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2021-06-20 – Springtime in the Rockies caravan… Day 25 – Yellowstone National Park

We are going on another tour with Yellowstone Forever…

Our first stop is at Swan Lake…

We found: Swans! Trumpeter Swans to be exact…

We moved on to the Canyon Visitor Center, a newer center, and a newer Lodge.

I had read earlier in the week about a new pilot demonstration project which runs self-driving (autonomous) shuttle buses through the park. And here it is!

There are currently eight busses operating among three or four visitor centers. The idea is to shuttle visitors easily and cleanly around the park. The base structure of the vehicles are 3-D printed! These look really neat! They offered me a ride, but I had to get back to our Transit van to continue our tour…

Our next stop is to the “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River”. These are the upper falls…

In addition to the Yellowstone River, we can see a Fumarole here on the canyon wall…

We had a short walk to the Lily Pond… There were great views along the way…

Some of us are braver than others when it comes to peering over the rim of the canyon…

Here is the Lily Pond. You can’t really see the water because it is covered in grass and Lily Pads…

More wildlife…

The hike to Lily Pond complete, we traveled to Uncle Tom’s Point…

These are the lower falls…

After Uncle Tom’s Point we drove to our next hike at Storm Point. Along the way we found more Bison…

We stopped at the “Fishing Bridge”, so named because there is no fishing allowed within one mile of this bridge. It is mainly used for watching Cutthroat Trout spawning. No action today…

Cutthroat Trout are an endangered species due to Lake Trout and Rainbow Trout; they are invasive species, and they eat the Cutthroat Trout. The population of Cutthroat Trout is 10% of their historic high. Grizzly Bears, Otters, and Bald Eagles depend on the Cutthroat Trout as a staple in their diet…

More Bison…

We begin our hike on the Storm Point Trail……

We finally see Yellowstone Lake in all its glory…

Yellowstone Lake is the largest body of water in Yellowstone National Park. The lake is 7,732 feet above sea level and covers 136 square miles with 110 miles of shoreline. While the average depth of the lake is 139 ft, its greatest depth is at least 394 ft (120 m). Yellowstone Lake is the largest freshwater lake above 7,000 ft in North America. In winter, ice nearly 3 ft thick covers much of the lake except where shallow water covers hot springs. The lake freezes over by early December and can remain frozen until late May or early June.

We had a bit of a challenge when felled treed crossed our path… Some go over, some go under…

We stopped to eat the lunches we brought along…

Here we see a Marmot. Maybe a Golden Marmot, or maybe a Long-Tailed Marmot, or a Red Marmot. You decide… (It’s really just a large squirrel…)

Various ducks and geese along the way…

Another bison…

And another. They really are all over the place… Elk, too…

We returned to our van. As we left the parking lot it started to rain. Perfect timing! We returned to the campground. The rain had stopped, so we enjoyed some time at the hot springs.

We had dinner in the Villa…

An enjoyable time was had by all…

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2021-06-18 – Springtime in the Rockies caravan… Day 23 – Yellowstone National Park

We had set the alarm for 4:30 am to be ready to board a small bus at 5:45 am. We are going into Yellowstone today to look for wildlife…

We gathered with the other Airstreamers. There are four buses coming to pick us up to see various parts of the park and to lead us on hikes, keyed to various activity levels.

Our tour today is from Yellowstone Forever, a non-profit subsidiary of Yellowstone National Park. All profits go back to the park, funding various projects, such as the reintroduction of wolves, bison conservation and transfer to prevent overpopulation, fish conservation, the cougar project, and others. Our driver/guide is Mike. The tour was very entertaining, interesting, and comfortable…

Our van arrived and we clamored aboard… There are 11 of us in our Transit van… We left about 6:15 am.

We weren’t in the park for 5 minutes when we spotted a black bear about 300 yards away…

Shortly after that we saw a small herd of Bison…

They decided to cross the road… A classic Yellowstone “Bison-Jam”…

Once they were all safely across we continued on our way…

While we were traveling through the park to our first viewing site our driver told us an interesting story…

In 1870, an accountant named Truman Everts, from Burlington, Vermont, decided on a whim to join an expedition led by Henry D. Washburn and Nathaniel P. Langford into the still largely unexplored wilderness that would later become Yellowstone National Park. This was the second official survey of the Yellowstone region in less than two years.

After falling behind the rest of the expedition on September 9, 1870, Everts managed to lose the pack horse which was carrying most of his supplies. Without food or equipment, he attempted to retrace the expedition’s route along the southern shore of Yellowstone Lake in the hopes of finding his companions. He ate a songbird and minnows raw, and a local thistle plant to stay alive; the plant (Cirsium foliosum, commonly known as elk thistle) was later renamed “Evert’s Thistle” after him. As well as the lack of food, Everts faced the coming autumn weather, including early snowstorms, and at one point was stalked by a mountain lion.

Everts’ party searched for him for more than a week, setting signal fires, firing guns into the air, and leaving notes and caches of supplies for Everts along the lake. Though a site near the lake had earlier been designated as a meeting point in case one of the party members became lost, Everts, for unknown reasons, never showed up. The expedition returned to Fort Ellis by early October. Believing him dead, his friends in Helena, MT, offered a reward of $600 to find his remains.

On October 16, more than a month after his separation from the group, two local mountain men – “Yellowstone Jack” Baronett and George A. Pritchett – found Everts, suffering from frostbite, burn wounds from thermal vents and his campfire, and other injuries suffered during his ordeal, so malnourished he weighed only 50 pounds (23 kg). Baronett and Pritchett were part of a search party which had been sent from Montana to find Everts’ remains. They discovered him, mumbling and delirious, more than 50 miles from where he had first become lost.  One man stayed with Everts to nurse him back to health while the other walked 75 miles for help.

Everts’ rescuers brought him to Bozeman, MT, where he recovered. The next year, Everts’ personal account of the experience, “Thirty-Seven Days of Peril”, was published in Scribner’s Monthly.  The story of his survival became national news and contributed a great deal of publicity to the movement to preserve the Yellowstone area as the country’s first national park. In spite of their assistance, Everts denied Baronett and Pritchett payment of the reward, claiming he could have made it out of the mountains on his own.

We finally arrived at our viewing location. Our guide hauled out telescopes so that we can get a better look without getting too close to the wildlife – we are trying to see wolves…

Nothing. We stared into the hill across the way looking for wolves. Some folks saw 3 running across the hill. Lynda thinks she saw one wolf…

But I saw more Bison, and a Pronghorn Antelope…

These Bison decided to cross the river…

Next we started out on our hike. We were met by a horse-drawn wagon. These are used to carry supplies into the back-country where Rangers and other workers live year ’round…

Our hike offered many views…

Off to our right, about 30 yards off the trail, we sighted another Black Bear, this one was cinnamon brown color… Luckily we saw him about 200 yards away. We walked through the sage brush to maintain at least 100 yards of separation…

He wasn’t bothered by us, and he was in no hurry to wander away. We spent a lot of time watching…

As we continued watching the cinnamon bear another hiker came by and told us there was a Grizzly Bear across the valley… So he is out there, somewhere, just to the right of the Bison. But he is about 1 mile away, so he is hard to spot…

We stopped for lunch, eating the sandwiches we had brought along…

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We started hiking back…

We returned to the Villa. We were hot and tired. We enjoyed a soak in the hot springs after dinner…

(The water isn’t really brown… The pool bottom is…)

And an enjoyable time was enjoyed bay all…

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2021-06-17 – Springtime in the Rockies caravan… Day 22 – Travelling to Yellowstone National Park

So we bid farewell to the Grand Tetons! It was the prettiest park we have seen on this trip. On to Yellowstone!

We left about 8:00 am to avoid traffic in the park. We’ve been told traffic can be terrible in Yellowstone.

The drive was short – only 112 miles. We drove directly through Grand Teton National Park, through the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway, and on into Yellowstone National Park…

Yellowstone National Park is located in the in the northwest corner of Wyoming, with some areas extending into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world.  The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful geyser.

We loved the Grand Tetons NP. In comparison, Grand Tetons covers 485 square miles, while Yellowstone covers 3,500 square miles. However, Grand Tetons is much more scenic, while Yellowstone features geothermal natural wonders and much more wildlife…

The views along the road are nice…

We soon stopped to see Old Faithful. First we hassled the very busy and crowded parking area. We only needed to jack-knife the Villa into 6 parking stalls, and we were set!

We entered the Old Faithful Lodge. Interiors were nice…

But the exterior was less than impressive…

We walked out to the viewing area where people were already waiting to see Old Faithful; they will wait another 45 minutes…

We wandered over to the Old Faithful Inn. It is much more impressive…!

The lobby is this giant 3-4 story high space, all done up in National Park architecture…

The dining room is also very grand… Unfortunately, it is closed…

We ignored the sign and walked up the stairs.

Very nice upper level lounge areas…

Near the top is what they call “the Crow’s Nest”. It is a room at the top of these stairs where orchestras would play in the evening. The top is 76′ tall! Unfortunately, in 1959 an earthquake damaged the structural integrity of the Crow’s Nest, so it is no longer habitable.

These writing desks are all over these upper floors… Beautiful!

Unfortunately, there are no dining or lounge areas that are open. Only fast food is available, and only for take-out… Gift shops have such a restricted capacity that there lines hundreds of people long just to get inside. Yellowstone is much more shut down for Covid than Grand Tetons was…

So we moved on to a modern Visitors Center. Again, capacity is restricted… But the views are grand…

We returned to the Old Faithful viewing are. The crowd has tripled…

Old Faithful is a cone geyser. It was named in 1870 during the Washburn–Langford–Doane Expedition and was the first geyser in the park to be named. It is a highly predictable geothermal feature and has erupted every 44 minutes to two hours since 2000.  The geyser and the nearby Old Faithful Inn are part of the Old Faithful Historic District.

So thousands of people are standing around looking at this for the past hour. The next scheduled eruption is due at 11:06 am.

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About ten minutes before the scheduled time the geyser spouts briefly…

Finally, at 11:07 am Old Faithful earns her name…

And it goes on and on…!

Finally the eruptions start to fade…

Eruptions can shoot 3,700 to 8,400 gallons of boiling water to a height of 106 to 185 feet, lasting from 11⁄2 to 5 minutes.

We continued to drive north. We found some Bison…

We found some Fumaroles at Roaring Mountain: (Fumaroles are similar to geysers, except that they do not have enough pressure to erupt; they just emit steam…)

We had some fine views

The traffic is bad and the roads are rough, slow, narrow, and curvy…

More green valleys…

We saw this female elk hanging out along the side of the road…

More Pronghorn Antelope… But they are far away…

We continued out of the park and into Gardiner, Montana…

The town of Gardiner is just outside the park; it was the original entrance to the park, and at the time all guests would arrive by train, so there was a large train station here…

Today Gardiner has mostly tour companies, gift shops, lodges, motels, and RV parks. We met with the club for dinner at this recently-constructed dining terrace… (Construction workers were still working when we arrived…)

Airstreamers started arriving (early, as usual)

We enjoyed a very good fried chicken dinner buffet…

After dinner, we returned to the RV park and walked around. We are right next to the Yellowstone River, but only tent sites are adjacent to the river.

The park is dry and dusty, but there is a small grill for dinner and other amenities…

There are extensive hot spring pools…

After checking out the hot spring pools we returned to the Villa. We have an early morning tomorrow.

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

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2017-09-17 Westbound; Mt. Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Needles, Wildlife, and Pigtail Bridges…

Today is the day for Mt. Rushmore!

2017-09-17 Black Hills 21 Mt Rushmore 03

We began the day with a temperature of 34 degrees at the campground.  However, the day warmed up nicely…

We set off to see Mt. Rushmore – the Presidential Memorial.  We got more than we bargained for!

We drove towards Mt. Rushmore via the Needles Highway.  We saw (and drove through) spectacular rock formations:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 07 Needles

2017-09-17 Black Hills 06 Needles

And when I say “drove through”, I mean through tunnels:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 05 Needles Tunnel 1

2017-09-17 Black Hills 05 Needles Tunnel 2

2017-09-17 Black Hills 05 Needles Tunnel 4

Tiny tunnels!  No Villas allowed on these roads!

2017-09-17 Black Hills 07 Needles Tunnel 1

2017-09-17 Black Hills 07 Needles Tunnel 2

There were a few viewpoints along the way that offered distant views of the monument:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 21 Mt Rushmore 05

2017-09-17 Black Hills 11 Pigtail Tunnel 08

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, a batholith in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture’s design and oversaw the project’s execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum, and Chief Carver Luigi del Bianco. Mount Rushmore features 60-foot tall sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington (1732–1799), Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), and Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865).  The memorial park covers over 1,278 acres and is 5,725 feet above sea level.

South Dakota historian Doane Robinson is credited with conceiving the idea of carving the likenesses of famous people into the Black Hills region of South Dakota in order to promote tourism in the region.  Robinson’s initial idea was to sculpt the Needles; however, Gutzon Borglum rejected the Needles because of the poor quality of the granite and strong opposition from Native American groups.  They settled on Mount Rushmore, which also has the advantage of facing southeast for maximum sun exposure.  Borglum decided the sculpture should have broad appeal and chose the four presidents because of their roles in preserving the Republic and expanding its territory.

Construction on the memorial began in 1927, and the presidents’ faces were completed between 1934 and 1939. Upon Gutzon Borglum’s death in March 1941, his son Lincoln Borglum took over as leader of the construction project.  Each president was originally to be depicted from head to waist.  Lack of funding forced construction to end in late October 1941.

Mount Rushmore has become an iconic symbol of the United States, and it has appeared in works of fiction, as well as being discussed or depicted in other popular works.  It attracts over two million visitors annually.  (I think they were all here today… see below…)

After Needles we found the Ironwood Highway.  It is famous for the Pigtail Bridges – wooden (logs) bridges that spiral the road upwards to meet a tunnel, then offer spectacular views after you drive through the tunnels:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 11 Pigtail Tunnel 01

2017-09-17 Black Hills 11 Pigtail Tunnel 02

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And then the payoff at the end of the tunnel:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 11 Pigtail Tunnel 07

It is quite the dramatic scene!

We drove on to the memorial itself.  Then we waited for over an hour, in a mile long traffic jamb of cars trying to get into the parking structure.  (PS to the National Park Service:  You need to get this figured out!  I would hate to be here in the summer when the park is busy!)

We opted not to park; we did have some fine views of the monument:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 21 Mt Rushmore 04

2017-09-17 Black Hills 21 Mt Rushmore 01

2017-09-17 Black Hills 21 Mt Rushmore 02

When we finally were able to drive around the traffic jam we saw something that I had not known about:  Washington’s profile:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 21 Mt Rushmore 15

This was not intentional on the part of the sculptor; he originally had Jefferson placed here, but after they had done some preliminary rough blasting, they found that the rock was not suitable; they blasted off the preliminary work, and this remained.

Just for fun:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 21 Mt Rushmore 15a

Also, if you look closely, you can see some people climbing on the monument***:

2017-09-17 North_by_Northwest_movie_trailer_screenshot_(28)

After seeing the monument we took a break and met my cousin and his wife (Chuck and Joan Canaan) for lunch; they live here in Rapid City, SD:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 99 Canaan

Then, back to the Black Hills we went.  This time to see its counterpoint, the Crazy Horse Memorial:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 41 Crazy Horse

The Crazy Horse Memorial is a mountain monument under construction on privately held land in the Black Hills, in South Dakota. It will depict the Oglala Lakota warrior, Crazy Horse, riding a horse and pointing into the distance.

The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder, to be sculpted by Korczak Ziolkowski.  It is operated by the Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, a nonprofit organization.

The memorial master plan includes the mountain carving monument, an Indian Museum of North America, and a Native American Cultural Center.  The monument is being carved out of Thunderhead Mountain, on land considered sacred by some Oglala Lakota, between Custer and Hill City, roughly 17 miles from Mount Rushmore.  The sculpture’s final dimensions are planned to be 641 feet wide and 563 feet high.  The head of Crazy Horse will be 87 feet high; by comparison, the heads of the four U.S. Presidents at Mount Rushmore are each 60 feet high.

The monument has been in progress since 1948 and is far from completion.  In fact, it appears that nothing has been done in years.  If it is ever completed, it may become the world’s largest sculpture.  I say, If…

At the base of the mountain is a huge complex containing western native american art, memorabilia, and trinkets, basically a giant gift shop.  The sculptor died in 1982, and his wife died in 2014.  Their 10 children have taken over the foundation.

Friends had told us this is a not-to-be-missed opportunity.  We thought the whole thing was a giant waste of time.  It appears to me that if they had spent half as much effort on completing the memorial as they did on building a giant gift shop for selling trinkets, they would have made more progress.  At this point it appears that it will never be finished…

So, after our disappointment at the Crazy Horse Memorial, we headed into Custer State Park, and drove the Wildlife Loop.  We saw beautiful outcroppings and wildlife…

Deer:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 08 Needles Deer 01

2017-09-17 Black Hills 08 Needles Deer 02

Bison:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 04 Bison

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 09 Bison

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 08 Bison

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 07 Bison

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 06 Bison

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 05 Bison

Wild Donkeys:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 32 Custer Wildlife 02 Donkey

2017-09-17 Black Hills 32 Custer Wildlife 01 Donkey

They were very friendly:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 32 Custer Wildlife 03 Donkey

And rock outcroppings:

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 03a

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 03

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 02

2017-09-17 Black Hills 31 Custer Wildlife 01

We finally returned to the Villa, exhausted.  Happy hours ensued and an enjoyable time was had by all…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*** The monument was famously used as the location of the climactic chase scene in Alfred Hitchcock‘s 1959 movie North by Northwest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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2017-09-16 Westbound; The Badlands of South Dakota…

We left the Ingalls homestead at about 8:00 am.  It was raining, and cold.  And windy. Really cold. About 45 degrees with a wind chill factor making it feel like, oh, I don’t know – maybe , like 5?

We drove slowly through town and stopped at the De Smet Cemetary.  We found the family plot where most of the Ingalls family are buried:

2017-09-16 SD 00 Ingalls Cemetery

And we are back on the road.  And it is still raining.  Harder and harder.  It rained for about two hours until the sky finally began to lighten.

The countryside was beautiful:

2017-09-16 SD 01 Clouds

2017-09-16 SD 02 Clouds

We stopped to take in the threatening black clouds over the Wide Missouri River:

2017-09-16 SD 15 Missouri River

2017-09-16 SD 13 Missouri River

2017-09-16 SD 12 Missouri River

2017-09-16 SD 11 Missouri River

2017-09-16 SD 14 Missouri River

The drive was uneventful, along two lane back roads.  When you visit places such as De Smet you spend a lot of time on two lane back roads.  We eventually merged with the interstate and continued west towards the South Dakota Badlands.  We took the “Badlands Loop”, a 35 mile long road through Badlands National Park:

2017-09-16 SD 38 Badlands

2017-09-16 SD 37 Badlands

We took time to take a selfie:

2017-09-16 SD 33 Badlands Selfie

These formations are the remains of an ancient salt water sea.  These rocks are sedimentary sandstone that have been eroding for a long, long time… The formations are striking…

2017-09-16 SD 29 Badlands

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2017-09-16 SD 23 Badlands

2017-09-16 SD 22 Badlands

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We were able to see some funny looking animals; turns out they are female pronghorn antelope:

 

2017-09-16 SD 50a Badlands

And a Bison:

2017-09-16 SD 51 Badlands

We stopped for a late lunch at Wall Drugs, in Wall, SD.  Really excellent buffalo hot dogs! Then we walked around the tourist attraction that is Wall Drugs.  I took a moment to ride the Jackalope:

2017-09-16 SD 61 Wall Drug Jackalope

Wall Drugs is even a bigger waste of time than The House on the Rock…

So we move on.  We arrive at Crooked Creek RV Park, in Hill City, near Mt. Rushmore. We were given a nice pull-through site, with good power to run the furnace (it will approach freezing overnight…) and we able to get satellite TV and internet access.  It is Saturday, and there is College football!

Texas lost!  CAL beat Ole Miss!  LSU lost!  A good night all around.

Happy Hours ensued and an enjoyable time was had by all…

 

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