Improbable Lands

On Wednesday we drove into the Northeast entrance of Yellowstone and were immediately greeted by the great roaming herds of bison that roam Lamar Valley. The bison are king in Lamar Valley and seem to frequently cause traffic jams as cars stop to gawk and just make way as the bison cross the road. They don’t seem very concerned about the cars. I was pretty excited to see them. The sheet number of them roaming the valley is awesome. Seeing them in valley, you can imagine yourself, just for a second, as an intrepid pioneer encountering a view of bison for the first time roaming the immense plains of the west. Then, of course, you realize you are one among a throng of other tourists excitedly snapping pictures with their phones.

The crowds in the National Parks that we have been to so far have been crazy. I guess, we should have expected it, because it was high season, but somehow they came as a surprise. It’s a little hard to feel like you’ve escaped the city and are enjoying nature when they are so many other people and cars. But it another way, it’s also awesome to see so many people out and enjoying nature. We really do have a pretty awesome National Park system and it’s neat to see that some many people utilize it and enjoy the parks. I blame and applaud the sort of awesome marketing being done by so many wonderful travel photographers that are so prolific on instagram and outdoor outfitters like REI. The outdoors is cool now. The specialized equipment you can buy for almost any outdoor activity is made so readily available with the internet that I feel like more people are getting out there than in the past. I think a lot of the parks were created so long ago though that they are not set up for the throngs of people visiting them now. The buffalo traffic jams and the lack of camp sites available at almost any national park unless you book months in advance (or arrive at 5 in the morning to first come first serve sights) is evidence of this. We’ll see how it all plays out in years to come, but really how can you begrudge even the laziest of tourists, who only want to drive through these awesome spaces, from enjoying all the beautiful bits these parks have to offer.

We went to the visitor center and got a map to plan what hikes we might do.  Yellowstone’s hsitory of volcanic eruptions means that there is a lot of petrified wood. We went at first to see the most visited petrified tree that lives right above a parking lot. The poor thing is a big stump, but sadly behind a giant iron fence, probably because too many people have pilfered souvenirs from it over the years. We didn’t even walk up the short path up to see it. This to me, was somehow sadder than animals in cages at zoos. They’d had to cage a petrified tree. We did a short hike to Lost Lake where we saw some bison bones down by the water and started to get a glimmer of just how much water runs through Yellowstone everywhere you turn. The path to the lake followed a small water flow that trickled and burbled as we went.

We also went on the hike to the Brink of Falls. It was a beautiful hike with different viewpoints of the upper and lower falls. This hike was remarkable uncrowded. In retrospect, we realized we’d accidentally stumbled onto a trail that I think was actual under renovation. I guess we should have realized what was going on when we had to shimmy down a steep incline with a roap to get to the trail (most of the trails here are pretty well established so a rope assist would be pretty surprising), but it wasn’t blocked off on the side we entered.  So sorry, Yellowstone, we didn’t mean to do where we weren’t supposed to, but tt was a welcome relief from the crowds though.

It took us probably and 1.5 hours to drive back to camp just due to the size of the park and the fact that there were even more people just parked in the middle of the road to view buffalo in the late afternoon.

In the morning we stopped in town before heading into the park and talked to a nice guy at the rock shop. We waffled for a while on buying a piece of petrified wood, but decided to wait.

We had waffled on what hike to do the next day, but eventually decided on one that was not marked in the maps. We had seen a small sign along the the side of the road for the Petrified Forest hike, but even the ranger we asked about it, didn’t seem to know much about it and it was not even mentioned in the hiking map we purchased. We had pretty much made up our minds to just try it anyway, but asked the ranger at the entrance gate about it when we came in the next morning. He confirmed its existence and said that it was steep, but had excellent views of Lamar Valley as well as examples of petrified wood. We climbed up past a few scattered buffalo, butterflies and grasshoppers, skittering away from us every step we took into the tree line above Lamar Valley. Some switchbacks led us further up until we hit paydirt. The live trees disappeared and petrified stumps started to appear in abudance. Near the crest of the hill we had climbed nearly all the rocks were petrified wood shards. It was hard not to slip and fall because of all the loose rock shard. I may have slipped and fallen once, but it does’t count because I popped right back up. For some reason, whevener I fall, my instinct is to pop back up as quickly as possible and pretend nothing happened and proclaim myself fine even before I have fully assessed any wounds.  Nope, nothing happened, nothing here to see people.

It was fun to go hunting for larger and larger stumps. Best of all this hike was people free! It was just us and one lone buffalo lurking near the top. That’s another funny thing we are starting to notice. The parks themselves are overrun, but actual hikes are fairly unpopulated.

After saying hello and appreciatively oohing and aahing over about a million pieces of petrified wood we headed back to camp. It seemed like weather was coming on and we actually had some paperwork we needed to get done so it seemed like the right choice. At camp, we checked on the Wonder Beast and then took him into town with us to get a snack and partake of some wifi. Cooke city is a cute little mountain town with a couple little restaurants if you want to eat away from camp one night. After a light dinner snack we hunkered down in the car for a minute until an impressive hail storm passed.

Even though we had not seen the more iconic Yellowstone sights like Old Faithful, we decided we’d move on in the direction of Glacier National Park in the morning thinking Glacier would surely be less crowded and also trying to be practical as we needed to keep heading north because we wanted to be in Washington in about a week. Old Faithful and the Grand Prismatic would have to wait until our next trip when we head the west side of the park.

 

Day 81 of travels was pretty much a driving day as we tried to make some headway through some flat parts of Wyoming and get closer to Yellowstone, which both of us were excited to see. It would be a first for both Zack attack and me. We found a campsite outside of Riverton, Wyoming. Lake Cameahwait was a quiet, mostly deserted spot after a long day’s driving. We camped next to a picnic area gazebo structure which seemed to be in the process of being reclaimed by wildlife. Small bats had nestled into a niche in the rafters and birds’ nests were so abundant that the picnic tables were nearly unusable as they were covered in droppings. The lake was beautiful though and seemed like it might be a good fishing spot if we were not just stopping for the night.

The next day we decided to stop in Cody, Wyoming to continue our tour of all things Buffalo Bill. We ended up camping on Spirit Mountain Road just on the west side of town. The little, dirt road takes you quickly up a hillside where you are treated to a lovely view of Cody. We went to the rodeo that night. The rodeo runs every night in Cody and it bills itself as a rodeo town so it seemed like a must. We weren’t super impressed though. So, after grossing ourselves out by consuming some purplish huckleberry flavored popcorn, we headed into town to check out Buffalo Bill’s Irma Hotel.  Like all things selling themselves as ‘wild west’ taxidermied animals were displayed proudly and prominently. The dining area of the restaurant with the long wood bar and tin ceilings fell somewhere on the spectrum between garish and historic, but somehow seemed just right for a hotel that Buffalo Bill had opened. Of course, we had a cocktail there.

The next day we explored Pioneer Town which I originally thought was a reproduction of the original town site, but really was collection of old cabins they’d moved into one walkable area and filled with pioneer memorabilia. If it was known who the cabin originally belonged to you got a snippet of its history. Many of the cabins also display either really poorly done taxidermy, or taxidermy that has just deteriorated over the years, so some of the poor critters on display are quite laughable ghoulish, especially the 2 headed calf and the lamb with an extra limb protruding from its side. Its biggest claim to fame seems to be that the real Jeremiah Johnson (whose story a Robert Redford movie is loosely based on) is buried there. He wasn’t buried there originally mind you, but was reburied at a ceremony Robert Redford himself attended.  Much like pictures of the pope at the Catholic Chapel, pictures of Robert Redford were prominently displayed as evidence of one of the shining moments in Pioneer town history. Several old west figures were reburied there in fact, including a lady of the night and 2 men that were murdered in a tangled old west love story that is documented in letters and other memorabilia displayed. Pioneer town was cheesy for sure, but also a fun look at the old west.

After Pioneer town, and before heading out of town for Yosemite we headed out to the Spirit Mountain Cave. A short hike a couple more miles up the road we were camping on leads you to a little visited cave. A quick stop at the BLM office in town gets you the key so you can visit this little gem. We came a little ill prepared as our lights barely penetrated the depths of the cave and to explore it more thoroughly would have required some serious scrambling, but we crawled around a bit before hitting the road.

We took the Chief Joseph Scenic byway toward the northeastern side of Yellowstone. There are lots of views on this road that build your anticipation for Yellowstone itself. Once we got close to Yellowstone we wandered around looking for a campspot for a while. We first went up a very steep 4 wheel drive road and found no spots. There was an established campground on the other side Beartooth Highway that we checked out. We got a glimpse of a fox there with a mouthful of rodents. We ultimately found spot on another dirt road that seemed to be frequented by atvs. It was just 10 miles or so from the northwest entrance of Yellowstone so we decided it was a good spot. Just an fyi for those thinking of camping near Yellowstone – a lot of camp spots there don’t allow tents or soft-sided campers because of the bears. There are some in the park, but many on the outside of the park are hardsided camping only. We had a fire that night and plotted how best to tackle our first day of Yellowstone the next day.

On Friday we drove back through Rocky Mountain National Park to the north and headed into Wyoming. We found a lovely forest road camp spot near King Solomon Falls.  Nearly as soon as we pulled into camp the Wonder Beast managed to find himself a full haunch of deer to gnaw on. This is no photographic evidence of this moment as I was a little grossed out. The camp spot was quiet and peaceful and a nice change up from the National Park. Rocky Mountain National Park had been fairly crowded on Thursday, but by Friday morning when we passed back through on the way out the crowds had at least doubled. We actually scratched our plans to do one more hike because of the crowds.

The next morning I drove back into town, at least as far as I needed to get some cell service so I could check on my Dad who lives in Redding and this was at the start of the large Carr fire. His area of town managed to stay safe throughout the fire, just smokey.

On the way into town I was waylaid by a large group of sheep that had decided to hang out on the main road, bleeting at passing cars. I also stopped in concern for an old sheep-dog that seemed to be wandering the road confusedly, far away from his sheep. I told the rancher further up the road about the dog, but he’d probably wandered home by that point. Poor old guy seemed plain tuckered out and looked like he’d waded through a mud trough.  I hadn’t gotten too close to him because somewhere further down the road I’d seen a sign warning silly, concerned city-folk to not try to rescue sheep-dogs who could even become aggresive if you approached them, especially if their sheep were near. Luckily, I heard the sheep bleeting down the road before I had approached this guy. The other, sprier sheep-dogs that were still with the herd showed obvious disdain for us goof balls in cars that were too close to their sheep. One of them stopped in the middle of the road and peed on the tire of the car coming the opposite direction from me. I silently communicated to him that my car was harmless and did not require the same treatment. For whatever reason, he let my car be and wandered off to gather up more sheep.

When I got back to camp we had some breakfast and then hiked back to a small waterfall and swimming area. It seems to be a place not known to many people besides the locals. The hike was a fun little adventure with some ropes to assist with dragging yourself over some sketchier parts. I debated for a long time about actually dunking in the water, but never did. As soon as we got to the spot the clouds had rolled and the slight chill in the air made me chicken out. We stayed at the fun spot until it seemed like rain was coming and then headed back to camp. We had some cocktails and shared a fire with a nice family that was also camping out there.

Today we headed into Rocky Mountain National Park. Right off the road on the way in we spotted what looked to be an old, stone church right off the side of the road. The church is built on the base of a rock outcropping and looks like something that might have been there for centuries. Turns out Saint Malo’s has only been there since 1936 and they still hold mass at the chapel once a week. Pope John Paul II apparently visited the church and even hiked in the surrounding area. As this is obviously a proud moment for any Catholic Chapel, there was no shortage of photographic evidence. It is open to the public and we stopped to explore and take pictures because we like things made of rock.

Once in the park, we stopped into the visitor center for a ranger consult to see what options we had if we were only staying for a day or two. I love talking to the rangers in the national parks. Some are more enthusiastic than others, but they are always good sources of information, much better than fumbling around the internet to discover fun spots in the park. Also, I picked up my National Park Passport Book at the Grand Canyon and now need to fill it with as many stamps from the different parks that I can. I might be the only adult participating in the Passport stamp program, but that does not dull my enthusiam. At some point, as I rushed into a different visitor center to get a stamp, a gentleman slighhtly older than myself, asked what I was doing, and I had to sheepishly admit to my childish activity.  He just laughed and basically said he didn’t berudge me the activity, we are all trying to reclaim and perfect our sometimes imperfect childhoods as we go along. It was a lovely thought – a different way of thinking about always remaining young at heart.

After talking to the ranger, we decided to do some short excursions from the Old Fall River Road. This is a one way road that leads you all the way up to the Alpine Visitor Center past some pretty spectacular sites as you wind your way up to the 11,796 foot elevation and into the alpine tundra. We stopped along the way to see the Alluvial Fan, which is a sort of waterfall created by flooding a few years back. It was such a short nice hike that even Malachi the Wonder Beast, despite his old man legs, went on it with us.  Any awesome display of water always makes me happy and this one was a nice first stop. The drive to the top was  pretty spectacular and we stopped a few more times along the way to see some awesome lookouts of more cataracts. You follow the river pretty much all the way to the top so there is a view around every corner. The mountains, as you go along, climb to greater heights, so that you are craning your head at ever corner to appreciate their grandeur. Near the top we hiked over some tundra for a mile or so and got a sight of some elk lazing in the grass below, paying us no mind whatsoever. It was pretty awesome day topped off by a nice fire back at camp. Rocky Mountain National Park is a great place to appreciate just how awesome and huge the Rocky Mountains are.

We left Westsliffe on Sunday and headed towards Rocky Mountain National Park. Since Zack Attack is a huge fan of Coors Original, otherwise known as Banquet beer, and less often known as the cold yellow dog, we thought it would be a no brainer to stop in Golden, Colorado and visit the Coors Brewery. We drove through the historic downtown area on the way in. I love these little mountain towns. The historic downtowns are always cute and quaint. This one was especially nice because although a lot of it obviously catered to tourists it did seem to have that feeling of a great little walkable community for locals as well. There was a cute little RV park right along the Clear Creek where it looks like the whole town goes tubing every weekend. There were so many people walking around with tubes slung over their shoulders that I thought it was some sort of an event. Turns out it was just a summer weekend in Golden. Unfortunately the little RV park was all booked. It was a perfect little spot, walking distance from downtown. We kind of fly by the seat of our pants a lot because we don’t necessarily know how long we will be in one spot, so making reservations in a busier area can be an issue.

We gave up on the Coors tour for that day and decided to head out to Golden Gate Canyon State Park. Technically this park  is only about a half hour from Golden, but once you start up the windy road you have to slow down a bit, at least if you are a bit lumbering like the Grolar Bear, and to get to the actual campgrounds you need to head to the northernmost parts of the park. We ended up getting into the campground quite late and snagging one of the only spots still available.  The park is huge and and full of lovely trees and trails. We hunkered down that first night as the rain came in pretty good. It was pretty enough though that we decided to stay the next day and book the campsite for the following night as well. We did a small hike along the Raccoon Trail in the morning. The raccoons did not seem to realize this was their trail however, because none of them were around. In the afternoon I did some laundry and some writing to try to get caught up on the blog.  The poor Wonder Beast was exhausted and slept most of the day.

On Tuesday, we moved camp to a spot slightly closer to the town proper, the Chief Hosa Campground, about 15 minutes or so outside of Golden. We quickly set up camp and headed into town to do the Coors Brewery tour. It’s a self guided tour and not as ‘behind-the-scenes’ as might have been really fun, but it was still fun. It’s completely free and they even give you 3 free tastings at the end of the tour. Zack Attack tasted Coors Extra Gold the last time we were in Colorado and it is now his Colorado drink of choice. The don’t really seem to distribute it outside of Colorado. However, we learned the secret to Extra Gold from a bartender in the tasting room. Extra gold is just a mix of Original and Killians Irish Red. Now Extra Gold can be had just about whereever we are. After the brewery we wandered town a little bit and had a snack and some ice cream before heading back to camp.

The next day we went and saw the Buffalo Bill Musuem and gravesite at Lookout Mountain. Apparently the spot of this showman’s burial was highly contested as Cody Wyoming, the town he founded, felt he should be buried there. His family stated his final wishes were to be buried on Lookout Mountain overlooking a very young Denver, Colorado. Some of the old show signs from his wild west show are just awesome examples of early poster art. Worth the $5.00 entry fee in my opinion.

We went a little further up the road and Zack Attack couldn’t resist learning some gold panning techniques outside of Black Hawk. Vic’s gold panning is a little ramschackle operation right off the side of the road, but those boys do know what they are doing. They earn a little extra money teaching gold panning to kids and Zack attacks, but most of them live there at least part time and gold mine and pan in earnest. They’ve got all sorts of bigger equipment around where they are still pulling stuff out of an active mine. Fun little peek into another world. A lot of the guys were just like you’d imagine a miner back at the turn of the century might have been, except now they live in truck campers.

After Vic’s we hit the road to make it to Meeker Park, right outside of the Estes Park side of Rocky Mountain National Park. Meeker Park was a nice national forest campground. Also, we were finally far north enough that we would actually have a campfire! Campfires had pretty much been a no-no up until here because of the terrible fire season everyone had been having.

We spent the rest of the week just enjoying Westcliffe. We did one bigger hike up the the Lake of the Clouds. The hike took us through dense thickets of Aspen and past lush mountain wildflowers until we reached 2 alpine lakes and scared a marmot or two. You just can’t beat an alpine lake for looking picture perfect. So serene, and surrounded by mountain, I want to chase other hikers away, so the lakes are left in peace.

My brother and his wife had some friends come into town so we got to hang out with those guys and do some smaller hikes, including just walking the local roads to say hello to the ponies.

There is a Rufuos humming bird that lurks around my sister-in-law’s hummingbird feeder, chasing off the the other birds. He dive bombs the other birds and just generally seems to be a meanie pants. My sister-in-law has named him Mussolini. One afternoon, after a few beers, my brother challenged Mussolini. He stood guard near the bird feeder and may have even through a rock or two in the general direction of this tiny, red, jerk. Don’t worry though, no birds were harmed in the making of this showdown though. We can only hope Mussolini learned his lesson, but somehow I suspect he is not so easily scared off.

We also went to the local Rodeo and saw the Rodeo parade. The local rodeo was more fun than some of the more competitive rodeos I’ve been too. These were the local ranchers just showing off their stuff. I sat next to a little boy and his Grandma whose dad was competing. I heard dad had lost one of his fingers roping a calf before. He was still out there doing it though. It sounds like a gruesome tale, but it really wasn’t, it was just presented as a fact of life.

Westcliffe is awesome little town, surrounded by mountains. You turn one direction and you’ve got the Sangre de Cristos and in another, the West Mountains. Everywhere there are epic views and you can watch the afternoon storms rolling in off the mountains followed by the views of the sun streaming through. Every time you look and think it just couldn’t get any prettier, it somehow tops itself.

We headed down to Arizona after our stay in San Diego to collect the Grolar Bear where we had left it in the capable hands of Big Chicken Hot Rod to due our frame repair work. We got there early in the day, but some repairs still needed to get done. It was blazing hot in Phoenix at this point so the Wonder Beast and I hid in the air conditioned lobby area while the boys did the final tweaks on the frame. By the time it was all done it was early evening so we crashed for the evening at a hotel with not much to recommend it other than the air conditioning.

The next day we jetted off the Colorado to get get some more repairs done to the Grolar Bear at Phoenix Pop Up. These repairs took a couple days, but we were finally able to get truly underway on Tuesday evening and headed to my brother’s cabin outside of Westfliffe, Colorado. The land out there is beautiful with a stunning view of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. We had visited last year too before the Grolar Bear was complete. We spent the day Wednesday mostly relaxing before we heading down into town the next day for the High Mountain Hay Fever Music Festival. This is a great bluegrass music festival that you can camp at in a small town. We set up camp behind the bowling alley which was the designated area for people with fur beasts. The deer like to frequent this spot as well. A smaller doe didn’t even bother stop munching the grass as we approached to set up camp.

Of course, as soon as we got into camp, the wind picked up and so setting up our awning became an exciting challenge, esp so because we were set up on quite a steep angle that raised the back of the camper much higher than normal. Zack Attack as mastered the art of driving up on a big rock in order to level us. The rocks we used at this spot were just short of boulders. The step up into the camper, even with the step stool, was almost worthy of a crossfit workout if done in reps.

The festival is spearheaded by Ron Thomason of Dry Branch Fire Squad. This is a man steeped and bluegrass lore who knows how to tell a tale and takes his time with it. He makes himself laugh when he’s up on stage regaling the audience and you can’t help but laugh along with him. Half the time you forget where his story was headed, but he is such a natural raconteur that you never doubt you are in good hands, and sure enough, the story always come back around. They are in the process of filming a documentary about him called Bluegrass Court Jester. I’ll definitely be keeping my eye out for it.

The music goes all day long and people line up early in the morning vying for spots – you can bring a fold up chair in or claim some of the folding chairs that a set up. The folding chair folks are the die hards. For the big day, Saturday, I thought I did pretty good, getting out to the line at 5:15 or so in the am. I was probably 7th in line. People were sleeping on fold out cots at the front on the line. I take by hat off to them.

The music was awesome and had some folks that had been doing the circuit forever and some younger groups, so it was a good mix. One of the performers, Bill Evans, gave a humorous history of the banjo, playing many different styles of banjo, and amusing the audience with historical anecdotes. Another group, the Ebony Hillbillies, would dance out into the crowd and dance with suprised and delighted audience members, including my sister-in-law’s papa, affectionately known as Poppy Seed. It was a lot of music, with some long days, but needless to say I discovered some new bands. I also felt I got an education about some of the history of bluegrass music. So many of the performers were such great story tellers and would reference older artists. I even got a lesson in square dancing while listening to the Six Dollar String Band, a great little band out of Durango who played some awesome, old timey gems.

On Wednesday we left the Grand Canyon to head toward Flagstaff where we would be attending the Overland Expo that weekend. We stopped along the way at the Lava River Cave in Coconino National Forest. This cave is actually a lava tube that formed from a lava flow about 700,000 years ago. It is almost a mile long and one of the longer ones of it’s kind. It didn’t have the typically stalactite and stalagmite cave formations obviously, but still a neat little snippet of geological interest to visit. Perhaps I have an overactive imagination, but I feel like you can’t help but feel a bit like an intrepid explorer when you enter any cave. Other people have been there before, but you are discovering all the new dark corners for yourself. The quiet and coolness inside is at once unnerving and invigorating. That night we pushed on to Flagstaff proper and camped on a teeny tiny bit of forest road that was a few miles from Fort Tuthill County Park, where the Overland Expo was being held and we would be camping starting the following day. There were a few other overland rigs already set up there.

The next day before we checked into the Expo we explored Flagstaff a bit including going to the Riordan Mansion. The mansion is actually 2 homes joined together by a sort of reception room that was built for 2 brothers in the early 1900s. The brothers were very prominent Flagstaff citizens early on. It’s a very craftsman sort of mansion, which is just the type of structure Zack Attack and I most admire. It was also designed by an architect whose credits also include the El Tovar Hotel in the Grand Canyon – another of the Canyon’s grand, old structures that we took a peak at while we were there. The mansion had a library to be envied with some lovely old books. I spied some Dickens works along the shelves. We checked into our campsite at the Overland Expo later that day amongst a throng of other folks. The just sort of cram as many people as they can into the park, but we managed to eke out just enough space between the other campers and the trees to put out our awning.

The next couple days were spent visiting vendors at the Expo and talking about fixes and tweaks we needed to make to the Grolar Bear, specifically the frame, as the camper was much heavier than we had originally anticipated it being and after a short period of use, the frame had torn. We looked at other rigs and talked to lots of folks. We also got a peek inside the Flagstaff Model Railroad Club’s building which happens to be right in the middle of Fort Tuthill County Park. One night we went into town and saw a fun little band called the Shaky Hand String Band at the Flagstaff Brewing Company. After the Expo we headed back to San Diego to work on a rental property, travels to be resumed in July after a stint in San Diego and also getting some work done to the camper frame in Arizona. I’ll catch on those travels soon which include Colorado and Montana adventures.