We Return South

We were glad to see the last of Yellowstone and we made our way south through the smoke of forest fires.  Stayed two nights at Vernal UT to visit a dinosaur museum/excavation exhibit and get a software update for the truck.

Downtown Vernal UT

Vernal is a very pretty small town and the excavation exhibit was quite interesting.  The building was constructed around a cliff face where bones were weathering out.  There were problems with the structure and it was not open to the public for several years while the structure was stabilized.

Dinosaur Quarry

On to Heber City UT outside Salt Lake City.  A friend from my Sprint days, Molly Stephens, and her husband Mark, live in Park City.  We met them for lunch one day.

A second day at Heber, we drove down to Salt Lake City to see the Salt Lake City Mormon Temple. A guide told me it took 40 years to complete the temple.  Would compete with some of the cathedrals I saw in Europe.  You can tell the scale by the photos that a nice person in the square took of me on the front steps.  

Salt Lake City is a very well planned and efficient city.  Their public transportation is a trolley system; it's clean, quiet, and fast. Would that other cities take a look at it.

We left Heber City bound for Marysvale UT to scout off-road trails for next summer's travels.  Not much there but we did get some good information.  

Next stop was Panguitch UT, also to scout trails. but we were greeted with a funnel cloud the day we checked in.  The locals were all aflutter as this type of storm is rare in this area.  I took the photo below from the RV park.

Panguitch tornado

We drove up to Richfield UT to talk with an ATV dealer who has a good reputation in the area and he sent us to Fish Lake for lunch.  Very pretty area.  I have been on a quest for a new visor but none of the places we've been had visors, only hats.  YEAH!!!  Bowery Lodge at Fish Lake had a visor!  

Yellowstone Part 2

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Upper Falls

Lower Falls

As we were driving from the Fishing Bridge RV campground to the Grand Canyon, we encountered a buffalo traffic jam which held up traffic for probably 30 minutes.  We talked to a guy who said he got caught after dark for over an hour and didn't even get to enjoy watching them.  

Why does a buffalo cross the road?

We went north another day to see Mammoth Hot Springs.  On the way, I finally got to see a big horn sheep!  Cars were stopped on the road (not much of an accident hazard...).  

Mammoth Hot Springs is far larger than I envisioned in my wildest thoughts.  We drove around and up the slope behind it so I could get photos shooting down and across.

The ground looks solid but it is not and there are warning signs everywhere telling visitors to stay on the road or the walkways.  Somewhere in the park there's a sign stating that 12 people have died from breaking through and dropping into the scalding water. 

Yellowstone Part 3 and Grand Teton National Park

Mike's truck was exhibiting some issue with the transmission so we found a Dodge dealer in Jackson, WY, and drove down from Yellowstone just east of Grand Teton National Park.  We started out fairly early in the day and found this guy grazing by the side of the road.  We had wondered where the stags were, as we had seen lots of elk cows and calves but no stags.  They stay in the high country until fall when the velvet falls off the antlers and they fight for breeding rights with the cows.

Note the velvet hanging from his antlers.  He's not quite finished rubbing it off.  The passing cars and gawking tourists didn't seem to phase him at all.  He passed so close to the truck I could have reached out and touched him.  Good luck this fall, big guy!

Returning from Jackson, we detoured into Grand Teton National Park.  Same traffic and crowd problems we have encountered in all the national parks so far.  Couldn't even get close to the visitor center.  We drove north to an area where we could picnic and then drove south along the shore of Jenny Lake.  

Beautiful, clear lake, and quite cold.  We did see a few brave souls dangling their feet but it must have been freezing.  

Imagine our surprise, as we turned into the campground, to be greeted at the entrance by this guy.  His name is Henry and he likes to visit Fishing Bridge Campground fairly regularly.  

Biscuit Basin

Our last day in Yellowstone we headed over to the southwest part of the park in the general vicinity of Old Faithful.  We got lucky and found a parking spot in the Biscuit Basin area.  Below are photos I took.  This entire area is eerie...steam vents, small geysers, scalding hot pools.  

Notice that there is a railing only on the section of the boardwalk closest to the parking lot.  I saw several tourists taking photos or selfies who could easily have stepped off the boardwalk.

Sapphire Pool

We tried to see two different areas called paint pots.  Traffic was the Wild West, with cars parked ON the road, blocking the outbound lane.  After waiting for some time to progress, when we got to the parking lot, we saw the problem.  Mike somehow turned the truck around (?) and we exited without seeing the paint pots.

This brings me to my final thoughts on the national parks:  they are out of control.  In Canada, you buy a pass for a date; and they check the receipt when you are in the park.  If your receipt is expired, they politely but firmly point you toward the exit.  They have traffic "cops" everywhere getting people in and out of the lots and keeping people from parking illegally and blocking the roads.  At Lake Louise, they actually close off access to the park when the numbers hit a certain level.  

Our national parks do nothing of the kind.  Just let enormous tour buses with dozens of visitors block parking lots and roads, ignore cars parked in areas which block access, look on benignly at the traffic and congestion chaos.  

If you are planning a trip to a national park, plan to go the first two weeks in May or the last two weeks in September.  You may actually get to see the park.  June, July, and August are increasingly impossible.  After this trip, I am done with the national park system.  We have found that the national monuments and national forests have far fewer visitors and in many cases, are just as beautiful. 

Cody WY and Yellowstone Part 1

Cody WY and Yellowstone

We stayed a couple of nights in Cody waiting for our reservation date in Yellowstone. 

Last year, constant readers know, we had a flat tire on the way to Durango CO.  Well, the tire bought to replace the flat went bad on us.  We ordered a new tire on Walmart online and needed to pick it up at the Walmart in Cody. 

What an experience.  One never knows when one pulls into the Walmart parking lot what one will find.  This one had the sculpture below.  A mere $75K, in case you are looking for a new yard ornament. 

When we inquired about the tire, no one at Walmart knew anything about it.  They recommended I check the website to see where it was.  Well, two days later, we discovered the tire in the Walmart store in Cody WY and it had been there the whole time.  Hhhhmmmm.   But we got the tire on the truck and we are back with four good tires now. 

Cody is an interesting little town, full of Buffalo Bill sites and history.  The Irma Hotel was built for Bill’s girlfriend, Irma.  

Without its close proximity to Yellowstone, Cody would be a much different place.  I doubt that the Buffalo Bill association would be enough to draw thousands of tourists through there every year. 

As we started up the highway to Yellowstone, we stopped at a memorial to firefighters killed in a wildfire in 1937.  At the time I write this, there are five wildfires in Yellowstone. Incredibly 

dangerous work for anyone brave enough to attempt it.  

There are wildfires all over the West and probably not nearly enough fire crews to work them.  I overheard two ladies’ conversation in the grocery store in Cody.  One asked the other, “Did  you get burned out?”  Obviously, the second lady had a home in the fire area.  Fortunately, the answer was “No.”  As we left Yellowstone through the south entrance, we encountered smoke from the fires burning around Jackson.

There are signs and posters EVERYWHERE warning of the danger of the Yellowstone bears.  (Note:  We saw NO BEARS in Yellowstone.)  Curiously, there is no information about mountain lions, and I was sure there must be cougars somewhere in the park, with the large deer and elk populations.  I asked at one of the visitor centers and was told the cougars are in the far north of the park and are rarely seen in the visitor-heavy area.  Good thing.

It is an unsettling feeling to look across the landscape here and see the plumes of steam from the vents.  You get the sense you are standing on top of an unimaginable power source which could blow at any time.  Yellowstone (as you all know) is a super volcano which hasn’t erupted in 600,000 years.  I am sure there are monitors all over the park but since Mt. St. Helens blew up without warning, so much for monitoring. 

On the Road to Yellowstone

After Glacier National Park, we are working our way over to Yellowstone National Park, another bucket list item for me.  

Faithful readers may remember the visit to the Little Big Horn Battlefield last year.  Since our route took us in that direction, we stopped again and saw a few things we missed last time.  

I was somehow of the opinion that there is a town at Garryowen MT...nope, just a gas station with a couple of interesting signs.

This is a memorial to one of Marcus Reno's soldiers, found in 1926, long after the battle.  No way to identify him.

Short Grass Prairie

I took the photo below from the 7th Ranch RV Park south of the battlefield.  We saw miles and miles of this in a landscape little changed from what Custer saw in 1876...except there were no Native American warriors.

When we  left the Garryowen area, we drove south to Sheridan and stayed one night.  The next day we went back north to turn west on US Alternate Highway 14, a route through the mountains which took us over to Cody.  Another incredibly beautiful drive through National Forest and mountains.  When we finally reached the top, there was a highway sign stating that there is a 10% grade for miles, all the way down.  Lots of emergency ramps for out-of-control vehicles and they all looked well used.

Found our way to Cody WY and were ready to slow down for a bit. Well, maybe not. Our first full day here we drove the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway and turned onto the Beartooth Pass All American Highway.  

Chief Joseph Highway

Beartooth Highway

Not a road for the faint of heart.  Steep, twisting, lots of switchbacks, just wide enough for two vehicles to pass.  Even Mike was tired at the end of it.  (It's one of the few places we've been that he hadn't already seen.)  Relatively few vehicles on it, as opposed to the Manhattan-at-rush-hour we saw on Going to the Sun Road at Glacier Park.  Easily just as beautiful and a whole bunch more fun without thousands of others on the road with you.

When we got back to Cody, it was only early afternoon so we headed west to Yellowstone to scope out the park where we will stay for five days beginning Friday.  

There is a large lake on the way to Yellowstone created by the Buffalo Bill Dam.  As you can see from the photo, it's very beautiful.  Both of us were surprised that we saw no boating of any kind on the lake; no kayaks, no canoes, no rowboats, no rafts, nothing.  And it's a very large lake.

Yellowstone National Park

We found the RV park easily and were returning to Cody when we stopped at this scenic outlook.  We had noticed what we thought was smoke from a fire just to the right of this photo.  Nope, it was a thermal vent.  What we thought was smoke was steam.  There's a fracture line along this part of the lake and you can see these little vents occasionally.  

The sign in the photo says that the lake's surface is so cold you would die quickly of hypothermia if you fell in; its bottom is so hot from the steam vents you would be scalded (assuming you hadn't drowned first...the lake is 480 feet deep at it deepest point.)