The Grand Tetons and Jackson, Wyoming - The Final Park

The Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole

     The Grand Teton Mountains abut the southern part of Yellowstone, have sharp, pointed, jagged, peaks of up to 13,800 feet, and are pointed because they are granite and recently formed (12 million years ago while the granite itself is 3 billion years old).  The snaking rivers and abundant wildlife gave us the fun experiences to kayak on the Snake River, bicycle to the ski resort, and go up the mountains on an ATV (a precipitous trail formed by the U.S. Forest Service just this year for the first time).  We saw many, many fly fishermen on the rivers.

String Lake where we hiked along the shore and had a picnic lunch

     The town where our motor coach was parked was Jackson Hole, a very upscale town (10,000) with many, many art galleries offering outstanding (and very expensive) art.   Barbara was in her element.   In addition to the galleries, the shops and restaurants were like those of Utah's Park City, offering elegant leathers, unique menus of elk and buffalo, and lots of Western clothing.  We celebrated Harold's birthday at the Snake River Grill and enjoyed a wonderful evening of exotic food. 

Harold during his somewhat harrowing but exciting ATV tour near the Tetons.

Jackson City square has a portal made of elk antlers, the sidewalks are old boards, and the farmer's market our first day in town was outstanding.  Buffalo Bill's Cowboy Bar has saddles instead of stools.  Sorry to say we left before having the chance to fall off.

     We rode our bicycles the 28-mile round trip up to the famous Jackson Hole ski resort lodge for lunch; the resort is known for very steep runs and narrow canyons.

The below photo from Google shows the resort in Winter

     We revisited the famous National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, where we were several years ago with Barbara's sister Jean and her husband Jim Lemmon.  The museum is world famous and holds annual contests and auctions of work from artists all over the world.

This painting "Days of Bison Millions" by Carl Rungius is one of many of this famous artist's western work we saw.

We also saw "Buffalo Hunt under White Wolf Skin" by George Catlin.  Birds, elk, wolves, buffalo and all other wildlife of Wyoming are here in this great museum. 

     After our final week in Wyoming, we returned to Salt Lake City via Idaho.  Final thoughts and conclusions about our 8,000-mile odyssey through 18 states and one in Canada will be offered in a final post soon.  We had a great time, met a lot of very interesting people, experimented with full-time RVing, and saw a lot of our beautiful and rich country.

Yellowstone Park - The World's First!

     YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

     Yellowstone National Park, the world's first national park, is truly special.  We have visited here twice before, both times in the Winter (once over Christmas) and find the summer a much different experience, since all parts of the park are available.  We will spend a week here before moving on to Teton National Park. 
     We have spent considerable time inside the park and marvelled at the many geysers (including the venerable Old Faithful), the bubbling mud holes, and the spectacular canyons and falls. The Yellowstone Volcano is still active and the geysers emanate from only about 3 miles below the earth's surface. Evidence for the current activity of the Yellowstone Volcano are the 1,000 to 3,000 earthquakes per year, active ground deformations, and the over 10,000 thermal features found in Yellowstone.

Old Faithful goes off about every hour

 The Falls rival those of Yosemite and are easily accessible

The Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center houses grizzly bears and wolves that would have been destroyed because they became threats to humans. Instead they were saved to serve as educational sources. The following 1,000-pound grizzly below is housed very close to our RV park which is right outside the West Yellowstone Gate.

The grizzly took a dip and seems to be self-satisfied

     We came upon a herd of about 200 bison that had surrounded the body of another bison killed by wolves. The seven wolves (including two juveniles) were patrolling-running around the edge of the herd trying to get at their kill.  A fascinating thing to watch and an important lesson about life.  

The Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center houses two packs of wolves with one being fed in the morning and the other in the evening.The following alpha female was allowed by the pack to eat first.  The food (elk meat) was hidden among rocks and among fallen trees to cause the wolves to forage for their meal.

More on the final days of our stay later.

Glacier Park, Canada, and Charles Russell

Montana, Canada, and Charles Russell

Glacier National Park (and the Canadian side of it named Waterton) and Great Falls have been great experiences. The magnificent landscapes of Montana and Canada are living photographs and our campgrounds have been beautiful and comfortable.

We took a strenuous 10-mile mountain hike up to Iceberg lake led by a park ranger and were so glad we did. Seeing the views, wildflowers, and animals close up is so much more exciting. The 21 remaining glaciers will be gone by 2020 and in the mid-1970s there were 150 of them.

Iceberg Lake was, as expected, full of ice fallen from the walls.  We ate our lunch there before starting back down the mountain.

   The bear below crossed in front of us as we were leaving the lodge after the hike.  In the small village of Waterton, Canada, deer walked casually throughout the streets, houses, and between stores. 

We had lunch on the Canadian side and visited the Prince of Wales lodge below.

After leaving Glacier National Park we spent three days in Great Falls, Montana before going down to Yellowstone National Park on the 25th of August.  Great Falls has the home and studio of the famous American painter, Charles M. Russell who along with Remington are recognized as the most important Western American artists in our history.  We visited the fantastic museum, his house, and of course the studio.  Barbara wanted to stay and live in the studio.  Ever the romantic.  Charles died in 1926 in the home below at the young age of 61 and having painted and sculpted over 4,500 pieces of work.  His art work chronicles the development of the West, the life and submission of the native peoples, and the plight of the buffalo.  He was a real cowboy so his art work has authentic experiences as the base.  He disliked the automobile so much at his funeral he was transported in a horse-drawn hearse. 

His detail and understanding of the human and animal anatomy lend drama to the paintings we saw.

 

We toured the house which is close to the main street of Great Falls where Russell, his wife Nancy (14 when they married, he was 31!), and their adopted son Jack lived.  The house cost $800 to build and received many famous visitors, among them Will Rogers.

The studio had his art set-ups and oil paints just as he left them.  Standing in the personal space of such a creative giant fills the visitor with quiet respect and a lot of humility.

Well, on to Yellowstone for 8 days, one of our favorite places.  We have been there three times before (once over Christmas) and never get enough.

Great Visit to North Dakota!

MEDORA

We stayed for 7 nights in the town of Medora, just outside the southern unit of the Teddy Roosevelt National Park.  What a great little town!  In the winter, there are 37 permanent residents, but in the summer season, it is a bustling town, offering lots of entertainment for the tourists.  We saw the Medora Musical one evening (above photo), a professionally staged musical review Branson-style, in an outdoor amphitheater.  Also saw a wonderfully performed one-man show about Teddy Roosevelt, and a free outdoor concert by a local country-western singer and composer.

 Barbara and Harold's Bicycling Encounter with Wandering Bison

On a bicycle ride one day into the TR Natl. Park, we ran into the above scene on the road: about 60 bison, including many new-borns, wandering along the same road we were riding, moving from one side of the road to the other, and holding up traffic.  Our quandry:  how to get by these 2000-pound behemoths without being knocked off our bikes!

Fortunately for us, the red pickup in this picture backed up to where we were standing and offered to carry us through in the back of their truck.  Nice people!  We didn't know how we'd make it without their help.

From the back of the truck we got up close and personal with these animals and snapped pictures right and left. 

Williston, ND - FORT UNION TRADING POST

This trading post sitting alongside the Missouri River is a faithful reconstruction (by the National Park Service) of a non-military fort that operated in Northwest North Dakota for about 40 years from the 1820s and the 1860s.  The unique thing about this fort is that it was established to facilitate trading of goods between white men (no white women ever resided here) and the various Indian tribes in the area.  The whites bartered beads, blankets, tin kitchen items, thimbles, thread and cloth (among many other things) for Indian buffalo pelts and robes.  The interactions were entirely peaceful, very formal and dignified events in which both the Indians and the white men felt superior to each other for making such good deals.  The whites felt they were getting the buffalo pelts very cheaply and the Indians couldn't believe the whites would pay them for buffalo pelts rather than shooting the buffalo themselves!

About 100 white men lived at this fort at any given time.  Because there were no white women, many married Indian women, both for love and to cement the relationships between the white trading post and the Indian tribes. 

When many more settlers began to arrive in the area in the 1860s, many fleeing from the civil war farther east and south, the military began to establish itself in the area to protect them and that was the end of friendly relations between the whites and the Indians.  The trading fort was closed around 1866 when a military fort was established down the road.  Custer passed by here in 1876 on the way to his defeat by Sitting Bull at Little Big Horn down in South Dakota. 

This is the trading fort from the outside.

In this room before the fire, the formal exchange of greetings and speeches between the white traders and the Indians took place, along with sharing a meal, before the official trading took place.  The preliminaries often lasted as long as 8 hours!

The Missouri River ambles by outside the Fort. 

While at the fort for trading, Indians would camp outside the fort in their teepees, as many as 5000 surrounding the fort - peacefully - at one time!

 Oil Boom in Williston

One of the most interesting aspects of our short stay (only two nights) in Williston was to observe the impact on this relatively small town of about 15,000 people of a recent discovery of a huge oil field in the area.  This is expected to be the largest oil field in the lower U.S., ever, and there is apparently good reason to believe that only a short distance further below this field is an even larger reservoir of oil.  The result that we saw was an incredible amount of activity.  Everywhere around town were huge makeship "man camps", temporary barracks and informal RV parks set up to accommodate the huge influx of workers.  There was new building everywhere, from large installations for the oil producers themselves plus all of the support kinds of companies, to new roads seeming to be going in everywhere.  Large trucks hauling dirt or tanker trucks crowded the roads and were on the move day and night.  The reports in the newspapers were that the number of passengers arriving at the airports in the area had doubled from a year ago, which in turn were already double that of the prior year.  Local businesses were upset at the disorganization caused by the rapid ramp-up of activity.  Oil companies appear to be hiring hundreds of workers "to report for work next Monday", only to have the workers to arrive on Sunday to find there is no place to live!  The RV park we stayed in had decided to sharply limit the number of long-term stays by workers in order to keep the park open for tourists.  And the rangers at Fort Union reported that the visits to the park were down 75% from last year, in large part, they felt, because of the decline in tourists due to the lack of accommodations for them.

In any case, jobs are going begging in Williston, ND, unlike the rest of the country.  We found empty shelves at the local Walmart, caused, we were told, by the shortage of workers available to stock the shelves, despite the fact that they are offering an extraordinary wage (for Walmart) of $16 per hour!  This is a boom town. 

At Teddy Roosevelt National Park, ND

     Another national park where we've never been, staying at an RV park in the nearby town of Medora. The Roosevelt park area is very much like the better-known badlands down in South Dakota, but not so dry and there are many wild animals to be seen here, unlike the SD version. 

     The park and surrounding area is also a great place for riding bikes and hiking.  There are museums (the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame), restaurants (of course), and theater.  We attended the Medora Musical last night, a Branson-style extravaganza staged in a 2,000 seat outdoor amphitheater with an emphasis on North Dakota's cowboy tradition, patriotism, Teddy Roosevelt, and country-western music.  It was well done and very entertaining.  The finale featured a cowboy on a white horse, spotlighted on a hill behind the stage and ridden slowly down the hill till he got to the stage.  (Where did that spotlight that followed him all the way down the hill come from?!!) 

    Visiting here has also heightened our interest in Teddy Roosevelt, a President we both know too little about.  Roosevelt came to this town when he was only 26, trying to recover from his grief at the deaths of both his mother and his wife - on the same day (Valentine's)! - back in New York.  He ended up staying here in a small cabin he had built for himself and later bought a ranch a few miles north of Medora.  He credits his life in North Dakota for becoming the President he became.  One of his achievements was a major role in the creation of several national parks (230 million acres), including Yosemite in California and the Badlands in South Dakota.  Harold first read a biography of John Muir after visiting Yosemite, and has now started one on Roosevelt. 

This is the actual cabin he built.  He got the cabin and 400 cattle for $14,000.  Later he bought a ranch and become the cowboy we know he was.

   

 On a ride through the southern "unit" of the park, we saw: bison, up close and personal lolling alongside the road; wild horses, deer and about three prairie dog towns. The prairie dogs were the most fun to watch, hundreds of them popping out of their holes in the late afternoon to look around, play and eat. They're earnest little guys. 

One of the hundreds of prairie dogs we saw, surveying his surroundings and "lookin' good for the tourists".



One of about 30 bison we found lounging by the side of the road.

The badlands inside the park.

One group of wild horses we found oblivious to the us taking their picture along the roadside.

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Moving on to North Dakota (Teddy Roosevelt) and Canada

     Today (Thursday, August 4th) is our last day in Duluth, Minnesota - we have really enjoyed this northern city on Lake Superior!  This afternoon, after Barbara finishes painting (she started at 9 a.m.) we take a guided boat tour down the St. Louis River.  Last night we went to the new Woody Allen movie "Paris at Midnight" and loved it (it is hard to be surprised anymore with so many movies and television programs but Woody does it again!) and highly recommend it to all our family & friends! 

   The movie house in downtown Duluth had a big-city restaurant and bar on the top floor and we were permitted to take our beers into the theater with our popcorn!  A first for either of us.
   This next photo is of a sailboat going under the aerial bridge in downtown Duluth, which is still a major shipping port with huge boats coming and going daily, carrying ore destined for steel plants.

The photo that follows is the 1938 iron ore ship William A. Irwin which worked for 40 years until the late 70's, built and owned by U.S. Steel in it's heyday years.  It is now an outstanding museum and we took a guided tour that taught us how important Duluth and the shipping industry was to the area and our country.
 
     We now get ready for North Dakota and Canada (Banff National Park, a unique mountain community located in Canada's first National Park and UNESCO World Heritage Site) before coming back into the U.S. to visit Glacier National Park (Montana, on the Canadian border), the Grand Tetons (and Jackson Hole), and Yellowstone National Park before winding our way to Salt Lake City.

Twofer: Catching up on Michigan/Minnesota Experiences

Picture Rocks National Lakeshore

From July 25th until the 27th, we were staying at an RV park in Munising in the UP (Upper Peninsula) of Michigan.  Unfortunately, rain prevented us from enjoying one of the days, but the other day we were able to take a boat tour to see the Picture Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior.  It was much more beautiful than we expected.  The seashore is comprised of rocky cliffs whose coloring is remarkable.  Below are some photos from there.

Amazing colors, including the color of the water, which is not exaggerated in these photos.

Duluth, MN.

Here in Duluth, we are staying for a week at the Spirit Marine and RV park, an unusual combination.  Our RV backs up to one of the docks and faces the St. Louis Bay of Lake Superior.  This is the most interesting RV park we've been to.  We love sitting outside our RV and watching the boating activity in the bay as well as coming and going from our marina.

Note the back end of our motorhome to the left of the boat on the right.

 This beautiful sailboat was built by one man over five years.  He cut and shaped all the wood, and put it all together.  He has hopes of taking it onto big water - like the ocean - one of these days.  It has four sails.  It sits opposite the dock right behind our motor home.

This stately old tugboat is moored alongside another wharf opposite our motor home.

Our marina/RV park was once a major shipbuilding site during WWII and before.  They built 350-700- foot boats here and launched them into the river, though their engines were attached elsewhere.  The water is too shallow here for a  fully-loaded boat of that size. 

In addition to the charming place we're staying here, Duluth seems to be a great small town as well as a major port in the Great Lakes.  Iron ore from mines nearby are shipped from here to Pittsburg and elsewhere on the Great Lakes, and has been for years.  The city has also turned its downtown working harbor into a tourist attraction with museums, good restaurants, shops and lakeside walk with a variety of attractions.  There is a 70-mile-long paved bicycle path within three blocks of our RV park, a zoo up the street, and many other attractions.  Lots of things to do here. 

What we've learned about the Motor Home Life

We’ve been on the road in our motorhome now for almost three months.  In that time, we’ve had the opportunity to get to know a few of our fellow “RVers” and have been surprised at some of the things we’ve learned.

1.       Not all RVers are the same.  

a.       Some folks use their RVs to travel relatively short distances most every weekend from their homes to “get away” and relax, as well as join like-minded RVers they’ve become friends with.  These people are usually still working (and thank God, still paying into Social Security for people like us!) and with younger families.  This is the case of Harold’s brother and sister-in-law Kathy who met us at Shawnee National Forest for a weekend.

b.      Some other people use their RVs for somewhat longer-than-normal vacations here and there – anywhere from two weeks to a month.  They may also use them for short getaways not too far from home.  Again, these folks are mostly those restricted by jobs and family size and really miss their permanent homes and “stuff”  when away. 

c.       Some people are like us – so far.  They travel several months of the year and go back to their regular home for the rest of the time, thus keeping the roots established in their home communities.  Almost all of these types are retired but still love their homes and cities.

d.      And then there are some people who sell their homes and most of their belongings, buy a motor home (usually a big one), and live as fulltime RVers.  These are the most fascinating to us.  With the exception of a few (we met a couple with 4 children, all home-schooled in the RV and the husband works and reunites often given his sales rep career) they are all retired with lives deeply moved by wanderlust to see new places and new people all the time.  Many of these are also “work-camper”  RVers, those who get free RV space and hook ups to work at a resort, national park or private RV park (a monthly value of approximately $1,500 in exchange for 20-30 hours per week).

2.        There are many more full-time RVers than we realized.  We have met several at the various campgrounds we’ve stayed at, and are told that there are a million households living full time in RVs.   Full-time RVing not only provides a degree of excitement, it can also be more economical than living in a regular home somewhere.  For instance, one couple we met recently has been living full time in their motorhome since 2005.  They lease a space for their RV, on a yearly basis at only $1600 per year, at a campground in southern Arizona.  They sold their home in Michigan, spend 6 months of the year at the Arizona “campground” along with 800+ RVers at their campground, and then travel around the country, like we’re doing, for the rest of the year.   There are no property taxes to pay, and although there are upkeep expenses on an RV, they are generally less than one would have on a full-sized home or condo.  The motor home is generally cheaper to buy ($50,000 - $200,000 on average) than a home with land, and one can use the funds they raise from the sale of their home for investments.   We asked our new friends the question of what happens when you finally reach the point that you feel incapable of driving one of these monsters around the country.  Their response was, “That’s the automatic trigger point for going into a Senior Living Housing Complex or an assisted living facility!”  How many children would love not to feel responsible for forcing that kind of decision on their parents?

3.        Full-time RVers are adventurers, as a group.  They’re risk takers.  It takes a risk-taker to sell all or most of their belongings and set out to live in a vehicle which is in many ways more complicated than a regular home (for instance, who do you call when you’re on the road somewhere in Montana and you have a flat tire – on a 25,000-pound vehicle!).   They’ve broken away from the day-to-day social relationships that make us all more comfortable in the world and depend, basically, on just their companion and the casual friendships they pick up on the way.  In many ways, they’re the frontier people of our time, forging a new life in a new way in new places.

4.       RVers are easy to get to know.  Everyone in a campground is looking for socialization and conversation, even if it’s just for an evening.  It might take months or years to find friends in a new city you’ve moved to, but fast friendships are formed quickly (if not necessarily lastingly) in the RV campground.  For those of you reading this and knowing Harold and me, there are constant conversations outside the coach, in the laundry room, around outside fireplaces over wine at night, and often when going downtown to an occasional dinner night out.

5.       RVers come from all walks of life.  There are retired policemen and professors, professional photographers, retired millionaires, retired plumbers, young families on vacation, young professional couples without children who have somehow found a way to live working only 5 months a years and travel the rest (yes, we met one of them), fifty-somethings from other countries who take a year off from their careers to explore the United States in a motorhome.  There is always someone you have something in common with in every campground where you stay, or someone whose life is so different from yours that you can’t wait to hear how they do it.

6.        At the risk of stereotyping, all the men in RVs adore their RVs and find nothing more fascinating to talk about than their RV and its inner workings, challenges, and mysteries.  The women may have to search to find things in common with one another:  politics, the arts, family, great restaurants they’ve found, their pets, books they’ve read, etc.  Men never have that problem.  They all KNOW what interest they have in common and they have an immediate bond.  Ask Harold about hydraulic jacks or gray tank management and get ready for note-taking!

Harold and his friend, Don Lehr, carry on an animated discussion on some arcane aspect of maintaining their motor homes (possibly boring - you think? - Don's wife, Darlene).

7.       Motor homes are pretty nice places to live!  They’re compact, but they can be very roomy, comfortable and about as elegant as you want to make them.  Here, for instance, is the inside of the 37-foot, 3-slide, and RV home of one of our friends.  It’s all there: the microwave (combo convection oven), stove, kitchen counters and cabinets, dining space, couches and easy chairs, as big a TV (almost) as you could want, office space for the RV; two bathrooms, if you feel you need them, a combo washer-dryer (yes, the same appliance does both!), lots of storage space, bedroom with queen-size beds, surround sound, etc.  Besides, most  RVers  like spending almost as much of their time outdoors as in. 

In short, we’ve found the “RV life” very appealing.  It’s only been about three months so far, of course, but so far we’ve found it to be a good decision and a rewarding experience.