Day 31 - Yellowstone to Bruneau Dunes St. Pk., Idaho

It was bittersweet to leave Yellowstone knowing full well that our adventure is coming to a close. We drove out the West Entrance, dropped out of the mountains and into the high desert of Idaho. We motored along without much excitement other than viewing the mountains in the distance. I don't know, I can never grow tired of the beauty of snow-capped mountains.

As I mentioned yesterday, we opted to drive an extra 87 miles to get to a state park that had known facilities rather than a forest camp without anything. I began to second-guess myself as we followed the signs to the park. We were driving across the desert without seeing a single soul anywhere. We take the exit for the park and it just appears deserted. Oh geez, not again! We worked our way to the campground to find a few people there. Not bad. We found a site and setup camp, had some cheese and crackers, a beer and chilled out for a few minutes. We decided to drive out to the dune to check things out. OMG, it was freaking amazing!!! It is the tallest single sand dune structure in North America. It formed at the congruence of two mountain ranges right where the Snake River rounds a bend. The conditions are perfect.

We climbed to the top and proceeded to act like a couple little kids in a big sandbox. You know, it's one of those things...we totally thought that this park was going to be a bust but it turned out to be fantastic. We went back to camp, had dinner and decided to ride our bikes back out to the dunes. That was when we took all the pictures at dusk. It was actually about 9:45PM when we took most of the pics. We were far enough north to take advantage of the long sunsets. Well, we started to get completely chewed up by skeeters so off we went back to the site.

We're sitting next to the fire enjoying our last night of camping when Dylan mentions an ambulance coming down the road with emergency lights on. Then we noticed another. It seems that the teenage girl across the way that Dylan had noticed earlier had slipped and fell outside the bathroom and had lain unconscious for quite a while before her family went looking for her. They took her away on a backboard and, though everyone was pretty worried, her grandma assured us that she was going to be ok. Because of all the excitement, we didn't get to bed until after 11PM. I was sleeping soundly when, all of a sudden, I hear footsteps right outside our tent. FREAKIN' RACCOON going after our garbage and trying to get into the ice chest!! Damnit!!! I scared him away and went back to sleep only to be awakened once more before morning. I was so excited to not have to pack everything up because of bears that I left the stove and the garbage out. Live and learn.

Tomorrow, we're off to my "brother-from-another-mother"s homestead outside of Reno. 5 days of R & R!!....and....I get to see my lovely bride on Thursday!!! YAY!!!!!

Ciao!!!

Day 30 - Last Day at Yellowstone

We took our time getting up in the morning. Yesterday, I had cracked the glass on the French Press coffee maker so we went ahead and splurged for a new enamel old-fashioned coffee percolator. It's been a while since I've used one so I ended up with fairly good, although, crunchy coffee. It's a good rugged coffee pot and as my dad used to say, "that's ok, it'll last a lifetime". I miss my dad. He would have really enjoyed these stories.

We decided to do the Grand Loop today. 142 miles all the way around Yellowstone. We knew it was going to take a while but we had all day and so what. So....we're driving along and, as we pass a "thermal area" that we want to check out, traffic comes to a halt. I was going to pull off and park anyway so I do just that. I still didn't know why traffic stopped but I figured because it was a fairly large "thermal area" that traffic was just backed up there. As I stop the car, I see why everyone was stopped. Walking towards my truck was a ginormous bison!!! He was about as large as the truck so Dylan and I just kinda sat there with our jaws dropped. Just as he passes by us...mind you, he was only about 8 feet away, we notice another one right behind him. Right then, some dumb-ass, stupid shit, douchebag on a Harley decides he's going to pass the buffalo!!! Obviously, the buffalo got spooked and I thought we were going to have to call our insurance agent. "I'd like to report some damage to my truck" "what happened?" "well, we were minding our own business when a buffalo decided to ram us" "ummmm....sir, we don't appreciate prank phone calls" Yeah, that would go over well!!! Anyways, the buffalo continued to walk down the middle of the hwy for about a 1/4 mile, stopping traffic completely, until they found a nice patch of grass off to the side. Fantastic!!

The thermal areas were all pretty cool...not as amazing as we had seen around Old Faithful and the West Thumb Basin but interesting nonetheless. There were actually a lot more bubbling mud holes than beautiful iridescent blue pools. We made a lot of stops and did a lot of power walking around these areas. About every half hour or so, we would come upon a traffic jam while people would get out of their cars and take pics of the wildlife. It's amazing how blase it becomes after a while. "yeah, dad keep going, it's just another huge bull elk that you would never see anywhere else except for a zoo....no biggie" We saw lots of elk, an entire herd of buffalo, a pelican surfing down a raging river, osprey, mooseseseses, black bear, grizzly bear and lots of fat humans!!!

So, I forgot to tell you, when we stopped at the area where the buffalo were walking down the road, we were meandering on the boardwalk around the bubbling pools and we came around a corner into a stand of small trees and here, not 6 feet off the path was a HUGE bison just lying in the shade minding his own business. Weird. Even being that close to semi-tame cattle is unnerving and here was this VW bus-sized behemoth just lying there ignoring us.

We continued on our drive and when we were at Mammoth Hot Springs, (which was a bust, by the way, nothing like the pictures on the brochure showed) Dylan mentioned that Montana was only 5 miles away. We had to take the opportunity to add Montana to our list of states visited. We drove into Gardiner and got gas. An official stop in Montana!!!

Made it back to camp by about 7ish, cracked a glorious, ice-cold Alaskan Amber, made a huge pot of spaghetti and chilled by the fire.

Today, we are off to our last campsite of our trip. We're going to drive a little out of our way to go to Bruneau Dunes State Park in western Idaho. (who da ho? You da ho! No, I da ho!) We decided that driving a little further to get to a place with showers and full rest room facilities is a little more palatable than our other choice of a forest camp at about the 11,000' elevation. I'm done with being cold and we need showers!!!!

Day 29 - Day 2 of 3 at Yellowstone National Park

I was cold last night. Not too cold but enough to wake me up every so often. Thunder woke me up at about 5:30 and then it started raining. I, unfortunately, thought very negative thoughts about the day because of the rain but, as soon as it started, it stopped!! Yay!!

We dinked around and took our time getting up and moving knowing that we had, yet, another full day here. Cool!! We decided to make our way to Old Faithful and, along the way, there was a section of hwy where there were a lot of people stopped alongside the road. That usually means a Wild Kingdom moment so we stopped and joined the crowd. It seems there was a bear down in the woods. We could bearly see him (hehehe) so Dylan decides to go exploring a bit. He found a clearing and there, in front of him was Mr. Bear tearing apart a pine tree just for the hell of it!!! Dylan was still a safe distance but all the other tourists had lost sight of him and Dylan had a perfect view from the top of a log. I joined him and we snapped away with the camera for quite a while before Mr. Bear decided to head on up the hill. Excellent!

We took off and started driving towards Old Faithful. As we round a corner, we see the top of the geyser off in the distance. Damn!!! We just missed it!!! We were in for an hour and a half wait for her to blow again. I suppose an hour and a half isn't too long to wait when you know how good she is when she does blow, huh? We decided to walk around and see all the other "thermal areas". Some of them were actually pretty cool. It's amazing how many different colors some of these pools can be. One of the geysers was blowing right as we walked by and we ended up getting a good shower from it. Not bad. We finished our tour of the "thermal areas" and went back to wait for Old Faithful to give her show. Thousands of people were waiting...and waiting....and waiting....what the hell happened to "faithful". She finally blew and everyone got their Kodak moments. We filed in behind the other human sheep and made our way to the lodge to get some food. Of course, everyone else was doing that too. I finally found a $6 hot dog and felt a little better so Dylan and I decided to hit the road. We only drove about 2 miles from Old Faithful when I spot a bike trail. There are virtually NO bike trails in Yellowstone. Why, I don't know. We stopped and rode our bikes through some very cool "thermal areas" and actually back toward Old Faithful. Had a great time and bikes are definitely the way to see these "thermal areas".

We made our way back to the truck and gathered some firewood before heading back to camp. Went for a little ride on our bikes to check out the campground. Ended up down by the lake and noticed another fantastic specimen of wildlife lying on the beach!! Once we got back to the site I festered up a dinner of rice pilaf, BBQed burgers, a few grapes and a couple beers. All good. As I write this, Dylan has a great fire going and I'm ready for another beer!!!!

....oh shit!! He just called me as I was writing this and he said that he was watching rangers trying to scare away a HUGE grizzly bear off this island in the lake....RIGHT BY THE CAMPGROUND!!!!! The rangers said yesterday that the largest grizzly in Yellowstone was spotted real close by. I wonder if this is the guy? Where's Marlin Perkins when you need him?

Addendum: I just went bookin' down to where Dylan was and shot a couple great pics of the grizzly. It seems that the rangers shot explosive shells over his head so that he wouldn't continue to the campground. They scared the shit out of him so he swam WAY out into the lake. The pics I took are of him coming ashore. A grizzly, who woulda thunk?

Ciao!!!

Day 28 – Deer Park Campground to Grant Campground, Yellowstone National Park

6:59AM July 16, 2010

We have been on the road for exactly 4 weeks!! Like our camp host told us, it is COLD this morning!!! We slept in the back of the truck for the first time on our trip and, surprisingly, really enjoyed it and slept well. We were warm and cozy and will certainly sleep in the truck again if Yellowstone is too cold to sleep in the tent. I don’t think it will be, though. Dylan and I talked last night and reminisced about the last 4 weeks of our lives. The 105 degree temperature of Lake Havasu on our first night seems like a lifetime ago. We mentally went through each and every place we’ve stayed. We’ve gone from the desert of Lake Havasu to the mesas of Arizona and Colorado to the plains of Kansas where we experienced fireflies for the very first time. We’ve worked our way through the Ozarks all the way down to the swampy lakes of Mississippi. We’ve (I’ve) drank beer on Bourbon St., eaten Beignets at Café Du Monde, twisted tail and sucked the heads of crawfish in New Orleans. We’ve played in the powdered sugar sand of Panama Beach then danced in the warm rain. We’ve eaten pizza and drank beers in Motel 6s. We’ve stood at the southernmost point in the US. We’ve enjoyed 4^th of July fireworks in Savannah, which still ranks as one of my favorite places. We’ve shown our respects to Confederate war heroes. We’ve driven across more bridges than we could count. We’ve marveled at the history of the US in DC and mourned the ridiculous loss of lives memorialized by the Vietnam Wall. We’ve raced our bikes from Battery Park to Central Park to Times Square and back to Battery Park in NY. We’ve enjoyed the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, the company of old friends in Ohio, the mashed potatoes and sausage gravy at Grandma Max’s All-you-can-eat buffet at the truck stop in Altoona Iowa. We’ve chased the setting sun into the Black Hills of South Dakota and posed with presidents. And then, we were lured by the call of the West. The snow-capped mountains of Northern Wyoming and this campground where I’m freezing my ass off, drinking coffee, swatting skeeters, listening to the birds and watching the chipmunks as I write this.

Today will be Yellowstone. I’ve always wanted to visit Yellowstone so, today, I will get my wish. We have 3 days in Yellowstone which will be the longest stay in one spot yet. I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully, they’ll have 3G so that I can update this blog and share some pictures.

....and we arrived at Yellowstone along with every other member of the human race!! Nah, it's not really that bad but there are a lot of people. We checked in, setup camp, cooked a couple hamburgers and set off to have a shower. Everything is really clean and nice, though expensive. Showers were $2 for 6 min. of hot water. Dylan didn't make it - I did with time to spare! Hehehehe... So, because this is bear country, you have to pack up absolutely everything that could possibly have a food odor to it, including drinking water for some reason. We have a collapsible 5 gallon water container that we use for rinsing hands and such....well, we put that in the back of the truck and when we stopped at the visitor center, we noticed that the back of the truck was dripping. Oh no. Yes, it had leaked everywhere. We unloaded the entire truck in the parking lot and dried everything out. Not a good start to our time in Yellowstone.

We decided to go visit the West Thumb Geyser Pools. I'm thinking to myself, "whatever, a bunch of hot water" It was actually very, very cool....ummm....hot. Some of the pools were this glowing dark blue where you could see tens of feet down....all the while the steam was pouring over you. Much better than I though it would be. There were signs everywhere about keeping your distance with the wild animals. Yeah, right, like we would actually get to see one. WE DID!!! There was a huge bull elk grazing about 20 feet from the walkway...just minding his own business while everyone took pics. In addition, I forgot to mention that, on the way into the park, we finally saw a bison. Dylan was so bummed that we didn't see any buffalo at Custer St. Pk. so this was really nice. There were 2 big guys just grazing alongside the road. Of course, everyone had to stop their cars to get out and take pics. Big freaking animals these elk and bison are!!!!

Got back to the site, made some dinner, got rained on a bit, listened to the thunder, sat by the fire, drank a few beers...all good!!! I miss home and my beautiful wife, though.

Day 27 – Custer St. Pk. To Deer Park Campground, Bighorn Mountains WY

Thursday July 15^th, 8:26PM

It’s still quite light out as I’m sitting here by the fire. The drive today was absolutely beautiful. We went from the Black Hills of SD to the snow capped mountains of Wyoming – all in about 4 hours. The mountains are amazing here. We had randomly picked a forest campground from the map and then I looked it up on the Internet. It looked pretty good so we followed the directions to West Tensleep Campground which was 7 miles down a dirt road. Tensleep was pretty much at the end of the road and, surprisingly, was completely packed! 7 miles down a dirt road in the middle of nowhere…what’s up with that? Well, not to worry, we passed a campground on the way and decided to check it out. There was a great site right on a beautiful river. We backed in and were warmly greeted by the camp host.

As we were setting up the tent, we began to notice the mosquitoes. Not just a few, but complete Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom swarms of them!!! We immediately grabbed the Deet and sprayed away. Shit, there were a lot of them!!! We didn’t spray our heads so guess where the skeeters congregated? Well, we got everything set up and the camp host comes over and says, “don’t be surprised if you have a moose in your backyard tomorrow morning” Ummm….moose? More National Geographic shit? She also asked if we had a tarp for our tent because it was 37 degrees when she got up in the morning. Great. I was freezing last night and the forecasted temp was only about 49. We have decided to sleep in the truck for the first time on this trip. It will be very close quarters but we should be warm and safe from herds of mooses.

Before dinner, we went for a bike ride down one of the trails. It was very steep, rocky and difficult to manage but the payoff was amazing. We ended up down at another river as it cut through a gorge. We sat on a huge granite boulder for a while and contemplated life. One thing is for sure, mountain biking at 9600’ elevation sure keeps you in shape! I was gasping for air but, surprisingly, I was able to recover very quickly. The camp host asked where we were from and when I said, L.A., she commented that we were going to have a tough time with the altitude. Hell no, not us!!!

Got back to the site and BBQ’ed some thick steaks while Dylan gathered some firewood. The skeeters and I had a great time cooking and drinking beer. I even did a movie of the skeeters over the river. I wish I had the bandwidth to upload and show everyone. Freakin’ amazing! More in the morning.

Day 26 – Second Day at Custer St. Pk./Mt. Rushmore Area

You know, there is just something really nice about getting up early and having coffee before everyone wakes up. It’s quiet, the birds are chirping, chipmunks are horny…it’s all good! I got Dylan up and we got moving fairly quickly. We wanted to see both Rushmore and the Jewel Cave – PLUS – we had to do some grocery shopping so we didn’t want to screw around too long in the morning. Kudos, BTW, to Custer St. Pk. For their fantastic showers!!! Push a button and they are on at the perfect temperature! Fantastic!!

Though I have a National Park Annual Pass, they still find ways to bleed you of some money. $10 to park at Rushmore. I should comment first on the drive up to the mountain. The road was one of the curviest roads I’ve ever driven…..similar to Scarlett Johanssen in a lot of ways!! J (I’ve been gone a LOONG time!) Anyways, as we passed her right thigh…I’m digressing big time here….the road started doing these corkscrews where you would spiral in a circle and end up going under the road you were just on. Very cool. As the road climbed back up, there was a point where we crested a hill and there before us were the 4 presidents!!! I had Dylan take a picture as I tried not to drive off the cliff. The road continued to work its way closer and closer to the mountain…going through 1-way tunnels and winding down more corkscrews. I think the only road I’ve driven that was as curvy was the north shore of Maui. (Remember that, Sandra, when we rode a Harley the whole way around and ended up at Little Makenna Beach?)

Mt. Rushmore was pretty cool. It didn’t really take my breath away like the Grand Canyon did but it was definitely worth the trip. I think what’s more amazing is learning about the men who first came up with the idea of creating the monument and the workers who spent years hanging by a thread during the creation. One can only wonder about the stress these guys dealt with. Imagine if you accidentally exploded Washington’s nose clean off his face! I’ll bet his paycheck would have been docked for that one!! So…we came, we saw, we took pics, we walked around a bit…..Ok, time to go. I mean, really, how many times can you look up and say, “wow”?

We decided to take a few minutes to drive into Keystone which is the town right at the base of the mountain. Filled up with gas, ate some DQ soft serve, updated the blog, made reservations for Yellowstone, checked some voice mails and called my lovely bride. All good! Off to Jewel Cave National Monument!! We were very excited about this because neither one of us had ever been in a cave before and this sounded really cool. We arrive at Jewel Cave and we start looking for parking. Ummm….there wasn’t any. Not a good feeling about this. We went around a second time and finally found a spot. Hopped out and went up to the ranger booth to buy some tickets. Yeah, you know where this is going, don’t you? Sold out!!! SHIT!! We just drove 20 miles to get there and they were completely sold out for the day. They did have one bullshit little “introduction tour” at 6pm but there was no way I was just going to sit there for 4 hours. We tried begging our way in but, obviously, they were used to that. While there, we asked about another cave monument close by. Wind Cave sounded good so off we went!

Remember the “balance” thing I’ve been talking about? Well, we drove to Wind Cave, parking lot was full, finally found a spot, went in to sign up….and…..YAY!!!....we got the tour we wanted!! Not only that, our ranger dude had been at Wind Cave for 25 years (he was only about 25yo so we all wondered about that), his father had been at Wind Cave for 45 years and his mother for 30 some years. Ok, it all makes sense now. His father met his mother while working there and Ranger Sam was conceived….maybe right in the cave. He didn’t elaborate but he did elaborate on everything else and he had stories about the cave and the early explorers that were really amazing. So, for all the negative that we dealt with at Jewel Cave, it balanced out with all the positive at Wind Cave. I couldn’t imagine anyone giving a better tour!! The tour went 200’ down into the cave and was a ½ mile journey through the dark, cold (53 degrees) depths of the earth. The cave was amazing and Ranger Sam’s stories during the tour just made it so much better.

Got back to the site, made spaghetti with leftover bbq’ed steak in it, had a couple beers, went for a bike ride to the lake, had a couple more beers, sat by the fire that Dylan had skillfully made, got really cold and went to bed.

A very good day!!!