7/5/99 -- Let's be brief about yesterday afternoon, which stretched into yesterday evening, which stretched into yesterday night. Basically, I detoured to Seridan to get cellular connectivity, found it just barely, and spend an agonizing 8 hours getting perhaps 1.5 hours of real upload done. Then I found out while I'd been sitting there idling my car's engine so that my phone and computer wouldn't drain the battery, coolant had been drizzling all over the ground beneath the car. The coolant was boiling in it's reservoir and was escaping out the cap. This morning I found out that there was air in the system, and a simple bleed took care of it. Thanks, Jake.
Anyhow it sucked, and it sucked more to realize this morning that the reason I was having such difficulties with cellular connectivity was that I hadn't gone far enough into Sheridan.
Okay, enough about that. Today has been
bloody awesome! I had gone to sleep in a rest area last night
just north of Ranschester, Wyoming. As soon as I hit the road,
the awesome scenic-ness began. First I crossed the Bighorn mountain
range, on the most excellent road full up twists and switchbacks...
I was loving the Saab's handling then, pushing the envelope (but
safely, Mom and Dad). Those of you pals who love driving (and
you know who you are), you've got to cross the Bighorn Range.
The whole way along route 20/14/16 was incredible, and as an
added bonus, I passed through Cody, the birthplace of Penny Pretty!
There it is below.
I provisioned
in Cody, and headed off into Yellowstone. Again, I was not prepared
for the beauty which awaited my senses... from the start, I could
see the Tetons to the south, hey, there's me posing in front of
them and Lake Yellowstone. Oh, I guess you can barely see the
Tetons in the photo, but you will see a better shot later.
After that was lunchtime, and after lunch was a pleasant hike
around Indian Pond. I did this on the advice of a ranger who I'd
asked advice of -- she told me that it was a beautiful hike, short
(necessary for me), but that I should make enough noise for 4
people, since there were Grizzlys in the area, and the most common
cause of Grizzly attack is an encounter where the Grizzly was
rolled up on unawares. 
So there I was, walking along through
the forest, whacking on all the trees with a stick, whistling
and clapping, and no bears. When I emerged from the forest at
one point on the hike, I was at a beach on Yellowstone Lake, and
I was so wrapped up in the lake that I almost didn't notice the
Bison that I walked right by. And he didn't take
any notice of me, despite that I was making enough noise for four
people, he just sat there swishing his tail. All the same, I left
the path and gave him a little more room -- every year people
die at the horns of Bison, people who don't respect the 1 Ton
horned animal which can sprint at 30 mph.
So that was my first wildlife spot on this whole shindig!
After the hike I went up to the Mudpots, where I saw awesome
geothermal phenomena. All the mudpots are the result of hydrogen
sulfide combining with water and sulfur, being metabolized by
bacteria, forming sulfuring acid, deep in the earth. This all
happens at the mudpots because of a nearby vent out of which lava
flowed during the collapse of the caldera at the center of Yellowstone
park. More than that I can't say for sure. There were numerous
different kinds of phenomena, for example there's a steaming underground
river which emerges out of a cave, along with it's steam, called
the Dragon's Mouth River, and a seriously bubbling pond of mud
called the Churning Cauldron. Also there is a pond so rich in
sulfur it's yellow, called, quite logically, the Sulfur Cauldron.
Many others, too, check out the image
gallery. Below are: the Churning Cauldron to the left, and
me by the Dragon's Mouth River to the right.
By the time I was done there it was time to head south to the Grand Tetons, for supper, and to spend the night. Grand Teton National Park is just 15 miles south of Yellowstone, and in fact one entrance pass covers both parks, which doesn't matter for me since I have the Golden Eagle passport, which was $50 and gets me and my careful of people (which doesn't matter now, but will when I meet up with Marc and Andy and they get free admission to Yosemite) into all the National Parks for a year.
On the way down, I encountered a phenomenon which I'd seen once before while in Yellowstone, which irked me quite a bit. Now, I understand people driving slowly through Yellowstone. It's a beautiful place, not to be rushed through, and it's unsafe for you and the free-roaming animals of the park to speed above 45mph. But here was a line of 8 cars in front of me, and another 8 or so on the opposite side of the road, just stopped, as if the first cars in both columns had just stopped to talk. This continued for more than a minute, and I was unable to figure out just what the hell these people were waiting for. So I pulled quickly into the center of the road, between the two rows of cars, and raced ahead... and when I saw someone by the side of the road at the head of the column with his camera out, I began to guess... "what's the holdup?" I asked him, and he replied, pointing to the woods, "that big black Moose."
A
Moose!!! You people don't understand what a thrill this was for
me yet. Besides the regular coolness of seeing a Moose in person,
besides the coolness of seeing my first live Moose, understand
this -- I spent two summers canoeing in the Boundary Waters of
Minnesota and the Quetico of Canada, in addition to spending the
rest of those summers driving across the northern parts to reach
Ely, Minnesota. Without seeing one, single, solitary Moose. I
had decided they were avoiding me, and now, finally, there was
one. He was foraging by the side of the road, walking slowly along
it in the direction I'd been traveling, appearing for the most
part unperturbed by the small throng of people watching him, or
the constant activity of cars traveling on the road suddenly stopping
even with him to get a look. I paced him on foot with my camera,
taking pictures, until we reached my car (since I'd passed him,
I'd run back to see him at first). Then I got in my car, and he
crossed the road and headed off into the woods.
 I
continued down to the Grand Tetons, and stopped in at Cotler
Bay to sup while basking in the glory of the sun setting behind
the Tetons while I wrote this journal entry. Today has been such
a perfectly wonderful day, and the skies continue to be completely
clear, which means awesome starscapes tonight. And my
stew is almost ready. |
Twice on that drive I saw animals, I think they were Pronghorn, about to cross the road and think better of it as I approached. The second time I stopped the car and stared for a moment, but had not the presence of mind to try for a photo. That's why the speed limit is 45mph in Yellowstone. I read today that over 110 animals were killed last year due to car collisions. Dumb.
I was glancing up through the sunroof at the sky while I drove, and the sky was just too beautiful for me to be catching quick glances of it while scanning the road ahead for wildlife, so finally I pulled over at a "turnabout", as they're called on the signs in the park, turned off the car, and lay down on the pavement walkway that lead to a trailhead nearby. I shielded my eyes from headlights as cars passed, and soaked in the view. For all of 3 minutes... after which, right across the highway from me, a trooper pulled a car over for speeding. Of course, his cruiser's light bar is flashing away, ruining any chance that I had at stargazing from that position. I could have moved on and resumed at another point, but instead I just moved along to the rest area and went to sleep.
Today had been a very active and interesting day. When I woke
up at 6:30am, it was so cold out there was frost on the roof and
rear bumper of my car. I drove into Jackson for coffee, then turned
around and headed back up through the Tetons park again towards
Yellowstone. I knew I didn't have half a day to hike up into the
Tetons, which I damn well will do the next time I visit
them. That's 'cause due to scheduling, needed to be leaving Yellowstone,
and Wyoming this evening. 
So,
I just took in the view of the mountains, and stopped in at the
Jenny Lake visitor's center for a lesson in the Geology of the
area on my way. I got there at 7:30am, and saw in the parking
lot, this couple, pictured at right, Robin and Beth, obviously
prepping for a serious hike up into the mountains. I went and
talked to them for a while, while they waited for the ranger station
to open at 8 so they could register their hike. They are from
Minnesota, and Robin said he'd just come from the Boundary Waters
last week. They were so cool, I hope I'm like them when I get
to be their age. Along with my parents, they're setting an example!
Robin was groaning about how corny the photo I was taking was,
but I'm trying to get pix of all the cool people I actually converse
with.
I headed to the Upper Geyser Basin,
where Old Faithful is. How can you go to Yellowstone and not see
Old Faithful. Well worth the stop. Besides Old Faithful, which
was itself awe-inspiring, there are like a hundred other geysers,
hot springs, and other geothermal phenomena like the mudpots I
saw yesterday, and fumaroles (hissing vents in the earth). There's
this boardwalk that you walk on (since the entire area is potentially
hazardous to walk over -- the earth near the hot spots is an extremely
thin crust which you could fall though and scald yourself to death)
which leads you all throughout the basin past scores of geothermal
features. Of course I saw Old Faithful erupt -- twice actually,
once while I was sitting waiting for it, and again from afar while
I was touring the rest of the basin. I didn't see any other massive
eruptions, since many of the predicted times were like "witihn
60 minutes of 6pm" or "sometime between 5pm and 9pm",
and I just didn't have that kind of time. But I saw them all anyway,
and learned about how they are home to these cool algae and bacteria
which are similar to those which live at the ocean floor by volcanic
vents, and thrive in water between 110 degrees and 180 degrees
Fahrenheit. These bacteria give the springs their cool orange
borders and create these delta patterns (the river formation,
not the Greek letter or the brain wave patterns!) which run downhill
from certain springs. Many of the springs are crystal clear because
they are too hot to sport these bacteria, and others are the most
incredible shade of blue that I've only ever seen near equatorial
reefs. Starting at the upper left of the following photos are:
Doublet Pool, and Ear Spring, each showing beautiful examples
of the so-called chromabacteria, Grotto Geyser, which is shaped
so interestingly because it grew up around a few tree trunks (no
longer present), and Sapphire Pool.
All of this direct evidence of the
earth's thermal depths was very impressive. Now, here's something
equally impressive, but not in a good way. I kept on reading,
in the informational pamphlets and on the boardwalk billboards,
about how some of the features, particularly Morning Glory Pool,
pictured at right, were in danger of drastic artificial modification
of their behavior, due to people dumping trash in them.
Excuse me? Did I read that correctly, that people toss
empty cans into these things? WTF?!?!?!?
I could scarcely believe it, except there were photos of workers
vacuuming literally hundreds of pounds of crap out of the springs.
May all of hell's fury be unleashed on such vandals. I have thought
about it and thought about it, and I still can't imagine the mindset
required to perform such an act. It's not as if you could just
casually toss something in there, either. You'd have to chuck
it. Ok, you get the picture. Let's move on, as I did... I took
tons of other pictures of many geysers and springs, again, check
out the image gallery
to see them all.
After visiting all of the geyser basins I took a walk around the Paintpot trail. It was while on that walk that I was a young girl wearing black jeans and a "The Crow" T-shirt. Ah, refreshing, to see the black uniform worn all the way out here in Wyoming. Anyhow, I commented to her how she was wearing a cool shirt, and turned back to watch a geyser. Then her Mom mentioned, seeming to me out of the blue, that she and her daughter had been swimming in a swimming hole on Firehole Canyon Drive. Score!!! Swimming is what I'd wanted to do for days now. I book out there and found it -- a spot in the Firehole River, at the bottom of a canyon (Firehole Canyon Drive, duh) where there were two teeny rapids, the kind you could walk through but with a current too strong to swim upriver, and some excellent rocks off of which to jump into the river. Again, I should have gotten pix -- but this time, man, I wasn't slowing down for nothin'. Gleeful is the only way to describe me when I hit that water, man, I was singing and romping. I was there for an hour, perhaps and hour and a half.
And that was it for Yellowstone. Almost. When I was heading
out, the sun was beginning to set -- animal activity time. Now,
I had learned to recognize the signs of an animal by the side
of the road -- any time there are ~20 cars stopped in the middle
and by the side of the road, it's 'cause there's some wildlife.
On my way out, I saw first a wolf, which was too far for a picture,
then four moose (3 in the picture), then an elk, a Rocky Mountain
Elk, I believe, also too far for a good picture, and finally a
bison and 3 elk feeding on the same little patch near a river.
That's my first live elk, too.
Then I took State Route 191 north out of Yellowstone, and out of Wyoming, and into Montana. I crossed through the Madison mountain range, in the Gallatin National Forest, on that road, which hugs the Gallatin River, which lies at the bottom of a canyon that runs through that range. It took me about two hours to get to Bozeman, where I sit now in a diner sipping my post-dinner coffee. It was an amazingly scenic drive, with pine-covered bluffs and rocky canyon walls, and the Gallatin river wending it's way alongside, nay, fairly meandering along, I would say it easily equaled the splendor of the Black Hills. The one catch -- man, the bugs were out in force. I believe I've touched briefly upon the issue of bug splatter? Well, basically I have to squeegee my windshield every time I gas up, and sometimes I clean it when I pass a gas station even if I don't need to refuel. But this was different. At one point it seemed to be raining. Let me leave it at that, and you can thank me that I didn't take a picture of that. Unless you're one of those people that followed the link to the pile of Mayflies...
I now have a choice to make. I will spend the night in Bozeman, probably in a motel (hopefully the only time I every do that this trip, but there are no rest areas within 80 miles, and it's too late to look for a campsite), and tomorrow -- do I mooch around Montana for a while, and spend a few days making my way West to Seattle, or do I continue the mad dash, heading up through Glacier Nat'l, then further North to Banff and Jasper in Alberta, followed by Vancouver, Victoria, and finally Seattle? We'll see.
Today has been a pretty damn lazy day. I slept waaay in, rising at 10:30am. That's waaay in when you consider that I've been getting up at between 6 and 6:30am every morning for weeks now. Last night I stayed in the Bozeman Inn, hopefully the first and only time I'll stay in a Motel during this vacation. $54 is quite a fine rate for a nights stay, I guess, but it's not nothing, which is what a rest stop costs, and it's not camping out, which is better for the soul.
Or is it? Since I don't have many pictures to show you for today, perhaps I'll rant about something that bothers me every time I stay in a campgrounds in a National or State Park or Forest. It's just all these RVs and campers and freaking living rooms on wheels, and staking out little spots in some woods 25, perhaps 50 or at most, in a really nice site, 100 feet from your closest neighbor. That's not camping. You will recall that I am a somewhat seasoned backcountry camper, and this... this... glorified trailer park style of outdoors is a bastardization in my mind. But there is no greater offender than freaking KOA campgrounds, this commercial organization that I've seen all over the country, which passes off a clearing with fire pits and a campgrounds. Eugh. Mind you, I'm not saying these things shouldn't exist. But they're mobile home grounds, not camping.
Anyhow, enough ranting for now. I checked out at noon, after taking advantage of the amenities offered by the Motel (a shower, ahhh), and went off to the AAA office I saw on the Main Street of Bozeman last night. See, I was looking for Crazy Woman Canyon, a place where both Nadya and Pete Biancanni had told me to go hiking if I passed by Bozeman. Now, no-one that I'd asked last night knew about it, and I asked everyone I encountered and stopped some random strangers to ask after it. At AAA they had no idea, but suggested I try the Rangers a few miles down Main Street. That I did, and they didn't know, and they called all the other Ranger stations in 4 different local counties, and none of them knew. So, Nadya, Pete, you guys have some explaining to do. Where precisely is this Crazy Woman Canyon?
Well, I gave up on that and went for lunch at the same diner, 4B's. Last night's dinner and toady's lunch have been the first 2 eating out meals I've had since Chicago. During lunch I scoped out my maps and came to the decision that I mentioned at the beginning of this entry -- head North.
Then I went to this little American Computer Museum, which took about an hour, which had a few cute exhibits on the history and development of computers from pre-decimal number systems to integrated circuits. The had a very funny hall of computersauruses, and of course I noticed the AppleII, the Mac 128, and the Lisa that they had in the section for the dawn of desktop computers, and they also had some excellent pieces of history, like the Apollo Nav computer, which had something like 36k of stored memory and 2k of rewritable memory. They had a pile of early gear driven calculating machines, and some relay-programmed (that's all hardware programming) computers.
Ok, I guess I should show you some pix. Here's some of Montana,
the western portion of which is well into the Rockies:
and here's Butte, the mining town I passed through on the way
up to Helena, on my way up to Glacier National Park:
Well, that's it. Now I upload, and the next time you hear from me, will likely be when I get to Fab's house in Washington, since I burned an inordinately huge amount of cellular time on my last upload, and have a little less than 3 hours of airtime left. I may wait till I can internet access without needing to use the cell phone.
