Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Being Off the Grid

 I didn't really realize until lately how much I was depending on the fact that I can use the telephone, email, Facebook, and this blog to feel like I'm still connected to my life outside...my "real" life. But for almost a month, I have had only the most sporadic connection to any of these things. There is pretty much no way to obtain cell service or wifi in these national parks (duh). From fleeting time to time, I've had a decent signal in some place weird like a Visitors Center, or on top of a mountain, and I've used those moments to say "I'm out here!" But mostly we have had no electricity, no cell phones, no internet, no tv, no email. I'm sure it has been healthy for me. But it has been HARD. I have realized how vital my daily connections are, and how lost I feel without them. In a previous life, I got letters from friends or family every few weeks, and didn't worry in between. How times and communication have changed!

Our week in Yellowstone was wonderful. It is not breathtaking like Glacier. In fact, if anyone out there is planning to go to both, I'd say, go to Yellowstone first, and Glacier second. And even better, Grand Teton, then Yellowstone, and then Glacier. (Fly into one place and out of another. Take two or three weeks!)  Yellowstone is weird and wonderful, but the beauty is not so jaw-dropping. It's strange, it is beautiful, and it is unforgettable. But it also is a lot of time in the car, because everything you want to see in the park is about 30 to 50 miles from everything else, and it takes a long time to get from place to place.

This hydrothermal stuff at Yellowstone is pretty incredible. There is really almost no place like this on earth, and many of these things must be seen to be believed. There are geysers, mud pots, springs, and every kind of strange hot mess coming out of the ground you can imagine....and even some you can't. That's what makes Yellowstone different from anyplace else. It's just WEIRD. There is "Old Faithful," of course, which goes off dependably when they say it will. But there are loads of other weird things of every description. One can only imagine what the native people must have thought this whole thing meant when they came upon it without advance warning.

Late afternoon in the geyser basin

Steaming mud pot. Not quite like a Calistoga mud bath

Just a strange sight in a strange place

They are each weird and somehow wonderful

The truly faithful Old Faithful

A bear has been here!

The weather is changeable. One day on a hike it suddenly started to HAIL. Hard. Those are little balls of hail in the gravel. Then it just stopped!

And the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is as beautiful as anything you will see anywhere. We did a lot of hiking around the canyon, and every view just seems more spectacular. Every vista from each perspective is stunning. It is a very fragile and truly awesome place. Even the pictures, which are from my cellphone, seem hard to believe.

Afternoon light in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

In the canyon

More of the canyon

The other terrific thing about this area is the wildlife. While you are there you always have the possibility of seeing an animal you could live your whole life without seeing, except in a zoo. Animals like bears, bison, moose, elk, antelope, big horn sheep, mountain goats, bald eagles, foxes, beavers...and the list goes on, are a part of the experience of being at each of these parks.

Bears are a really big deal. Both black bears and grizzly bears live in each of these three National Parks, and knowing what to do if you come upon one is a constant refrain. First of all, it is really thrilling to see a bear in the wild. Everyone wants to see one. But not too close! Trying to make sure people don't attract bears is a constant preoccupation of the Parks. The bears and the humans can live around each other, but only if the bears do not find out that the humans have food. A long time ago, Yellowstone used to encourage bear/human interactions. They even had people feed bears from their cars! But, not surprisingly, people got killed, and bears got aggressive, and it turned out to be a disaster. Now they make sure you know that a "fed bear is a dead bear." This means very elaborate rules about how you keep food stored and where you take every tiny piece of garbage. As soon as a particular bear hangs around too much near where the people are, the Park figures someone has left out some kind of human food somewhere, which is what is causing the bears to come around. And then, that bear is marked for death. They have tried taking them far away, but they find their way back. So that is the end of that bear. It is very sad! The balance is very delicate. And pretty scary for both parties!

As soon as you arrive at these parks, especially if you are camping or hiking, there is a lot of instruction about how to let the bears know where you are, because the bears don't want to see you up close, just like you don't want to see them up close. So when you are hiking you have to talk out loud, or sing, and make human noises so they know to stay away. If you come upon a bear up close when you are on a hike, you are supposed to raise your hands and say really calmly, " Hi bear, I'm just walking here, don't mind me," and back slowly away. Don't run! (Then they will run after you like it's a game, or like they think they have to chase you.) Then, if that doesn't work, you are supposed to use this spray which is like a hot pepper spray that they find really annoying and horrible. When it gets into their nose, they will go away. This stuff costs about forty bucks... and you just keep hoping you bought it for nothing!

When you are driving on the roads, you sometimes come upon a place where all the cars are stopped along the road, and that's how you know there is something interesting to look at. The rangers call it a "bear jam," although it is more likely to be elk or bison or something else. One day we came upon a bear jam, and all the people were looking through binoculars at a scene far away. We looked through someone's high powered lens, and it was a bear eating the carcass of a buffalo (bison). How strange is that? You could live your whole life without seeing that, even at a zoo. We did see a bear walking in the woods another time, but from far away. We saw lots of amazing animals, but never saw a moose. (Dang.)

Grand Teton is much more beautiful than Yellowstone, I think,  but doesn't have the canyon or those weird thermal things. What it has is mountains. BIG mountains. It is such a beautiful place.....but....it was cold and rainy for the whole week we were there.We did get to go on some nice hikes, but we had planned a lake trip, a float trip down the Snake River, and many more hikes. It was just too damned cold and wet. Too bad. Still, it was beautiful and well worth visiting. We are just left with the feeling that we will need to return. (It is good to have goals). And who knows, maybe we will make it back some day. We stayed a bit longer in order to cross paths with some friends who were there on vacation, and that also made the whole thing worthwhile.

Clouds lower than the mountains!

A hike during a sunny break

Another lake in a sunny moment

Now we begin a week in Idaho. We are currently in Idaho Falls, just on the other side of the mountains from Grand Teton, and tonight we have the opportunity to use electricity, recharge our devices, catch up on email, and sort of rejoin the world of technology. Tomorrow, after we get fully restored, we are likely to be in the wilderness, and out of technology range, again.

Montana: Stunning Beauty, Glaciers, Fires, Hikes....but NO bears...YET.

Montana is as wonderful as I remembered. And Glacier National Park, which we always remember as the most beautiful place we have ever been, is just as astonishing in person as it is in our memory.

I was vaguely sorry to leave Missoula and the Flathead Valley. The valley, and Flathead Lake, are just beautiful as I remembered. And this time, after visiting Missoula and Big Fork, we spent a couple of days in Whitefish, which is about as cute as a town could get, and seems like an amazing and wonderful place to live. While we were there we went up to the top of the mountain, riding on the chairlifts that are used for skiing during the winter, and it was spectacular, but without the views we anticipated, because the entire area is hazy with smoke from wildfires in Montana, Washington, Oregon, and even as far away as Northern California. Riding up the chairlifts with us were quite a number of pretty crazy people (mostly quite young), who were sending themselves and their dirt bikes to the top, in order to send themselves careening down the mountain at crazy breakneck speeds. It was fun to watch, but sobering, too. I'm not so sorry to not be so young and indifferent to mortality.

Yes, those are our bikes, but you can't do much riding here. And no careening down mountains.

When we got to Glacier we started right away learning a lot of stuff, like we have at each National Park or historic site we have been to so far. It's too bad that it has taken so long for us to understand that  Park Rangers, guides and docents really can give us a bigger and richer experience than we get just going around on our own, and we have determined to go on more Ranger-lead hikes and listen to more of their talks. Sometimes they are kind of geeky (today the Ranger leading our hike went on in a rather religious way about rocks...and we had to stop a few times on our hikes to hear more about her favorite kinds of rocks), but they are usually adorable in their enthusiasm, and we have already learned a lot more than we would have without their encyclopedic knowledge and dedication.

On of the things we have learned is that the Continental Divide, which goes through the middle of this park, marks two completely different ecosystems. The western side, where we are camping this
time, is the end of the Pacific Northwest,  and gets its weather system and ecosystem from the Pacific. This is why the smoke from the fires farther west, especially from Washington, are making
the air so hazy here. The eastern side of the park is really the beginning of the Plains, and although the smoke is still bad there, the climate is pretty different, the animals are different, and the landscape is quite different.  Most of the hiking we have done here in the two other times we have been here
was on the eastern side, and we are disappointed not to really be able to go there again. So disappointed in fact that we have decided to blow off the last couple of nights at this campground, and go the long way around (you can't drive a trailer over the pass), so that we can enter the park from the other side.

The water is amazingly COLD

Can you see the haziness? There are BIG mountains there at the back, but they look vague

Perhaps I should explain about this park. It is 50 miles to travel from the west side of the park to the east. That sounds like nothing, right? But the Going to the Sun Road, which is THE most spectacular drive I have ever seen, is so winding and difficult that in the best of circumstances,  it takes about two and a half hours to go from one end to the other. So since you start on one side (camping doesn't really happen in the middle, that is the highest pass), you may have four or five hours committed to your day even before you get to the place you want to hike. Most hikes are at least three or four (or more, if I'm coming along) hours long. So you see the problem.

I'm not complaining. We have been on amazing hikes. One day we went to the top of Logan Pass, and hiked up to a hidden lake. It was so beautiful.

Hidden Lake, above Logan Pass

We tried to do this hike with our kids a long time ago, but the snow was too deep. Here is another
amazing thing. The pass opens around the 3rd of July. This year there was still 8 feet of snow there on July 3. Yesterday, on August 8, most of the snow was gone. The wildflowers were everywhere. The short period of time in which these flowers have to push their way up, flower and then drop seeds, is amazing. If I worked up at this pass at the Visitor Center, I'd go out every single day between the 1st of July and the 1st of September just to watch the changes. What an amazing transformation!

Can you see the wildflowers? Maybe you have to expand the picture

There is still some snow

Speaking of transformations, it is hard not to feel both glad and terribly sad about this place. When it opened in around 1910, there were something like 125 or 150 glaciers here. Now there are 25. They predict that all the glaciers here will be gone by 2030. That is only 16 years. Better get packing if you want to see them before they are gone. It will still be amazing and terrifying and beautiful here. But it will be different in significant ways.


One of the most startling things we have seen was on another hike to a lake. About halfway up the hike, there is an area with a tremendous number of fallen trees. Many of them are broken off about half way up the trunk. And they are falling UPHILL, which of course doesn't make sense at all. The Ranger told us that they believe that the trees were blown down, not by an avalanche (which occurred across the valley), but by the WIND created by the avalanche as it fell down the mountain across the valley.  Some of them broke off above the snow cover in one big moment in 2003. WOW.

Trees falling uphill

After we accomplished our hike, we got here:

I know this looks amazing, but it is hazy from smoke.

This is Avalanche Lake.

Last night we took a boat ride on the lake nearest to us. It was a very beautiful night, and not as smoky as some of the time here has been. It was one of the nicest experiences we have had since we began this trip last January.

Our wooden  boat, making this trip since 1938

This is how the mountains looked from our boat ride.

This is how we looked on our boat ride

Here is an amazing story we heard on the boat ride: in the 1930's there was a young couple staying at the lodge here at this lake who announced to everyone that they were going to climb to the top of one of these mountains. Everyone said, don't be ridiculous. Then they claimed they had, in fact, reached the top. No one believed them. They claimed to have left a glass jar, with their names and the date inside, wedged under a rock at the very top. They were just a crazy couple named Cannon, until the 1980's, when some Boy Scout troop found the jar. Now the mountain is called Mt Cannon!

When we were on a hike today,  and came upon a really almost unbelievable waterfall,

McDonald "Creek"

A River Runs Through it...and Bob steps in it

I suddenly thought of the sunset at Mallory Square in Key West.....and thought both: WOW, what a trip we are on...and WOW, what a BIG country.

Am I doing enough Glacier National Park boosting? This is one of the, if not THE,  most stunning
places it is possible to visit in this country. It is not on the way to anywhere. You can't pass through it as part of something else. You have to come here deliberately.  But it is so worth it. It is unlike anything else. And the time to visit it is SOON. DO  it, before you can't do it.

And We Resume: Hotsville USA

It is wonderful to be on the road again, but I haven't felt like writing because it has been TOO. DAMNED. HOT. You wouldn't automatically think Pacific Northwest when someone says it's too damned hot, would you? Neither would we. We are having a great time but it has been too hot to enjoy spending time outdoors.

We spent close to a week with beloved family members in Washington, and the best part was that it became a familyfest, with a few gatherings of family members I never get to see--including a cousin I haven't seen since I was 18--all in the same place at the same time. It was wonderful, it felt great, and it was hard to leave.  One of the best things, besides the awesome family time, was the opportunity to pick rainier cherries. One of my cousins is in the cherry business, and he helped us have the opportunity to pick cherries for ourselves. And not just cherries, but rainier cherries, the most rare and delicious cherries of all. We picked them, took them home, washed them, and then ate them....ate them...ate them...and are still eating them, a week later. Bob and I are now traveling with them and eating a few at a time, and we feel like we got away with something amazing!

We had piles and piles and piles! And we picked them ourselves!

Bob and I were sad to leave our family (and the cherries!), but we have been happy to be back on the road, even if it has been too hot to have much fun. 

Our first stop was a very sweet and fun little town called Republic, which is an old Western town that looks like it belongs in a movie.

A little bit of downtown Republic

It was too hot to walk around! But we did find a sweet little place for dinner, where they serve beer made next door in a brewery that was closed for the day. We also visited the Grand Coulee Dam, which is the biggest in the country, and the second biggest in the world. It's on the mighty Columbia, which we almost followed from the Pacific into Canada (with a few hiccups). It was an amazing sight, and would have been even more interesting if the water had been running out the spillway, which would have happened in the spring. It also would have been more fun if it hadn't been 104 degrees outside.

The dam...with no water coming out

So, we headed north into British Columbia, which we had hoped would surely be cooler...but alas, it wasn't so.  We skirted the border for the rest of the day, then dropped down into a little bit of Idaho and then into our beloved Montana. Hooray for Montana, one of our favorite places in the US of A. We landed in Missoula, which is a place that I love. We are still loving it, but it has been too hot to bike, too hot to hike...but not too hot to go to the movies and go to breweries in the afternoon.

Missoula is just a little bit of beer heaven. I think we would have to stay here a long time to try all the beer that is made in this town. ...and that would be fine with me. What a fun town! It's a lot like Portland, but with a "western" feeling. Lots of people with cowboy boots, but that same laid-back, youthful, easy-going feeling. Today we had a picnic and watched some people float lazily downstream in inner tubes, looking like they didn't have a care in the world.

Guess you can't see them here. Maybe they just floated past.

It's just a lovely, easy place, and one that I will want to come back to whenever I can. In the meantime, I'm enjoying every minute, every view of the mountains,  and every excellent beer. A singer I have been wanting to see for a long time, Hayes Carll, is playing here on Saturday night, and I'm pretty happy to be seeing him at last. And in the meantime, it's just waiting for the sun to go down so it will cool off.  It's going to be hard to leave, even though Glacier is calling us. We will make a visit up on Flathead Lake, and then hope by the time we get to Glacier it will be cool enough to hike. In the meantime, Montana is one of the very best places there is.

Oh, look closely. There they go.