Gardiner, Montana and Yellowstone's Original Entrance

Well, this bodes well for our visit.  While I'm checking in at the Rodeway Inn and Suites in Gardiner, Montana, Granpa is snapping photos of a deer friend.

We really enjoyed our stay here.  We'd do it again in a heartbeat. 

But just around the corner is the northern entrance to Yellowstone.  

We've been to Yellowstone umpteen times and this is the very first that we've seen these guys!

Yup, mountain goats.  But we're still looking for Yellowstone's Big Horn Sheep.  Maybe someday.

Yeah, for most people Yellowstone is about the volcanic geysers.  They're cool, but it's the animals we really come for.  Of all the National Parks we've been to, Yellowstone is the one guaranteed to show us some animals.  Animals like, well, this cinnamon colored Black Bear just moseying along the side of the road.

See?  You don't even have to get out of the car in Yellowstone to see fantastic critters.  Here.  Here's a better shot.

Well, let me get my goofy arm out of the way!

Bears just love to graze on wildflowers.  What's amazing is that there ARE wildflowers in Yellowstone in July!  But there are always buffalo (well, actually American bison).  

  

And waterfalls.  This would be Kepler Cascades.                  And more buffalo.

Some Canadian Geese.

Trumpeter Swan.

And Elk bucks with velvet still on their antlers.  Nice 'n fuzzy lookin', huh?  But this is just a young buck.

This would be "daddy."

And that would be day one of this particular trip to Yellowstone.

From Glacier to Yellowstone

We're following the commands of Lil' Miss GPS, and we have no clue where we are.  She says turn on this little country road, and that one, and this one ...  But we certainly feel like we've found a little piece of heaven on earth.

 Every new turn brings us chapter and verse.

Deuteronomy 30:19

 So many of these homesteads have these Ten Commandments billboards.  We like!

Glacier's Wildlife

We stopped for a picnic where a bear and her cubs were just yesterday.  Didn't see them, but thought watching these guys watch each other was fun!

I've already shown you the Big Horn sheep at the Visitor's Center.  Looks like they've made it across the road and up the side of a mountain.

No bears this trip. 

Glacier's Wildflowers

The entire park is carpeted with wildflowers.

These guys don't put out seeds, they grow off of rhizones - like iris.  Because of that they survive wildfires easily and are usually the first to start growing again after a fire.  We find them often, but beargrass only blooms every five to seven years, so we appreciate it when we do run across them.  Beargrass also (apparently) can only be found in western North America.  Other common names for bear grass are squaw grass, soap grass, quip-quip and Indian basket grass.  The Indian basket grass and squaw grass I can understand because "squaws" used to use the leaves (long and thin like lillies) to decorate their weaving and clothing.  Why soap grass I dunno.  Quip-quip?  Maybe that's the Indian name for it.  I also know that bears love grazing on wildflowers so maybe they especially like these flowers and search them out.

These blooms may be out of focus, but I wanted you to see the spiny stems and leaves.  I'd bet bears are likin' these as much as the beargrass!

Glacier's Waterfalls

If you can get here, oh, mid-June, you will probably see more waterfalls than at any other time.  The greater the snowfall over the winter the better the waterflow.  But July isn't so bad.

Glacier is so vast that it's difficult to get a feel for it in photos.  This next photo is above the bridge.  (You can see it at the very bottom of the picture.) This is known as Bird Woman Falls and is 560 feet high.  It flows off of Mount Oberlin.

And this one is below the bridge.

But, there are more...

They just appear around every turn.  There are more, but I think you get the idea.  Glacier isn't just about glaciers!

Glacier

This place is really indescribable.  Wait five minutes and everything changes - and it is always beautiful.  It's a land of waterfalls and wild animals, snow and glaciers.  On one of my first trips to Glacier International Peace Park I ended up following a grizzly bear through one of these tunnels.

This is the very internationally famous "Going to the Sun" road.  It was built in the 1930's by Roosevelt's New Deal CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp.)  Completed in 1932 it is the only road that crosses the Park.  Cutting through Logan's Pass at an elevation of 6,646 ft, it completes its transit in 53 miles. Literally hanging off of the side of the mountains traffic is limited both in length and width, so if you have an RV you might wanna do some investigating.

We're not the only critters visiting Logan Pass today.  This is one of about a dozen big horn sheep that was grazing on the alpine flowers here at the top of the world. 



There was also this Columbian Ground Squirrel.  Like marmots these guys hibernate about eight months out of the year.  Even so, they are the most commonly seen animal in the park.

It's beautiful up here - even if a fog was moving in.  There are only a couple of months out of the year that you can get up to Logan's Pass because of the snow.  It's a real bummer when you coming visiting and get turned around before the best part.  Might wanna always check the website before planning to come.  Sometime from June through August (or maybe September) are the most likely times to come all the way through. 

It's so amazing to walk around up here.  The views are breathtaking, the air is sparkling, and the romance never ends.

Crossing Lewis and Clark - Again

As we leave the next morning for Glacier International Peace Park, Granpa asks if I used the National Park website and made reservations for a campground.  Ooops.  Turns out that I wasn't the only one to goof.  Lil' Miss GPS took us to the east side of the Park, not the West side where we prefer to camp.




But Granpa took advantage of the route and took me by Great Falls, Montana to see the Lewis and Clark Museum.  Because of the series of waterfalls along this ten mile stretch of the Missouri River, Lewis and Clark had to portage for miles.  (That means take their boats out of the river and man-handle them across impossibly rough terrain.)  It took them 31 days to travel the ten miles.






It was grueling work because some of the pirouges carried several thousands pounds of supplies!  

Every ounce had to be transported by man-muscle.

First they portaged around Black Eagle Falls, and then Colter (six feet high), Rainbow (fifty feet high), and Crooked Falls (19 feet).

Clark reported seeing 10,000 buffalo concentrated along a two-mile stretch of the the river banks here.

It's amazing to think that, what took Lewis and Clark 31 days to get past, now only took us ten minutes in the comfort of an air-conditioned car.

Idaho Falls, Idaho

It's a two day drive up to the Canadian border, so I find us a halfway point to spend the night.  It's an off-brand hotel, Le Ritz Hotel and Suites, but it's lookin' pretty good to us.

We're on the banks of the Snake River,

and right on the Falls.

Pretty romantic, huh?

From our very nice room we can see across the Snake to the very first Mormon Temple built in Idaho.  They make those steeples high so as to draw your attention to the heavens above.

After the cavalry got control of the Shoshone Indians in 1863, pioneers and miners flooded west on the Montana Trail in search of the dreams - be those dreams of potato crops or gold mines.  The Montana Trail was one of the very few that ran north to south carrying folks over mountains and across streams and valleys from Salt Lake City, Utah, up through Idaho and into the Montana gold fields. 

This place used to be known as Taylor's Crossing.  Ol' Matt Taylor built a timber frame bridge across the Snake in 1865.  Crossing the black volcanic-rock gorge using Taylor's toll bridge here was a site better than having to go seven more miles up to the ferry.

By 1866 there had accumulated enough businesses at this crossing to be called a settlement and it became Eagle Rock.  The first child of European descent born at Eagle Rock was delivered in 1874.  By 1878 the railroad had built it's own bridge across the Snake.  In 1891 the town voted to change its name to Idaho Falls. Not bad growth over a thirty year span.  And here we are today.

Virgin River

Well, we're speaking again (of course!), and have decided to zip up to Glacier International Peace Park to do a bit of camping.  To get there we go through Las Vegas and head east through the Virgin River Canyon.  If you have to travel on an Interstate, you might as well go through a gorgeous canyon.

There's no place to pull over because of the construction, so I have to take pictures through the windshield.  It just doesn't do the scenery justice.

I've been after Granpa to get a polarizer filter for his camera, but it just seems it will never happen.  I decide to try using my sunglasses instead.  Makes a bit of difference, eh?

So, if you're ever visiting Vegas and just want to take a day drive, head east across some flat land for awhile and you'll come across this amazing piece of roadway.  It goes on for miles!

Indian Reservations

Well.  It seemed like a good idea.  Fourth of July, a drive through an Indian Reservation down to the Colorado River east of the Grand Canyon, just Granpa and I in his pickup truck down a dirt road.  I suppose it was ill-fated from the beginning.

Granpa's pickup is over 20 years old, has been totaled once, repaired, and crashed a couple more times.  But it's our farm truck, so it's okay.  (We brought it to Arizona so we'd be able to get the love seat we bought back to Texas.)  The truck's air-conditioner had been repaired in Texas, but it wasn't blowing cold - and we were in Arizona and it was the Fourth of July.  The dirt road was rough as an old corn cob, and we had to go about five miles an hour.  The a/c couldn't keep up, so it was a windows-down drive. 

The scenery was pretty.  

There was no one else on the road - well, except for a few burros that were keeping an eye on us. 

After all of this time in Arizona we were going to finally get down to the banks of the Colorado...  But, Granpa was hot, and just was stressing for I have no clue why. 

And then the worst happened.  The cops stopped us.  By "cops" I mean a Reservation cop.  He asked for our permit. 

"Permit?  We're just out for a holiday drive." 

"Sorry, permit please."

"Well, we don't have a permit."

"Then that will be $52.00."

WHAT!?!  What?!?  "We don't have that kind of cash on us."

"We will take a check."

Mm-mmmm-mm.  If Granpa wasn't happy before he absolutely isn't happy now.

After paying the $52.00 we went on to the river's edge - without speaking.  It would have been a wonderful place to spend the day.

 
But the day was completely spoiled.  So spoiled, in fact, that we didn't speak of it for weeks, and I couldn't bear to look at the pictures until today.

Maybe we'll try again this Fall, before we go back to Texas for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  But not if it's gonna cost another $52.  Seems those Indians have become serious Capitalists!