Month: September 2009

I’m sure there’s a good LDS reference to resting and recuperating in Salt Lake City but I’m not really up on my Book of Mormon. We rested so much that I didn’t take a single picture in Salt Lake City. A first! So I’m including a picture from a previous visit to Salt Lake City.

The drive out of Yellowstone was lined with small towns that seemed to be mostly cabins, chalets, gift shops and gas. Jayne’s quest on this leg was to get a hotel booked from her phone for tonight. Coverage in the eastern Idaho was really spotty and strange. We’d be driving along and then get 3G coverage. Two years of iPhone ownership in Iowa City, a college town, with no 3G coverage, yet sporadic 3G coverage in Trude, Idaho. As soon as she got coverage it would disappear. And with the lack of a mobile friendly Hotwire, it was quite a chore. I pulled off two or three times when she thought she had coverage. As soon as I would slow to a stop it would disappear. We eventually got two nights at the Airport Inn.

I stopped for gas at one of those gift shop/gas stations while Jayne booked the room. This place was primarily gift shop. I think gas was an after thought. Every inch of the walls were lined with those lame Western paintings of raccoons chilling with some deer or large birds flying out of a brush. This theme was continued in the bathrooms where pictures were kept high enough you wouldn’t pee on them but low enough that a big elk stared you in the eye while you pissed.

We set Pocatello as our goal for dinner. It is a college town (Go Bengals!) and even though we were rushing we thought we’d take a little time for dinner and get something other than roadside fast food. We wanted college food. Wing Street came up on a restaurant search and I was like, “Yeah that’s good and college-y. Chicken wings! I think I’ve seen those in Columbus.” Jayne rebutted that she thought it was associated with Pizza Hut. It was Pizza Hut.

We ordered from two super flighty chicks. One was named Sunday. Probably after her parents’ favorite day to go to church. When I gave her my phone number (area code first), she asked “You’re from Wyoming?” as if that was the only other state option. I figured there’d be a bond between us from being from states that are confused with each other but there wasn’t. Surely attending Idaho State she has heard, “That’s in Ames, right?”

We sailed on in to Salt Lake City with a late arrival to our Airport Inn complete with drained indoor pool in the lobby (!). We didn’t care though we were tired.

The next morning we searched for a good breakfast place. It was called Ruth’s Diner and it was up the drive through Emigration Canyon on the eastern edge of the city. The drive seemed to be a hotspot for bikers (non-motor) and after passing several we found the diner by itself on the right. The place was hopping. Kristen Stewart’s understudy seated us and we could tell we were at a place a little more suited for us than “Uncle Brigham’s Pancake and Decaf Coffee Hut”. I saw tattoos, beards, cleavage and even heard swears.

The food was sinful too. They brought out biscuits that Jayne still talks about and a blackberry jam to spread on it. That would have suited me for breakfast but we had a crab and avocado omelet and steak breakfast burrito on their way. Those were also delicious.

After I dropped Jayne off at the Genealogy Museum, I tried to run some errands but was mostly unsuccessful. Most importantly our Forester was due for an oil change and we were about to enter parts of Utah that probably don’t have a lot of Jiffy Lubes. This Friday they closed at 4:45 or something weird like that so I missed my chance. We wanted to head out bright and early Saturday morning so we left without an oil change.

Jayne was pretty disappointed with her results at the Museum too. Her family seems small and spread out and I think she was having trouble getting a lead. She struggled finding information on people she even knew existed, like her dad.

That evening we had dinner at a Biaggi’s and walked around an outdoor mall where we bought another warmer sleeping bag. This was purchased as a precaution because at this point we hadn’t decided what we were going to do next. There was talk of just going on to Denver or Santa Fe or continuing our original plan of Arches then all the other southern Utah national parks and eventually Grand Canyon.

The next morning we got up and decided to head to Arches to at least try to stick with our original plan. We were a day behind but we’d figure it out on the road. Before we got stuck on the road too much though we HAD to get our oil changed. We pulled off in Provo and hit a Jiffy Lube. It was pretty Jiffy and by 11 or so we were out of there. But now we were hungry. We went for our default and found a Mexican grill nearby called Cafe Rio. Little did we know we would be to this day wishing we were closer to one for the pork burrito/salad. It’s a chain so on the way back through when moving out to California we stopped off for a fix in SLC. I could go for one right now.

We woke up pretty grumpy the next morning mostly due to the cold night. The weather hadn’t been too cold during the day but that night it really dropped and kind of pushed us to our limit. We were lacking our enthusiasm that we had in Devils Tower and Glacier. Things were starting to feel the same. This after camping in a gigantic ancient volcanic caldera. Ho-hum.

Jayne and I weren’t feeling Yellowstone like we did Glacier. Some of it is the accessibility of Yellowstone (you can drive to see a lot of the park) and the amount of other people. But we did plenty of driving in Glacier and there were plenty of people there too. The bubbling pools do lose their novelty after you see a field of them. But every waterfall is different, every mountain you wind around still holds its majesty. But Yellowstone has majesty too. I really think the main culprit is we’ve been doing this for two and a half weeks now. We just drove across Washington, Idaho and Montana to get here and now what? Drive some more.

Promises of towering geysers and waterfalls couldn’t cure the stiff back caused by shivering all night. We decided to put in our time and bid Yellowstone adieu. Salt Lake City was next on our list and would be a good turning point to decide how much further we wanted to take this wagon.

We had slept at the edge of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone but had not seen it yet in daylight. That was first on our to-do list. You like how I’ve made America’s first national park in to some sort of chore?

We drove the one way loop along the canyon. Occasionally we stopped to get out and marvel. We looked down in to the yellow-stained canyon and on one of the stops there was a dude with a telescope. He had it trained on some sort of nest. I think he said “osprey”. They certainly weren’t robins. You couldn’t see little ones but there was definitely a big one tending to the nest.

Another sighting I had was “Gunther”. Gunther is this kid that Jayne and I saw the previous day at Sheep Eaters Cliff. We decided to make our “car sandwiches” and eat chips at a picnic table by the cliff and for a while it was just us and the port-o-potties. Then I heard a sound I was very familiar with. That “toosh” sound a little boy makes when he is imagining he is powering over some huge mountain or firing a rocket at an enemy. I say little boy but let’s be honest, I still do that when I’m “doing karate” after getting something right in my programming.

Among the rocks at the cliffside was the source of the noise. We named him “Gunther” because he looked totally German. He was like a dirtier version of Augustus Gloop. I should have named him “Augustus” but I was blanking on the comparison. He was stomping over the boulders and fake fighting someone. Probably Indians who used to live around here. If they ate sheep who’s to say they wouldn’t eat a fat little boy. He had to protect himself.

He was tightly wearing a long sleeve red Bugle Boy shirt and some man-pris and most astonishingly he was barefoot. Even more interesting to me was, besides another empty car, I saw no sign of parents.

I was relieved to see he was reunited with his family when we ran in to the same family at Mammoth Hot Springs. Here the family stood out because we learned that despite the fashion sense of a visiting German family they were grumpy Americans. The daughter, Amelia (real name), refused to hike any further to see more boiling water and threw a teenager tantrum in front of everyone with the dad so classically ignoring and the mom having NONE of it.

And now today at Canyon we vacationed with them again as their truck pulled in to the parking lot near us and the truck bed topper popped open and the three kids climbed out. Even though he was wearing shoes, I spotted Gunther immediately because he exited the truck bed with a “toosh” clad in his same Bugle Boy armor.

We skipped Yellowstone Lake and headed to Old Faithful because we had Salt Lake City as a destination for the night and that’s a good piece away. But everybody has to see Old Faithful while she’s still faithful right?

The road between Canyon and Old Faithful was lined with bison. We really hadn’t seen a ton of bison in Yellowstone. Our first run-in was as soon as we started driving the first morning here. We came up behind one lone bison just walking down the road staying between the lines. I kept my distance until there was a good passing opportunity. As we drove past he had wild eyes that reminded us of the naked man on PCP who just strolls down the street like it’s where he belongs. Later that night we came across another one doing the exact same thing along the climb up to Dunraven Pass. We decided it was the same dude making the loop.

This morning we saw one just standing at the crest of a hill on the edge of the road. It was a tall enough hill that from far away we saw his silhouette and I assumed it was some sort of sign for a portion of the park. It stood so perfectly still. Bending around that hill though, he must have been a sign saying, “Holy crap! Bison!” because there were a ton of them. In the road, on the side of the road, in the river valley, across the river plain. The ones by the road were getting a lot of attention because of their proximity but also because there were babies!

We observed from the pull off for a while with several other cars. An older couple talked to us about different ones and we exchanged thoughts on which ones were our favorites. Then I unholstered my camera and started to walk to frame a shot. The lady freaked out telling me I better not go any closer or I’ll get gored. After I found a new mom, I was now tempted to push it. Not that I had really planned on it, I was really just stepping more to the side so more bison faces could be in the frame. Besides, there were two ditches and a two lane highway between us, Mom!

Arriving at Old Faithful felt like an amusement park. Remember kids, we’re parked in the Bear lot. The road to Old Faithful actually turned in to a highway with cloverleaf exits and everything. The parking lot was sprawling and there were lots of redirections due to road and building construction. We could find Old Faithful Lodge but struggled to find Old Faithful.

I was just saying as we walked in the lodge that they have a “clock” letting you know when the next expected eruption would be. Jayne said “Like this one?” and we saw it predicted the next eruption at 2:13pm. Which was…right now! We briskly walked toward the geyser. Wouldn’t want to be uncool running to see a natural wonder!

We got there right around 2:14 and thought, “Uh-oh we missed it.” But the hundreds of other people in clothes with multiple pockets staring in the geyser’s direction told us otherwise. Just then, steam came from the hole in the ground, water started to appear, a murmur went over the crowd. A larger splash, the murmur got louder. Cameras were readied, children were corraled. This happened for 30 minutes every time water crested out of the hole. Nothing like what you’ve seen in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon though. People kept their faith though and were rewarded for their patience with an eruption, probably very similar to what the people saw an hour before and the next group would see an hour later. Still, boiling water from the ground, man. You don’t see that at your shopping mall.

After the spectacle we were hungry. We went back in to the Old Faithful Lodge and saw they were serving lunch until 3pm. It was 2:58. Welp, somewhere else then. But, “no,” they told us, “as long as we got in the door by 3pm they would serve us.” We had a private lunch in the lodge. For most of the lunch it was us, the tall ceilings, antler chandelier and our very nervous waitress from Arizona. I had more buffalo in the form of a cheese steak.

It was after 3 and we were nowhere near Salt Lake City. We loaded up the Forester and headed west out of Yellowstone. Our trip out went along the Madison River and the weather and light was perfect. The Madison River on the western part of Yellowstone is gorgeous. There were some mountains and falls further up river but as we exited the terrain flattened out and the river began to meander more. At one big sandbar island, there was a huge collection of elk and a lot of people pulled off to view. It was too awesome to pass up and so we took some of our hurried time to stand at the edge of the road and just watch the elk go about their business.

But now Zion awaits.

Highway 90 got us back to Livingston, Montana where 12 days earlier we turned north toward Glacier. This was the center of our gigantic figure 8 across North America. This time we headed south to Yellowstone. The smaller highway south of Livingston wasn’t actually too bad and the speed limit was reasonable. We ended up rolling in to the northern entrance of Yellowstone sometime around 9pm. This is the entrance with the badass Teddy Roosevelt arch that is inscribed with what makes America rock: “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” Eat your hearts out, libertarians.

With Yellowstone being a popular park and it still being before Labor Day, I expected some trouble finding a campsite especially showing up after dark. To try to counteract this we planned an arrival in to Yellowstone in the middle of the week but still weren’t holding out too much hope. North of Yellowstone we were taking inventory of private campgrounds and hotels and felt pretty comfortable with those options in case we needed to turn back to them. My last experience with this was when my family rolled in to West Yellowstone expecting velvet rope service only to find that plenty of other families with bored teenagers and little brothers taking pictures of every other geyser on 110 film had arrived before us. We spent the night on the shoulder of the highway leading in to Yellowstone. We had a camper then.

When we arrived at the gate, the ranger and the campsite status sign told us there was space available in Mammoth campground which was the closest. We drove through the dark through the little village of Mammoth and in to the campground which now had a full sign. Other campgrounds were listed as available so we just went on to the next one. The next one south was Indian Creek which had a pit toilet only which Jayne was a little wary of. We pulled in and mostly everyone was down for the night. When we pulled up to the registration station, the elderly campground host couple wheeled up in their silent electric golf cart. Sneaky. We’ve been writing checks for National Park Service campgrounds since they seemed to accept them and it was an easy way to not deal with cash. These campground hosts informed me that they didn’t accept checks here. Apparently people have been driving to northwest Wyoming specifically to ripoff a campground with a pit toilet for $10. These folks decided I had a face that could be trusted and let me write them a check. My money is good somewhere. I’ve made it!

We are quite familiar with the tent by now so putting it up by moonlight wasn’t a problem at all. We did a quick kick check to make sure we weren’t laying the tent on top of any jagged rocks and got it up and checked out the toilet amenities right across the street. As we settled in to the air mattress, we heard some howling/barking. At first it was minimal but soon was joined by tens of tens more. It was pretty close sounding and was most definitely wolves. It was an eerie sound that I have never heard before. Pretty awesome. Far enough away to be safe (feeling at least) and close enough to be bone-chilling. The Eagle Scout in the tent next to us thought he would impress his girlfriend with his ability to judge distance of wolf howls (I think that’s a merit badge). “Do you know how close they are? Sounds like less than a quarter of a mile or so.”

The next morning there wasn’t much at Indian Creek to marvel at so we moved on to the Norris Geyser Basin. This was the site of young Zach running around with his 110 camera taking pictures of steam while his adventurous brothers ran ahead. Leaving my mother nervously imagining a reenactment of the warning signs that are all around the park. You can see one in the slideshow below but it basically features a nerdy German child falling in to a hot sulfuric geyser while his helpless sister, DJ Tanner points at him. It’s pretty frightening.

This time around I wasn’t as fascinated by the steam so we did a quick hike along the boardwalk looking at colored pool after colored pool. After procuring a campsite in Canyon, we went back north to visit the Mammoth Hot Springs area of the park. We had driven through this area last night but it was dark so we missed it all. You can get pretty jaded from the nonstop majesty so things like ancient volcanic formations and colored hot water coming out of the ground gets to be like another episode of Two And A Half Men. We didn’t spend a ton of time looking at this next pile of sulfur either. We did get some awesome ice cream in the little village of Mammoth.

That’s something else in national parks. They have all these little areas and buildings that were built back in the heyday of public funding for national parks. So along with preserving natural wonders, these old Yogi Bear type buildings complete with signs made of carved brown wood and huckleberry ice cream are kept up. Not a new Gehry building in sight.

The road east of Mammoth had a one-way trail that split off from the main drag. Because we were headed the right way and I like to think of the Forester (Rihanna) as an offroad beast we decided to take it. It was really fun at first. I was driving it fast enough to get a little of that racing feeling. Then I came up behind a rental Kia and had to slow down. Like way down. The car was moving slow enough that I couldn’t read my speedometer. They certainly weren’t driving it like it was a rental.

We’d been in one-way slow driving situations in national parks and the standard procedure is to pull to the side when able. Most roads including this one had plenty of spots set aside to pull off. Unfortunately these folks didn’t follow this procedure and we were stuck behind them and the, eventually, many more families for the majority of the remainder of the trip. At one point the caravan came to a complete stop. This was for legit reasons because there was just a moose chilling to the left of the trail. The Methuselah family were all out with their cameras and kids taking pictures which I certainly had no beef with because, dude, it’s a moose. In fact, the mother of the family called attention to this while filming the moose. Everyone was sitting silently just kinda taking in this moose gnawing on some brush. The mother was filming for several minutes and then all of a sudden decided to “David McCullough” it and whispered in to the microphone, “This…is a moose.”

No one even pulled off for the moose jam so after the caravan started up again we were still behind three or so cars. I was really looking forward to pretending I was in the Baja 1000 but instead I guess I had to enjoy the scenery or at least enjoy flashing my lights everytime a pull off opportunity came up. Eventually they pulled off and when we drove by them they looked at us like we were crazy. Maybe they had heard about that urban legend with the flashing lights or read the Scary Story To Tell In The Dark about the “High Beams”.

After they turned off, I resumed my rally car speeds (25-30 mph maybe tops) for the next two tenths of a mile until we hit the main road. We turned off soon after to check out Petrified Tree and Tower Falls. Petrified Tree is definitely one of those things that is worth reading about but I don’t think you get much more out of seeing it. It looks like that stump that my mom has been bugging my dad about removing for years now.

To complete the loop back to our campsite in Canyon, we went across the continental divide and down the valley to the canyon. In the Canyon campground area, we stopped at the lodge and got a bite to eat. The lodge after the sun goes down definitely has a cool, nerdy feel to it. Everyone is settling in for the night and is coming back from their day in the sun with stories about how many moose they saw or how many miles they hiked.

We then drove in to our campsite and inflated our bed for the night. Jayne was cold and tired but I heard there was a ranger campfire talk so I abandoned Jayne and went to the amphitheater. There an older ranger gave a talk on the history of the park. I watched the first half of it and from what I could gather the theme was people have always sucked. From throwing rocks in clogged geysers to spreading trash out to purposely attract bears for viewing. It was interesting to hear my suspicions backed up by a government official but I was starting to feel guilty for leaving Jayne alone so I wandered back to the site.

After I got under the covers, I felt like it was a good decision to be with her because the wolves started howling again.

I would liked to have stayed to shoot the shit with the Most Astonishing Young Man but there was majesty to be seen.

It was nearing 3pm and our friend Emily had tipped us off to a bakery that had great sourdough delivered daily at that time. We showed up right on time but unfortunately the delivery arrived at 4pm. We weren’t really sure if this bread was worth an hour delay. Next door was another Emily-recommended Missoula must: Kettle House Brewery. She had suggested buying a loaf of sourdough and walking it over to the Kettle House. We went over sans sourdough.

This was a microbrewery warehouse-y thing right in town. The brewery hosted a taproom which was in the same room as the stills. There was a halfwall separating the stills from the taps. Something about Montana law required taprooms to be licensed differently than bars. In order to drink a pint Jayne had to get a stamp card. Once she drank three pints (card stamped three times) she would have to relinquish her drinking rights for the day at the Kettle House. Luckily we were here just to sample.

With a pint of Bongwater for Jayne and a pint of rootbeer for me, we headed south/southeast toward Livingston, MT and eventually Yellowstone. We made sure to cruise as fast as possible because we hoped to camp in Yellowstone that evening and it was still a fer piece. We stopped twice along the way. The first time was at a rest area where an awesome “supervan” caught up with us. We had earlier passed this sweet BMW van/RV. As they pulled in, I walked up to them with my camera and talked to them about it. The man driving it told me it was a BMW Vixen. It wasn’t a full-sized RV or anything; for he and his wife it looked like it worked well. It had a kitchenette and bed and everything and he said they really enjoyed their trips in it. The most amazing thing about it to him was that because it was relatively small and a diesel, he got gas mileage in the 30s. Add that to the list of things I want now.

At some point we were hungry and after that canister of meat and bread and mayo I ate earlier, I wasn’t really interested in some heavy fast food. There was a bakery advertised on billboards for miles called Wheat Montana. We pulled off at the exit hoping it was nearby and it was right there. Interesting vibe. That close to the highway, I pictured a McDonald’s for whole grain bread but it seemed to be the town hangout for a town that was nowhere in sight. The dining area had old ranchers hanging around sipping coffee and eating fresh sandwiches and behind the counter were the town’s attractive high school girls and over the speaker were golden oldies. Jayne liked her brownie.

After a damp night’s sleep we loaded up our car and headed toward Yellowstone. We knew we’d have a long drive and did not opt to take the ferry since we’d join the interstate at the southern end of the sound. Our trip took us across Washington through Spokane. Both of us had an instant craving for pizza but we were in rural Washington. Through the magic of the iPhone we ordered some Papa John’s outside of Spokane and timed it ready for pickup on the way through.

After picking up the pizza, I gave up the reins for the first time on our trip out west, aside from the test drive Jayne got in Custer State Park. The sun had just gone down and Jayne was driving 75 through the Bitterroots in Idaho. There were lots of trucks going uphill at about 45 MPH and Jayne was dodging in and out of them. She just said, “I feel like I’m on an obstacle course.”

With Missoula being a smaller town, few hotels were available on Hotwire so we took what we could get. The roulette wheel landed on some very generic looking hotel on Broadway. When we rolled up around midnight, the first thing we saw was a girl stumbling around on a grassy patch in the parking lot, pulling her pants up. After seeing bare ass and checking in, we pulled around back to get to our room. There were multiple people sitting in their cars. Just sitting there. Before seeing the interior, we decided this was some sort of hangout for johns or something.

I emailed the Daniels family for an update on our eventual arrival in to Denver sometime later and we went to bed. The next morning with our only perception of Missoula being the apparent bordello we were staying at, we thought, “Let’s get the hell out of this town.” But Emily had already responded to my late night email and gave us a laundry list of things we could do in Missoula. We were really just thinking of Missoula as a layover close to Yellowstone but we did have actual laundry and we had some suggestions from someone we trusted.

Since we weren’t going off any sort of real schedule we decided to wing it in Missoula. We found a laundromat with wifi and set up our base there. While Jayne watched laundry, I went to the Staggering Ox. This is much like a Jimmy John’s except their sandwich ingredients are stuffed inside a loaf of bread baked in a coffee can. It wasn’t as good as it sounds. Weeks later on this trip, Jayne would still bring up the sandwich I had. Looking at it unsettled her and she sometimes would claim she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Across the street was an Albertson’s so we replenished our cooler. Jayne went inside to start on the list and I started moving things from the back of the car to dig the cooler out of its spot. I walked up to some shrubs and placed the cooler in the shrubs to drain the water. At this point we were pretty low on ice. Like everything on this trip, we replenished the ice whenever. If we were at a hotel where it was easy to fill up a 48 quart cooler, we did. In Canada, we paid $6 for 14 pounds of ice. We bought some at Albertson’s but I didn’t ask Jayne how much this one set us back. The Sanderson in me doesn’t want to know what I just paid for frozen water.

We rolled our cart out to the parking lot and started to take out everything but the base of the cooler (bottled waters, milk, Diet Cokes, Cokes and Koolaid Jammers). We organized the waterlogged jams and condiments with the cheeses and butter tub and surrounded the milks and juices and lunch meats with plenty of ice. As we were doing this, the cart collection boy strolled up and said, “Going camping?” This opened the door for him to carry on one of the best (one-sided) conversations I’ve ever had with someone. Jayne wrote a lot of it down as soon as he left and I will block quote that right now if I may.

In an Albertson’s parking lot in Missoula, MT, while Zach packed up the cooler, we made the acquaintance of a cart return boy. He was a most astonishing young man. He told us that he personally had met Barack Obama twice, and that Barack Obama is from Chicago, and that he, too, is from Chicago.

Upon learning that we were going camping in Yellowstone he let us know that one of the times he met President Obama was when Obama flew a 747 into Yellowstone. The young gentleman had also been at Yellowstone just last night, with his mom. They saw 17 bears.

“Excuse me,” a woman in the car next to us yelled. “Can you move these carts?” The carts the young man had been pushing were left in front of her car. When the young man made no response, Zach grabbed the carts and held them out of her way.

“Gotta stabilize ‘em like that,” the young man said, approving of Zach’s method.

Finally, upon learning that we are from the great state of Iowa, he informed us of yet another amazing coincidence – his father is the governor of Iowa, and his uncle is head coach of the football team there. He enlarged upon this last fact with some information shared with him by his cousin in Iowa, but I did not hear this part, because I was hiding in the car because I was laughing too much.

I have nothing to add except that his cousin in Iowa was in fact the Nebraska basketball coach. And…despite meeting Barack Obama multiple times he seemed most astonished that upon seeing 17 bears in Yellowstone that they just let you park in the middle of the road!! I’ve heard of pulling to the side but parking in the middle of the road?! Unbelievable!