Trip update: Yellowstone to Tetons to Salmon, Idaho

I did go to Hamilton the day after my last update, and spent Sunday evening to Wednesday morning with my friends there. Again, it was HOT–unusually so for Hamilton, hitting 100 each day. I’m seriously looking forward to getting back to the west coast–though the way things are going, Portland will get one of its annual heat waves just about the time we arrive.

Wednesday I picked my brother up in Missoula and we headed toward Yellowstone. He had a liver transplant a year ago (terminal cirrhosis of the liver, and he’s a lifelong teetotaler–go figure, it’s a mystery to all of us), and his strength is limited, but he held up pretty well to riding most of the day and camping at night in Yellowstone and in Teton National Park.

First Yellowstone. Still hot–high 90s–so we may have seen less than if it had been in, say, the 70s. For whatever reasons–the heat, the lingering effects of the 1988 fire, my age–Yellowstone seemed a bit diminished to me. In particular, it seems to me there’s less geothermal activity than in my youth. I’m talking serious youth here, age 5 or less, so it may be my memory; but for instance, I remember a lot of water at Mammoth Hot Springs, and there are but a few trickles now. The mineral formations are still pretty impressive (below)–but not up to my 55-year-old memory.

Here’s one of the more colorful bits, with a trickle of water still adding to it.

This one is no longer active. It has a name, but it’s leaked out of that memory I’ve been mentioning:

Of course, it’s the geysers and steam vents that Yellowstone is most famous for. Here’s my favorite view–somehow, I liked the effects from a distance better than the closeups, though those are pretty cool (or hot, really) too.

What you get from the closeups is the color–which I tend to attribute to mineral deposits, but just as often they’re bacteria mats.

This one is a geothermal pool spilling down into a river.

And of course we had to go see Old Faithful. We went there for supper, and had a miserable experience of the cafeteria there. The park site at Old Faithful has gotten to be virtually an urban experience–you exit a 4-lane highway to get to it, the parking lot is vast, and I don’t even know how many buildings are there. Trust me, that is different than it was 50-odd years ago. Necessary, I’m sure, to accommodate the crowds so that they don’t spill over and cause even more environmental damage–but still. Fortunately, the crowds when we were there weren’t bad, which helped.

I didn’t get good shots of Old Faithful–for one, the eruption we saw wasn’t all that impressive (I caught the end of a more impressive one the next morning, but not in time to grab a picture), and for two my camera didn’t function properly. But for what they’re worth, here are a couple.

This one is toward the beginning of the eruption. At least it’s in focus.

For some reason, the camera didn’t focus when I grabbed the second batch, but this one is from the peak of the eruption.

The guy with the hat carefully making his way down the stairs is my brother, heading back to the car after watching Old Faithful:

We saw very little in the way of wildlife–as we told each other, any sensible mammal of any size was hanging out in the shade in the deepest forest they could find. But we did see a few buffalo:

And a couple of elk, though I only got pictures of this one:

We camped that night in one of the official Yellowstone campgrounds. It was OK, but I do find such places over-crowded. The bear warnings were ubiquitous, and they had steel boxes to hide out food in–which we needed, because I slept in the car, so storing the food in the car would not have been the thing to do.

From Yellowstone, we drove down to the Grand Teton National Park, which is just a few miles south. My brother got to enjoy more of the sights that day, because the Tetons are hard to hide and are visible from the car everywhere you go. We did a full circuit of the park, with a little detour to Jackson looking for an A & W I remembered, visions of root beer floats dancing in our heads (or mine, anyway), but it had transmogrified into a Dairy Queen, so we had to settle for dipped cones instead. Good, but not as good.

Here are a few shots of the Tetons. The first is from a bit of distance–you kinda have to get distance on them to get many of them in. There were warnings about hiking down in the pretty green stuff in the foreground–bears again. Not that we saw any.

This one is stitched together from a couple of shots taken from the front of the Jenny Lake lodge, which definitely has one of the best, if not the best, perspectives on them. I’m posting it as a thumbnail–click on the thumbnail and you’ll get a full-sized view. Photoshop did a pretty good job stitching the two shots together, don’t you think? I could have saved it a bit bigger, but this’ll have to do.

This next one is a shot over the lake near where we camped that night (Colson Bay). I was looking for a place to walk the dogs (leashes only in the parks–not so much fun when you have 4 leashes to juggle, especailly when stopping to pick up you-know-what. I leave it to your imagination. . .). Anyway, I was looking for a place to walk the dogs and found this spot. Not too shabby.

From the Tetons we headed over to Idaho, via Wyoming Rte. 22, which has one of the steepest passes I’ve encountered (10% grade). The little car had to work really hard to get us over it. Southern Idaho is not my favorite place on the planet–and I get to say that since I spent many a hot hour in the back seat of our car travelling through it as a kid. However, when we stopped for lunch in Idaho Falls, by virtue of getting a bit lost, we found the actual falls. Again, a thumbnail to click on for the full view–it’s a panorama stitched together from about 8 shots.

There’s a pretty nice park along there, with a good brewpub across the street. Just off Broadway, if you ever happen to find yourself in Idaho Falls.

Then on to Salmon, where we lived when we were kids. I was 12 when we left–you do the math. Salmon played an important role in forming my psyche. For instance, I used to think every town had a river running through it. Mountains, to really be considered mountains, should have at least a few with timberlines. Temperatures in the 80s are hot, and the 90s are excessive (though it’s been in the high 90s while we’ve been here, it didn’t used to get this hot around here, I swear.) (Unabashed plug approaching) We checked into the Stagecoach Inn, which I remember from when we lived here. It’s in the same spot, though the building is entirely different. The room was so nice, and the dogs were so happy, and the air conditioning felt so good, and they were so nice to us (e.g., only charging me for one pet instead of the 4 I have, even when I ‘fessed up) that I decided to stay an extra night, rest up, and catch up on blogging (I’m enjoying the room even as I write.) So I recommend the Stagecoach Inn, on the corner on your right as you cross the bridge heading north through town.

After we rested, cooled down, and ate, we drove around town a bit. It sure does seem smaller now than it did when I was, say, 10. Everything is just a few blocks apart. I remember being really proud of running all the way from our house on the Bar downtown to Mom’s office, barefoot, without stopping. Now that I realize that’s probably only 8-10 blocks, it doesn’t seem like such an accomplishment 🙂

This morning we went to the Methodist church we attended as kids. We learned that the man who was the preacher then (Don Smith) has just died, only a few months ago, and his wife is not doing well. Don loved Salmon, and for years managed to stay in Salmon as the minister, even though the Methodist church has a policy of moving their ministers around every few years. When he couldn’t extend that any longer, he tried teaching English at the high school. I’m not sure how long he did that, but not long–I suspect he couldn’t quite get the hang of the difference between preaching and teaching. He left Salmon then, and took other jobs as Methodist ministers, but kept the ranch they had and retired here.

When I was in college, I finagled a co-op job as an aide at the high school here–in fact, it was that experience that made me decide to be a teacher, which has certainly shaped the rest of my life, so that’s another way Salmon was an important influence in my life. Don was teaching that year, and I remember he talked about some of his struggles with it in the teachers lounge while I marked papers for some of the math teachers. Don was also the reason I never heard fire and brimstone preaching until I was old enough not to be traumatized by it, and he was the one who taught the membership class when I joined the church. He had a nice, conversational style of preaching, understandable and interesting to me as a kid, always including a few jokes. He and our parents had gone to college together. So while not surprised, my brother and I were sorry to hear he had gone.

We just came back from supper, and we went back up to the church so I could get pictures of my brother in front of it, just to prove he was here (it’s the first time he’s been back in probably 35 years). Here’s the church, with my brother standing in the doorway under the cross/flame.

After which, I dragged him over to stand next to the sign. If you look careully, you may be able to read it.

The sign is “new”–that is, not the same one that was here when we lived here, though it says the same thing. The old sign was nicer (naturally 🙂 )

This final picture is “something old and something new”.

The statue of the bear and fish is new–less than two years old, since I was here two years ago and it wasn’t here then. The McPherson’s store in the background is “something old”; it’s one of the stores that’s survived the intervening years. Mom bought a lot of our clothes from McPherson’s. The library–just visible on the left of the picture–is next door to the library we remember, from which I borrowed all the Tarzan books, all the Oz books, and probably every other children’s book in the place. They had a 4-book-limit, and I used to check out four books, go home and read them, go back the next day, return them, and check out four more. My brother was even more voracious. For that reason alone, it’s probably a good thing we got moved to larger towns, with larger libraries.

Tomorrow we’ll cross the state to Boise, for a quick visit with our half-brother, then on to Portland. As usual, I know not when I’ll have both time and Internet access for blogging.