. I noticed a bird kind of shaped like a partridge lurking down at the end of the parking lot. I got out my camera and wile watching the bird noticed that there was a second bird near the first.

All of a sudden, the second bird flew away with considerable gusto. What’s up wit dat? Just then, a coyote came walking up over the edge of the parking lot. It looked at the other bird (who flew immediately away) and then began to saunter through the parking lot. I called to Cheryl and Stan to come see the coyote. I handed the camera to Cheryl as the coyote was headed straight for me. He walked by me about 10 feet away. He kept a close watch on me and as a result was startled by a tiny bird that flew up from a patch of weeds near him.

He walked up the lot and turned right to head up towards Mt. Washburn. In a minute he came to a complete stop. He didn’t move for a bit as there was a ground squirrel near him. He finally turned and ran after the squirrel through the remnants of the 1988 fire. The squirrel won and was soon in his den chirping out his warning to whoever could hear it.

We continued on, checked out a fairly long dirt road over a plateau of land (seeing nothing) then continued on towards Mammoth. Once in Mammoth, we got a bite to eat. As we were finishing, I looked out the window and saw 3 elk coming through the town park. I got everyone’s attention and out the door we went. There was a line of them coming up from Fort Yellowstone and traveling through the park. When we got outside of the restaurant, we noticed that there were 8 of them, all females and young ones. Oh, wait, there are still more. They gathered in the center of the park.

We were standing on the edge of the park and realized that they might be headed our way. We were standing in a heavily traveled path so we moved quite a bit to the side of the trail. Of course, they took a different path and came up our right side instead of our left. They looked a little nervous but soon started to move. They came up the right hand trail and crossed the road. No hesitation, they just walked down the path and walked out into the road bringing traffic (which was heavy) to a complete standstill. A couple of the elk that were in the back of the pack kept looking over their shoulders. We assumed that they were just checking to ensure that no one was coming up behind them.

By now we recounted them and found that there were 12. They finished crossing the road, walked between the stores and started up the hill behind them. Once on the first crest of the hill, they all kind of looked back. We turned around and saw 3 more elk crossing the park. They also walked right into the road and crossed. Once they met up with the rest of the pack, they continued up the hills and disappeared over the top. They never looked back after the last 3 caught up with them.

The traffic meanwhile had not started up again. The people in the cars were mesmerized by the elk and continued to watch them. A ranger car came up through the traffic calling over the loudspeaker for the cars to keep moving. No one paid much attention to him but eventually they all started moving again. Elk Jam dissolved.

We wandered through the gift shop for a while. They had a Pendleton Blanket with a wolf on it. It was a special limited edition blanket to commemorate the repopulation of the wolves in the park back in the 70s. It was beautiful. It had the wolf on the front with a lot of Indian type symbols and on the back, it was a different color and had totally different patterns. It was $250 complete with a really nice mug with the same picture on it for free (if you can call $250 for the mug/blanket free). We passed. We have a nice Pendleton (Beaver Creek) Indian blanket that I have had for 25 years.

As we were driving out of town, we saw a traffic jam just breaking up ahead of us. We asked an escaping man on foot what was happening. He told us that there had been a black bear by the road but that it was now gone. We drove through slowly and looking through the woods to a field right behind them, we saw the bear walking through the field. I parked and hurried back with my camera and managed to get a shot of the bear through the trees. Not as close as the frost covered buffalo but still a good shot.

We drove down the west side of the park until we hit the crossover road in the middle. We took that so that we could return to Hayden Valley to check again on our buffalo carcass. There was nothing going on there. The ravens were pecking away at the carcass but it would take months for a few ravens to pick that body clean. A different ranger was on duty there. She seemed to think that the bear and wolves were at the carcass during the previous night. You couldn’t tell that from looking at it. That was a different story than the morning ranger had given us. Who knows? We will keep an eye on it over the next few days to see what happens.

The night ranger seemed to think that the calf had left the mother eventually and had hooked up with the herd and could very well be ok. The tough part will be the winter. The animal will need help from the herd to survive the winter. She said the herd often took in strays and cared for them. Whether true or not, it was what most of the people wanted to hear. You certainly didn’t want to be told that they calf was toast.

We finished our trip back to camp and just crashed for the rest of the afternoon. I made nachos for happy hour and chicken and roast potatoes for supper. In between, I took a nap which I apparently needed desperately. It had been a long day. After supper, we sat around and talked then retreated into our computers. We considered a DVD but the closest DVD was probably 80 miles away (unless you wanted to go buy National Park DVDs.

The day is done and it was a corker. We all had a good time but it is raining and we figure that the evening ranger program has been cancelled and if it hasn’t, we aren’t going! We are already tired and cold and don’t need to be wet.

Good night for now. See you tomorrow.

C

Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, Lincoln and the weatherman! 4 out of 5 ain't bad.

Today started out cloudy but the clouds started to break up at midmorning. After the marathon drive yesterday, we decided to stay close to home today. Wind Cave National Park is only a few miles up the road. We had breakfast and hit the road. Wind cave is a two pronged national park. Above the ground is a vast prairie with low rolling hills and a large population of animals including the magnificent buffalo. They have a large herd of buffalo roaming on the plains. They also have elk, deer, antelope and prairie dogs each of which draws a significant crowd. The buffalo were hanging out by the entrance today lining both sides of the road and moving between them stopping traffic.

Well, they stop traffic even if they don’t change sides of the road. There were also a number of rangers keeping an eye on both the animals and the people. After all, this is motorcycle week and them there bikes make a lot of noise. The buffalo like the non-biking humans seem to have gotten use to the noise and the extra attention. We watched like the tourists we are and then headed into the park. The buildings here are very unassuming and you would never suspect the network underneath them. This is one of the longest cave complexes in the world spread over 3 distinct layers. There are 132 miles of cave mapped all within one square mile of ground space.

There are a number of different tours available. We have taken the natural entrance tour previously. It enters from the surface and descends 250 feet returning via the elevator. We took the fairgrounds tour. It started from the base of the elevator and returned to the same spot. It did however have the most steps and toured a section of each of the levels. Wind Cave is most famous (other than for its length) for its boxwork. It holds 95% of the boxwork in the world. The tour we took had an incredible amount of boxwork (cracks form in the limestone, calcite flows into the cracks and then the limestone dissolves leaving these box looking very fragile formations. Our ranger was Tammy Wright. She is from Iowa and worked here last year spending her winter in Carlsbad Caverns down in New Mexico.

When we returned to the surface, it was quite a bit hotter than it had been when we descended. We visited the gift shop and I looked around for a coffee shop and finding none we headed back to camp for lunch. It was nice to have a scheduled lunch that we had on time (well somewhat late but breakfast was at 10 so 2 was right on time.

We had a bunch of errands to run so we spent the afternoon running around to return movies, get new ones, and visit the grocery store and the liquor store. I bought a bundle of wood at the grocery store and it started raining immediately. Par for the course! We had supper on a schedule too, staggering to the mind. Then we watched Clint Eastwood’s “Grand Torino”. Interesting movie.

Well, morning has broken again. I have WHEB on the computer and I am writing so the world is good. Talk to ya later. We are off to Mt. Rushmore (yet again) and Custer State Park. BYE

We headed north and into Custer State Park. We took the Wildlife Loop hoping to find the elusive buffalo. First we found the pronghorn antelope. We found a small group then crested the hill and found a group of 10. They were right beside the road and were not spooked at all by our presence (or that of the half dozen other vehicles that stopped). We had a mutual understanding with them: we watched them and they watched us very carefully. After a while, we hit the road again and soon saw a few buffalo. We took the obligatory pix and soon rounded a corner seeing a great traffic jam in the road ahead. That can only mean one thing; a herd of buffalo. As we approached, we could see the dark dots all over the land around the road.

We approached slowly and carefully so as not to spook them. The road was full of them as were both sides of the road. There were several hundred on the right and we (and everyone else) shot pictures by the dozens. We moved slowly through the herd and noticed that there was a steady stream coming from the woods on the left crossing the road in their distinct lumbering style and settling into the grassy hills on the right. They didn’t seem to be bothered by the crowd that had gathered on their behalf but they did keep a wary eye on their two legged stalkers. Even the constant noise of the motorcycles didn’t seem to bother them.

No one threatened them and there were no incidents like the one in Yellowstone a few years ago when an impatient man honked his horn at the buffalo in the road because he was in a hurry and was inconvenienced. The buffalo walked to the side of the man’s pickup and drove its head into the door changing the shape of the door significantly and causing the man to lose more time than if he had just waited for the buffalo to move.

Eventually we arrived at the site of the buffalo train coming down the hill and out of the woods. Like all good things, that too ended and we were off. We ran into the wild burros and ended up on the Iron Mt. Road where we had camped the week before. We thought there were a lot of motorcycles the previous week. Well, you should have seen the road this week. It was an almost steady stream of bikes coming over the mountain from Keystone. The space where we had made our phone calls (and was empty every time we went there) was full of bikes and the wait at the single lane tunnels made you think you might not ever get a chance to pass.

We stopped at a picnic area for lunch then continued onward to Rushmore. Looking up onto the 4 Presidents, the first thing you noticed (today) was that there was a large tripod on top of Jefferson’s head. There were also 3 people underneath Jefferson’s chin doing something we could not determine. We took the Ranger tour to the base of the faces (we were the last to do it as they closed the trail while we were on it. It seems that the people were setting up a line from below to send up equipment that was to be installed to improve the security of the monument. We got our tour but that was the last for a while.

We visited Borglund’s studio and saw the last model he had made. It seems that the original plan was to show the President’s from the waist up. They started to find rock that was not suitable for carving and when Borglund died, the government decided to just clean up the work that had been completed and end the project in order to honor Borglund following his death rather than bring in another person to finish it.

That is the reason that George Washington looks carved but not finished below his lapels. During the Ranger talk in Borglund’s studio, we were told that the only surviving carver of Mt. Rushmore was down in the gift shop personally autographing a book he had written about working on the mountain. We visited him and talked to him for a while about what working for Borglund on the mountain was like (you mean he wasn’t interested in talking about the Pat’s upcoming season? Go figure!). He autographed our book (which was really just a Q&A) and we headed down the road to Crazy Horse planning to return for the nightly lighting up ceremony.

Crazy Horse on first glance hadn’t changed a bit in the last 3 years. On closer examination, there had been some major changes. The face is finished and a lot more rock has been removed from the front of the statue. Crazy Horse’s arm and the horse’s head have had much of the extraneous rock removed. They claim that all places on the statue are within 20 feet of their finished location. That may be true but the bottom of the horse is buried in rubble from countless blasts above. This will have to be removed before the carving of the lower part of the horse can be started (they do have a unique way of removing it. They haul it down to the gift shop and pile it up letting people take a piece of the monument for a small donation….ingenious). We ate in the restaurant, they had a special Indian taco all you can eat bar in honor of bike week.

After eating, we had a dilemma. We didn’t have time to completely traverse the Needles Highway before returning to Rushmore so we drove in the best end, saw Sylvan Lake (we do have company that hasn’t seen this) and proceeded in a fast paced tour of part of the Needles. At one point, we stopped to take a picture of a spikehorn deer on the side of the road. Some guy came from a cabin just 50 yards away and chased the deer away (?). We did get one picture but I don’t understand. There was no traffic so the deer wasn’t in any danger (especially from us) but this guy chased him away and then glared at us daring us to make some comment. We had no clue so if he was trying to make some statement it was lost on us. We who had danced with buffalo posed no threat to this deer.

We made a mad dash to Mt. Rushmore. We arrived about 15 minutes before the scheduled start of the ceremony and took seats in the back middle of the arena. The top part was mobbed and there was a good crowd down where we were. The Ranger came out and gave us a preliminary talk. It started raining lightly with lots of lightning and thunder the moment she came out. After a while, the movie started and the rain fell a little more heavily. The lightening pretty much blotted out the movie. Soon the Ranger came back out and the movie stopped. She told us that the remainder of the show was cancelled. There had been hail in the area and there were some power outages so they were pulling the plug.

We had waited all trip for this one evening. The evening starts out with a ranger talk on freedom and patriotism. Then there is a movie about freedom and the monument including pieces on each of the presidents included and why. Then they have the illumination of the faces, sing the National Anthem and follow with a ceremony to honor the veterans in the audience. They bring them all up and they take down the flag and fold it. They tell the audience when and where they served and pass the flag around all of the veterans. It is a very moving end to a spectacular evening. The ride out is pretty special because in both directions you see 1 or more of the faces illuminated.

We had our friend Stan there specifically to have him take place in the veteran’s part of the ceremony and it was really disappointing to have it cancelled.

We drove back to camp and watched the movie we had rented. This was something we really didn’t need but we had rented it so we sat there and watched it (well, we did nap a bit). It was “The Wrestler”. It was well acted and all but like many of the Academy nominated movies it was powerful, well acted and very unentertaining. We watched it and we were glad we saw it BUT.

More tomorrow

C

Tonto, they have ridden into the Badlands! We follow, free ice water at Wall Drug!

We did go to the church Sunday morning. We had a lazy morning then drove down to the church. It is a stone church. It is small but friendly. The pastor came out before the service and “got to know us”. The service is very similar to ours but they had a pot luck luncheon afterwards. One of their parishioners had been on a mission trip to build houses in Mexico and showed some pictures and told some stories about his trip. He used one or two disposable cameras and took them to WalMart to be developed. They made a slide show out of them but didn’t pay too much attention to how they oriented the pictures. Several of them were either upside down or sideways. It was really distracting from the show although he had plenty of stories. They did tell us that they only have the luncheons once in a while, not every week.

We explored the town some more but didn’t find anything very exciting. It was really hot (101) in the afternoon but started to cool down as the sun dropped towards the horizon. It was more than a single air conditioner in our camper could handle. We do not have enough electricity to run both of them so we had to pick the front or back. We run the back one at night and then open the window. Usually the coolness from outside keeps the a/c off but when the sun comes up, it will start to warm up quite quickly and the a/c will help keep it cool. Today, I discovered that both air conditioners use the same ducting. If you close the big vent at the a/c, the air comes out the scattered ducts. It never seemed to be as much air as you get from the main unit so I always wondered where it went. I went into the bedroom this afternoon and it was cooler in there than it was in the living area (with the a/c off in the bedroom?). Eureka!

The a/c in the living area blows straight into the floor and does not distribute well so I built a (cardboard) deflector for the main vent. This distributes the cool air pretty well throughout the living area. We were watching a movie this afternoon and it just seemed to get hotter and hotter as the movie played on. After the movie, I found that the deflector had come loose and was hanging out of the path of the air.

Today was a work day. We had to get ready for Stan and shift the camper around from a two person rig to a 3 person rig. That is not as easy as it seems but we moved clothes around, cleaned the rug in the living area (life in the camper had not been kind to the carpeting) and put everything in its place which is not something we do well. We found a laundramat (actually 2 of them side by side if you can imagine that). After driving all over town, we stopped at the information booth and the woman there told us where to find it (them).

Just as we started to sit down with our neighbors, the sky turned black. The wind came up and we got one of those afternoon thunderstorms everyone around here talks about. We are on a hill and get a good view towards the west. The blackness moved closer and he lightning just flew all over the sky. It sounded like a bowling alley on a Saturday night and soon we were folding up our chairs and heading inside. I tried to get some pictures but the lightning moved too fast or my camera was not fast enough. All of my pictures just showed bright patches in the sky vice the beautiful lightning bolts.

Well, that just about catches us up for the day. Like I said, not too much to talk about today. Tomorrow may be another matter.

The storm was big and shiny. It rained moderately hard but the real show was the thunder and lightening. The wind blew really hard and the trailer shook so hard it sounded like the awning was banging but the awning wasn’t even deployed. It eventually broke but it was too late to return to the outside and watch the lightening retreat towards the east.

We slept on the couch (pull out) last night. We give company the bedroom in the back so they have some place they can go for peace and quiet. We have a curtain assembly that we put up to separate the bedroom from the hall. The door provided by the manufacturer puts the bathroom in the bedroom area and that is not convenient so we hang the curtain and close the door. If we have to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, we can open the door and go into the hall and into the bathroom leaving the bedroom with its modicum of privacy. It works well.

The day dawned clear with some high thin clouds and much cooler and drier than it has been over the last few days. It is close to noontime and still comfortable outside in the sun. We did some grocery shopping and some more reorganizing for company. The table where I reside with all my computer gear will have to be next. I am not sure what I am going to do with it but I have an Uninterruptible power supply, computer, wireless modem and speakers so we can play music off the computer (It is fun to listen to WHEB while we are on the road and a necessity if we cannot get the races on TV or on local radio). A touch of home and more entertainment in the morning than any of the stations around here (better music also).

Well, time to head for the airport. It is much further than it had been at keystone but it is pretty country to drive through. I’ll get back to you soon.

I can see it has been a couple of days again since I have written. We headed up to Rapid City and found the airport with little trouble. It was right on 44 east of the city. 44 is also Omaha street so we had been there before just not out in that direction. It was a small airport. There seemed to only be 6 gates spread over 2 sides of the concourse. There was one gift shop (nice western stuff) and a deli/lounge (sandwiches and a choice of limited drinks). The coffee was ok but not much better. Stan’s flight was early (?? Whoa!) The other flight that came in at the same time was 20 minutes early.

We spent the evening catching up on old times so thus endith day one.

Wednesday morning we got up early and then frittered away the next couple of hours eventually leaving for the Badlands. The Badlands were a far piece but definitely worth the drive. This is my third, Cheryl’s second and Stan’s first visit. We took a different route getting there. We drove over to Buffalo Gap, a town out on a dirt road. It had quite a few buildings but many of them were empty. We were faced at this point with about 40 miles of dirt road. It was a spectacular drive. I don’t know what we would have done if we had broken down. There was no cell signal and relatively few houses, farms or anything but fields. Some cattle grazing but mostly miles and miles of hay fields most of which were not watered. We did cross a river at one point and the fields directly around the river were irrigated (the bridge however was rusted to a fairthewell).

Eventually we got to the Badlands visitor’s center, a small one located in the southwestern corner of the park. It is located on a Sioux reservation and populated by Indians. We stopped there and then headed south deeper into the reservation to find a store to get Stan batteries for his camera (you know the drill…the batteries in the camera go dead in the first hour of taking pictures). We had lunch there. I am not sure how you get $9.65 out of a $2.49 sandwich, a $1.99 sandwich and a $3.00 bag of chips. I know the tax out here is high but that is ridiculous.

We skirted the bottom of the park and then headed into it, stopped at the visitor’s center and then took the wrong road. Once corrected, we had a nice drive through the park. I am continually amazed by the beauty of the Badlands. The spires of the layered sedimentary soft stone have a beauty that cannot be described. You can photograph it but no matter how beautiful the pictures are, they don’t come close to actually capturing the beauty.

The downside of this trip is the amount of driving. I burned up more than ¾ tank of gas and had to refuel before we got back (fortunately it coincided with a bathroom break). We headed into Wall for a mandatory visit to Wall Drug. I revisited the western shop where I got my first hat and pair of boots. I wanted to look for a good western belt and buckle but when I actually started looking, I lost interest. Cheryl and Stan spent a goodly amount of time looking at hats. Cheryl didn’t find anything she liked better than the 2 she has. Stan on the other hand found a hat he liked and then spent the next hour talking himself out of it.

There were several foreign workers in town (and we only went to 2 stores). At least 3 of them were from the Czech Republic including the nice girl that waited on Stan. She talked about her program. She applied to come to the US for a work program. They got back to her and offered her a gig in Wall South Dakota. Her first question was: “Can I find it on a map?” She is here for the summer and has had a great time. She has improved her English, met a lot of nice people and still has some other Czechs to talk her native language to.

The most interesting thing was that she told us that she had developed more love for her own country while she has been here. When she was young (still is to my eyes) she wanted to leave when she grew up. Now she loves being in her country and has plans to stay there.

We ate there and headed out for the long drive back; almost 50 miles of I 90 then 55 miles of 79 and another 9 miles of 385. It even seemed longer than that in practice but we eventually made it back. The air was uncomfortably warm last night with thunderstorms all through the night. We kept having to close and then reopen them. But, nonetheless, here we are. It is closing in on 8 (10 at home). I am listening to the Morning Buzz on WHEB in Portsmouth. It is really nice getting a piece of home. Unfortunately, the first hour and a half are the best but out here that would mean listening at 3:30 am.

See you tomorrow (or the day after the way everything is going).

C