August 2017: Epic "Roadtrip" Part I: Yellowstone/Grand Teton

Rainbow over Upper Mesa Falls

So here's the thing.  When you marry someone, you don't just marry them, you marry their family.  When I married The Hot Chick, I acquired a few more siblings.  I gained some extra brothers and a sister.  For me, I don't really see 'brother-in-law' or 'sister-in-law', I just see brothers and sisters.  We are all part of the family.

In August of 2017 we had a total eclipse of the sun.  My house was right in the path of totality.  Ground zero for eclipse folk.  There are people who spend thousands of dollars and lots of their free time chasing eclipses.  Who knew?  It seemed a bit weird to me, but it seemed like a once in a lifetime deal, so we got excited for it.  We convinced The Hot Chick's sister and her family to come to our house to witness it, then we shamed The Hot Chick's brother into coming here with his family.  He works really hard and is a business owner.  When you are a small business owner, you are never really sure if you own the business or if it owns you.  We convinced him that his children needed to have that experience and that it was a once in a lifetime deal.  So he came and brought his family.  We were glad he did.

Remember what I said about family.  I was only trying to establish the familial relationship.  I have been a member of The Hot Chick's family for a long time, and several of her siblings were young when I joined the family, one of her siblings has almost no memories of life before I was a member of the family.  So her siblings are my siblings.  My siblings are now her siblings.  It's a package deal.

All the news stations were predicting huge crowds of people in our town, at least three times the population coming for the eclipse.  Stores were selling out of lots of goods and there wasn't a hotel room to be had.  People were renting square footage in potato fields for people to tent camp.  It was crazy.

We convinced our family members who were travelling to come a few days early to beat the rush, and in return we'd go see some of the sights around and about.  Our brother hadn't been to Yellowstone since he had been a teenager, his kids had never been here.  We wanted to make sure they had a good time.

Mesa Falls Scenic Byway
The quickest route from our home to Yellowstone is along US 20, as I discovered in an earlier blog post is the longest continuous road in America.  You can dip your feet in the Atlantic and drive all the way to the Pacific and never leave US 20.  At the town of Ashton, Idaho a spur road called Highway 47 takes off to the east.  It might be the old highway to Yellowstone or it might be it's own thing.

HWY 47 dips down into Warm River Canyon where a fish preserve is located.  People feed the fish all summer long and some of the trout get up to two feet long, maybe longer.  Then the byway continues up a pass and descends into Bear Gulch.  Then it continues up to Lower Mesa Falls and then Upper Mesa Falls.  There are other things to see on this byway, but for this post, those are the things that matter

When we got to the trout preserve, the trout weren't feeding, but the only entity allowed to fish there was.  The osprey.  We ended up feeding the ducks instead.  Then we headed up to Lower Mesa Falls and Upper Mesa Falls.  I have written about all of this before, but this was the first visit for our brother and his family.  One of the things The Hot Chick and I love more than just about anything is taking first timers to see the sights.

If you get to Upper Mesa Falls at just the right time there is a magnificent rainbow effect that plays there.  We were able to see it on that day and it was magical.

The Fish Hawk in it's natural habitat.  I learned yesterday that an Osprey is a member of the hawk family.  I had thought
they were their own deal.

Fish hawk again

The only fish pic of the day

But the ducks were fed

Feeding the duckfish

Lower Mesa Falls from the overlook

We asked a stranger to take this group shot.  She took the photo and didn't steal my camera

Bears sometimes pose for tourists
(ok, so these aren't live bears, they are dead bears that have been posed to look like live bears)

Brink of the falls

Rainbow at Upper Mesa Falls

The Hot Chick and the nieces

Turkey vulture flying overhead.  Not sure if he was waiting for me or not

More Mesa Falls

Even more

Just before the Idaho/Montana border on US 20 is a pullout called Howard Spring.  My kids say it is the best water they have ever tasted.  Somewhere along the line the natural spring was tapped and they made a fountain for weary travelers.  There is a picnic area as well.  Sometimes we picnic there.

In 1877, just after the Battle of Camas Meadows, General Howard, in pursuit of the Nez Perce tribe stopped at this natural spring.  I don't know if he named it after himself or if someone else named it for him.  There was a pass through a narrow canyon to the Montana side.  Highway 20 follows along the Nez Perce Trail for a short distance here.  A hundred and forty-three years ago, though this canyon was bustling with hundreds of cavalry soldiers and their mounts as they pursued Chief Joseph and his people.

We just stop for the water.

The nephew and the nieces at Howard Spring, the best water on earth

Lewis Monkeyflower.  Merriweather Lewis is the first scientist to describe this flower in scientific literature.  It is named for him as many things are in the Louisiana Purchase and the Oregon Territory.  William Clark got to name a few things after himself too.

Yellow Monkeyflower.  Both the Lewis Monkeyflower and the Yellow Monkeyflower are found at Howard Spring annually.

Yellowstone:  Entrance to Old Faithful
I grew up in West Yellowstone, Montana.  Because my dad owned a theatre there, we worked at night, so having a long trip into Yellowstone didn't happen very often.  We usually had in and out trips.  That meant we went in to see Old Faithful often.  These days, when we visit the park, we spend most of our time on the upper loop.  We go to Mammoth, Norris, Canyon, Tower and The Lamar Valley.  Thing about it is, there is so much to see and so much to do in Yellowstone that you can literally go in after a thousand times and see something different.

That being said, when we bring newbies along, we start with Old Faithful, because you have to.  You have to see it at least once.

Firehole Falls, which I have photographed ten hundred million, billion times and will photograph it at least that many more times before I take the dirt nap

We always pose for a photo here.  Never gets old

Silex Spring on the Fountain Paint Pots Nature Trail.
This is what Morning Glory Pool used to look like before stupid people

I think this is Spasm Geyser on the Fountain Paint Pots Nature Trail

The Old Faithful Inn, the largest log structure in the world.  Take that, Texas and Russia!

Geo-thermal royalty.  The Big Kahuna, La Grande Fromage!
Old Faithful

Yellowstone:  The Million Dollar Room
So I said you could go to Yellowstone a thousand times and see something new every time.  It's true.  After Old Faithful erupted, we went on an obligatory visit to Hamilton Store because ice cream.  When we were hanging around looking at authentic Yellowstone souvenirs made in China, I saw a sign on the wall that talked about the "Million Dollar Room."  I asked an employee at the register what that was and she asked, "Would you like a tour?"

Hmmmm, let me think, "Uh, Yeah.!"  So Charles Hamilton was an early concessionaire in Yellowstone.  He may have had a monopoly at one time.  Jury's out.  His headquarters were in the upper rooms of the Hamilton Store at Old Faithful.  Hamilton saved every cancelled check he ever wrote for supplies and merchandise and when he had enough, he wallpapered his office with them.  Then he called it "The Million Dollar Room."  He had six rooms in the upstairs, but sadly his office is all that remains.  The National Park Service, though brought in a conservator to clean and stabilize the paper of the checks and then covered them with plexi-glass.  Now you may take a tour upon request.  Disclaimer:  The total dollars represented on the cancelled checks don't equal a million, more like 1.9 million.

You can always find something new.  Always

Charles Hamilton's original light

Some of the check wallpaper

The lights were low, so the pics are dark

And people in motion are fuzzy

I finally decided to use a flash

The final tally

Yellowstone to the South Entrance:  Waterfalls
When we planned this trip, we only planned up to Old Faithful.  We didn't have an exit strategy.  I don't know the reason, but we decided if one national park was good, then two would be infinitely better.  I did ask the nieces, "Which of your other uncles have taken you to TWO national parks in one day?"  Of course the answer was, "None."  Favorite uncle, right here.

We really just stopped at waterfalls from Old Faithful to the Southern Entrance.  First we stopped at Kepler Cascades.  Then we stopped at Lewis Falls and finally Moose Falls.  I have blogged about all of these waterfalls before.  Really, this trip was all about showing our family things they had never seen before.

Kepler Cascades

The family at Kepler Cascades

Lewis Falls.  Named for Meriwether Lewis of the famous Lewis & Clark expedition.  Contrary to popular belief, Lewis & Clark (or was it Clark and Lewis?) never explored Yellowstone.  If they had, they would have never left.

Stone bridge near Moose Falls

Moose Falls, one of my favorites

The family at the brink of Moose Falls

Grand Teton National Park
The Teton Range in Wyoming has often been called, America's alps.  There is a whole range of mountains that are over 11,000 feet above sea level.  They aren't the tallest mountains in the United States, but they may be the prettiest.  There is an Idaho side and a Wyoming side to the Tetons.  That doesn't mean the mountains are half in and half out, it means that when you view them from Idaho they are very different than if you view them from Wyoming.  The classical view is from the Idaho side, but most people who really experience them see them from the Wyoming side.  I am pretty sure the lonely Frenchman who named them was looking at them from the Idaho side.  It's the only side that makes sense.

Story goes, a lonely French trapper saw the mountains and proclaimed les trois tétons (which means the three teats).  What can I say, the west has some interesting place names.  There is a town in Idaho named Malad.  Story goes, a French trapper got sick while camping there.  Was it the same French trapper?  I don't know.  Food poisoning, and the whole camp got sick in ways that are unspeakable in polite company.  They complained about their malady at that location and then an English speaker shortened it to Malad.  So the story goes.  In fact, when I lived in Buffalo, New York I was told that a French trapper looked out over the Niagara River and proclaimed "Beau fleuve!"  Which means beautiful river.  Someone passing by thought he said Buffalo, even though there were no buffalo in what would be called Buffalo, New York.

Grand Teton is directly south of Yellowstone National Park and is connected to it via the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway.  The parkway is managed by the National Park Service (NPS).  Really, the whole area is managed by them, but there are divisions of responsibility within the park service so they all do different things.  It doesn't make sense on the one hand, but the two parks are very different so I guess it's okay.  Grand Teton was carved and sculpted by glaciation whereas Yellowstone was born of fire.  Two vastly different landscapes separated by a mere 27 miles.

Grand Teton was established in 1929, the same year the stock market crashed and ushered in The Great Depression.  We still cared about beauty during that period.  From the north, coming from Yellowstone, the first body of water a traveler encounters is Jackson Lake.  It is a natural lake but a dam was built at one end before it became a park which raised the water level by 40 feet.  My understanding is that after the original park was created, lands were added to it when they became available.

For our trip, it was late in the day and we were headed home over Jackson Pass, so we just enjoyed the drive and didn't hike.  We stopped at Jenny Lake for the sunset because there may not be a more picturesque lake anywhere in the world.  There may be lakes that are equal but I've never encountered one that is superior.  At Jenny Lake, we ate a small picnic dinner and headed for home as the sun went down.

Jackson Lake almost at the golden hour

The marshlands

Our family

I've had something to say about place names in the last few blog posts.  This area I live in was discovered by and settled by creative, colorful, maverick people.  There was a trapper in the area named Andrew Henry who named everything he could in this area after himself.  Fort Henry I, II, and III, Henry's Lake, Henry's Fork of the Snake River.  Almost like a retirement plan.  The French guys who named things after body parts and functions.  Lewis & Clark named all kinds of stuff after themselves.  When you drive up to Northern Idaho, through Montana, you will cross over the Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone River at least ten times.

Then there was this other guy.  Richard Leigh.  Richard Leigh was a trapper and a relative latecomer to Idaho toward the end of the fur trade.  Leigh was a colorful character who trapped all over the area that is southeast Idaho and northwest Wyoming.  He especially liked the Tetons.  Leigh was an Englishman who came to the west to seek a fortune.  He was well liked in the trapping community and with the local settlers.  He married a Shoshone woman who had converted to Christianity, and her Christian name was Jenny.  There are two lakes in Grand Teton that are connected by a smaller narrow lake.  The northern lake is Leigh Lake which is connected to the southern lake called Jenny Lake by way of a small body of water called String Lake.  They are joined together for eternity.  All over the Tetons there are features named for Leigh and Jenny.  In southeast Idaho, near where I live there is a park named for Richard Leigh.  For this park, though they did not name it for his Christian name but rather his nickname.  It is called "Beaver Dick Park."

Jenny Lake at dusk.  There are a few days of the year that you can photograph the sun going down between the two
Mountains.  When there is smoke in the air or dust, the sunbeams through the gap are amazing.  Professional photographers
will camp in Grand Teton on those predictable days just to try to get that shot.  I've never taken that photo.  Some day maybe

See what I have to deal with?  I can't handle this much beauty

Mount Teewinot in the golden hour

So, I have titled this Epic "Roadtrip" even though our home was our homebase.  We didn't camp, we didn't stay in hotels, we stayed in our home.  We did set up a tent in the backyard and the kids slept back there.  So why call this a roadtrip?  I think I'm calling it that because of the epic nature of our staycation.  Our family certainly made a roadtrip to see us, but then we basically camped at our house and went all around the area waiting for the eclipse.  Everything about this felt like a roadtrip except the accommodations.  In the end, I guess I'm calling it an Epic "Roadtrip" because it's my blog and I can.


Epic "Roadtrip" Part II:  Lewis & Clark Caverns

Epic "Roadtrip" Part III:  Teton Dam

Epic "Roadtrip" Part IV:  Total Eclipse of the Sun