Day 5 It Gets Better

Dear Diary,

I am trogging on WORD (travel + log) as we have no Internet access so the blog will be written as current but delivered late.  Am discovering this blog thing, don’t know what it means.  When I was young my German grandparents said someone was a ‘blatherskite’, non stop talker, one who blathers.  Is blog the combination of blather and log?  I won’t know until I get back online.  Regarding this amateur travel log, realizing it’s more than a travel log but also a kind of journaling.  I hope we have captured the essence of this trip because it has been amazing and grueling.  Chuck is the blog master, editor and all round techie.  Pat keeps the notes and writes the content.  We each bring our gifts?  TBD

            We awakened today to 40’s, gray, rainy.  Glad we walked the town last night for a beautiful evening and visiting with locals.  At least there is very light wind.   Americans are generally friendly and love to tell about their home towns.  Some people from Canton, Ohio, are in our campground.  They made this RV trip 5 years ago.  They now own an RV and live in Ak for 6 months and Canton for 6 months.  Hmmmm?  We get gas (not personally), so far it is under $4.00 per gallon and we need 30 gallons at a time.  So, the Cenex station (who owns them?) in Buffalo was $3.59 per gallon.  We like Cenex, even though they are probably owned by a dictator.  Just kidding, but we like cheap gas like most of America.  We head west out of Buffalo on Rt 16, the recommended route.  Why?  Because the reports about entering Yellowstone in the north means rock slides and entering via our intended eastern route means 25 foot avalanches from last night’s storms.  So new route to the south gate.  Rt 16 takes us through the Big Horn Mountains, which means going through Powder River Pass, at nearly 10,000 feet.  The road is good and starts off with rain, turns into fog and then to a snow storm.  We are steadily climbing and have fair visibility.  This is a big winter sports area with downhill and Nordic skiing and snowmobiling.  Most of this area is the Big Horn National Forest with some pockets of private lodges and pack horse packages.  They label the different rock layers with road signs.  We just passed granite gneiss 3 billion years old?    Must look that up.  The road signs also say beware of pedestrians and lose livestock.  What?  Lots of pine forest and repeated homage to the Crazy Woman, used to name creeks and liquor stores.  I wish we could meet her.   The weather is lousy but the road conditions are good.  Climbing, climbing.  Reach the pass, foggy, snowing.  Snow everywhere.  Another Alaska fleet RV is parked at the pass.  We are everywhere, 150 of us moving steadily toward the far north.  Now we move down out of the pass on a 6% grade, time to apply low gear.  Very foggy, snowing and rain at times.  So far road is wet, no black ice.  Lots of runaway truck ramps, we keep in low gear.  We are also in big rock slide area, recently fallen boulders line the road.  We reach an incredible valley.  It is too bad we could not enjoy the views down.  But the road signs point out the type of rock that is bared and it’s age.  140 million years more or less.  We can’t understand why rock that is lower is younger than top rock.  Will have to look it up. The valley is indescribable with beautiful exposed canyon walls, all color of rock.  It is spring down here with budding trees and micro-climate plants.  Rock formations abound in this tight valley, nature’s sculpture.  In some ways, more remarkable than Rushmore and Crazy Horse.  Note to selves:  worth coming back here in good weather.  The valley opens wide.  More crops requiring lots of irrigation.  We see our first large sheep herds.  New lambs and freshly shorn adults.  We pass through Ten Sheep and are greeted by a thousand sheep.  Cute little town with rodeo grounds.  The road opens to open range and rolling hills.  It looks prehistoric but there is always cattle munching and sage brush, we think sage brush is the state plant it’s so insistent at all latitudes and land types.  It is easy to image millions of buffalo/bison living in this land, eating and moving relentlessly.  It’s also easy to think about Cowboy songs.  Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam….  Too bad they have blended Western with Country music, they really are very different.   Note to self, look at cowboy songs and brush up on history.  Now seeing multiple small oil rigs scattered over the land.   This land is a geologist, anthropologist, paleontologist’s dream.  On the horizon we can begin to see big snow covered peaks, moving toward Grand Teton National Park.  One thing about Wyoming, wait 5 minutes and the land changes, never a boring moment.  It starts spitting.  We come to construction and it requires that we have a pilot car.  The roadway completely disappears and we are on packed dirt.  Since it rained this is as bad a washboard as we have been on in the past.  Lasts about 2 miles, dodging surveyors, earth movers and large stones heading for the windshield.  Went through Worland, very pretty town, oil money is obvious.  We veer onto Rt 789 heading southwest  and the RR parallels, the land is flat, signs say they are growing barley, malt and beans.  There is a sign advertising a Wyoming Whiskey Distillery.   Sounds like an explosive mixture when taken together.  And we see an Amish buggy road sign.   We then turn northwest across the Wind River Indian Reservation.  All of a sudden we smell sewer.  We come to Thermopolis with the world’s largest hot springs.  We stop off to view.  They have built concrete beehive structures that pipes the mineral water up the middle.  The result is a beautiful mineral deposit structure of multiple colors and textures.  The monster hot springs nearby over flows the rocks and forms cliffs of deposit.  There is a loose rock mountain looming over where someone has taken white rocks and spelled out the hot springs.  Yellow school buses full of happy kids on their spring field trip.  A sight to be seen and shared all over America.  The Big Horn River gushes through it all still flowing to the Mississippi.  Fly fisher man are trying their luck for trout.  We pass through Wind River Canyon.  It is incredible.  We see deep seams of pink granite and now wonder if this is where BP got their granite for the Cleveland and Anchorage buildings.  Can rock be lush?  We are always climbing, and even when we appear to be going down the water is appearing to go up.  Of course it is an illusion.  The canyon tightens and it requires going through tunnels.  The RR is running across the river into multiple tunnels.  On the other side of canyon the land is flat and looks like dessert.  We follow the Boysen Resevoir, water level down.  Thinking most comes from glaciers and snow melt directly west.  We pass an apiary of 30 hives.  Bees!  The crops don’t seem to support them.  Hmmm?  We can just see the bottom of Gannett Peak, the highest in the state at over 13k.  The high mountains are in storm.  Have to stop, cattle in the road and munching in the drainage area.  Locals call this area the painted hills, and some of it is very similar to Badlands in South Dakota.  Pass through Dubois where they are having antler rondezvous.  Lots of mule deer everywhere.  We start into the Wind River Valley taking us up to the Continental Divide at Togwotee Pass around 10k.  The road and weather are good.  But soon we are in total winter.  The snow berms are 6 ft at times, kind of like in a tunnel.  This is big winter sport area but no downhill skiing.  Very good conditions for snowmobiling and there are tracks.  Lots of new snow.  We reach the pass and start the 6% descent.  Here is where water separates flow to Mississippi to the east and Pacific to the west.   Togwotee Lodge is there, can’t see it from the road and it’s totally snowed shut, think The Shining.  Downside narrow roadway not so good, glad we are on the inside, there are no guard rails.  This side of the valley not as special but the panoramic views of the Grand Tetons open up before us.  They are such distinctive shaped mountains and can always be recognized.  We have to enter through GT Nat Park in order to get to the Yellowstone south gate.  We are barely in the park and we spot a moose and two herds of elk, a Sandhill crane.  It is still very early spring here, only small patches of grasses appear occasionally.  The narrow road is plowed with 6 foot berms that look like sculpture.  We follow along huge Jackson lake still frozen.  Bear alert notices are out.  All animals are active, birthing and eating the new buds.  There are forests of quaking aspens, silver and spindly, and pine.  Devastated areas of fire, new growth on the way.   We miss our sign to the campground because the snow covers it.  This is the only one open.  We follow huge Yellowstone Lake, frozen.  It is a huge caldera of an active volcano.  We can see steam rising along the shores in spots.  The sun is shining hurray!  A little melt here and there.  We have full hook-ups here but no Internet or cell phone.  This is supposed to be a wilderness experience.  Haha.  We are warned to check the area as we come out of the camper.  The bears are hungry.  An employee tells us that 3 weeks ago they came upon a female bison who had to birth in the road.  She and new baby just lying there, she was very thin.  The snow is so heavy they have little food and so deep there are few areas to lie down.  We take a stroll around the campground to acquaint ourselves and run into many of the RV fleet.  We help one couple back into their space.  Many of these folk have little experience with driving camping vehicles (they are originally from Kaisertown, NY and eastside Buffalo by Broadway market).  We meet up with new friends from San Antonio, Tx who we first met at the airport.  We don’t get back for our dinner until later.  Cooked some quinoa, onions, tomatoes and added some more of the rotisserie chicken.  We are camping at over 7700 elevation.  Realizing it takes water longer to boil.  Discovering you can eat off one rotisserie chicken for several days and never have the same meal.  Our first night in Yellowstone and it is cold!  374 miles, 9 hours.  Good night.