Just because you live in Maine doesn't mean you can't be a Cowboy!

Hi again. I have been home for a month now and realized that I had some unfinished business. We didn’t have any signal at Fishing Bridge Campground so this chapter of our trip never got sent. Here is the missing already written section. A short time (hopefully) later I will write up the last and final chapter. A couple of interesting things happened on our trip home and those will be covered in the next section. For now, here is chapter 10.

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 30^th.

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.

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 the night we arrived. We woke in the morning to see 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 makes the air pretty stuffy and no one slept much. 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 where we were comfortable sleeping on the side of a hill amongst the motorhomes.

At night, we would hear the wolves howling on the other side of the hill listening to them come towards the hill then move to the top of the hill before heading back out into the wilderness.

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 away from touring but continued to come up short. I guess the only way to handle this is to become rangers and come here for the summer. Sometime.