Category: Uncategorized

Day 47

          “Good Morning Class, Today’s lesson is about Miss Geology and our new best friend, Mr. Erosion.”

          “Aww, com’on Teach! We’re sick of all these lessons! Just give us a free period so we can play video games!”

          “No can-do kids…. But I do promise that the accompanying photos will make any video game pale in comparison!”

          Silence.

          I know that I’ve used the word “otherworldly” before and there is a part of me that hesitates to use it again, but sometimes it’s the perfect adjective to describe a scene.

          Bryce Canyon National Park is just that.

          Bryce Canyon National Park is located in Utah just north of Zion National Park. Utah seems to have the enviable position of the Star State of National Parks….. there are still many left that we may need to save for another trip.

          Bryce Canyon is not really a canyon in geological terms, but more of an amphitheater as you can see by the photos. There really is no other opposing side of the “canyon”. It has been a National Park since 1928 and is named for Mr. Bryce, a Mormon settler who homesteaded the area back in 1874. It is also quite small in comparison to its neighbors at a mere fifty-five square miles. But what it lacks in size is more that made up for in grandeur.

          So now we get into the meat of the lesson!

          Once upon a time there was a giant ocean that covered the area. There were lots of little critters (diatoms, where diatomaceous earth comes from) that eventually croaked and fell to the seafloor. Add in a bunch of other sedimentary minerals that deposited themselves on this seafloor, stir in millions and millions of years and then wait for the baking process to begin. Eventually the seas receded leaving all of the sediment behind. The playground bully, Mr. Gravity, added his weight and helped compress all of this into more solid alluvial layers, each with their own special color and characteristics. Some were softer than others which added lots of drama in the coming years as they all started to wear away at different rates!

          This is where we meet our new best friend, the aforementioned Mr. Erosion. Without him and his handiwork, we would never be able to see all of these layers that have waited so long to put on a show for us. Mr. Erosion not only uses rainwater to his benefit, but he also uses the freeze/thaw process to his advantage as this really speeds up his work by having chunks of material fall away a little more quickly. (Think potholes in the road suddenly appearing out of nowhere!)

          This evolution of the land here is still in this progression of wearing it all away right before our eyes. Well, maybe we will be lucky enough to witness a large collapse of his work, but in reality the place looks pretty much the same as it did when we first saw it.

          It takes a long, long, time for this recipe to finish.

          We hiked along the Rim Trail here. The elevation averages about 8300 feet above sea level, which makes breathing a tad difficult if you are flatlanders like we are. Except if you’ve been in the area, and at elevation for a while (like we have been). We are not acclimatized enough to try Mount Everest yet, but we have noticed a marked difference since the beginning of our stays at the elevated Parks. It’s a good thing because you would not want to experience any sort of oxygen-related dizziness as you walk along this ledge. The ever-present Mr. Vertigo provides enough of that already!

          As we walked along, I noticed several peculiar trees that dotted this somewhat harsh environment, especially right along the edges. I’ve never seen a Bristlecone Pine, but I’ve always wanted to see one in person. So, after checking it out and finding that these longest-living things on our planet do, in fact, live here, I am proud to show you an example of these marvelous non-sentient living beings!

          These troopers here at Bryce average about a thousand years old, and the oldest is approximately 1600 years. This pales in comparison to the oldest living thing on our fine planet, which is a Bristlecone Pine, that lives near the border of California and Nevada in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This particular tree has been named the Methuselah Tree and for a good reason, as it is over 4650 years old!

          I am pleased to report that our dinner plans with our new friends Sherry and Scott did come to fruition. We had a very nice time catching up on family news that we did not know that we even needed just a little over 24 hours ago. We’ve been doing this vagabond lifestyle for about two years now and have never really met anyone else except the folks that park next to us in any random RV park along the way. It’s always a short, nice conversation, but nothing more. I hear about others that go to RV group functions, or meet up with other people who travel around, not necessarily full time, but at least this is their preferred leisure time activity, and have these far-flung relationships. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to meet some others that could become genuine friends, even though you live thousands of miles apart.

          I believe that I can say that we now know what that feels like, and we could not be happier to include Sherry and Scott in our group of extremely fine friends.

          Nicely, I believe that the feeling is mutual  😊

                    Class dismissed.

Day 46

          Zion is one of the Biggies in the National Park Service. It’s one that everyone has heard about and for good reason. Established way back in 1919, this place is almost 230 square miles, which at #36, puts it almost right in the middle of the list of National Parks ranked by size. What we have discovered so far, is that when it comes to National Parks, size is probably the least of the features of a Park that make it important.

          It’s what a particular area contains.

          And Zion is no slouch in that department.

          Much like Yosemite, a lot of what is here is confined in one central valley that is about 15 miles long and has walls up to 2600 feet high. That awesome reddish color that you see in the photos is Navajo Sandstone, which because of its makeup, allows water and wind to sculpt it as they see fit which is usually pretty grand. Mother Nature does not waste her efforts or talents on puny things when it comes to carving out special places for us to visit.

You may know Navajo Sandstone by another popular name, Red Rock. This name (or marketing term) is used all around the four-Corners Region and is so popular that most of the National Parks in this area have it as a prominent feature. That is a good thing because we never get tired of seeing it on display in all of the canyons and buttes in this vast region. Couple that reddish color with other sedimentary layers with different colors, and we have the recipe for all of the banded layers that contrast with each other so nicely. I guess Mother Nature is an artist too!

          Zion is the first Park that we have visited that has made using a shuttle system mandatory in the most congested parts of the Park, namely that 15-mile-long valley. It is easy to see how horrific the traffic would be if we were all allowed to drive up and down the valley trying to get to the trailheads or other features of the Park. The nightmare is that there is no place to put parking without seriously impacting the area, so this shuttle system was the answer to the growing problem (?) of its popularity.

          And we are here to report that this system works just fine.

          If…… you get there early!

          The first shuttles start at 7AM. There is a limited amount of parking available at the Visitor’s Center inside the Park. After that the overflow parking is in the little town of Springdale, which is located just outside the Entrance. A shuttle system that links these other parking areas with the Visitor’s Center is provided for free. That’s nice, but it means that you need to wait for a shuttle to bring you to another shuttle that eventually gets you to where you want to go in the Park.

          Messy, but if you come here you would also agree that it is necessary.

          Luckily for us, we (well, maybe me) LOVE to get up early! Anyway, we were successful in arriving in time to get on the first set of shuttles along with several hundred of our best friends.

          We have also come to realize that these Parks are so vast that if you do come at the right times of both the day and season, the Park has the capacity, and appetite, to swallow the hordes of us visitors and digest us nicely.

          Just make sure that you arrive at a good time so that you too can be a tasty snack!

          We (Paula) did some homework, and after looking over the available hikes to prominent features, came up with a good one for us.         This process is aided by the descriptions of the trails that the Park Service provides. We have come to understand the adjectives and other descriptives that they use.

          Easy is just that,

          Moderate means that there will be elevation gain and loss, so you may want to bring your Lekki Poles along for assistance.

          Strenuous is one that we stay away from. It is Verboten! One of those trails here is to Angel’s Landing. I’m guessing that it is named this for the spectacular vistas laid out before you if you are successful in navigating your way there. This hike encompasses a traverse of a thin ledge carved into the side of a vertical cliff with no guardrails. They have thoughtfully adhered some chains to the walls along the way for you to hold onto, but there is only one way both in and out so that means two-way traffic which means that someone has to let go of said chains in order to pass the other person. I suspect that it may be named Angel’s Landing because over the past twenty years or so, fourteen people have needed the assistance of their Guardian Angels but even those guys failed to prevent tragedy.

          We picked a nice hike to some safely named destinations of the Emerald Pools. What can go wrong with such a nicely named objective?

          Well, nothing did go wrong, in fact, it went rather nicely! The trails to the Lower, Middle, and Upper Pools were about three miles long and were clearly marked and in some areas, steps had been carved into the famous Navajo Sandstone for us to use. We also happened upon another couple, who for some reason or another, we struck up small conversations with as we passed each other on the trail. We finally ended up hiking with Sherry and Scott the rest of the way. We were of similar abilities and desires of non-scary scenarios which made them perfect travelling companions. In fact, we got along so well that we exchanged contact info at the end because they were on their way to Bryce Canyon the next day (as we were too). We invited them over to our Dining Room on Wheels for dinner and if everything falls into place, that is what will happen.

          Scott likes Chocolate (yay!) so desert is a chinch!

          When you start out hiking at 7 AM in deep canyons the light of the sun does not reach down inside until a little later. This means that it is both chilly and not the best scenario for photographs. It is comforting for both of these situations as the sun creeps down the canyon walls and makes a dramatic difference in a positive way.

          After our hike we drove through a mile-long tunnel to the other side of the Park trying to gain access to an Overlook Trail. Remember that parking issue from before? Well, couple thin roads, windy turns, and all of those best friends from the morning all having same idea and we end up with nowhere to park. We did have a nice ride both ways through this tunnel that was carved out in 1930, but absolutely no chance of that hike.

          We ended up checking with our next Campground at Bryce Canyon and found out that we could get in a day early, so we packed up and headed out over some fairly spectacular (and scary driving) mountains that someone placed in our way.

          See example!

          Today is Bryce Canyon, another fine example of what Utah has to offer. Stay tuned,

Day 45

          It’s been 45 days since we departed Texas Home Base.

          It seems like 450.

          If that sounds like a complaint, I can assure you that it is not!

           I think that it’s just that we’ve crammed so much travel into this stretch that our little Planet Winnebago has entered its own time-warp. Which is just fine…… we’re retired and really don’t care what day it is and, in fact, we’re so old we don’t remember either! I know for a fact that yesterday was Saturday because the Walmart of Hurricane,(Yes, Hurricane) Utah was filled to capacity when we arrived. It’s just something that we’ve come to be able to analyze quantitatively. This is also one of the Walmart’s that has posted signs about No Overnight Parking. We did call a day ahead and when I asked the young lady who answered the phone if they allowed RVs to park overnight she replied, “No, not really but if you park as far away from the building as possible no one will bother you.”

          We are testing that theorem tonight and as I write this (4 AM, Mountain Daylight Time) two police cars have just pulled into the parking lot and have stopped about twenty yards away from us.            Report to follow.

          Back to the narrative. I am sure that you have heard the  old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.” Case in point…. not just two days ago we were leaving the snowbound northern nether regions for warmer and sunnier climes.

          Success! ☹ It got to freakin’ 92 degrees yesterday!

          We needed to run the generator for a bunch of hours so that we could keep the AC running. Walmart does not have full hook-ups in their lots! It was actually hotter here than back in Texas…. the place we vacated before it got to be Hadestown. That other old adage, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity” is mostly true. Back in Texas the humidity hovers around 3017% and here in southern Utah it is 23%.

           Ahhhh, the comfort of it all!

          Our plan for the day was to visit a very small section of Zion National Park. This area, Kolob Canyons, is only accessible by its own entrance in the northwest part of the Park, so it does not get the same amount of visitors that the much larger Zion Valley gets. The road into Kolob is only five miles long but it goes past some spectacular scenery and its easy to see how this area got annexed to the Park. As you can see by the photos, we are back to our originally mandated 15 on a 1 to 10 scale of weather.

          Since this adventure was somewhat reduced by the fact that the Park is that small, we took advantage of our extra time to get things ship-shape as it were. Both the car and the motorhome kind of get trashed when we’re just running from place to place and we’re not in a position to be able to stop, empty everything out, and re-pack it nicely. Thankfully, yesterday was one of those days, it was sorely needed.

News Flash…. the Police departed without a word. 🙂

          Another thing that was needed was to give Miss Biggie a bath. This is something that I normally do by myself armed with a large micro-fiber washing mop and a hose. Most campgrounds and all Walmart’s frown on this practice. So, after all that time (the 45 days) and all that inclement weather we drove through, our baby looked like it was owned by some ne’er-do-wells.  The solution was to visit a Truck Wash. These places are huge drive-through garages with about ten guys armed with large brushes and power-washers on steroids. We’ve only done this once before and that was down in Tucson. That experience was fine until as we exited, all shiny and clean, a Haboob Warning went off and the daily dust storm swept our way aiming itself directly for us and our still wet motorhome.

          It was not a pretty sight when she got through with us! Luckily, downtown Salt Lake City does not schedule dust storms on a daily basis!

          On to the main part of Zion today!

Day 43

          The world is filled with different religions and faiths that obviously do not all agree with each other. That may be the one underlying fact that requires itself to be true. Opinions about all of these different worship assemblies is not what this is about. Opinions vary, as they should, but there may be one universally held belief and that is that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir can sing!

          We found ourselves in Salt Lake City after about a six-hour drive down from West Yellowstone. Our original plan was to head north, and east, through Montana and the Dakotas, eventually emerging in Minnesota, with designs on Mackinaw Island and Michigan.

          Well, as we found out, Winter releases her grip on that region very reluctantly and so that we need not live our traveling lives in fear of repeating our ordeal of the Great Texas Icemegeddon of 2021, we elected to be prudent and point the nose of our six-wheeled rolling house southward.

          When we figured out that Salt Lake City was going to be on our new itinerary, I did what any good Cruise Director would do and came up with Excursions for the passengers (us) to enjoy while in Port! With a little help from Miss Google, I found out that the Choir practices every Thursday night at 7:30 PM.

          And the public is invited to observe!

          Well good-golly-gee! Guess where we would be at that time?

          After trying to find our way out of the parking garage and get pointed in the general direction of where we needed to go, we found ourselves on a self-inflicted tour of the local streets. It was fine, we needed to get our steps in any way!

          We finally located the correct building, which happened to be the actual Tabernacle. There are three main buildings on Temple Square, The Temple itself, the Meeting House, and the Tabernacle. Each one of these buildings has a semi-specific purpose, but their duties can overlap as needed.

          We followed the incredible sound of the grand organ, layered with harmonious voices, that was washing out of an open door. Upon entering we were greeted warmly and invited to stay and watch (and listen!) to the Choir practice.   

          We were not alone! Apparently this is a very popular activity on a Thursday evening. I don’t know how any of our fellow listeners were  like us, but the place was quite busy as folks came and went with regularity while we were there. I probably should have taken more photos but even though we had permission to do so, I felt it was a little sacrilegious to be a card-carrying tourist.

          I am quite sure that all of you have heard of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, but you may not have actually heard them. I am so far from being knowledgeable enough to expound on the technical aspects of this performance, but I am also quite sure that it probably does not get any better!

          There are 360 members of the Choir and an additional 110 members of the Orchestra. Membership is by audition which is why I will never be invited to join! Aside from having no musical talent, (I can only play the radio) I am too old.

          If chosen, one may be a member for twenty years or until you turn sixty-years old, so that leaves me out!

          So, why sixty?

          Apparently back in the 1970’s there was a need to revamp and revitalize this traditional group. After a lot of discussion, it was decided that a term of twenty years and maximum age of sixty would help stem the growing emotional decision of when to say when.

          All these years later is has been proven that this policy is hugely successful and popular. It takes the emotion out of the decisions, and it keeps a steady stream of applicants vying for the honor to replace the retiring members.

          Oh, and by the way, none of the choir or orchestra is compensated for their participation. The budget for the two entities is entirely supported by their CD and other media sales.

          We sat enraptured as we listened to both the Choir and Orchestra practice for the upcoming Sunday Service.

           Goosebumps were not required to listen, but they happily showed up anyway!

Day 42

          Our last day in Yellowstone was a huge success even though we picked the slowest lane at the Entry Gate of the Park. This was our third time driving into the Park and each of the previous days we were able to drive right up to the Ranger, show our Old Guys Forever-Pass, exchange pleasantries, and be on our way.  This time was different and maybe it had something to do with the improving weather situation. I guess folks decided to press the GO button and take advantage of the somewhat warmer and sunnier forecast. We thought that we were in trouble and that there was going to be the proverbial wall-to-wall stands of multitudes of shuffling tourons taking selfies, clogging up the works.

          We were wrong.

          This place is so immense that the amount of people flowing into the Park at this time of year gets easily swallowed up by all of the places (and vast distances between them) that it hardly registered as anything but a minor delay when we went to take our selfies!

          Our goals for the day were to finish up with our visits to the remaining places in the Park that were open at this time of year. There are still a few roads and destinations that will not be open for a few weeks. Elevation plays a key role here when it comes to snow cover and how long it hangs around. We already started at over 6000’ of elevation back in West Yellowstone and this slyly gets shifted to the background as the roads in the Park gradually got us up to over 8000’ above sea level.

          And we were still relatively flat!

          We were not on top of a mountain!

          But all of the evidence of what lies below here, the hot springs, thermal vents, and geysers, were still all around us and were constantly a reminder that the Volcano could blow its stack at any minute!

          Mind you, a minute in Geological Time is equal to several hundred thousand years of our time  😊

          One of the more awe-inspiring views in the Park (or anywhere for that matter) is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. It’s too bad that the nomenclature of “Grand Canyon” gets used here. To us, this canyon deserved its own identity as no matter where you looked, upstream or downstream, the view was nothing short of magnificent all in its own right. But someone before us named this geological formation, so that’s what we’re stuck with.

          But it is a canyon, and it is grand, and it is the Yellowstone River, so…..

          Anyway, there are two falls in this section, and I think that the same guy with no imagination named these also. We have here, for your inspection, some fine photographic examples of …….

          The Upper Falls and the Lower Falls. (Sigh)

          Someone needs to take a class in Creative Marketing!

          After spending a lot of time going back and forth across the River to get to all of the Vantage Points on the map (and never being disappointed) we left the Falls area and went about forty miles north to get to Mammoth Hot Springs. This area is not named for some woolly elephant-like creature that may have roamed here; it is named this because that adjective aptly describes what we encountered here.

          A series of hot springs so tall that it rises several hundred feet above the floor of the valley in which it is situated. It required a labyrinth of stairs, steps, ramps, and railings, that wound around and through the steaming and bubbling watercourses. The colors were vivid and the steps and terraces that have been formed over the millennia rival the most magnificent fountains found in any palace, anywhere!

          The last place we visited was the Norris Basin Geysers. This area is constantly shifting and the geysers within it, (there are well over fifty) wax and wane with no regularity whatsoever. They are completely dependent on the ebb and flow of ground water and the underground thermal features of the moment. The most active one shown here sounded like the roar of a jet engine as it spewed its boiling, steamy water out of a narrow slit of a crevasse which only heightened the pressure behind it, creating that distinctive sound.

          On the way back to West Yellowstone (about fifty miles away) we were thankful that this end of the Park did not have the amount of Bison that were encountered the previous two days. It felt rather odd not wanting to cross paths (literally) with these furry beasts. I don’t want to say, “Seen one, seen ’em all”, but they do tend to cause massive traffic jams on the roads here. I know that its better than a Construction Delay, but when you are trying to fit far-flung destinations into a finite time period, well, I hope that you get my drift.

          But we did come upon a slowdown caused by an unknown spottage of something as yet to be determined. Yielding to that Touron Behavior lurking just beneath our skins, we promptly pulled over and investigated. Apparently there was a Mom Black Bear and a cub or two safely screened by trees on the far side of a stream. Unfortunately, it was not even worth a photo as they could barely (pun intended!) be seen. Back to the car we went.

          Paula has done all of the driving in the Park as I am constantly on the lookout for nice places to pull over at, jump out, and snap a few pics. That, and I tend to nod off in the afternoon and with no guardrails and those million-foot-high precipices to be hurled off of, we prudently decided that Paula would be the DD.

          We did see a couple of those road-clogging fuzz balls on our way out and we did slow up to take  a pic or two,

          Guilty as charged!

Days 40 and 41

          We’ve had a few close calls in our travels.

          The one that I am about to relate to you could have had catastrophic consequences.

          Given the slightest provocation, an upheaval of cataclysmic proportions that was lying just below us and it  would have brought our quest to drive around the country to an untimely and abrupt halt.

          Volcano!

          Unlike the previous day’s cheap attempt to lure you into reading one of these posts by alluding to fierce Anacondas, this one is actually true.

          Well, maybe just a little stretched.

          Let’s say by about 500,000 years or so.

          The last eruption of the Yellowstone Super-Volcano was about 650,000 years ago and if memory serves me, we have another bunch of eons before it erupts again. But it’ll be a big one! The last eruption covered most of the US in ash and other remains of a Big Blast, so we’re only spending a few days here, just in case!

          We’ve decided to plan just a few days ahead of ourselves because the weather has been a tad unpredictable. We left Anaconda and headed south to Yellowstone National Park where Winter has doubled her grip on the area. Ten degrees Fahrenheit (overnight) is just a bit too low for our somewhat delicate on-board systems to tolerate for any length of time, so our track is definitely in the southern direction.

          The road between Anaconda and the town of West Yellowstone (both in Montana) runs mostly through a valley, so the hills and curves of mountain driving were mostly absent from this leg. What a relief!

          But…..

          This is where Mother Nature disguised herself as the ol’ Widow Winter and provided us with some Whiteout conditions as we were driving along a large (and reputedly) beautiful lake, but we couldn’t see it! Luckily, the snow did not stick to the road, they thankfully remained just wet, so we did not have slipperiness to contend with.

          While the snow did not stick to the roads, it did stick to almost everything else, including the Bison crossing the road. This camouflage trick almost worked had it not been for an oncoming motorist who flashed his lights in warning. Peering into the distance we could see that there were indeed big critters on the road. See example!

          We also came across some Bighorn Sheep which, even down in Colorado, is not an everyday occurrence.

But hey! This is Montana (and Wyoming) where the Mountains are large, and the National Parks are even larger! At over 3400 square miles, Yellowstone is our largest National Park behind the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska. Wrangell-St. Elias  is enormous at over 20,000 square miles!

          But no one goes there!

          Everybody goes to Yellowstone! At least in the summer, and for good reason. Yellowstone is another one of those other-worldly places here on Earth. It boasts the largest collection of geologic/thermal sites (and sights) on our still geologically active planet.

          The Volcano that I mentioned in the beginning sits down underneath this area and still provides pools of magma to heat the water that eventually finds its way to the surface in the form of geysers and multi-colored hot springs that are absolutely everywhere in the Park. Yellowstone Lake at twenty miles long and ten miles wide is the remnant of the caldera of this super-volcano so that should give you an idea of how large this beast really is!

          But while the activity below is frantic, the life on the surface is quite tranquil. Especially in winter when all is snow covered and the steam from the thermal activity is that much more pronounced. It was like looking at far away villages with everyone inside sitting by their fireplaces, smoke curling out of their chimneys.

          I believe that I have found a new favorite River.

          Mind you, I’m not sure that I had a favorite before this, but I am quite sure that I have one now.

          The Madison River guided us all the way from Anaconda down to West Yellowstone. It was her valley that we traversed while driving. I liked it then, but when I found out that the Madison is one of the major rivers that define the topography of Yellowstone… Well, that just solidified it. Everywhere it ran gave an opportunity to view one beautiful scene after another.

          We decided after getting into West Yellowstone at a decent time, that we would just go and get a map of the Park and speak to someone in anticipation of a next day visit. Upon our arrival and subsequent conversation with a Ranger, we decided to give Old Faithful a try. It is about an hour’s drive from the Entrance. Even though the weather was snowy and cloudy we figured we didn’t have anything to lose, so on we drove. It did make for some interesting sights, or non-sights, as the visibility was not that good.

          Who needs visibility anyway!

          It was an Adventure of Volcanic Proportions so who are we to judge? On we went, did some reconnoitering for a return trip the next day and had a frozen good time. At twenty-six degrees and with a wind speed of fifteen miles an hour, it made for some very cold forays into the features of the Park. Note Photo!

          All of this just primed us for the return visit the next day when the Weather promised to be nicer to us. It had snowed all night so that in the morning we had a gorgeous blanket of pristine mountain snow covering everything, and a Bluebird Sky to back it up.

          We repeated our trip from the day before and now that we were seasoned veterans, we were able to bypass all of the Bison that roam freely and stop traffic frequently. Well, we almost bypassed them all.     Who can resist  a photo of Bison traveling across a vast river plain starkly contrasted against the new snow?

          I can’t!

          Our return to Old Faithful was another highlight as the steam and skyrocketing hot water of the geyser were not lost against a cloudy, snowy sky. This time we had a beautiful background to witness a spectacle that has repeated itself with regularity for thousands of years. All of the thermal features of this enormous waterpark are fed by water dripping down into the ground. This groundwater is then heated by the volcanic activity and then reverses itself, finds other vertical passages and comes back to us via geysers and hot springs.        

  There was a time, about eight hundred years ago, that Old Faithful turned into Old Unreliable because a drought encompassed this region and all the groundwater that is needed to fuel the eruptions was not to be had. Ouch! It’s a good thing that we hadn’t built the Old Faithful Inn back then because we would have had scores of Unhappy Tourists!

We next plan to visit the northern part of the Park. Mammoth Hot Springs and everything in between is our destination. Mammoth lies about fifty miles from where we are so this will be an all-day excursion. Reports to follow!

Days 38 and 39

          Anaconda.

          If you know anything about snakes, this word will send shivers up and down your spine. Usually about twenty feet long and weighing better than one hundred pounds, these constrictors lie quietly in the water waiting for you to swim by and then, Slam! They’ve got you (a tasty snack) all wrapped up. Just ask Jim, the quintessential sidekick of Dr. Marlin Perkins of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, one of my favorite TV shows from the ‘60’s. Poor Jim was wrestling with one of these biggies while Dr. ”I Never Go In Harm’s Way” stood on the shore narrating in his deadpan style, “Jim’s going down for the third time, gee, I hope he’ll be alright. That snake sure does seem to have a good hold on him! Keep up the good work Jim!”

          Anaconda, (Montana) did send shivers through us but not because there are lots of snakes there, it was because there was lots of cold there. Winter has a tempestuous grip on this area of our Country and true to anyone with that type of personality, is refusing to let go and is taking delight in making others keep a wary eye out for them.

          Much like its namesake.

          Anyway, we spent two nights in this mineral-rich region of southwest Montana. Copper is/was the most mined ore in the area. The National Mining Museum (yes, there is one of those) is located one town away in Butte, Montana.

          We did not spend our two days here scraping out open-pit mines looking for copper. We instead spent that time wallowing in the hot springs of the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort where the naturally occurring, from deep down under the earth, dissolved good-stuff minerals, non-Sulphur smelling waters are pumped continuously into their big pools. In fact, the waters come out of the ground at about 160+ degrees, which is good for cooking some things, but bad for a toe-dip. So, they cool them down for us non-lobsters so that we can sit and soak leisurely without a fear of being someone’s dinner.

          Not even an Anaconda!

          So, I’ll bet you’re wondering then, why Anaconda?

          Back in the day, the local mine was started by Michael Hickey, a Civil War veteran, who liked the way that Horace Greeley described the tactics of General Ulysses S. Grant when opposing General Robert E. Lee. Greeley wrote that Grant had Lee surrounded “like an Anaconda”.

‘Nuff said.

The End.

Days 36,37, and 38

          We find ourselves sitting in a nicely appointed suburban neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. The weather gods have forsaken us, and thusly abandoned us, in this seemingly far-flung locale.

          Spokane? Why here?

          The answer is simple, as we are visiting friends!                      One of the fun parts of this travel is winding and worming our route to include dropping in on folks that we know. And, since we carry our home on our backs, we are never a burden to those that we crash in on.                          Oops! I mean visit!                                                                         (Think Cousin Eddie in Christmas Vacation)

          We are here on East Handy Road parked in front of the home of Greg, Kim, Gavin, and Kaydence. Greg is a former Marine buddy of Danny’s and the families have stayed as close as they can considering the distance between Texas and Washington state. We, on the other hand, are as close as a fifty-foot extension cord running from the house to the street can allow!

          I have alluded to our weather woes in some of the previous posts, complaining because we are not experiencing the better-than-perfect weather that we had for almost a month.

          Please tell me to just shut up!

          Weather/shmeather, who cares? We still get to drive around and visit peeps and places!

          Kim, Greg, et al, have been great hosts as we have been treated to many of the local sights that Spokane has to offer. A nice visit downtown to the Waterfall District is a good example of what a city can do when it puts its collective minds and efforts into a long-term project. They even have a nifty way to keep the area litter free.

          The Garbage Goat.

          I kid you not. Since 1975 this bronze goat-like effigy has been “fed” garbage and litter much to the delight of its “feeders” because at the touch of a button the Goat comes to life and sucks up the offending litter placed in its mouth.

          What self-resecting little kid wouldn’t scour the area for litter to feed the goat? I almost feel that you would be doing some young litter-seeker a favor by dropping an errant candy wrapper or two so that they could “find” it, do a good deed, and have Garbage Goat be fed!

          The Spokane River Falls were running nicely as evidenced by the photographs. The volume of water cascading down the cataract reminded me of Niagara, albeit on a smaller scale, these falls are just as dramatic in their own right.

          Get a load of this Radio Flyer Red Wagon! You could be the envy of all of your friends because you could fit all of the neighborhood kids and their families in there and tow them around the block with your Schwinn Sting-Ray bicycle!

          The Town Hall building began its life as the Montgomery-Ward Building. Constructed back in the late 1920’s it is a fine example of the Art-Deco movement that proliferated at that time. Its architects were none other than the Montgomery-Ward Design and Construction Department. Interestingly, they did it all in-house!

          After the downtown tour we went way up into the highlands and found ourselves at the Arbor Crest Winery. It is housed on the former estate of a guy with the unlikely name of Royal Riblet. He was not the inventor of the item that appears on the McDonalds menu from time to time, but he was the inventor of many items such as the square-wheeled tractor and a host of other innocuous contributions to society. Anyway, his family was successful in the tramway business, and he hitched his wagon (or tram) to that and parleyed that into a living of sorts.

          The best part is that his estate sold this mountain top aerie so that it did not fall into disrepair. In the 1980’s it was purchased by the Winery, and they have transformed it into one of the best catering venues that I have ever seen.

          Take a look!

          After a watching and cheering at a thoroughly entertaining girls volleyball game in which Kadence was one of the best players, we had some great local pizza and retired to the curb-side seclusion of our traveling abode.  

Back at home……

Zzzzzzz…….

          Tomorrow we figure out where we aren’t going and try to patch in some destinations that are a little more seasonally-friendly.

          Stay tuned for further developments.

(No, not a new event in the upcoming Olympics)

Days 33 and 34

          I wish I could tell you that we are experiencing our usual extremely gorgeous weather.

          I cannot report that.

          In fact, the weather does not look good for the foreseeable future.

          But…. we’ve traveled this far, so what’s a few clouds and raindrops? While not ideal, so far, it has not been a wash-out. Our first expedition of this leg was to visit Olympic National Park. Everything about this area is rugged and lush at the same time. One of the finest examples of a temperate rainforest is located here. The Hoh Rainforest (which we did not visit) is on the other side of the Park, more than a two-hour drive from where we were, and the forecast for that area was worse than our local spot! Our destination for that day was the ominous sounding Hurricane Ridge, an area at the end of an access road that barely penetrates this immense Park. In the center of the Park, Mount Olympus climbs to 7980’ and is the central, and highest mountain in this chain.

          Who knew that there was this rugged mountain interior in this area? I didn’t! I can now see why and how a good portion of this Park is still closed because of winter conditions. This is the issue that we are facing more and more as we try and visit other Parks in the Northwest.   Yellowstone is high on our list but by the time that we arrive there a several-days Winter Weather Event is forecast to be in full-swing. We shall see. There have been other times (Sequoia) where based on the forecast, (who decided to place their weather station way back in the interior and at an elevation that is twenty degrees colder that most of the visited stuff?) that we have found wonderful conditions instead of doom and gloom!

          We shall see!

          Anyway, we traveled up the mountain road with an accompanying cover of clouds above us. As we ascended we could see that we were going to break out of most of the cloud cover sooner or later and we were correct. There were just enough clouds left below us in the valleys and around the peaks to give a nice perspective to the mountains all around us.

          It was the descent that was a little disconcerting because on our way down, the clouds moved in big time and made for a slow, foggy (full-on dense stuff) ride down.

          With no guardrails.

          We are constantly amazed with the lack of guardrails out here. I guess that there is no way to effectively place these security blanket-type items in any amount that would actually make a difference.  

There’s just too much road mileage to be covered.

                So, we all hold our collective breaths as we travel the Wonders of the West. Knowing that in fifty-one years of driving I have never even come close to driving off the road makes no difference. The fact that the car goes where you point it, especially at the lower speeds needed to navigate these twisty-turny thoroughfares, makes no difference to our brains that can only imagine us piled in a heap at the bottom of some random ravine, never to be discovered until a kid hiking in the area 32 years from now stumbles across us.

          Enough about the gene-pool altering lack of roadside safety devices. Paula did the driving because she gets nervous when I start looking around at the scenery trying to find that perfect location for a photographic opportunity. Maybe in hindsight that is why we are not at the bottom of that ravine!

          The next day we booked passage on a Gilliganesque three-hour tour of the waters off of Port Townsend. The idea was to try and get a glimpse of some whales. California Grey Whales are in the area on their way north to Alaska for the summer. They pop into Puget Sound for some snacks and a rest stop on their thousands of miles swim fest. Not wanting to jinx things, I deliberately did not ask any of the crew what the chance of seeing Orcas was. This was actually the goal of this venture, and I wasn’t going to mess it up with any stupid questions!

          Well, I needed not to fret because not fifteen minutes out of the harbor we were directed to a pod of whales by a radio announcement. It seems that all of the Captains, (tugs, commercial, and other whale watching competitors) share this info readily. It’s an “All for one, and one for all” attitude that makes everyone successful.

          We found ourselves following a family pod of about twenty Orcas, the patriarch of which was gentleman by the name of, (I kid you not) Chainsaw. He got his name not by his reputation for acts of violence, but by the distinctive markings on his six-foot dorsal fin. Although, I am quite certain, that somewhere in his past he has committed some violent felonies. They aren’t called Killer Whales for nothing!

          We swam with the Killers for quite a while until the Captain announced that we were going to go north and see if we could find some Grey’s that they had seen the previous day. On or way there, we spied some Puffins sitting in the water. These little guys were that first ones of the season that the crew had observed. They spend most of their time way out in the central Pacific and only come back to land to raise their little Puffs.  

          It was quite a treat to actually see one in the wild.

On our way we also encountered a raft (yes, that is what a group of them is called) of Sealions resting comfortably on an island desperately trying not to become snacks for the Chainsaw Family!

          We did find the Grey Guys after that. These whales are forty to fifty feet long and we only saw a little of them as most of their bulk stays below the surface. No breeching today! I did mange to get a few tail fluke photos as they began their deeper dives and went vertical.

          The whole cruise was delightful, and I want to thank the crew for arranging such pleasant sailing conditions, not a wave was to be found on our millpond-like floating experience.  Much to my dismay, but definitely to Paula’s delight!

          Our next leg will bring us to Spokane to visit family friends of Paula’s. That means that we’ve turned the corner, made a right, and are headed eastward hopefully to be in New Jersey by mid-June.

          The weather will decide our fate (and route) !

Day 33

          As many of you know, we sometimes find ourselves in locations that are significant, but we had no idea that we were in such a place. Last year at this time, we needed to go to Forest City, Iowa and visit the Winnebago Fix-it Place, which was right next door to the Buddy Holly crash site.

Who knew?

          A few days ago, we were disappointed to find out that our plans to stay at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds here on the Olympic peninsula in Washington State were not going to materialize. Apparently they still had some maintenance to do. The nice office lady suggested the Fort Worden State Park which was just down the road from them. I called and got a reservation, and even managed to arrive a day early and still be accommodated.

           We had planned on a trip to Olympic National Park and possibly a Whale Watch, all of which depended on our luck with the weather.

          What we had not planned on was being smack dab in the middle of the entire location where ‘An Officer and a Gentleman” starring a very young Richard Gere and an equally aged Debra Winger, was filmed.

          Not much has changed since they did the movie which seems about a thousand years ago, but in reality was only back in 1982, which is almost a thousand years ago!

          Anyway, here are a few photos from today with some hints as to where they were in the movie. Also, they shot all around Port Townsend, the local town, using motels, bars, homes, and street scenes galore.

          We watched it last night…. Had a ton of fun recognizing everything in it.

Here goes…