May 25, 2009

After Yellowstone we headed to Bozeman, MT for the night. We spend the next morning doing errands (laundry, restocking food for Baxter and snacks for us) and taking advantage of the hotel’s wireless to finally get some more postings up. It was afternoon before we headed back out on the road so mostly we just spent the day driving. We decided to head to the western side of Glacier, our next destination on the western parks tour.

We camped at the Hungry Horse Reservoir, on National Forest Land just outside the park. Here are a few pics of the reservoir and our campsite.

Pics are taking too long to upload from the computer and we want to go have so dinner so I'll add them later.

Here they are...

Yelowstone

Our next National Park was Yellowstone. We got there in the early afternoon, having come over the pass and down out of the Beartooths that morning. We, of course, did the obligatory Entrance Sign photos. Mine, in Beth Grimaldi's honor, pointing out the Bison Butt helpfully included on the entrance gate.

There was still plenty of snow in the high places in Yellowstone, several feet deep in the 8,000-foot elevations. We got a mix of sun and clouds all day long.

Yellowstone is a great park for critters, and they didn't disappoint. Never did find a grizzly, but we came across a black bear. Elk and bison (butts and otherwise) were everywhere. On the way out, in the valley just north of the park entrance in Montana, we saw a small group of Dall sheep up on the cliff face, basically straight over our heads. Chris got a nice photo of a mommy and baby sheep, with the baby getting herded back behind the rocks and away from the silly photographers. I'll put all the critters at the end of this post.

Once we got down to the lower elevations in the northern part of the park, we got into the geothermal stuff. Very stinky and steamy, but lots of pretty colors to see. Chris and I especially liked Firehole creek, where the not-very-sulfurous steaming-hot water pours straight from the boiling cauldron into one of the best trout streams in the park. Not really sure how this helps the fishing, but the highest density of trout fishermen was certainly on the Firehole.

Here's one of Mammoth Hot Springs, which was much stinkier than the Firehole, but likewise had great colors and lots of boiling water.

From here it was off to try to get into Glacier National Park.

We'll get the critter pictures posted soon...

Baxter's Commentary

Forgot this fine photo from our day in South Dakota.

Just Baxter leaving his commentary when we told him it was time to head back into the car and stop climbing on the rocks. I think he'd prefer to stay in the Black Hills with the critters...

The Beartooths

Our next tent night was in the Beartooth range, in Wyoming. We finally have found some proper Big Snowy Mountains. Driving across the plain approaching the mountains, we could see that the National Forest there was clearly going to have to be our destination for the night -- the only question would be which side of the pass we would be on when we finally stopped for the night.

We ended up on the eastern side of the pass, but well up into the mountains. Our campsite was an established Forest Service primitive site in a little poplar grove by a small stream. It was about 50 degrees with the sun still up and at about 8,500 feet elevation. Definitely a beautiful campsite!

Mommy and baby moose were strolling around the stream all evening, keeping an eye on us (and Baxter). Baxter wasn't quite sure what to make of them; he settled for hunkering down behind a clump of grass and watching them. Neither party seemed too terribly concerned about one another.

About 150 feet straight uphill above our site was a nice rock with a fantastic view of the whole range. We strolled up for some sunset sitting and enjoying that fresh-off-the-distant-snow breeze. Very nice.

We'll close with a few more scenery pictures and some wildlife. Pictures of Yellowstone coming soon. The beautiful red stone walls were in the river valley coming down out of the Beartooths. Probably pretty crumbly but it would be a gorgeous place to climb! Maybe let it freeze up and ice climb there; no need to worry about crumbly rock that way...

South Dakota

We spent the next night of our journey in a hotel in lovely Wall, SD. We almost made it out of there without having to go to the famous Wall Drug, but it turned out to be the best place for coffee and breakfast in town. Chris, of course, had to "prove" that she had gotten me into that tourist trap, so the event has been duly recorded. At least the coffee is fully visible to justify the trip.

After the marathon run the previous day, we were in no mood to put too many more miles behind us yet. And now that we were in a pretty place in the West, we decided to just play around in the abundant local attractions. We started the morning with the driving loop through Badlands National Park. We started early enough that we were able to leave Baxter in the hotel and just go look around by ourselves.


The Badlands is certainly a park worth seeing, although we were unsure if we'd really come back there and spend time hiking and camping and such. It was about 50 degrees and windy when we were there. When Chris was there in the past with her sisters, it was about a million degrees and more "typical" Badlands weather. Several times through the day Chris reiterated that we were seeing this place at the "right" time of the year.

There were, however, a few living things there. Chris found some nice little desert flowers and got a bunch of pictures of them. It takes some doing to live in a place like the Badlands, so we salute those little guys.


I'm sure we got a few interesting looks driving around the Badlands with a kayak on top of the car. Sort of the eternal optimists. But if Wisconsin can have a water park named Kalahari, then I figure we can drive around a desert with a kayak. So many great things to learn here in America.



From there we picked Baxter back up and headed into the Black Hills. Now this was a place much more in our usual style. Big mountains, lots of greenery, and plenty of places for Baxter to play outside and not be eaten by rattlesnakes (we hoped).

We found a nice overlook where Baxter could get out and stalk through the rocks and hunt whatever Monsters might present themselves. He liked to climb, storming around up and over anything he could. If he weren't on the leash, we're fairly sure he'd still be there, poking around in rattlesnake holes and anywhere else he could stick his furry nose.





Despite being a Cat of the Forest, he seems to have developed quite the ability to blend into his mountain environment. Since he seemed to forget exactly which things needed to be stalked, he was currently stalking Christina from his Place Of Stealth when she shot the picture on the right. Can you find him? Or would you be Kitty Lunch?



In order to maintain our American Tourist credentials, we stopped by Mt Rushmore and Devil's Tower (on the way out of the area and heading across Wyoming). Mount Rushmore was mostly a tourist trap, but Devil's Tower was actually quite impressive. Maybe it's because it's somewhat out of the way, and maybe because you can't get that close to it without hiking, we had the place more or less to ourselves. Clearly a very spiritual place, it's easy to see why the Natives in the area revered it for so long.










From here we headed across Wyoming and spent the night camped out in the Beartooth Mountains. Then on to Yellowstone. More pictures and stories soon...

The Timezone Run

From Wisconsin we took off for The West, crossing the entire Central timezone in one (long) day. We managed to lose 2 hours in the process, so in the end we finished only 10 hours after leaving Wisconsin instead of the 12 our bodies noticed.

On the way crossed the Mississippi, which looks like a nice, peaceful braided river up here. We crossed over it via a couple of bridges and a sizeable island in the middle.

Despite having nothing much to see driving across western Wisconsin, southern Minnesota and South Dakota, it was at least a beautiful sunny day.


At the far side of the drive, we crossed The Big Muddy -- the Missouri river. For a river with such a fearsome reputation in American history, it was actually a rather pretty thing. Lots of old, long bridges and what looked like peaceable water. The two longest rivers in America now safely crossed, we must finally be in The West, right? We spent the night in the Badlands/Black Hills area in western South Dakota. Pictures and such from that rest day in the next post...

The American Midwest

So we made a bit of a marathon run across the whitebread amazing American midwest.

Christina's masterful repacking in Greensburg left us with plenty of space, and a puffy, deluxe nest for Baxter in the back seats. Everything we need for camping is in those snazzy white bins; everything we need in the car is in reach under or next to Baxter's nest. I'm impressed, anyway.





From Greensburg we headed out around Chicago and through the corn western Indiana and Illinois. We went north from there and spent the night at a place called Mirror Lake, near the Wisconsin Dells. The Dells, as it turns out, are quite the little tourist attraction. The Waterpark density is about one park for every mile. We were most impressed with a place called Kalahari, which had lots of pouring water and fun rides for the kiddies. I'm not quite sure the owners are familiar with the concept of a "desert."

In any event, we found an open spot in a campground at Mirror Lake and spent our first tent night. Our neighbors turned out to be a couple of drunk soldiers who were "taking their queer friends out on their first camping trip." After pointing out carefully that they were in separate tents, they told us they expected to be pretty loud. We moved across to the other side of the campground and appreciated the Fair Warning. They were indeed rather loud. As for unbridled gayness, none was noted by us.


Baxter wasn't totally thrilled with the camping arrangement, but he appreciated a little outside time. He did demonstrate a knack for getting himself hopelessly tangled around anything at all while wearing his leash. We'll need to work on a better system.