1,647 miles until we reach home, that is! Here we come Cincinnati!!!
And now Steve has transitioned to singing that Poison (then Guns n' Roses) "classic"... "Every rose has it's thorn... Just like every night has it's dawn... Just like every cowboy sings his sad, sad song...." There's really no escaping it! Do we actually miss his Roy Rogers act? Maybe!!!
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Day 14: White Water Rafting in Jackson Hole.... And Fading Off Into the Sunset
Is there really any better way to start off a beautiful summer day than white water rafting down the Snake River? Well, unfortunately, there was one down side…. A good portion of the water on which we were floating had been mountain snow just the day before! It was only 42 degrees!
But let me back up. We entered the beach-shack looking establishment of “Jackson Hole White Water” first thing this morning, which is an outfit operated by the most intrinsically content people I have ever met. Seriously. The décor was distinctively college-dorm-room-esque, and the atmosphere otherwise was part surf shop / part rustic cowboy (think Marlboro-man-in-flip-flops?). But, funny enough, this same simple little outfit also took the Clinton family and Ron Howard’s family down the rapids during their family vacations to Jackson Hole (yes…. Steve may have mentioned this to me a few times to get me comfortable with taking all 4 of the kids on this adventure…. ha).
I was pretty concerned about whether we were going to be able to pull this off in such cold water, regardless of the beautiful warm weather we were otherwise enjoying, but I was reassured by this experienced crew of well-tanned, wavy-hair types that the wet suits they would be sizing each of us up for would make it completely tolerable – although certainly not completely comfortable – when the water splashed up around us in the raft. And they were right…. for the most part.
Just before embarking on our 8-mile trek down the Snake River, we met our lead Jamey and the other people with whom we would be sharing our raft – a family from Israel (father, mother and three young girls) and three very giggly teenage girls who came on their own. That made Steve, and the similar-sized gentleman from Israel, the “Big Guys” in this mission, and they were instructed to assume the roles of lead rowers while Jamey was going to be in the back with two mounted oars that were principally for steering the craft (since just one person cannot possibly do much to row a raft full of 14 people down the Snake River by himself….).
The rapids were very mild in the beginning, which gave us the opportunity to de-girlie-fy our rowing techniques, and get in sync. Good thing! It wasn’t pretty in the beginning. It’s just never a good sign when the leader of your craft reacts to your first attempt at rowing together with, “That was just adorable, but…..”
But Jamey was a fantastic guide. He was as knowledgeable about the river and how we would get through these powerful rapids( with our, at-best, B-Level recruits -- ha!), as he was adorable-recent-college-grad-funny. He squarely hit every stereotype that immediately comes to mind of the young kid who comes out to Wyoming to take a job as a white water rafting guide, except that he didn’t use the words “totally,” “awesome” or “dude” (which I’m sure is because I’m just getting so old that that’s actually how his parents talk – LOL).
The rapids became increasingly intense, and we really had to dig in with the rowing! It was an absolute blast!!! I was definitely worried that one of us would fall out into the near freezing water, and I almost did myself a few times, but 3 of the kids were in the interior of the boat where that is pretty much an impossibility. It was such a relief to me that we were all able to stay in the boat…. Although our lead did dare us to go in voluntarily, and 2 of the giggly teenage girls did so…. and then climbed back into the raft and pushed the last member of their own giggly group into the water as well. Poor thing!
The only real bit of trouble we had was when a particularly challenging set of rapids ended up causing a huge 42-degree-wave to come crashing down in the dead-center of the boat where our three youngest children were sitting together. Although two of the kids thought it was hilarious, the world’s-skinniest-8-year-old boy (our son John), was chilled to the bone and kept saying, “I have brain freeze!” Poor kid! We determined that SOME body fat is required, in addition to a wet suit, to make an experience like this tolerable.
But, before we knew it, we had conquered the 8-mile trip and we (including John) were all smiles by the end. What a great day… and it wasn’t even time for lunch yet!!!
We cleaned up, and made our way to “Mile High Pizza Pie” in the heart of Jackson Hole, where we sat on the outside porch area to enjoy the sunshine and the view. From there, the kids kind of took the lead, so we ended up stopping by the Wort Hotel (a hotel that is as beautiful as it’s name is ugly….), the Jackson Hole Museum ( which is really a work-in-process at this point, but the kids particularly enjoyed the box of clothes, hats and cowboy boots that they were encouraged to try-on and tool around in), a studio of wildlife photography (30 years worth of perseverance and patience yields some AMAZING photos of local wildlife) and, of course, the ice cream shop on the corner of the main square. We strolled around the square with our ice cream cones, taking in the sites and sounds of this animated little town, and then finally plopped down on a park bench to finish them up. We took a quick photo at the famous arch made from antlers that serves as a gate to the main square, and then popped our heads into the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar right across the street to have a good look of what all of the fuss is about. Then we were ready to go….
On our way back, the kids completed their very last Jr. Ranger thing – this time for the Grand Tetons National Park – and we spotted another grizzly bear off in the distance (again, the 18 cars pulled from the road helping with that find).
Knowing that we were shoving off first thing in the morning, the kids all wanted to spend our last evening just down the path from our RV on the edge of Jackson Lake to get one last look at the mountain range from “our beach”. When we arrived on the scene, the large family camping right next to us (together with their sister and brother-in-law who were staying in a nearby cabin with their large family as well) were already in the process of starting a campfire right on the rocky beach of the lake with some sticks they had gathered, and were encircling it with their chairs and S’Mores supplies . We had a couple of bundles of wood and way too many marshmallows to take home with us, so we offered to go grab it all and bring it down there for them to use. Before long, however, we were all talking and laughing about traveling out West and just family life in general, and we ended up spending the evening together as a group of approximately 22 or so until the last of the wood had finally burned down to nothing….
Good-bye Grand Tetons!!!
But let me back up. We entered the beach-shack looking establishment of “Jackson Hole White Water” first thing this morning, which is an outfit operated by the most intrinsically content people I have ever met. Seriously. The décor was distinctively college-dorm-room-esque, and the atmosphere otherwise was part surf shop / part rustic cowboy (think Marlboro-man-in-flip-flops?). But, funny enough, this same simple little outfit also took the Clinton family and Ron Howard’s family down the rapids during their family vacations to Jackson Hole (yes…. Steve may have mentioned this to me a few times to get me comfortable with taking all 4 of the kids on this adventure…. ha).
I was pretty concerned about whether we were going to be able to pull this off in such cold water, regardless of the beautiful warm weather we were otherwise enjoying, but I was reassured by this experienced crew of well-tanned, wavy-hair types that the wet suits they would be sizing each of us up for would make it completely tolerable – although certainly not completely comfortable – when the water splashed up around us in the raft. And they were right…. for the most part.
Just before embarking on our 8-mile trek down the Snake River, we met our lead Jamey and the other people with whom we would be sharing our raft – a family from Israel (father, mother and three young girls) and three very giggly teenage girls who came on their own. That made Steve, and the similar-sized gentleman from Israel, the “Big Guys” in this mission, and they were instructed to assume the roles of lead rowers while Jamey was going to be in the back with two mounted oars that were principally for steering the craft (since just one person cannot possibly do much to row a raft full of 14 people down the Snake River by himself….).
The rapids were very mild in the beginning, which gave us the opportunity to de-girlie-fy our rowing techniques, and get in sync. Good thing! It wasn’t pretty in the beginning. It’s just never a good sign when the leader of your craft reacts to your first attempt at rowing together with, “That was just adorable, but…..”
But Jamey was a fantastic guide. He was as knowledgeable about the river and how we would get through these powerful rapids( with our, at-best, B-Level recruits -- ha!), as he was adorable-recent-college-grad-funny. He squarely hit every stereotype that immediately comes to mind of the young kid who comes out to Wyoming to take a job as a white water rafting guide, except that he didn’t use the words “totally,” “awesome” or “dude” (which I’m sure is because I’m just getting so old that that’s actually how his parents talk – LOL).
The rapids became increasingly intense, and we really had to dig in with the rowing! It was an absolute blast!!! I was definitely worried that one of us would fall out into the near freezing water, and I almost did myself a few times, but 3 of the kids were in the interior of the boat where that is pretty much an impossibility. It was such a relief to me that we were all able to stay in the boat…. Although our lead did dare us to go in voluntarily, and 2 of the giggly teenage girls did so…. and then climbed back into the raft and pushed the last member of their own giggly group into the water as well. Poor thing!
The only real bit of trouble we had was when a particularly challenging set of rapids ended up causing a huge 42-degree-wave to come crashing down in the dead-center of the boat where our three youngest children were sitting together. Although two of the kids thought it was hilarious, the world’s-skinniest-8-year-old boy (our son John), was chilled to the bone and kept saying, “I have brain freeze!” Poor kid! We determined that SOME body fat is required, in addition to a wet suit, to make an experience like this tolerable.
But, before we knew it, we had conquered the 8-mile trip and we (including John) were all smiles by the end. What a great day… and it wasn’t even time for lunch yet!!!
We cleaned up, and made our way to “Mile High Pizza Pie” in the heart of Jackson Hole, where we sat on the outside porch area to enjoy the sunshine and the view. From there, the kids kind of took the lead, so we ended up stopping by the Wort Hotel (a hotel that is as beautiful as it’s name is ugly….), the Jackson Hole Museum ( which is really a work-in-process at this point, but the kids particularly enjoyed the box of clothes, hats and cowboy boots that they were encouraged to try-on and tool around in), a studio of wildlife photography (30 years worth of perseverance and patience yields some AMAZING photos of local wildlife) and, of course, the ice cream shop on the corner of the main square. We strolled around the square with our ice cream cones, taking in the sites and sounds of this animated little town, and then finally plopped down on a park bench to finish them up. We took a quick photo at the famous arch made from antlers that serves as a gate to the main square, and then popped our heads into the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar right across the street to have a good look of what all of the fuss is about. Then we were ready to go….
On our way back, the kids completed their very last Jr. Ranger thing – this time for the Grand Tetons National Park – and we spotted another grizzly bear off in the distance (again, the 18 cars pulled from the road helping with that find).
Knowing that we were shoving off first thing in the morning, the kids all wanted to spend our last evening just down the path from our RV on the edge of Jackson Lake to get one last look at the mountain range from “our beach”. When we arrived on the scene, the large family camping right next to us (together with their sister and brother-in-law who were staying in a nearby cabin with their large family as well) were already in the process of starting a campfire right on the rocky beach of the lake with some sticks they had gathered, and were encircling it with their chairs and S’Mores supplies . We had a couple of bundles of wood and way too many marshmallows to take home with us, so we offered to go grab it all and bring it down there for them to use. Before long, however, we were all talking and laughing about traveling out West and just family life in general, and we ended up spending the evening together as a group of approximately 22 or so until the last of the wood had finally burned down to nothing….
Good-bye Grand Tetons!!!
Day 13: Hiking around Jackson and Jenny Lakes, Grand Tetons National Park
Jumping out of the camper this morning right after breakfast, we layered up to the gills with our winter hats and gloves on to fend off the cold morning air (poor little Mark looked like the kid from the Christmas Story, I had so many layers on him!). Although it was pretty cold, it was a thrill to be welcomed by a beautiful sunny day instead of snow. Snow or no snow, we intended to hike today (for as long as we could anyway), but now it would be easier -- less sloppy!
Grandma took a pass on this morning’s hike (probably something to do with that in-born Cincinnati reflex that compels us to buy 8 gallons of milk and hunker down at home whenever snow is predicted?), but the rest of us bounded down the short path to Jackson Lake, threw a couple of stones as close to the Grand Tetons as possible (OK, really not so close, but…) and started hiking the 2-mile Lakeside Trail. About half of the path was on the edge of Jackson Lake, where the wind was pretty strong off of the water, but the rest of the path was deeper in the woods and so much warmer that we found ourselves having to quickly rid of our gloves and extra layers. One of our favorite parts of the hike was singing “Jingle Bells,” with our own customized lyrics, since we were lacking Grandma and her now infamous “bear bell”… and because it conveniently subdued any thoughts of breaking out into a Roy Rogers tune. Also very popular was hopping from one big stone to the next, just off of the isthmus that separated Jackson Lake from Colter Bay.
We grilled hot dogs back at the RV for lunch and, for a taste of home, drizzled a little Skyline chili, mustard and cheddar cheese on them. Then we were off again, driving to another scenic area of the park that Steve had read great things about -- the Hidden Falls Hike on the other side of Jenny Lake. It was about a 30 minute drive to Jenny Lake, but it was a beautiful drive that gave us the opportunity to see plenty of wildlife - including a couple more moose (a rarity) - on the way.
Once there, we took a boat across the lake to begin our hike to the falls. It was a winding, ruggedly stony path up to Hidden Falls, where we found prairie dogs and crossed several rustic wooden bridges over rushing waters on the way. Then, after we had finally climbed our way up to view the falls, we came upon a trail marker that let us know that something called Inspiration Point was only another half-mile away. So… why not, right?
The path became relatively steep and narrowed from that point on, but there was also a good surprise around every corner with another look at the falls or unexpected section in the trail… And so we climbed, and climbed, and climbed, and climbed, until finally reaching our destination at around 7,200 ft elevation! Everyone agreed that the views from Inspiration Point were well worth it, and so we took some time to savor it and snap a few pics before making our way back down. Unfortunately a bit too much time savoring it, however… because the last boat back to the Jenny Lake Boathouse left the dock promptly at 6:pm! We would have to hurry!
When we got to the point that we had to go left to catch the boat (another ½ mile to the dock) or keep going straight to hoof it back instead (a walk that the woman at the boat dock said was an easy, flat 2-mile hike), Steve and Mark were so far behind us that we knew there was no way that they were going to make the boat. So, since a twisted ankle is always a risk on any hike, much less a path as varied and rocky as this one, I knew it wasn’t an option to leave Steve and Mark behind to make the 2-mile walk back alone even if it would be OK with them otherwise. So we knew at that point that we were hiking back -- not boating. Steve and Mark finally caught up to us, but about 2 miles into this trek across a rolling, wooded hillside, we began wondering things like… Where’s that flat part again? And, why don’t we seem to be anywhere near civilization again yet? Uh oh.
Then we ran into another family of hikers, and another, and another. With each passing group, their estimates of how far they had hiked from, and thereby how far we had to hike to get back to, the parking lot near Jenny Lake kept going in the wrong direction! The first set said they thought we had about another mile to go… 5 minutes of hiking later the next set said about a mile and a half… and, after another 15 minutes of hiking as fast as we could, we were told by the next set that we were still about a mile and half away! But we kept plodding alone. Most of us were fine, a couple of us were beginning to whine a little, and Grandma was… well… really quiet (either afraid for her own well-being or plotting the end of ours? Ha).
By the time we reached the RV, we had been hiking for 4 hours, and up and down some pretty significant elevation (we hiked up about 700 feet of elevation from where the boat dropped us off). What a day! So, pretty exhausted all-round, we had a late dinner at a comfortable little restaurant called Dornan’s in Moose, Wyoming… it was a vibrant place, with a lodge feel, where it took a little patience to get a table. But we ended up scoring a big table right against the window, and warmed up and relaxed over dinner and coffee while enjoying the amazing views of the Grand Tetons -- basically right from the bank of the Snake River -- as the sun was beginning to set. Not bad!
The kids, and Grandma this time, fell asleep on the drive back!
Grandma took a pass on this morning’s hike (probably something to do with that in-born Cincinnati reflex that compels us to buy 8 gallons of milk and hunker down at home whenever snow is predicted?), but the rest of us bounded down the short path to Jackson Lake, threw a couple of stones as close to the Grand Tetons as possible (OK, really not so close, but…) and started hiking the 2-mile Lakeside Trail. About half of the path was on the edge of Jackson Lake, where the wind was pretty strong off of the water, but the rest of the path was deeper in the woods and so much warmer that we found ourselves having to quickly rid of our gloves and extra layers. One of our favorite parts of the hike was singing “Jingle Bells,” with our own customized lyrics, since we were lacking Grandma and her now infamous “bear bell”… and because it conveniently subdued any thoughts of breaking out into a Roy Rogers tune. Also very popular was hopping from one big stone to the next, just off of the isthmus that separated Jackson Lake from Colter Bay.
We grilled hot dogs back at the RV for lunch and, for a taste of home, drizzled a little Skyline chili, mustard and cheddar cheese on them. Then we were off again, driving to another scenic area of the park that Steve had read great things about -- the Hidden Falls Hike on the other side of Jenny Lake. It was about a 30 minute drive to Jenny Lake, but it was a beautiful drive that gave us the opportunity to see plenty of wildlife - including a couple more moose (a rarity) - on the way.
Once there, we took a boat across the lake to begin our hike to the falls. It was a winding, ruggedly stony path up to Hidden Falls, where we found prairie dogs and crossed several rustic wooden bridges over rushing waters on the way. Then, after we had finally climbed our way up to view the falls, we came upon a trail marker that let us know that something called Inspiration Point was only another half-mile away. So… why not, right?
The path became relatively steep and narrowed from that point on, but there was also a good surprise around every corner with another look at the falls or unexpected section in the trail… And so we climbed, and climbed, and climbed, and climbed, until finally reaching our destination at around 7,200 ft elevation! Everyone agreed that the views from Inspiration Point were well worth it, and so we took some time to savor it and snap a few pics before making our way back down. Unfortunately a bit too much time savoring it, however… because the last boat back to the Jenny Lake Boathouse left the dock promptly at 6:pm! We would have to hurry!
When we got to the point that we had to go left to catch the boat (another ½ mile to the dock) or keep going straight to hoof it back instead (a walk that the woman at the boat dock said was an easy, flat 2-mile hike), Steve and Mark were so far behind us that we knew there was no way that they were going to make the boat. So, since a twisted ankle is always a risk on any hike, much less a path as varied and rocky as this one, I knew it wasn’t an option to leave Steve and Mark behind to make the 2-mile walk back alone even if it would be OK with them otherwise. So we knew at that point that we were hiking back -- not boating. Steve and Mark finally caught up to us, but about 2 miles into this trek across a rolling, wooded hillside, we began wondering things like… Where’s that flat part again? And, why don’t we seem to be anywhere near civilization again yet? Uh oh.
Then we ran into another family of hikers, and another, and another. With each passing group, their estimates of how far they had hiked from, and thereby how far we had to hike to get back to, the parking lot near Jenny Lake kept going in the wrong direction! The first set said they thought we had about another mile to go… 5 minutes of hiking later the next set said about a mile and a half… and, after another 15 minutes of hiking as fast as we could, we were told by the next set that we were still about a mile and half away! But we kept plodding alone. Most of us were fine, a couple of us were beginning to whine a little, and Grandma was… well… really quiet (either afraid for her own well-being or plotting the end of ours? Ha).
By the time we reached the RV, we had been hiking for 4 hours, and up and down some pretty significant elevation (we hiked up about 700 feet of elevation from where the boat dropped us off). What a day! So, pretty exhausted all-round, we had a late dinner at a comfortable little restaurant called Dornan’s in Moose, Wyoming… it was a vibrant place, with a lodge feel, where it took a little patience to get a table. But we ended up scoring a big table right against the window, and warmed up and relaxed over dinner and coffee while enjoying the amazing views of the Grand Tetons -- basically right from the bank of the Snake River -- as the sun was beginning to set. Not bad!
The kids, and Grandma this time, fell asleep on the drive back!
Day 12: Good-bye Yellowstone…. Hello Grand Tetons!
There were a couple of things left on Katie’s must-see list that we planned to see on our way out of Yellowstone – the “Grand Prismatic Spring” and “Excelsior” - and boy am I glad that she suggested them! Even though I thought that I had seen enough of the hot springs at this point, it is amazing how they can keep surprising you. Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in Yellowstone (with a 200 ft diameter), and it’s varied colors and the amount of steam it was producing from it’s vibrant turquoise center are impossible to exaggerate! Excelsior, on the other hand, was quite unlike most of the hot springs that you come up upon kind like a mud puddle (albeit much more impressive than a mud puddle!)… rather it was encased in a small little hill that was hollowed out by its bubbling hot spring waters, and the large amounts of steam it emitted gave it the appearance of a gargantuan wizard’s cauldron (which probably has something to do with it’s name).
These hot springs were located within feet of each other, and we learned at a small exhibit nearby that they are the beneficiaries of an interesting NASA research grant. The theory being researched is that the living micro-organisms that have been discovered to thrive very well in the hot temperatures of these hot springs may give us a window into learning more about what living organisms may be thriving on the surfaces of other hotter planets. At least that’s the short version.
As we were wrapping up our walk around this hot spring area, the wind really began to pick up and a heavy rain followed suit within a couple of minutes. But perfect timing for us, really, since we were leaving Yellowstone anyway! But, first, we decided to make a “quick” stop at the last Yellowstone General Store on our way out to pick up a few more groceries and, in particular, lunch. I knew a little more shopping would likely also ensue, but what I wasn’t expecting was that the electric to the entire General Store would go out not just once, but twice, as Grandma (who, let’s just say, has something of a reputation when it comes to… ahem… generous shopping excursions) was checking out with her non-food purchases! No judgment here, of course. Just reporting the facts, folks!
And then finally we were back on course to the Grand Tetons, happy to get farther from the heavy rain until we learned, upon our arrival at Grand Teton National Park just about an hour later, that a cold front was moving in and they were forecasting very low evening temps and 2 to 4 inches of snow by the morning! There was no dampening of our spirits, however, since at this point we had been blessed with virtually perfect weather the entire time (between 60 and 70 degrees most of the time), and we had packed plenty of hats, mittens and layers of fleece anyway since we knew various locations in these parks still have piles of snow that haven’t melted yet and cold fronts were still somewhat likely. Yep, summer’s arrival can take quite a while in these high elevations!
Our campsite at Grand Tetons was obscenely perfect. Seriously. We were in this beautifully wooded area and then, within a dozen or so footsteps, we were clear of the tree coverage and could see just how close we were to the edge of Jackson Lake and a spectacular view of the Grand Tetons! The air was crisp, for sure, but the kids just loved everything about this little area and spent a lot of time simply throwing stone and after stone into the lake…. Kerplunk! “Mine went further!!!!!”…. It was great.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH IN OHIO….
Mobile phone reception was non-existent for me and spotty for Steve and Grandma, but now the messages were pouring in on the various beeping and buzzing pieces of technology we’ve kept largely at bay until this point….
But now we have learned that Grandpa Bushman is not doing very well at all with Grandma’s absence, to say the least! In fact, he has suffered a series of real-life events that are funny when they don’t happen to you, but so seemingly far-fetched that the writers of a comedy show would have elected to edit them as being too unrealistic in number for just one weekly episode. First, he unknowingly co-habitated with a cat of unknown ownership, if any, that entered their home through the back door he left open (you know, the one Grandma would have told him harshly to shut… But she wasn’t there to do so) for what he estimates to be about 3 or 4 days. Then, somehow, he also managed to inadvertently lock this kitty up in one room of their house as well, where the kitty of course eliminated all over the place… A particularly disgusting development he discovered shortly after he opened the door and the blanket-blank cat (his words, well kind of) bit him as it darted out of the room! Then, because he tossed the cat out of the house, and the cat proceeded to go back home or simply never come back, his doctor told him that he has to go through a course of rabies treatments… just in case… which he recently began. And, finally, while mowing someone else’s lawn (while nursing his vicious cat bite and under the influence of rabies treatments), a tree branch clocked him in the face and knocked off his glasses…. that he then proceeded to mow over and destroy. Oh and then he got a speeding ticket, too. I just hate those kinds of weeks, don’t you?
These hot springs were located within feet of each other, and we learned at a small exhibit nearby that they are the beneficiaries of an interesting NASA research grant. The theory being researched is that the living micro-organisms that have been discovered to thrive very well in the hot temperatures of these hot springs may give us a window into learning more about what living organisms may be thriving on the surfaces of other hotter planets. At least that’s the short version.
As we were wrapping up our walk around this hot spring area, the wind really began to pick up and a heavy rain followed suit within a couple of minutes. But perfect timing for us, really, since we were leaving Yellowstone anyway! But, first, we decided to make a “quick” stop at the last Yellowstone General Store on our way out to pick up a few more groceries and, in particular, lunch. I knew a little more shopping would likely also ensue, but what I wasn’t expecting was that the electric to the entire General Store would go out not just once, but twice, as Grandma (who, let’s just say, has something of a reputation when it comes to… ahem… generous shopping excursions) was checking out with her non-food purchases! No judgment here, of course. Just reporting the facts, folks!
And then finally we were back on course to the Grand Tetons, happy to get farther from the heavy rain until we learned, upon our arrival at Grand Teton National Park just about an hour later, that a cold front was moving in and they were forecasting very low evening temps and 2 to 4 inches of snow by the morning! There was no dampening of our spirits, however, since at this point we had been blessed with virtually perfect weather the entire time (between 60 and 70 degrees most of the time), and we had packed plenty of hats, mittens and layers of fleece anyway since we knew various locations in these parks still have piles of snow that haven’t melted yet and cold fronts were still somewhat likely. Yep, summer’s arrival can take quite a while in these high elevations!
Our campsite at Grand Tetons was obscenely perfect. Seriously. We were in this beautifully wooded area and then, within a dozen or so footsteps, we were clear of the tree coverage and could see just how close we were to the edge of Jackson Lake and a spectacular view of the Grand Tetons! The air was crisp, for sure, but the kids just loved everything about this little area and spent a lot of time simply throwing stone and after stone into the lake…. Kerplunk! “Mine went further!!!!!”…. It was great.
MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH IN OHIO….
Mobile phone reception was non-existent for me and spotty for Steve and Grandma, but now the messages were pouring in on the various beeping and buzzing pieces of technology we’ve kept largely at bay until this point….
But now we have learned that Grandpa Bushman is not doing very well at all with Grandma’s absence, to say the least! In fact, he has suffered a series of real-life events that are funny when they don’t happen to you, but so seemingly far-fetched that the writers of a comedy show would have elected to edit them as being too unrealistic in number for just one weekly episode. First, he unknowingly co-habitated with a cat of unknown ownership, if any, that entered their home through the back door he left open (you know, the one Grandma would have told him harshly to shut… But she wasn’t there to do so) for what he estimates to be about 3 or 4 days. Then, somehow, he also managed to inadvertently lock this kitty up in one room of their house as well, where the kitty of course eliminated all over the place… A particularly disgusting development he discovered shortly after he opened the door and the blanket-blank cat (his words, well kind of) bit him as it darted out of the room! Then, because he tossed the cat out of the house, and the cat proceeded to go back home or simply never come back, his doctor told him that he has to go through a course of rabies treatments… just in case… which he recently began. And, finally, while mowing someone else’s lawn (while nursing his vicious cat bite and under the influence of rabies treatments), a tree branch clocked him in the face and knocked off his glasses…. that he then proceeded to mow over and destroy. Oh and then he got a speeding ticket, too. I just hate those kinds of weeks, don’t you?
Day 11: Old Faithful
Given the iconic images of Old Faithful we’ve seen all of our lives, we have been looking forward to the day we would finally see it with much anticipation… but today did start out pretty humbling!
The campsites at Yellowstone are beautiful, but rustic. There are no water or electric hook-ups, so we have to run off of a generator and use the water pump to get the basics to run in the RV. And, unfortunately, our little RV shower has proven woefully insufficient for the 7 of us – both because of the amount of time it takes to run 7 showers and because it can only offer us 8 gallons of hot water at a time (then we have to wait for the water to heat up again). By the time we arrived at our new campground here at Yellowstone – Madison Campground - Steve went to ask about other shower options. Surprisingly, he was told that the campers at Madison were assigned to the Old Faithful Inn to take showers at $3 a pop.
This was not really such great news! I mean, this was the hotel we had planned to stay in for this trip before we ended up veering off-course and going with the RV…. So clearly we like it very much and knew that the showers would be very nice. But we weren’t really looking forward to pulling our RV up to the Old Faithful Inn and trudging our unshowered selves up to the front desk to ask for a three buck shower! But, oh well….
So we drove up to this regal-looking circa 1903 gabled-roof inn, with all of its flags waving from the widow’s walk, and we entered through its heavy, iron-studded front doors… with each of us clad with a small backpack full of shampoo and soap and clothes for the day. The lobby area is an open 7-story space with a commanding stone fireplace in the center and hand-wrought wooden balconies all the way around the periphery. The carved wooden front desk is off to the left, situated next to the large open windows that offer some of the best views of Old Faithful. And so now, here we are…. standing in one of the most beautiful and most photographed destinations in the park…. begging for a shower! But, fortunately, the woman at the front desk met our request with rote familiarity, as I did have some concerns that perhaps we were joining that very slim number of people who actually took the Inn up on its offer to take in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, from Madison Campground....
Because the Inn is so old, the rooms in the oldest sections, which are also the most beautiful, do not have their own bathrooms. And so these were the bathrooms in the Inn to which we were led. Regardless of my paid admission to these glistening marble shower rooms, however, I just couldn’t help but feel like an intruder when another woman brought her small child in as well… only to realize that we were occupying all three of the showers located there and that they would be in for a little bit of a wait. Although I was trying to hurry to reduce their wait time, I did take a bit of comfort in the fact that at least she really had no way of knowing that we were not guests of the Inn as well… or at least, that is, until Katie mentioned something about her clothes for the day, and Grandma chimed in, “Don’t worry, we can get you something else when we get back to the camper!” Oh man! My cover was blown to smithereens! Ha. In any event, I never ended up actually seeing this woman and her child, as they left either to go to the other shower room down the hall…. or to report the vagrants? LOL.
But the “fun” wasn’t quite over, unbeknownst to me. What was “knownst” to me was that I had heard a thud while we were driving yesterday (one of what seems like 200 thuds of various things that have fallen while the camper was in motion over the past 10 days), and this particular thud had been identified to me as the cabinet door popping open in the bathroom and my hair dryer tumbling out of it. Oh well… standard procedure…. Just shove that baby back in. But, in fact, this particular “thud” was different…. OH SO VERY DIFFERENT! Long story short, as I turned on my hair dryer, for what could not have been more than a few seconds, the entire room filled with the foul smell of what one could only assume was burning pee! Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting…. Oh my! The fact the the "thud" was actually a "splash" in the toilet, was information I needed to have earlier! Now I would have to go scrub that whole cabinet and everything inside it with bleach or something!!! Ugh!
Shortly after we returned to the RV to put away our things, a couple of bison decided that the grass RIGHT OUTSIDE our main door looked particularly appealing. We really could have reached out and touched one of them without even stepping outside the door! The head of these bison were so enormous that neither of them could have poked their head through the width of our door if they wanted to, but our quick-thinking, ever-fearless Grandma wasn't going to take ANY chances so she promptly closed the screen door. You know, because how could a 2,000 pound bison possibly get through a screen door, right? Ha.
So, other than the shower and our brief hostage stand-off with those two bison, we actually did some other things today! Like seeing Old Faithful erupt 200 feet in the air on four different occasions (it erupts every 60- to 90-minutes), and each time with hundreds and hundreds of other folks who were lined up on the boardwalk and sitting in the wooden bleachers that surround it. In our experience, there is absolutely nothing else at Yellowstone, or any National Park we have visited, that comes close to getting as much attention and foot traffic as Old Faithful. In addition to the number of people that were there, we were shocked by the number of buildings that have been erected around it! Of course, there was the Old Faithful Inn – which I have already well over-described – but also the Old Faithful Lodge, the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, the Visitor Center, a yet-to-be-completed-and-much larger new Visitor Center, 2 General Stores, and other smaller stores and buildings as well. Just crazy! Here’s hoping that none of those 2- to 3-thousand annual earthquakes at Yellowstone upsets the balance of Old Faithful’s plumbing, rendering it a mere bubbling puddle as has happened to so many other geysers at the park! That would be dreadful on so many levels!
The reason that we were able to see Old Faithful erupt so many times is because there are so many other things to do in the area. We hiked around the hot springs area that surrounds it for quite a while, which included Castle Geyser (a geyser I am highlighting because it really does look like a castle structure that continually emits steam, although it also erupts with a fountain of water twice per day). We also did a little shopping and lingered over lunch at the Old Faithful Lodge, which gave us another opportunity to see Old Faithful blow it’s top over dessert. In addition, the kids once again completed the requirements for, and were awarded, their Yellowstone Jr. Ranger badges and patches at the Visitor Center right there at Old Faithful.
I don’t know if it is because the Jr. Ranger requirements were more rigorous here than in most of the other national parks or what, but the Park Rangers made a pretty big deal about it. They went through the worksheets with each of the kids, asking them some pretty hard questions, and then they asked for everyone’s attention at the Visitor Center as they introduced each of our newly commissioned Yellowstone Jr. Rangers to them! It’s also worth mentioning that our youngest, Mark -- who at this point is sporting an official “Yellowstone Jr. Ranger” army-green vest at all times -- is known for his wise-beyond-his-years commentary whenever an adult asks him a simple question. So this vest thing has opened us up to all kinds of funny situations, with adults stopping him to ask about his vest and Mark spouting off about some relatively obscure Yellowstone fact or using some 5-syllable word the adult may not happen to use themselves (ha!). As a result, just following Mark around these days has created an endless source of amusement, as we get to bear witness to these intermittent, but predictably frequent, interactions with random Yellowstone visitors our family comes across...
We also had a reservation for dinner at the Old Faithful Inn, so yes I did actually have to show my face in there again – ha! But no one seemed to be staring or pointing and, even if they had been, it would have been worth it! We all thoroughly enjoyed the great, historic, western-themed dining room, with etched glass windows overlooking the park and it’s comfortable lodge atmosphere. Oh yeah, and we liked the food too. Ha. It was hard to leave at the end!
After dinner we had a great surprise in store for the kids… a guided tour in a 1938 “Old Yeller Bus.” These yolk-yellow antique touring buses were used in Yellowstone in the 1930s, only to be completely retired in the 1960s. But eight of these classic “buses”, which are really more like antique station wagons on steroids with roll-back tops, were completely restored and returned to service at Yellowstone in 2007. We happened to end up in the bus named “Hollywood” – referred to as such because it had enjoyed a starring role in the movie “Big Trouble in Little China” during the period of its abandonment by Yellowstone.
Old Yeller took us past some beautiful waterfalls in Firewall Canyon and also paused so that we could get a great pic of an elk with a very impressive rack of antlers. But our luckiest site was a geyser (the name of which currently escapes me) that happened to be erupting as we came upon it – over and over again. The eruption was a little later in the day than was predicted for this geyser, so we were one of the few visitors there. It also happened to be one of those rare geysers that continues to erupt for approximately one hour once it gets started, so we chose to get out of the bus and hang out to watch it for a little bit (Old Faithful, by comparison, erupts for only 2 to 5 minutes at a time).
It was a perfect ending to a great day, however imperfectly it may have began....
The campsites at Yellowstone are beautiful, but rustic. There are no water or electric hook-ups, so we have to run off of a generator and use the water pump to get the basics to run in the RV. And, unfortunately, our little RV shower has proven woefully insufficient for the 7 of us – both because of the amount of time it takes to run 7 showers and because it can only offer us 8 gallons of hot water at a time (then we have to wait for the water to heat up again). By the time we arrived at our new campground here at Yellowstone – Madison Campground - Steve went to ask about other shower options. Surprisingly, he was told that the campers at Madison were assigned to the Old Faithful Inn to take showers at $3 a pop.
This was not really such great news! I mean, this was the hotel we had planned to stay in for this trip before we ended up veering off-course and going with the RV…. So clearly we like it very much and knew that the showers would be very nice. But we weren’t really looking forward to pulling our RV up to the Old Faithful Inn and trudging our unshowered selves up to the front desk to ask for a three buck shower! But, oh well….
So we drove up to this regal-looking circa 1903 gabled-roof inn, with all of its flags waving from the widow’s walk, and we entered through its heavy, iron-studded front doors… with each of us clad with a small backpack full of shampoo and soap and clothes for the day. The lobby area is an open 7-story space with a commanding stone fireplace in the center and hand-wrought wooden balconies all the way around the periphery. The carved wooden front desk is off to the left, situated next to the large open windows that offer some of the best views of Old Faithful. And so now, here we are…. standing in one of the most beautiful and most photographed destinations in the park…. begging for a shower! But, fortunately, the woman at the front desk met our request with rote familiarity, as I did have some concerns that perhaps we were joining that very slim number of people who actually took the Inn up on its offer to take in the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free, from Madison Campground....
Because the Inn is so old, the rooms in the oldest sections, which are also the most beautiful, do not have their own bathrooms. And so these were the bathrooms in the Inn to which we were led. Regardless of my paid admission to these glistening marble shower rooms, however, I just couldn’t help but feel like an intruder when another woman brought her small child in as well… only to realize that we were occupying all three of the showers located there and that they would be in for a little bit of a wait. Although I was trying to hurry to reduce their wait time, I did take a bit of comfort in the fact that at least she really had no way of knowing that we were not guests of the Inn as well… or at least, that is, until Katie mentioned something about her clothes for the day, and Grandma chimed in, “Don’t worry, we can get you something else when we get back to the camper!” Oh man! My cover was blown to smithereens! Ha. In any event, I never ended up actually seeing this woman and her child, as they left either to go to the other shower room down the hall…. or to report the vagrants? LOL.
But the “fun” wasn’t quite over, unbeknownst to me. What was “knownst” to me was that I had heard a thud while we were driving yesterday (one of what seems like 200 thuds of various things that have fallen while the camper was in motion over the past 10 days), and this particular thud had been identified to me as the cabinet door popping open in the bathroom and my hair dryer tumbling out of it. Oh well… standard procedure…. Just shove that baby back in. But, in fact, this particular “thud” was different…. OH SO VERY DIFFERENT! Long story short, as I turned on my hair dryer, for what could not have been more than a few seconds, the entire room filled with the foul smell of what one could only assume was burning pee! Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting…. Oh my! The fact the the "thud" was actually a "splash" in the toilet, was information I needed to have earlier! Now I would have to go scrub that whole cabinet and everything inside it with bleach or something!!! Ugh!
Shortly after we returned to the RV to put away our things, a couple of bison decided that the grass RIGHT OUTSIDE our main door looked particularly appealing. We really could have reached out and touched one of them without even stepping outside the door! The head of these bison were so enormous that neither of them could have poked their head through the width of our door if they wanted to, but our quick-thinking, ever-fearless Grandma wasn't going to take ANY chances so she promptly closed the screen door. You know, because how could a 2,000 pound bison possibly get through a screen door, right? Ha.
So, other than the shower and our brief hostage stand-off with those two bison, we actually did some other things today! Like seeing Old Faithful erupt 200 feet in the air on four different occasions (it erupts every 60- to 90-minutes), and each time with hundreds and hundreds of other folks who were lined up on the boardwalk and sitting in the wooden bleachers that surround it. In our experience, there is absolutely nothing else at Yellowstone, or any National Park we have visited, that comes close to getting as much attention and foot traffic as Old Faithful. In addition to the number of people that were there, we were shocked by the number of buildings that have been erected around it! Of course, there was the Old Faithful Inn – which I have already well over-described – but also the Old Faithful Lodge, the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, the Visitor Center, a yet-to-be-completed-and-much larger new Visitor Center, 2 General Stores, and other smaller stores and buildings as well. Just crazy! Here’s hoping that none of those 2- to 3-thousand annual earthquakes at Yellowstone upsets the balance of Old Faithful’s plumbing, rendering it a mere bubbling puddle as has happened to so many other geysers at the park! That would be dreadful on so many levels!
The reason that we were able to see Old Faithful erupt so many times is because there are so many other things to do in the area. We hiked around the hot springs area that surrounds it for quite a while, which included Castle Geyser (a geyser I am highlighting because it really does look like a castle structure that continually emits steam, although it also erupts with a fountain of water twice per day). We also did a little shopping and lingered over lunch at the Old Faithful Lodge, which gave us another opportunity to see Old Faithful blow it’s top over dessert. In addition, the kids once again completed the requirements for, and were awarded, their Yellowstone Jr. Ranger badges and patches at the Visitor Center right there at Old Faithful.
I don’t know if it is because the Jr. Ranger requirements were more rigorous here than in most of the other national parks or what, but the Park Rangers made a pretty big deal about it. They went through the worksheets with each of the kids, asking them some pretty hard questions, and then they asked for everyone’s attention at the Visitor Center as they introduced each of our newly commissioned Yellowstone Jr. Rangers to them! It’s also worth mentioning that our youngest, Mark -- who at this point is sporting an official “Yellowstone Jr. Ranger” army-green vest at all times -- is known for his wise-beyond-his-years commentary whenever an adult asks him a simple question. So this vest thing has opened us up to all kinds of funny situations, with adults stopping him to ask about his vest and Mark spouting off about some relatively obscure Yellowstone fact or using some 5-syllable word the adult may not happen to use themselves (ha!). As a result, just following Mark around these days has created an endless source of amusement, as we get to bear witness to these intermittent, but predictably frequent, interactions with random Yellowstone visitors our family comes across...
We also had a reservation for dinner at the Old Faithful Inn, so yes I did actually have to show my face in there again – ha! But no one seemed to be staring or pointing and, even if they had been, it would have been worth it! We all thoroughly enjoyed the great, historic, western-themed dining room, with etched glass windows overlooking the park and it’s comfortable lodge atmosphere. Oh yeah, and we liked the food too. Ha. It was hard to leave at the end!
After dinner we had a great surprise in store for the kids… a guided tour in a 1938 “Old Yeller Bus.” These yolk-yellow antique touring buses were used in Yellowstone in the 1930s, only to be completely retired in the 1960s. But eight of these classic “buses”, which are really more like antique station wagons on steroids with roll-back tops, were completely restored and returned to service at Yellowstone in 2007. We happened to end up in the bus named “Hollywood” – referred to as such because it had enjoyed a starring role in the movie “Big Trouble in Little China” during the period of its abandonment by Yellowstone.
Old Yeller took us past some beautiful waterfalls in Firewall Canyon and also paused so that we could get a great pic of an elk with a very impressive rack of antlers. But our luckiest site was a geyser (the name of which currently escapes me) that happened to be erupting as we came upon it – over and over again. The eruption was a little later in the day than was predicted for this geyser, so we were one of the few visitors there. It also happened to be one of those rare geysers that continues to erupt for approximately one hour once it gets started, so we chose to get out of the bus and hang out to watch it for a little bit (Old Faithful, by comparison, erupts for only 2 to 5 minutes at a time).
It was a perfect ending to a great day, however imperfectly it may have began....
Friday, June 18, 2010
Day 10: Things That Bubble, Things That Squirt
Today began slowly, as we slept in a little later and took some time to enjoy our last morning in Canyon Campground with a breakfast campfire. A little unconventional, for sure, but we all enjoyed the warmth of the fire in the coolness of the morning, and we were happy to spend this time enjoying the beautiful surroundings of this campsite since we really hadn’t spent very much time there otherwise (while awake, anyway).
We finally shoved off and, after a brief stop at the Canyon General Store for a few lunch items, we headed out for a picnic at a beautiful wooded area that abutted a fork in the glistening Yellowstone River – an area called Nez Perce (named for a Native American tribe that had moved through the area, while running from the U.S. Army). This was definitely the most memorable meal we have had together on this trip! We had the whole area to ourselves, and the day turned out to be a perfectly sunny day. It all just came together… you just can’t plan anything to be that perfect!
But then, after lingering over lunch and strolling alongside the river for a bit, we moved on with our plans for today… To figure out more about this whole Yellowstone-being-a-giant-volcano thing. We have already learned that there are some extremely unique forces at play underground throughout the entire park (…like the fact that every year there are between two and three thousand earthquakes here, and that’s just part of it), and that Yellowstone has been the scene of many volcanic eruptions. So we started out very close to one of the major vents from which lava has flowed -- the Mud Volcano Trail in the Caldera section of the park.
Our first site on the trail was Sulphur Caldron, with the accompanying first smell of rotten eggs from all of the hydrogen sulfide these things spew. It’s just wild to be walking along a wooded path, and then come upon these three very very large “puddles” of boiling substances… the largest is rapidly boiling water, the middle-sized one is just bubbling water and the smallest one is gurgling and spewing in the air what looks like liquified clay. Just bizarre. And we learned that these boiling substances have a pH level that is very close to the acidic level of car battery acid – stay away!
As we continued on the trail, these very abnormal conditions did start feeling more and more normal…. “Oh yeah, there’s another belching, spewing mudpot…. and look, over there, the steam is hovering over that boiling pit of bright turquoise water like a sorcerer’s cauldron.” And on, and on. But our favorites among these freaky natural occurrences were:
1. The Dragon’s Mouth Spring. It was a little cave opening in the side of a hill that was filled with boiling water that collected in a small pool surrounding the opening. What made this hot spring even stranger than the others was that, every once in a while, it would make a sound very similar to the rushing sound of a toilet that was just flushed, but then it would let out a loud growling sound (where you would expect a toilet to gurgle) and simultaneously spew a thick puff of steam (which I hope isn’t part of any of your toileting experiences!).
2. The forest-covered, rolling hills immediately behind Sulphur Caldron. Although these hillsides looked relatively non-descript among all of the other evergreen-covered hillsides we have seen in the park, we learned that the streaming lava beneath them causes them to rise and fall – imperceptive to us, but well-documented by scientists – like the rise and fall of a person’s chest as they breath. Whoa…. We were amazed!
From there we went to Norris Geyser Basin, and joined a Ranger-led tour (one of the requirements for earning the Yellowstone Jr. Ranger designation, of course). He took us around the entire lower portion of this geyser basin, and showed us the location of the largest geyser in the world…. Steamboat Geyser. We saw this geyser squirt large amounts of water up 40 to 60 feet several times (called a “minor eruption” for this geyser), but never up to it’s highest level (a “major eruption) which is around 380 feet! It only does that “every 5 to 50 years” per Mr. Park Ranger and, although it hasn’t done it since 2005, we decided not to wait it out. I mean, we’ll be at Old Faithful tomorrow, and we’re really OK with a guaranteed 200-foot water spew. Really.
In the middle of our tour, a wayward bison went for a stroll through the hot springs area. This was clearly a distraction from whatever our guide was saying since, at any given time (as we had learned, over and over again, from the hundreds of signs warning against walking in these areas), that 2,000-pound bison could have fallen through the crust and become well done and then some. Very distracting, indeed. So the kindly Park Ranger just paused for a bit, until the bison found his way back into the forest and our attention was sustainable again…
The Park Ranger also taught us a lot about the “plumbing” of geysers, and how sometimes they can unexpectedly hurl out huge rocks all over the place as, notably, a geyser by the name of Pork Chop so hurled in 1988 to the profound surprise and deep chagrin of 8 park visitors. Although, thankfully, none of the visitors were harmed (amazing!), once this hurling stuff happens, the plumbing of the geyser is irreconcilably broken and it just turns into a run-of-the-mill bubbling hot spring.
The tour came to an end after a little over an hour with nary a true eruption - with most of the geysers on the tour having gone the way of Pork Chop geyser, and they were now relegated to hot springs (although once named a geyser, always named a geyser). One geyser at the end of the tour used to erupt almost every minute, but tourists throwing coins and other objects into it eventually stopped the eruptions. Of course Steve asked the Park Ranger about the locations of geysers that, you know, actually STILL erupting fairly regularly happened to be and, quite unbelievably, he responded that there were a bunch in the Norris Geyser Basin (where we were the WHOLE tour!) but that, basically, he just took us through the has-beens... thanks for that! LOL. But, by that time, we were all too tired and hungry to continue on with touring... So, the "Windows into Yellowstone" Tour we had just experienced was re-dubbed by us as the "Geysers that Used to be Great" Tour. Ha.
Then, quite unlike us, we headed back to the campsite for a late dinner and to turn in early after that… although this time to a new campground – Madison - on the other side of the park. We tried to blame our pitiful campfire on various conditions, which was very hard to do as the campfires of our camping neighbors continued to roar in mockery of us. When Steve, with Grandma’s coaching, finally got the campfire to a mildly respectable state, we moved forward with our plan of making campfire pizza with our grill placed just inches above the flames. We waited, and waited…. But that cheese just wasn’t going to melt over that sad little campfire. We finally broke down and just heated it up over Grandma’s gas grill, and that did the trick. By this time, Steve had sufficiently struggled over the fire long enough that we were able to roast our marshmallows over the licking flames with our heads held high. Whew! Thank goodness!
There is something about that campground camaraderie thing that made the whole turning-in-early plan impossible. The kids made friends with four other kids immediately, and were having a blast. Then, the next thing you know, now the adults are meeting and talking around the campfire, so we finally called it a night much much later. But, no regrets. Vacations just have to roll like that.
We finally shoved off and, after a brief stop at the Canyon General Store for a few lunch items, we headed out for a picnic at a beautiful wooded area that abutted a fork in the glistening Yellowstone River – an area called Nez Perce (named for a Native American tribe that had moved through the area, while running from the U.S. Army). This was definitely the most memorable meal we have had together on this trip! We had the whole area to ourselves, and the day turned out to be a perfectly sunny day. It all just came together… you just can’t plan anything to be that perfect!
But then, after lingering over lunch and strolling alongside the river for a bit, we moved on with our plans for today… To figure out more about this whole Yellowstone-being-a-giant-volcano thing. We have already learned that there are some extremely unique forces at play underground throughout the entire park (…like the fact that every year there are between two and three thousand earthquakes here, and that’s just part of it), and that Yellowstone has been the scene of many volcanic eruptions. So we started out very close to one of the major vents from which lava has flowed -- the Mud Volcano Trail in the Caldera section of the park.
Our first site on the trail was Sulphur Caldron, with the accompanying first smell of rotten eggs from all of the hydrogen sulfide these things spew. It’s just wild to be walking along a wooded path, and then come upon these three very very large “puddles” of boiling substances… the largest is rapidly boiling water, the middle-sized one is just bubbling water and the smallest one is gurgling and spewing in the air what looks like liquified clay. Just bizarre. And we learned that these boiling substances have a pH level that is very close to the acidic level of car battery acid – stay away!
As we continued on the trail, these very abnormal conditions did start feeling more and more normal…. “Oh yeah, there’s another belching, spewing mudpot…. and look, over there, the steam is hovering over that boiling pit of bright turquoise water like a sorcerer’s cauldron.” And on, and on. But our favorites among these freaky natural occurrences were:
1. The Dragon’s Mouth Spring. It was a little cave opening in the side of a hill that was filled with boiling water that collected in a small pool surrounding the opening. What made this hot spring even stranger than the others was that, every once in a while, it would make a sound very similar to the rushing sound of a toilet that was just flushed, but then it would let out a loud growling sound (where you would expect a toilet to gurgle) and simultaneously spew a thick puff of steam (which I hope isn’t part of any of your toileting experiences!).
2. The forest-covered, rolling hills immediately behind Sulphur Caldron. Although these hillsides looked relatively non-descript among all of the other evergreen-covered hillsides we have seen in the park, we learned that the streaming lava beneath them causes them to rise and fall – imperceptive to us, but well-documented by scientists – like the rise and fall of a person’s chest as they breath. Whoa…. We were amazed!
From there we went to Norris Geyser Basin, and joined a Ranger-led tour (one of the requirements for earning the Yellowstone Jr. Ranger designation, of course). He took us around the entire lower portion of this geyser basin, and showed us the location of the largest geyser in the world…. Steamboat Geyser. We saw this geyser squirt large amounts of water up 40 to 60 feet several times (called a “minor eruption” for this geyser), but never up to it’s highest level (a “major eruption) which is around 380 feet! It only does that “every 5 to 50 years” per Mr. Park Ranger and, although it hasn’t done it since 2005, we decided not to wait it out. I mean, we’ll be at Old Faithful tomorrow, and we’re really OK with a guaranteed 200-foot water spew. Really.
In the middle of our tour, a wayward bison went for a stroll through the hot springs area. This was clearly a distraction from whatever our guide was saying since, at any given time (as we had learned, over and over again, from the hundreds of signs warning against walking in these areas), that 2,000-pound bison could have fallen through the crust and become well done and then some. Very distracting, indeed. So the kindly Park Ranger just paused for a bit, until the bison found his way back into the forest and our attention was sustainable again…
The Park Ranger also taught us a lot about the “plumbing” of geysers, and how sometimes they can unexpectedly hurl out huge rocks all over the place as, notably, a geyser by the name of Pork Chop so hurled in 1988 to the profound surprise and deep chagrin of 8 park visitors. Although, thankfully, none of the visitors were harmed (amazing!), once this hurling stuff happens, the plumbing of the geyser is irreconcilably broken and it just turns into a run-of-the-mill bubbling hot spring.
The tour came to an end after a little over an hour with nary a true eruption - with most of the geysers on the tour having gone the way of Pork Chop geyser, and they were now relegated to hot springs (although once named a geyser, always named a geyser). One geyser at the end of the tour used to erupt almost every minute, but tourists throwing coins and other objects into it eventually stopped the eruptions. Of course Steve asked the Park Ranger about the locations of geysers that, you know, actually STILL erupting fairly regularly happened to be and, quite unbelievably, he responded that there were a bunch in the Norris Geyser Basin (where we were the WHOLE tour!) but that, basically, he just took us through the has-beens... thanks for that! LOL. But, by that time, we were all too tired and hungry to continue on with touring... So, the "Windows into Yellowstone" Tour we had just experienced was re-dubbed by us as the "Geysers that Used to be Great" Tour. Ha.
Then, quite unlike us, we headed back to the campsite for a late dinner and to turn in early after that… although this time to a new campground – Madison - on the other side of the park. We tried to blame our pitiful campfire on various conditions, which was very hard to do as the campfires of our camping neighbors continued to roar in mockery of us. When Steve, with Grandma’s coaching, finally got the campfire to a mildly respectable state, we moved forward with our plan of making campfire pizza with our grill placed just inches above the flames. We waited, and waited…. But that cheese just wasn’t going to melt over that sad little campfire. We finally broke down and just heated it up over Grandma’s gas grill, and that did the trick. By this time, Steve had sufficiently struggled over the fire long enough that we were able to roast our marshmallows over the licking flames with our heads held high. Whew! Thank goodness!
There is something about that campground camaraderie thing that made the whole turning-in-early plan impossible. The kids made friends with four other kids immediately, and were having a blast. Then, the next thing you know, now the adults are meeting and talking around the campfire, so we finally called it a night much much later. But, no regrets. Vacations just have to roll like that.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Day 9: Our Biggest Day Yet!
Today began with Steve cooking us all bacon, eggs and toast for breakfast, which was an awesome beginning to a pretty cold morning and our planned hike around the North Rim of the Canyon.
Before our hike, we stopped off at the Brink of the Upper Falls. WOW!!! Just a breath-taking hike with a dead-end on the ledge of cliff (which had built-up stone walls along the sides), with amazing views of the river as it’s white rolling peaks charged through the canyon and dropped off at the waterfall. We just lingered there for quite some time, taking in the view and enjoying the soothing effect of listening to the falls.
Then we made another stop right next to the trailhead.... an observation area called Grand View, which is where we enjoyed one of the most amazing experiences that we have had during the trip. We noticed a bald eagle that was perched in a tree way down near the base of the canyon, but it was pretty hard to see him without binoculars. Then, just a couple of minutes later, he took flight almost as if he intended to put on a show! He was gliding from side-to-side in the canyon, going higher and higher as he flew, and then disappeared around a far-off bend in the canyon. We all felt like we had just had a once-in-a-lifetime experience with that one!
But we weren't done yet! On the way back out, we ran into more great luck! On the flat surface of a huge rock structure that rose up at least 6 stories from the base of the canyon, we discovered a nest with a young white-headed bird inside! At first we thought it was another bald eagle, but after viewing the bird with our binoculars and talking with some other hikers who had also stopped to take a look, we realized that it was actually an Osprey (a fish-eating bird with which I was not previously familiar until I saw the wildlife chart in the kids’ Jr. Ranger workbooks).
And, by the way, at this point all of the kids are budding naturalists! The Jr. Ranger Program at each of the National Parks is actually pretty great. I can’t believe how much they’ve learned about the history of the parks, the wildlife there, ecosystems, conservation and geology. And the more they learn about each of our destinations, the more than want to discover for themselves during our hikes and when they are just kind of hanging out at our campsites (not that we have done very much of the latter – we pretty much stay on the go!). It’s pretty cool!
We had a quick picnic lunch at the trailhead and then, at last, we began our hike around the North Rim. The path overlooked the depths of the Canyon all the way around, so we stopped at various spots just to take in the spectacular views and look for some wildlife while we were at it. A couple of the pictures we took during the hike will end up framed in our house for sure
, but probably not the one I took of my Mom acting like she was falling into the depths of the canyon with Steve standing over her with an evil look as if he has just done her in…. yeah, that might just be one for the album.
After passing only 2 other people while we hiked the North Rim Trail, we ended up at our destination – Inspiration Point. It was amazing how many people were there! While we were planning the trip, we had read that most people who visit Yellowstone will just drive their cars to each of the best sites that have pull-off points or parking lots within yards of them, but they will not hike a single trail. Now, here we were on the trail that our guide book listed as the #1 hike at Yellowstone, and that fact would certainly seem to ring true! How sad! It’s just not anywhere near the same experience if you’re in your car most of the time!
So we went back to the RV, and started traveling toward our next adventure for the day, which was scheduled to begin at Roosevelt Corrals… a 30-minute chuck wagon ride into Pleasant Valley where we would enjoy an authentic western cookout. That being said, we ended up stopping for a quick hike on yet another trail on the way so that we could see a waterfall called Tower Fall
, but we had to settle for the view from the observation deck with all of those “Yellowstone Flunkies” (ha) because the trail was closed… it had been washed away at some point and was in need of repair. Oh well, at least were able to see another beautiful waterfall, however briefly, before we were back on our way to being a little early for the dinner bell at the corral.
The chuck wagon was pulled by 2 horses across some beautiful terrain where we saw some yellow-bellied marmots sunning themselves on some rocks, and a herd of buffalo grazing in the distance.
Our “wrangler,” a recent college graduate from New Hampshire, told us some wonderful stories about the history of this particular area of the park which made the 30-minute ride pass pretty quickly. And we learned a lot. Even more important to some of us, however, is that we learned that she drove her New Hampshire-plated car all the way to Yellowstone.... for, you see, at this point we had identified 47 state license plates (plus 3 Canadian provinces) but we were missing Mississippi, West Virginia and, oh yes, New Hampshire. Score! We were definitely going to walk off part of this yet-to-be-consumed chow by finding her car outside of her cabin at the Corral!
The cookout itself exceeded all of our expectations… wow! The Yellowstone employees were fantastic, and definitely acted and dressed like authentic cowboys…. there was even a “singing cowboy” who entertained us the entire time with his western-themed music, as he played his guitar.
Everyone was welcome to eat as much steak (cooked to order), corn bread, Roosevelt baked beans, cole slaw, potato salad, corn, apple crisp, cowboy coffee (the strongest I’ve had), hot chocolate or other drinks as they could possibly consume, and the atmosphere was just fantastic. The kids, as kids will always do, made a few friends and the singing cowboy taught all of them how to yodel. To top it all off, the weather was perfect… beautiful sunshine (the sun doesn’t set here until almost 11:pm), and a temperature that fell from warm to a crisp light jacket temp. Just an awesome experience!
As the chuck wagon pulled back into the Roosevelt Corral, we learned from our wrangler that we were just a short drive from a prime location to look for Grizzly Bears (from your car, of course!), and that we would be getting back at the prime time to see them out and about as well. So, after officially locating that New Hampshire license plate of course, we were off on yet another adventure…. A “bear hunt”! Let’s go!
So we just started driving to where she told us to drive, with 7 pairs of eyes duly peeled, and – of course – we found that Grizzly Bear in just a few minutes. Yep, chewing on an animal carcass about 100 yards from a point in the road where about 20 cars were already pulled off on the side to take a look and get a picture. So much for the “hunting” part, since we clearly saw the cars before the bear, but it was thrilling and terrifying and amazing to happen upon that bear. Sooooo cool!
So after ALL of that excitement, the kids were all sound asleep before the RV came to a stop again at our little spot in Canyon campground for the last time. Tomorrow we’ll be staying on the other side of the park until we head out for the Grand Tetons.
Before our hike, we stopped off at the Brink of the Upper Falls. WOW!!! Just a breath-taking hike with a dead-end on the ledge of cliff (which had built-up stone walls along the sides), with amazing views of the river as it’s white rolling peaks charged through the canyon and dropped off at the waterfall. We just lingered there for quite some time, taking in the view and enjoying the soothing effect of listening to the falls.Then we made another stop right next to the trailhead.... an observation area called Grand View, which is where we enjoyed one of the most amazing experiences that we have had during the trip. We noticed a bald eagle that was perched in a tree way down near the base of the canyon, but it was pretty hard to see him without binoculars. Then, just a couple of minutes later, he took flight almost as if he intended to put on a show! He was gliding from side-to-side in the canyon, going higher and higher as he flew, and then disappeared around a far-off bend in the canyon. We all felt like we had just had a once-in-a-lifetime experience with that one!
But we weren't done yet! On the way back out, we ran into more great luck! On the flat surface of a huge rock structure that rose up at least 6 stories from the base of the canyon, we discovered a nest with a young white-headed bird inside! At first we thought it was another bald eagle, but after viewing the bird with our binoculars and talking with some other hikers who had also stopped to take a look, we realized that it was actually an Osprey (a fish-eating bird with which I was not previously familiar until I saw the wildlife chart in the kids’ Jr. Ranger workbooks).
And, by the way, at this point all of the kids are budding naturalists! The Jr. Ranger Program at each of the National Parks is actually pretty great. I can’t believe how much they’ve learned about the history of the parks, the wildlife there, ecosystems, conservation and geology. And the more they learn about each of our destinations, the more than want to discover for themselves during our hikes and when they are just kind of hanging out at our campsites (not that we have done very much of the latter – we pretty much stay on the go!). It’s pretty cool!
We had a quick picnic lunch at the trailhead and then, at last, we began our hike around the North Rim. The path overlooked the depths of the Canyon all the way around, so we stopped at various spots just to take in the spectacular views and look for some wildlife while we were at it. A couple of the pictures we took during the hike will end up framed in our house for sure
, but probably not the one I took of my Mom acting like she was falling into the depths of the canyon with Steve standing over her with an evil look as if he has just done her in…. yeah, that might just be one for the album.
After passing only 2 other people while we hiked the North Rim Trail, we ended up at our destination – Inspiration Point. It was amazing how many people were there! While we were planning the trip, we had read that most people who visit Yellowstone will just drive their cars to each of the best sites that have pull-off points or parking lots within yards of them, but they will not hike a single trail. Now, here we were on the trail that our guide book listed as the #1 hike at Yellowstone, and that fact would certainly seem to ring true! How sad! It’s just not anywhere near the same experience if you’re in your car most of the time!
So we went back to the RV, and started traveling toward our next adventure for the day, which was scheduled to begin at Roosevelt Corrals… a 30-minute chuck wagon ride into Pleasant Valley where we would enjoy an authentic western cookout. That being said, we ended up stopping for a quick hike on yet another trail on the way so that we could see a waterfall called Tower Fall
, but we had to settle for the view from the observation deck with all of those “Yellowstone Flunkies” (ha) because the trail was closed… it had been washed away at some point and was in need of repair. Oh well, at least were able to see another beautiful waterfall, however briefly, before we were back on our way to being a little early for the dinner bell at the corral.
The chuck wagon was pulled by 2 horses across some beautiful terrain where we saw some yellow-bellied marmots sunning themselves on some rocks, and a herd of buffalo grazing in the distance.
Our “wrangler,” a recent college graduate from New Hampshire, told us some wonderful stories about the history of this particular area of the park which made the 30-minute ride pass pretty quickly. And we learned a lot. Even more important to some of us, however, is that we learned that she drove her New Hampshire-plated car all the way to Yellowstone.... for, you see, at this point we had identified 47 state license plates (plus 3 Canadian provinces) but we were missing Mississippi, West Virginia and, oh yes, New Hampshire. Score! We were definitely going to walk off part of this yet-to-be-consumed chow by finding her car outside of her cabin at the Corral!
The cookout itself exceeded all of our expectations… wow! The Yellowstone employees were fantastic, and definitely acted and dressed like authentic cowboys…. there was even a “singing cowboy” who entertained us the entire time with his western-themed music, as he played his guitar.
Everyone was welcome to eat as much steak (cooked to order), corn bread, Roosevelt baked beans, cole slaw, potato salad, corn, apple crisp, cowboy coffee (the strongest I’ve had), hot chocolate or other drinks as they could possibly consume, and the atmosphere was just fantastic. The kids, as kids will always do, made a few friends and the singing cowboy taught all of them how to yodel. To top it all off, the weather was perfect… beautiful sunshine (the sun doesn’t set here until almost 11:pm), and a temperature that fell from warm to a crisp light jacket temp. Just an awesome experience!As the chuck wagon pulled back into the Roosevelt Corral, we learned from our wrangler that we were just a short drive from a prime location to look for Grizzly Bears (from your car, of course!), and that we would be getting back at the prime time to see them out and about as well. So, after officially locating that New Hampshire license plate of course, we were off on yet another adventure…. A “bear hunt”! Let’s go!
So we just started driving to where she told us to drive, with 7 pairs of eyes duly peeled, and – of course – we found that Grizzly Bear in just a few minutes. Yep, chewing on an animal carcass about 100 yards from a point in the road where about 20 cars were already pulled off on the side to take a look and get a picture. So much for the “hunting” part, since we clearly saw the cars before the bear, but it was thrilling and terrifying and amazing to happen upon that bear. Sooooo cool!
So after ALL of that excitement, the kids were all sound asleep before the RV came to a stop again at our little spot in Canyon campground for the last time. Tomorrow we’ll be staying on the other side of the park until we head out for the Grand Tetons.
Day 8: First Impressions and First Hikes in Yellowstone
Yellowstone is…. snow-capped mountains, beautiful valleys with winding streams, prairies dotted with herds of bison, acres of woodlands teaming with wildlife, powerful waterfalls and charging rivers, winding canyons, and volcanic areas filled with geysers (Old Faithful and others), hot springs (boiling puddles of water, of various colors both vibrant and earth-tone), mudpots (boiling mud) and fumaroles (steam-emitting holes). Only 3% of the park is accessible through the various roads and trails that have been established since its founding in 1872, and there’s no way to conquer even that 3% adequately without visiting several different times!
Today we set out with the intention of hiking the North Rim Trail in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Grandma went ahead with the girls in the direction of the sign that said, of all things, “North Rim Trail,” and the boys and I caught up with them while Clark was still doing whatever-it-is-that-he-was-doing in the RV. Upon my arrival on the scene, I learned that Grandma had purchased a laminated fold-out card which depicted the shapes of the hoof prints and poop piles (referred to as “scat”) of Yellowstone wildlife. Unfortunately, the trailhead had very few hoof prints but was scattered with scat. We had identified the ownership of all manner of elimination… to bears, moose, elk and bison…. Which, of course, reminded me, “Where’s Clark?” Is he really STILL in the RV or did he take an entirely different trail?
I was almost all the way back to the RV when I called his name a couple of times, and then I heard him rather testily call back. Then, next thing I know, there he is walking back from another trail that started very close to the one we were on – carrying all kinds of stuff, including a jacket, camera, movie camera and tripod. After confirming with him that the hike he had planned to take us on that day was on the trail from which he had just returned, I suggested that I would double-back to get Grandma and the kids and that he might want to grab a backpack for all of his gear… you know, perhaps a 3-mile hike up hills, through gulleys and amongst wildlife might just warrant a backpack?
Finally we were all on the right trail, and getting very good use of our waterproof hiking shoes since the trail was wet and muddy. But the great thing about a muddy trail, of course, is lots of tracks! We found a good sampling of bear, wild boar, elk and bison tracks… and I have to say that they were harder, but much more pleasant, to identify than scat… I’m just sayin’.
We also came across a great herd of bison off a bit in the distance, and continued down to Clear Lake which had clearly been visited fairly recently by a bear since there was a wet mud bear print on one of the stones very close to the lake.
Then, as we continued on, we found a mule deer that was very at ease with us staring at him for a while and snapping a few pics. In fact, the mule deer was so at ease that he wasn’t even bothered by the jingle of Grandma’s “bear bell”….
A method many espouse around here to keep bears away but, no matter the case, the constant rhythmic jingle-jingle-jingle kind of makes you feel like you’ve brought Santa along for the hike.
So all of this was great stuff except for one thing…. we still hadn’t seen any of the things that we had set out to see (huge waterfalls and charging streams, among them) because, as we discovered well into the hike, we were NOT on the right trail after all. We were on the Wapiti Trail – the trail which Clark’s book said led to the North Rim Trail - but, in fact, it was taking us in the opposite direction. Oh no… Grandma was right Clark!!! At this point Clark was in I’m-going-to-make-this-all-better-somehow mode and was convinced that the Wapiti Trail would eventually loops us around to the North Rim Trail; meanwhile Grandma was in let’s-just-walk-back-the-way-we-came-and-go-follow-the-signs mode. So the rest of us went into hey-let’s-just-sit-on-this-log-and-have-a-drink-of-water-and-maybe-a-little-snack-too mode…. You know, and watch to see who wins.
Just then, a couple of hikers veered off their own course to warn us that they had just sited a bear that was way too close to the trail – and the portion of the trail that we would have to take to go back the way we came. Whew…. a tie-breaker! So we just continued on Clark’s way, all under the belief that getting more lost was probably still better than getting eaten by a bear.
And the good news is that, eventually, but a very long time later, the trail did end up looping us back to the trail we had wanted to take from the beginning, and we saw a very beautiful waterfall.
The bad news is that there was a great deal more to see on the original trail, and we were all just way too exhausted to even consider it…. except for Clark who was still itching to conquer the trail we had originally intended to hike. And he was clearly under some delusion that the rest of us would eventually agree to keep going if only he kept repeating, “but it’s only another 7 miles!” over and over again. Um, not so much. Anyway, rather than say no, we all just agreed that it was time to take the 1-mile hike back to the RV for a bit of a break and something to eat, and that we would get to that original trail later (with all but one of us understanding that “later” meant “tomorrow).
We ended up driving to Mammoth Hot Springs from there to have dinner at a little grill next to the General Store, but we decided to take our time getting out of the RV since a bison had decided to scratch himself on a post just outside the store…. and very near our RV.
As our Yellowstone Jr. Ranger Trainees informed us -- virtually in chorus – you have to stay 100 yards away from bears and wolves, and 25 yards away from the other animals. So that’s just what we did…. And so when Mr. Bison finally decided that he was done scratchin’… he ambled on, and we made a break for it to get some grub.
After dinner we made our way up to the Mammoth Hot Springs area for a relatively short hike – it was just a couple of miles, all on a wooden boardwalk, since walking directly on the ground anywhere near a hot spring is extremely dangerous. The crust can be unexpectedly thin and brittle, and you can easily fall into a now newly-formed hot spring (thanks to the force of your own boot) with scalding hot liquid that contains extremely high amounts of sulfur and silica (…and I must have seen at least 30 signs warning hikers that many people have suffered permanent injuries or died by doing just that!). 
We had to climb a lot of stairs to get to the highest elevations of the hike, at which point the rolling boil of the hot springs became even more intense and, for reasons I cannot fathom, the boardwalk had no handrails at this point – Yikes! 
Excellent Wyoming…. Can you suit us up with some bucking broncos too to make this whole will-I-or-won’t-I-fall-into-the-scalding-hot-springs experience that much more exciting?! Ha.
After the hike, we doubled back to the General Store, and Steve and Katie grabbed hot chocolates for everyone while Grandma and I suited the rest of the crew up in their pajamas so they could fall asleep during the slow-moving 30-minute drive back to Canyon campground.
Today we set out with the intention of hiking the North Rim Trail in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Grandma went ahead with the girls in the direction of the sign that said, of all things, “North Rim Trail,” and the boys and I caught up with them while Clark was still doing whatever-it-is-that-he-was-doing in the RV. Upon my arrival on the scene, I learned that Grandma had purchased a laminated fold-out card which depicted the shapes of the hoof prints and poop piles (referred to as “scat”) of Yellowstone wildlife. Unfortunately, the trailhead had very few hoof prints but was scattered with scat. We had identified the ownership of all manner of elimination… to bears, moose, elk and bison…. Which, of course, reminded me, “Where’s Clark?” Is he really STILL in the RV or did he take an entirely different trail?
I was almost all the way back to the RV when I called his name a couple of times, and then I heard him rather testily call back. Then, next thing I know, there he is walking back from another trail that started very close to the one we were on – carrying all kinds of stuff, including a jacket, camera, movie camera and tripod. After confirming with him that the hike he had planned to take us on that day was on the trail from which he had just returned, I suggested that I would double-back to get Grandma and the kids and that he might want to grab a backpack for all of his gear… you know, perhaps a 3-mile hike up hills, through gulleys and amongst wildlife might just warrant a backpack?
Finally we were all on the right trail, and getting very good use of our waterproof hiking shoes since the trail was wet and muddy. But the great thing about a muddy trail, of course, is lots of tracks! We found a good sampling of bear, wild boar, elk and bison tracks… and I have to say that they were harder, but much more pleasant, to identify than scat… I’m just sayin’.
We also came across a great herd of bison off a bit in the distance, and continued down to Clear Lake which had clearly been visited fairly recently by a bear since there was a wet mud bear print on one of the stones very close to the lake.
Then, as we continued on, we found a mule deer that was very at ease with us staring at him for a while and snapping a few pics. In fact, the mule deer was so at ease that he wasn’t even bothered by the jingle of Grandma’s “bear bell”….
A method many espouse around here to keep bears away but, no matter the case, the constant rhythmic jingle-jingle-jingle kind of makes you feel like you’ve brought Santa along for the hike.So all of this was great stuff except for one thing…. we still hadn’t seen any of the things that we had set out to see (huge waterfalls and charging streams, among them) because, as we discovered well into the hike, we were NOT on the right trail after all. We were on the Wapiti Trail – the trail which Clark’s book said led to the North Rim Trail - but, in fact, it was taking us in the opposite direction. Oh no… Grandma was right Clark!!! At this point Clark was in I’m-going-to-make-this-all-better-somehow mode and was convinced that the Wapiti Trail would eventually loops us around to the North Rim Trail; meanwhile Grandma was in let’s-just-walk-back-the-way-we-came-and-go-follow-the-signs mode. So the rest of us went into hey-let’s-just-sit-on-this-log-and-have-a-drink-of-water-and-maybe-a-little-snack-too mode…. You know, and watch to see who wins.
Just then, a couple of hikers veered off their own course to warn us that they had just sited a bear that was way too close to the trail – and the portion of the trail that we would have to take to go back the way we came. Whew…. a tie-breaker! So we just continued on Clark’s way, all under the belief that getting more lost was probably still better than getting eaten by a bear.
And the good news is that, eventually, but a very long time later, the trail did end up looping us back to the trail we had wanted to take from the beginning, and we saw a very beautiful waterfall.
The bad news is that there was a great deal more to see on the original trail, and we were all just way too exhausted to even consider it…. except for Clark who was still itching to conquer the trail we had originally intended to hike. And he was clearly under some delusion that the rest of us would eventually agree to keep going if only he kept repeating, “but it’s only another 7 miles!” over and over again. Um, not so much. Anyway, rather than say no, we all just agreed that it was time to take the 1-mile hike back to the RV for a bit of a break and something to eat, and that we would get to that original trail later (with all but one of us understanding that “later” meant “tomorrow).We ended up driving to Mammoth Hot Springs from there to have dinner at a little grill next to the General Store, but we decided to take our time getting out of the RV since a bison had decided to scratch himself on a post just outside the store…. and very near our RV.
As our Yellowstone Jr. Ranger Trainees informed us -- virtually in chorus – you have to stay 100 yards away from bears and wolves, and 25 yards away from the other animals. So that’s just what we did…. And so when Mr. Bison finally decided that he was done scratchin’… he ambled on, and we made a break for it to get some grub.
After dinner we made our way up to the Mammoth Hot Springs area for a relatively short hike – it was just a couple of miles, all on a wooden boardwalk, since walking directly on the ground anywhere near a hot spring is extremely dangerous. The crust can be unexpectedly thin and brittle, and you can easily fall into a now newly-formed hot spring (thanks to the force of your own boot) with scalding hot liquid that contains extremely high amounts of sulfur and silica (…and I must have seen at least 30 signs warning hikers that many people have suffered permanent injuries or died by doing just that!). 
We had to climb a lot of stairs to get to the highest elevations of the hike, at which point the rolling boil of the hot springs became even more intense and, for reasons I cannot fathom, the boardwalk had no handrails at this point – Yikes! 
Excellent Wyoming…. Can you suit us up with some bucking broncos too to make this whole will-I-or-won’t-I-fall-into-the-scalding-hot-springs experience that much more exciting?! Ha.
After the hike, we doubled back to the General Store, and Steve and Katie grabbed hot chocolates for everyone while Grandma and I suited the rest of the crew up in their pajamas so they could fall asleep during the slow-moving 30-minute drive back to Canyon campground.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Day 7: A Day in Cody, and then on to Yellowstone!
Today started off pretty slow in Cody, Wyoming, as we rolled out of bed late and treated ourselves to a big pancake (er, I mean, flapjack) breakfast – complete with all the trimmings and an overactive smoke detector. Ah… the great outdoors! Ha. We also decided to take advantage of the large bank of washers and dryers that were at our disposal at the Cody KOA, so we threw in a week’s worth of clothes for 7 in almost as many machines at the same time. We also seized upon the opportunity to join all the kids who were jumping on the outrageously-sized, in-ground “air pillow”…you know, between wash/dry cycles and re-packing the RV. 
Although, truth be told, Grandma did the lion's share of the laundry, partly because she is sooooo nice, and partly because it afforded her the opportunity to yap on her cell phone for a long time (probably to beg whoever would listen to get her out of this mess? Ha).
It was mid-day by the time we finally rolled into downtown Cody, and we really just meandered through the shops and took in the Old West ambience – all in our cowboy hats, of course, a little bit of whistlin’ (we are just making Roy Rogers more and more proud by the day, I tell ya). Our favorite store was “The Custom Cowboy Shop.” You know, because we’re not going to regret walking around dressed in full cowboy gear when we get back to Ohio AT ALL! No, no… just kidding… we resisted all that business this time around. We just ended up with a few odds and ends to bring home as souvenirs…. but just the old stand-bys, like the new set of steak knives with branded handles and the western-themed wine charms (clearly no REAL cowboy is gonna take to the range without his trusty wine glass charms…?).
We had an early Prime Rib dinner at “The Irma”, the historica and famous restaurant / hotel founded by Buffalo Bill Cody and named after his daughter. It was something of a Back-to-the-Future moment, as we found ourselves being in the distinct minority with our modern-day style of dress… there were absolutely dozens of people walking around The Irma’s front porch and inside the restaurant dressed like they had just walked out of a movie starring Buffalo Bill himself. I knew I had to act fast to find out what was going on before Clark Griswold – not to be outdone - got it into his head to run us all back to that Custom Cowboy Shop to suit all of us up too.
So what WAS going on? There is an outdoor production of a legendary gunfight scene on the streets of Cody right outside of The Irma on most evenings during the summer, and we just happened to arrive on the scene just about 90 minutes before show time. This show is put on by volunteers from the Cody community to raise money for various charities, and they have also incorporated a segment at the beginning to teach children about the danger of firearms. At this point in my Cody experience, I was fairly certain that this “safety segment” was most likely inserted to appease those blasted worry-wart, east-of-the-Mississippi mothers who hold similarly over-reactive views to my own… you know those people who would prefer having a little warning before someone starts firing weaponry or unleashing livestock on their grade school children? It must be a pain catering to the pansy tourists in order to turn an honest buck…
After the show, we met with the cast for a bit, and then rolled out of town to begin our 90-mile trip to Yellowstone National Park. The entire drive was GORGEOUS, but sometimes mildly nerve-wracking in a very large, lumbering RV. Seatbelts or no seatbelts, there were just too many road signs indicating that the next curve in the road was in the shape of a “U”, where missing the turn meant rolling down a rocky incline to a certain death on or before the 25th full rotation of the RV. But, in spite of it all, everyone (but our driver, at some points) enjoyed the spectacular landscape – snow-capped mountains, rushing rivers, and driving down into the beautiful valley floors. We also saw some amazing ranches and the occasional teepee along the way, as well as a winery in TenSpoons, Wyoming – an interesting little town with a posted population of 304 which is also home to the TenSpoons Emporium, a fine institution which bragged by way of tattered wooden storefront sign that they were the fine purveyors of “More Odds than Ends.” And there we were with no time to shop…
One really convenient thing about searching for wildlife while you make your way through Wyoming is that all you really have to look for is the cluster of cars pulled off from the road. You won’t see another car for miles and miles, and then all of the sudden you’ll see 3 or 4 and you just know that there’s probably something fairly close by that could rip your face off or something. And that’s exactly how we knew to pull off at one point, and get all the kids out of the RV to get a better look at whatever it was! LOL. What we had happened upon was a jet black, full grown moose (yes, a black one!) drinking from the other side of the stream. He was so beautiful! I don’t think anyone said a word for a full five minutes… we were just awe struck. Or at least we thought we were…
When we finally reached Yellowstone -- the destination we’ve been most anticipating since we began planning for this trip many years ago -- we learned just what awe struck means. More to come about that… 
Although, truth be told, Grandma did the lion's share of the laundry, partly because she is sooooo nice, and partly because it afforded her the opportunity to yap on her cell phone for a long time (probably to beg whoever would listen to get her out of this mess? Ha).It was mid-day by the time we finally rolled into downtown Cody, and we really just meandered through the shops and took in the Old West ambience – all in our cowboy hats, of course, a little bit of whistlin’ (we are just making Roy Rogers more and more proud by the day, I tell ya). Our favorite store was “The Custom Cowboy Shop.” You know, because we’re not going to regret walking around dressed in full cowboy gear when we get back to Ohio AT ALL! No, no… just kidding… we resisted all that business this time around. We just ended up with a few odds and ends to bring home as souvenirs…. but just the old stand-bys, like the new set of steak knives with branded handles and the western-themed wine charms (clearly no REAL cowboy is gonna take to the range without his trusty wine glass charms…?).
We had an early Prime Rib dinner at “The Irma”, the historica and famous restaurant / hotel founded by Buffalo Bill Cody and named after his daughter. It was something of a Back-to-the-Future moment, as we found ourselves being in the distinct minority with our modern-day style of dress… there were absolutely dozens of people walking around The Irma’s front porch and inside the restaurant dressed like they had just walked out of a movie starring Buffalo Bill himself. I knew I had to act fast to find out what was going on before Clark Griswold – not to be outdone - got it into his head to run us all back to that Custom Cowboy Shop to suit all of us up too.
So what WAS going on? There is an outdoor production of a legendary gunfight scene on the streets of Cody right outside of The Irma on most evenings during the summer, and we just happened to arrive on the scene just about 90 minutes before show time. This show is put on by volunteers from the Cody community to raise money for various charities, and they have also incorporated a segment at the beginning to teach children about the danger of firearms. At this point in my Cody experience, I was fairly certain that this “safety segment” was most likely inserted to appease those blasted worry-wart, east-of-the-Mississippi mothers who hold similarly over-reactive views to my own… you know those people who would prefer having a little warning before someone starts firing weaponry or unleashing livestock on their grade school children? It must be a pain catering to the pansy tourists in order to turn an honest buck…
After the show, we met with the cast for a bit, and then rolled out of town to begin our 90-mile trip to Yellowstone National Park. The entire drive was GORGEOUS, but sometimes mildly nerve-wracking in a very large, lumbering RV. Seatbelts or no seatbelts, there were just too many road signs indicating that the next curve in the road was in the shape of a “U”, where missing the turn meant rolling down a rocky incline to a certain death on or before the 25th full rotation of the RV. But, in spite of it all, everyone (but our driver, at some points) enjoyed the spectacular landscape – snow-capped mountains, rushing rivers, and driving down into the beautiful valley floors. We also saw some amazing ranches and the occasional teepee along the way, as well as a winery in TenSpoons, Wyoming – an interesting little town with a posted population of 304 which is also home to the TenSpoons Emporium, a fine institution which bragged by way of tattered wooden storefront sign that they were the fine purveyors of “More Odds than Ends.” And there we were with no time to shop…One really convenient thing about searching for wildlife while you make your way through Wyoming is that all you really have to look for is the cluster of cars pulled off from the road. You won’t see another car for miles and miles, and then all of the sudden you’ll see 3 or 4 and you just know that there’s probably something fairly close by that could rip your face off or something. And that’s exactly how we knew to pull off at one point, and get all the kids out of the RV to get a better look at whatever it was! LOL. What we had happened upon was a jet black, full grown moose (yes, a black one!) drinking from the other side of the stream. He was so beautiful! I don’t think anyone said a word for a full five minutes… we were just awe struck. Or at least we thought we were…
When we finally reached Yellowstone -- the destination we’ve been most anticipating since we began planning for this trip many years ago -- we learned just what awe struck means. More to come about that… 
Day 6: Breaking the 2000-Mile Mark and Making It to Wyoming!
We left Custer State Park, and South Dakota, first thing this morning – but not before waving to all the bison, deer and antelopes with which we’ve kind of become used to co-existing. From there we took the comparatively boring ride through Rapid City and then up to a planned stop at “Devil’s Tower” – a giant rock formation that was formed by magma that cooled before it reached the surface, and then was eventually pushed up hundreds of feet above the ground by some process I need to learn more about. Or not. Anyway, in my experience it looked like a much, much larger Zimmer Power Plant with a faux-bamboo decorative finish, which was then painted various shades of brown for a weathered look.
We stopped for lunch at a little KOA Restaurant / General Store just outside the entrance to Devil’s Tower National Monument, and were stopped on our way out by a couple of guys wearing shirts embroidered with “Wyoming Tourism” and standing near a van bearing the same insignia. They asked if they could take a picture of our adorable children for some of their promotional materials, and then proceeded to haul out their huge camera and tripod as we were both shrugging, “Sure.” In spite of the initial flattery, this experience was neither the harbinger for their modeling careers, nor an endorsement of the features of our gene pool…. They composed the shot by asking the kids to keep their cowboy hats on, line up tallest to shortest and then TURN AROUND to face Devil’s tower with one of them pointing up to it. Ha! So, not to brag butt, you may see the back sides of our 10-gallon-hat-wearing children at www.WyomingTourism.org. Regardless, they all hopped back in the RV thrilled with their fame and notoriety… so that’s all good…
Passing through the entrance gate to the Devil’s Tower National Monument was a bit of a surreal experience, as the first park ranger we encountered was as exaggeratedly friendly as he was quirky – so much so that I would have sworn that this one-front-toothed happy camper was actually Will Ferrell and we were unwittingly cast as some token extras in his next movie. We pulled away exchanging “does anybody know what just happened???”- looks amongst ourselves, and then pulled off to speak with the second park ranger once we spotted him to see if he could help us translate what the first guy was trying to tell us about parking our RV in his “teeny tiny parking lot” (his words). But, wouldn’t you know it, as this second guy began to answer us, I found myself having to resist the strong urge to crane my neck around to look for the candid cameras… With his authoritative Wyoming rancher manner of speaking, he started off with, “Well… this is how this is gonna work folks…” Again, Hollywood just doesn’t cast ANYTHING this well.
So we made it up to Devils Tower, and hiked all the way around the beautiful path encircling it. Because Devil’s Tower is a sacred place to Native Americans, we saw evidence of prayerful acts at various places along the path including colorful “prayer cloths” hanging from various trees and some tightly wrapped little bundles of herbs lying beneath them. We also counted 5 climbers making their way up the tower (with all manner of roping and related gear), but we were happy to continue on with our feet on the ground…. Looking for prairie dogs, admiring flowers, and asking lots of questions -- like whether the piece of bark one of us discovered was an ancient Native American arrowhead. The weather was perfectly sunny and comfortable, and so this nice long hike was the perfect break in what would otherwise be a long day of driving.
Plus, of course, yet another opportunity to earn a gold-toned plastic Jr. Ranger badge and Devil’s Tower patch! No, this concept is not wearing thin… Not even close.
And so then back in the RV we go to endure another 5 hour drive to Cody, Wyoming. Or so we thought. As soon as we turned on our GPS, we were disappointed to learn that it was in violent disagreement with the Google maps estimate of our drive time -- upping it from 5 hours to 7! Oh no! If that were the case, we would definitely miss the Cody Nite Rodeo!!! But we decided to persevere, nonetheless, in the hopes that Google happened to be the more accurate source of information.
Then we ended up hitting road construction a couple of different times on the way too -- doesn’t it just figure? And in Wyoming “road construction” means that you have to wait for the lead car that shuttles one lane to the guy standing guard with a stop sign on one end of the road work, and then back to the other stop-sign-wielding guy on the other side of it. We also found that, in some cases, you have to wait for the lead car driver to get out of the lead car, get her dog out of another truck, pet her dog a few times, exchange a few words with stop sign guy, put her dog in the lead car, and then do that back-and-forth thing to turn around that you would do if you were trying to turn around on a dead-end street in town… EXCEPT THAT YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE IN WYOMING!!! LOL. Seriously, you got room here, babe…. And turning around relatively efficiently would appear to be part of the job description here?
Then, wouldn’t you know it, a little more bad luck -- we hit foul weather. Shucks. Wind, rain, harder rain and more wind. Ugh! We’ll never make the rodeo now… Oh well.
But wait, somehow and someway, we found ourselves pulling into Cody, Wyoming at 7:43pm… just in time for the 8:pm rodeo extravaganza. Sweet… the GPS was way wrong. Giddy-up and grab those cowboy hats, kids, ‘cuz here we go! Sure, we may have been the only RV pulling into that parking lot on 2 wheels, with 4 kids jumping out of the back door before the gear shift was officially in “Park”… But gosh golly darn it, we made it! Yahoo!
The rodeo was much more authentic than we expected… definitely the real deal. Cowboys riding bucking broncos, calf lasso-ing and tying races (you start on your horse, lasso the calf and then jump down to tie the calf’s feet together), steer wrestling (again, start on that horse, but this time jump from your saddle directly onto the steer and bring ‘im down with ya), cowgirl barrel racing (horseback riding’s answer to slalom skiing), and last – but not least – bull riding (I seriously was fearful we were going to witness a stomped or gored cowboy… kind of a terrifying experience, really). These guys were awesome, and completely nuts! And they were real competitors with scores and standings in an official league and everything. Other indicia of authenticity included the vast acreage of livestock sectioned off into various “gated communities” around the arena, a press box with a professional commentator, a rodeo clown inside the arena who was continually interacting with the commentator, a grand stand of fans on both sides (but we sat in the “Buzzards Roost” where you could see the cowboys saddling up), and adorable young women wearing paper hats shaped to look just like popcorn containers marching and calling up and down the grand stands to sell food and drinks to the fans. The fans, on the other hand, were either equally authentic looking or, well, looked like us.
So the rodeo clown. Who takes him seriously, right? He’s goof-balling it up all night long, and then about half-way through the rodeo he invites all of the children in the stands between the ages of 6 and 12 (which covers the full range of ages of the Hieatt buckaroos) to come down to the arena floor to have a look. OK, what a great opportunity, right? So, like all the rest of them, our kids excitedly run down there. Then, the next thing we hear that crazy little rodeo clown say is that they are going to release three calves into the ring with them, that these calves will have red little bows tied to their tails, AND that the kids should try to catch up to one of the calves and grab that little red bow to win a prize. Very funny…. Ha! I just sat back and waited for all of the kids to believe him, and just run back out of the arena…
Oh, but wait! Here come the calves… What?!!!! Why do they look so big all of the sudden, and why are they charging at my children… kids who have never been to the library without first having to have a permission slip signed by me? Wow, these people really are crazy!!! I’m learning the hard way that people who risk being stomped on and gored senseless by angry bulls on a daily basis just don’t have it in their DNA to be afraid of silly little things like lawyers and their propensity to sue you when you maim their children. Oh my!
So the 50 kids and 3 calves created a complete melee in the arena, but it was all over inside a minute when a little girl dressed very much like one of my own started sprinting up to that rodeo clown with one of the coveted red ribbons in her hand. And the next thing I know, she’s holding the clown’s microphone and introducing herself, “I’m Emily Hieatt, and I’m from Ohio!” What?!!!! And with that, my second born is handsomely congratulated for winning the be-the-first-to-grab-a-red-bow-off-of-the-tail-of-a-charging-calf contest, and is presented with her big winnings…. Gift certificates for a Dairy Queen sundae and a free horse ride (which by now I’m just assuming will be on one of those bucking bronco ones… because, heck, it’s not like she’s still in diapers, right?).
Minutes later all of the kids are back in the grandstand, unscathed and completely exuberant about the “Big Win”, so it’s just the most exciting thing ever! Time to celebrate! There’s just nothing quite like being officially named the best cowgirl out at the rodeo on your first night in the great state of Wyoming. Awesome!!!!
We stopped for lunch at a little KOA Restaurant / General Store just outside the entrance to Devil’s Tower National Monument, and were stopped on our way out by a couple of guys wearing shirts embroidered with “Wyoming Tourism” and standing near a van bearing the same insignia. They asked if they could take a picture of our adorable children for some of their promotional materials, and then proceeded to haul out their huge camera and tripod as we were both shrugging, “Sure.” In spite of the initial flattery, this experience was neither the harbinger for their modeling careers, nor an endorsement of the features of our gene pool…. They composed the shot by asking the kids to keep their cowboy hats on, line up tallest to shortest and then TURN AROUND to face Devil’s tower with one of them pointing up to it. Ha! So, not to brag butt, you may see the back sides of our 10-gallon-hat-wearing children at www.WyomingTourism.org. Regardless, they all hopped back in the RV thrilled with their fame and notoriety… so that’s all good…
Passing through the entrance gate to the Devil’s Tower National Monument was a bit of a surreal experience, as the first park ranger we encountered was as exaggeratedly friendly as he was quirky – so much so that I would have sworn that this one-front-toothed happy camper was actually Will Ferrell and we were unwittingly cast as some token extras in his next movie. We pulled away exchanging “does anybody know what just happened???”- looks amongst ourselves, and then pulled off to speak with the second park ranger once we spotted him to see if he could help us translate what the first guy was trying to tell us about parking our RV in his “teeny tiny parking lot” (his words). But, wouldn’t you know it, as this second guy began to answer us, I found myself having to resist the strong urge to crane my neck around to look for the candid cameras… With his authoritative Wyoming rancher manner of speaking, he started off with, “Well… this is how this is gonna work folks…” Again, Hollywood just doesn’t cast ANYTHING this well.
So we made it up to Devils Tower, and hiked all the way around the beautiful path encircling it. Because Devil’s Tower is a sacred place to Native Americans, we saw evidence of prayerful acts at various places along the path including colorful “prayer cloths” hanging from various trees and some tightly wrapped little bundles of herbs lying beneath them. We also counted 5 climbers making their way up the tower (with all manner of roping and related gear), but we were happy to continue on with our feet on the ground…. Looking for prairie dogs, admiring flowers, and asking lots of questions -- like whether the piece of bark one of us discovered was an ancient Native American arrowhead. The weather was perfectly sunny and comfortable, and so this nice long hike was the perfect break in what would otherwise be a long day of driving.
Plus, of course, yet another opportunity to earn a gold-toned plastic Jr. Ranger badge and Devil’s Tower patch! No, this concept is not wearing thin… Not even close.And so then back in the RV we go to endure another 5 hour drive to Cody, Wyoming. Or so we thought. As soon as we turned on our GPS, we were disappointed to learn that it was in violent disagreement with the Google maps estimate of our drive time -- upping it from 5 hours to 7! Oh no! If that were the case, we would definitely miss the Cody Nite Rodeo!!! But we decided to persevere, nonetheless, in the hopes that Google happened to be the more accurate source of information.
Then we ended up hitting road construction a couple of different times on the way too -- doesn’t it just figure? And in Wyoming “road construction” means that you have to wait for the lead car that shuttles one lane to the guy standing guard with a stop sign on one end of the road work, and then back to the other stop-sign-wielding guy on the other side of it. We also found that, in some cases, you have to wait for the lead car driver to get out of the lead car, get her dog out of another truck, pet her dog a few times, exchange a few words with stop sign guy, put her dog in the lead car, and then do that back-and-forth thing to turn around that you would do if you were trying to turn around on a dead-end street in town… EXCEPT THAT YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE IN WYOMING!!! LOL. Seriously, you got room here, babe…. And turning around relatively efficiently would appear to be part of the job description here?
Then, wouldn’t you know it, a little more bad luck -- we hit foul weather. Shucks. Wind, rain, harder rain and more wind. Ugh! We’ll never make the rodeo now… Oh well.
But wait, somehow and someway, we found ourselves pulling into Cody, Wyoming at 7:43pm… just in time for the 8:pm rodeo extravaganza. Sweet… the GPS was way wrong. Giddy-up and grab those cowboy hats, kids, ‘cuz here we go! Sure, we may have been the only RV pulling into that parking lot on 2 wheels, with 4 kids jumping out of the back door before the gear shift was officially in “Park”… But gosh golly darn it, we made it! Yahoo!
The rodeo was much more authentic than we expected… definitely the real deal. Cowboys riding bucking broncos, calf lasso-ing and tying races (you start on your horse, lasso the calf and then jump down to tie the calf’s feet together), steer wrestling (again, start on that horse, but this time jump from your saddle directly onto the steer and bring ‘im down with ya), cowgirl barrel racing (horseback riding’s answer to slalom skiing), and last – but not least – bull riding (I seriously was fearful we were going to witness a stomped or gored cowboy… kind of a terrifying experience, really). These guys were awesome, and completely nuts! And they were real competitors with scores and standings in an official league and everything. Other indicia of authenticity included the vast acreage of livestock sectioned off into various “gated communities” around the arena, a press box with a professional commentator, a rodeo clown inside the arena who was continually interacting with the commentator, a grand stand of fans on both sides (but we sat in the “Buzzards Roost” where you could see the cowboys saddling up), and adorable young women wearing paper hats shaped to look just like popcorn containers marching and calling up and down the grand stands to sell food and drinks to the fans. The fans, on the other hand, were either equally authentic looking or, well, looked like us. So the rodeo clown. Who takes him seriously, right? He’s goof-balling it up all night long, and then about half-way through the rodeo he invites all of the children in the stands between the ages of 6 and 12 (which covers the full range of ages of the Hieatt buckaroos) to come down to the arena floor to have a look. OK, what a great opportunity, right? So, like all the rest of them, our kids excitedly run down there. Then, the next thing we hear that crazy little rodeo clown say is that they are going to release three calves into the ring with them, that these calves will have red little bows tied to their tails, AND that the kids should try to catch up to one of the calves and grab that little red bow to win a prize. Very funny…. Ha! I just sat back and waited for all of the kids to believe him, and just run back out of the arena…
Oh, but wait! Here come the calves… What?!!!! Why do they look so big all of the sudden, and why are they charging at my children… kids who have never been to the library without first having to have a permission slip signed by me? Wow, these people really are crazy!!! I’m learning the hard way that people who risk being stomped on and gored senseless by angry bulls on a daily basis just don’t have it in their DNA to be afraid of silly little things like lawyers and their propensity to sue you when you maim their children. Oh my!
So the 50 kids and 3 calves created a complete melee in the arena, but it was all over inside a minute when a little girl dressed very much like one of my own started sprinting up to that rodeo clown with one of the coveted red ribbons in her hand. And the next thing I know, she’s holding the clown’s microphone and introducing herself, “I’m Emily Hieatt, and I’m from Ohio!” What?!!!! And with that, my second born is handsomely congratulated for winning the be-the-first-to-grab-a-red-bow-off-of-the-tail-of-a-charging-calf contest, and is presented with her big winnings…. Gift certificates for a Dairy Queen sundae and a free horse ride (which by now I’m just assuming will be on one of those bucking bronco ones… because, heck, it’s not like she’s still in diapers, right?). 
Minutes later all of the kids are back in the grandstand, unscathed and completely exuberant about the “Big Win”, so it’s just the most exciting thing ever! Time to celebrate! There’s just nothing quite like being officially named the best cowgirl out at the rodeo on your first night in the great state of Wyoming. Awesome!!!!
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Day 5: Still in Custer State Park, South Dakota
Today began with a long horseback ride on a fairly challenging course through Custer State Park -- up rocky inclines, crossing streams (sorry…. “cricks”), and following some narrow, rugged paths on hillsides as well. But it was breathtakingly beautiful… what a fantastic place!
In order of largest to smallest (both as to horse and rider), our horses were named Chango, Prince, Tasheena, Hershey, Snazzy and Glory. Our guide was a very sweet Montana State student, with great stories of her seasonal job here at the park and a gorgeous regal-looking horse…. that also happened to be very gassy (the horse, that is, not our guide). Although she was a wealth of information on the park and horse-riding in general, even the most brilliant of statements tends to lose all effect when punctuated with a robust, tail-in-the-air horse fart. You’ll just have to trust me on that… Giggle. And this must have happened to her at least a dozen times! After the ride, we walked back to our campsite and readied ourselves for a repeat visit to Mt. Rushmore, albeit by a less complex route. We had debated whether or not we should return, since we had seen it under lights the night before, but as it turns out we were all very glad that we did. We hiked the “Presidential Trail” and ended up joining an interesting ranger-led tour that had just began, and we made it to the Sculptor’s Gallery – among other things - where we learned two very interesting facts.
First, the original plans for Mt. Rushmore were to have the torso of each of Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln carved into the mountain as well, with Roosevelt looking on over the shoulders of Jefferson and Lincoln. And second, that there is a “secret” room that was built behind Lincoln’s head to store important national documents. You know, the ones that are probably all easily accessible on-line now? LOL. Nice try Mr-Cloak-and-Dagger-secret-room-builder-guy! Then we rounded out the rest of our hike around Mt. Rushmore, and took in one last view of the fab four while the kids huddled over their Jr. Ranger books to compare notes and make sure that they would all earn the certifying signature of the park ranger on the back page of that book… and thereby obtain the coveted gold-toned plastic Jr. Ranger badge and Mt. Rushmore patch!
We drove into the town of Custer for dinner, choosing the steak and ribs place on the corner of Mt. Rushmore Road and 6th Street. The building housing this restaurant, built in 1881, is on the National Register of Historic Places and was originally the First National Bank of the Dakota Territory (established 8 years before South Dakota was a state). It was just a few doors down from a Sheriff’s office that looked like it was plucked directly out of a Western movie, and right across the street from, quite simply, the “Saloon” – complete with it’s distressed-wood front porch, shoulder-to-knee free swinging double doors, and Pabst Blue Ribbon sign swinging with a mildly eerie cr-e-e-e-e-eek in the evening breeze. The restaurant also had a beautifully-carved wood counter nestled in one of the corners, which they had converted into a coffee bar licensed by Starbucks… what a shame1 So, in protest, we all ordered our after-dinner Venti Nonfat Lattes and got out of Dodge. Yeah, that’ll show ‘em….
The evening ended with a roaring campfire, the heavy consumption of S’mores, and a dramatic reading of several campfire stories which were heavy on one-eyed monster chases, talking snakes and spooky Native American legends (but which were all carefully selected pre-trip to end with a surprisingly humorous twist at the end, so as to avoid sharing our bed with 3 or 4 extras).
Tonight we all go to bed, happy with the fact that the weather has been so perfect throughout our entire stay so far that we’ve used neither the furnace nor the air conditioning the entire time… and tonight will be no different. Good night!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Day 4: Custer State Park, a Birthday Balloon and an Evening at Mt. Rushmore
The 2 hour drive to Custer State Park after our mid-day hike up some of the steepest inclines of the Badlands was a welcome resting period – particularly for the adults, as you might imagine. And, once there, we had a fantastic introduction to the park as we drove to our campsite via the “Wildlife Trail,” which certainly lived up to its name! Huge herds of buffalo were roaming across vast fields, and then teams of them (and their galloping young) were crossing right in front and all around our car at one point. Wild horses, donkeys and llama were walking up to cars and sticking their heads in open windows for food, which afforded us the opportunity to learn the art of feeding a few of the donkeys with open palms well-extended from the RV window. And, wouldn’t you know it, too many deer and antelope to count were prancing all over the place, which meant that our own Clark Griswold was able to make good use of having reinforced the lyrics of “Home On the Range” to the children just the evening before. We ended our drive through the park at a horse stable that also happened to serve as the entrance to the park campground – our home address for the next two days. We set up camp (OK, so we just hooked up our electric), built a campfire, encircled it with our chairs, and cooked some burgers, wienies, corn on the cob, baked beans and S’mores – some directly over the campfire and some on Grandma’s camping grill. Then we had to make sure that the fun wrapped up a bit earlier for the kids today, because….
We sang “Happy Birthday” to Katie first thing this morning (6:30am in South Dakota, although it still kind of felt like 8:30am to some of us?) on a spectacular hot air balloon ride. It really was beyond-words amazing! Walter, the particularly skillful pilot of our balloon, couldn’t have been better cast by Hollywood - with his dry wit, comfortable draw, cowboy attire and no-nonsense approach to all this business. And he REALLY knew what he was doing! He took us to heights exceeding 1,000 feet, and then brushed our basket across treetops so that we could reach out and pick pine cones from them. He identified all the mountain ranges, and pointed out which ones were actually in other states - Nebraska and Wyoming. He pointed out a single tree among the thousands that he noticed was on fire, and quickly called it in to the rangers with some pretty impressive directional precision (although I suppose any direction would have appeared amazingly precise to a woman who had no idea from where and to where she happened to be floating?). He navigated us directly toward a huge rock structure, and elevated us slowly upward so that we were eye-to-eye with it and then, hovering, and almost sitting right on top of it! Although he had instilled a great deal of confidence in his ability to pilot this craft by then, I can’t deny that this particular rock structure maneuver was as terrifying to me as it was thrilling…. And my thoughts kept cycling through the dis-connected mantra of “He really knows how to do this!!! I hope he really knows how to do this?!!!” while I kept a forced smile of calm on my face for the kids… LOL! Exhilarating!
The balloon landing was much gentler than I had imagined it ever could be (perhaps partly because he had trained us in the “windy landing position” before we left – which I assume is the kindler, gentler term for “crash landing”?). Soft or not, however, the landing itself was adventurous in and of itself. Although a balloon pilot can control the height of the balloon, he has precious little control over the course the balloon takes and where it will ultimately land – that’s up to the wind. Our first intended site for landing had some electrical wires across it, so back up into the air we went to look for another! The second intended sight looked like the perfect spot (a wide open field with a road within reasonable distance), and so down we went. As we came in past the tree line, however, a herd of cattle began running across the field -- presumably fearful of this loud, colorful blob moving in on their pasture. Our pilot wasn’t at all concerned, and put us down easily in the soft, wet grass while at least 60 cows that had accumulated in the far corner of the pasture stared us down like we had just arrived at their black tie dinner in Led Zeppelin t-shirts and ripped jeans. But there we sat, eye-to-eye with all that bovine goodness, while Steve jumped out of the basket to help guide the balloon over the barbed wire fence by rope in order to separate us from the cattle while we waited for the crew to find us and return us to our home on wheels.. While waiting, our pilot mentioned that he hoped our landing had not agitated the rancher who may be one of those types who are inclined to threaten us off of his property with a shotgun. Sweet, right? As it turns out, the road was a private lane with a locked gate about a half-mile away, so we had to hike it to the gate to meet the crew and get back. God only knows how they got that balloon out of that pasture sometime later today!
We wrapped up the experience by receiving certificates for being “Aerostatic Adventurers” over mimosas for the adults, orange juice for the kids and light breakfast fare otherwise. This little ceremony occurred at a picnic shelter at the random meeting point the balloon company had established to begin this adventure…. A Flintstone-themed campground which was VERY heavy on theme, with every character represented and every building looking like it was made of boulders, or purple fur with rough-edged white spots, or the like. But, interestingly enough, I learned that Steve had actually camped here with his family when he as little! Ha! Pretty funny….
The birthday girl directed the rest of our day from there, which included hitting a local bakery for her Oreo cookie cake, purchasing a book of real “Wanted Dead of Alive” posters from the days of the Old West, and then going back to the campsite for some R&R before going on to a nice dinner. Most of us had buffalo for dinner, straight from the herds of Custer State Park… those heartless children of mine, right?! Ha!
After dinner we went on to Mt. Rushmore for the 9:pm show at sunset and to see it lit up after dark. We trusted the GPS to lead us there efficiently, but it took us through the horse trail path up there if I’ve ever seen one! Several hairpin turns, some pigtail turns (that’s a new one on me!), three one-way tunnels cut out of the mountain rock and then just generalized winding, back-and-forth all the way up the mountain…. In short, it was like driving an RV through a set of small intestines with a 10’6” diameter. Not a lot of room for error! But the destination, of course, was inspiring to say the least. We watched a movie highlighting George, Tom, Abe and Teddy, saw their 60’ likenesses lit up, and sang “America the Beautiful” and the national anthem with the hundreds of others in attendance. I was proud of how “into it” all of the kids were, particularly since we had pushed them so hard by getting them up before the crack of dawn and winding down at Mt. Rushmore at 10:pm.
So now, after a fantastic day and some late night birthday cake, I’ve fully updated you and am finally signing off!
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