Mom and Dad's Excellent Adventures

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Mom and Dad Shorty came out to Montana for a wild and roaring good time on July 18th-28th. Little did they know what kind of adventure they were getting themselves into! The day they rolled into town I was sitting on my neighbors porch discussing the repercussions of some construction worker who had just poured petrol-chemicals onto our street and hoping they would get washed down the drainage system of Bozeman, ahh the excitement had begun. I introduced my parents to my neighbors and took them out to eat at Old Chicago, a quaint little chain restaurant that perhaps some of you have heard of. The unfortunate part of this whole vacation of theirs is that I had to work (both teaching and at the Meat Shoppe -a local butcher/delicatessen here in town) and I would not be around to share in all their adventures, I'm sure the pictures will do plenty of talking for themselves. So off I pointed my parents in the directions of Rat Lake, Palisade Falls in Hylite Canyon, and Lewis and Clark Caverns to keep themselves occupied until I could join them on the weekend of the 21st and be their companion on the crazy 1800 mile loop of the American northwest. On Thursday the 20th my parents picked me up from the esteemed sensational sausage selectorium that is the Meat Shoppe and we headed east as fast as that little Camry could take us. We had made reservations for a hotel room in Buffalo, Wyoming and dutifully stayed the evening in the ever so popular Best Western. Strangely enough all three of us were up by 5am the following morning to get back on the road and visit Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Monument, and of course Wall Drug (how could you not, there are so many dang billboards, what can you do). So it's here the adventure begins.

The Badlands

Around 10am on Friday we enter into the Badlands National Monument and boy were they bad, in a good way. It is the epitome of the high plains. Lots of different grasses, jagged looking mud mountains (truly the rock that makes up these mountains is crumbly and fragile just like mud) and large expanses of nothingness, flatness as far as the eye can see. It was humbling to see what five million years of erosion can do. In five million more the badlands won't be so bad anymore. Then we can call it The Flatlands National Grazing Area or the “This used to be a bunch of multicolored dirt and mud that was cool to look at, but man the wind and water washed it all away” National Park, either way I probably won't have a say in the name, so we'll leave that problem up to future generations.

After completing the loop we had worked up quite a hunger and decided to satisfy our stomaches with some good old Wall Drug Food. If you have never been to Wall, SD it's probably for one of two reasons. You've never been to SD or you've been to SD and said “SOME FOOL PUT UP 10,000 HOME MADE BILLBOARDS ON THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY AND I'M NOT GONNA ENCOURAGE THAT TYPE OF BEHAVIOR, NOT EVEN FOR ALL THE FREE ICE WATER IN THE WORLD!!!!” slammed on the accelerator and flipped off the 30 foot green brontosaurus on the exit that said “Wall, SD”. So after consuming our lunches from the Worlds Largest Drug Store's Restaurant and Buffet, we decided to get some ice cream at their soda fountain, peruse the pharmacy/bookstore/gift shop/clothing store/arcade/back yard/historic picture wall/chapel (that's right they have a chapel). What a hoot and free ice water to boot. Funny thing about Wall Drug is that they higher people from foreign countries to work there. I had someone from Poland give me my ice cream he was a nice fellow. Oh and for all you Mainers out there, Wall Drug even had a Moxie sign in it.

After refilling our tummy's with tasties we moved on to see the fabled Mount Rushmore and the Mind Blowing Work In Progress they call, Crazy Horse. Now I've had a discussion with a friend of mine named Zach who lives in LA and am now in the same opinion that there is nothing quite as cool as giant rock sculptures like Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore, well, I guess it would be cooler if they could come alive and run around and sing or talk or something, but it is pretty damn impressive to see these huge sculptures in stone. Mount Rushmore was very cool to look at up close and personal, but Crazy Horse stole the show. When finished it will be the tallest, largest most massive man made monument ever created. It is larger than the Washington Monument and all of Mount Rushmore can fit on the side of his head. I hope it is done in my lifetime, but only time can tell.

After viewing Crazy Horse and touring the Native Culture museum we ponied up into the Camry and took off into the sunset (which we saw multiple times that day due to the mountains, valleys and plains we drove through) and into the next crazy chapter of our escapade...

Deer Dodging on US 16

So our destination on the evening of Friday the 20th was Cody, WY. We never made it due to Dad Shorty's famous “short cut” instead of taking US 14, it looked like US 16 was faster, but our cheap place mat map of Wyoming didn't show us that we would be going right over the Big Horn National Forest map into Tensleep Canyon. Let me set this up for you: The sun has finally set, the road is extremely windy, it's dark, we've been driving all day, and we want to plow into the night and get to Cody as soon as possible. Then they start appearing...Mule Deer start dancing across the road and on the side of the road and in the trees and on rocks and it's just Mule Deer on Mule Deer action. I am not exaggerating in any way, shape, or form when I tell you we must have seen 30 Mule Deer in 30 minutes, it was amazing. Maybe it was the nerves, maybe it was our imagination, but we were all tense and on edge looking for deer that would dart to their death in front of our rental vehicle, but I swear we saw a deer that was five feet tall at the shoulder. We've convinced ourselves it was an elk, but surely we might have witnessed the QUEEN OF THE MULE DEER, that evening (Sasquatch's only known pet). After the Deer Dodging, the road decided to go from a windy 55 mph road to a quickly switch backing 25 mph road on the side of a cliff, at least that's what my parents told me as I was in a white knuckled state of concentration as my parents ooo'ed and aaaaa'ed out the windows. THE EXCITEMENT doesn't end there as we descend from the top of this canyon to the bottom (a descent that would actually cause a twenty -yes 20, degree temperature differential). As I'm going 25 mph around these curves still looking for deer what do I see a thousand feet above me? Headlights, and their coming up fast. I am being followed by a truck that must be taking these hairpin turns at at least 45 mph. Down in the canyon the “ghost truck” passes us and goes around a corner, never to be seen again, it was truly amazing to see how someone could navigate these steep windy roads that quickly in the dark. The only other vehicle we saw that night was a Demonic Truck with it's hazards on, no headlights, and a strange motor in the back of the pickup shooting out dark smoke. I was going to stop to see if everything was alright, but we all felt it was a better idea to keep moving. So off we went and landed in Worland, WY, two hours shy of our destination of Cody. Went to the hotel and crawled into bed and succumbed to sleep after our wild first day of the trip.

The Grand Tetons

The next day we drove through Cody, WY (one of Buffalo Bills old stomping grounds) and into Yellowstone National Park. We were in good luck and as shortly after we entered the park we ran smack into a Bear Jam -a term endearingly used for when large groups of humans pull over to the side of the road and run to take pictures/observe/get dangerously close to bears). We didn't stay too long, but did get out to take some nice pictures of a mother grizzly and her cub. They are big animals and that is about as close as I ever want to get to one. Our goal this day was not to see Yellowstone, though we did do that for a little bit (around the Yellowstone Lake Geyser Basin area), but to get down to the Grand Tetons and than back up to West Yellowstone for the night. The trip through the Tetons was not the most eventful, but we did get to stop at one of the visitor centers and saw a nice little demonstration about the park and what there is to do and see. We traveled the Teton loop and took some nice pictures of the mountain range before we went merrily on our way back up the park and into West Yellowstone, which is vaguely reminiscent of Old Orchard Beach meets Bar Harbor minus the ocean. That evening we watched an Imax move on Yellowstone and I partook of a Apple Pie pretzel. It sounds nasty I know, but it wasn't so bad. It had an apple pie filling and a cinnamon/sugar pretzel covering, quite tasty, and than I had a large popcorn and raisinettes and a large soda too boot. We than went to our hotel which is outside of Quake lake (a lake that formed due to an earthquake in the 1930's). This hotel was amazing, it had a stove, a refrigerator, a complete dining set, a kitchen, a bedroom, a closet, and a bathroom (which I used frequently after those late night Imax snacks I had earlier that evening).

The Yellowstone

Here's a little known fact, Yellowstone used to be known as Colter's Hell, named after the trapper, John Colter who first described it to other trappers (the natives had known of Yellowstone for a long time before Colter had come along). This was another nicely packed day. We drove to old faithful early that morning and watched it explode over the geyser basin. It still surprises me that people like to walk over active volcano's but, if that's what floats our boat (my dad kept saying “Are people stupid or what?”). I also showed my parents the dead buffalo that's been sitting by old faithful for the past three months or so. There isn't much left to it, but it's still there, I think it's a good warning to little kids “Step off the boardwalk and DIE like this bison”, that would teach 'em. After that we drove over to Canyon Ferry and through Dunraven pass which was incredibly beautiful and out into the Lamar Valley. Now one thing that I had been surprised not to see was animals. I felt like I always saw Bison in large quantities when I was in Yellowstone, but not this visit. I was a little worried to where they had all gone. They're smart animals and maybe to avoid the influx of humans they all migrate up to the Lamar Valley. There must have been hundreds of Buffalo just grazing along with Elk, Deer, Coyotes and other animals. So we got our animal sightings in and headed out to Cooke City for lunch. Man are people rude over there. First and foremost gas was $3.25 when other places the gas was only like $2.97 and we went to get food from this main street deli, but low and behold the guy working behind the window told us he was closed (this was at 1 in the afternoon) so we went to another restaurant where we had to wait a half hour to get our orders taken and another twenty minutes to get our food, unimpressed, to say the least. Cooke City should change it's name to Crooke City.

So back into the park we went and we drove down to the Yellowstone Canyon to see the upper and lower waterfalls of the Yellowstone River and Artists Point. Along the way we got a really good close up of a Coyote as my father almost ran one over. Luckily for his tiger like agility we dodged the little guy and all is well. We did quite a bit of hiking to look at the two falls of the Yellowstone and they are both completely worth it, it's amazing how much force the water pours over those falls. I do enjoy going to them earlier in the year when there are a lot less humans, but just going with my parents made up for the crowds of people who were also making their pilgrimage to our nations first national park. After the falls we drove up to the north entrance and left through Gardiner after the rain gods decided to open up the skies and give us a torrential down pour. It was beautiful because afterwards their was an amazing rainbow over the canyon next to Mammoth Hot Springs. It was a beautiful drive through Paradise Valley and we actually saw the starts of a fire up in the Paradise Valley mountain range. We got back to Bozeman by eight Sunday night and went to Mackenzie River Pizza to celebrate our home coming! All in all we had a blast and I'm hoping my parents had as good a visit as I had visiting and being with them.

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Photos

Mom and I
By Artists Point with Lower Falls in the background.

Nice Kitty Kitty
The house cat at Lewis and Clark Cavern's visitor center.

Valley by the Caves enterance.
One of the Valley's Lewis and Clark walked thru.

Into the Darkness
The mouth of the cave.

Caves
One of the many rooms in the Lewis and Clark Caverns.

The Melting Pillar
These are all over these Cavern's.

A Black Bear Baby
Outside of the Caverns.

The Philospher
Goes to drink from the falls...

The Drunk
...after drinking from the falls.

Comments

[Roger]

Life is Good
You are doing a great job ! I am seeing the world and not leaving my house. Life is Good!

[Anita Winters]

Wonderful
It looks like you all had a wonderful time and I thoroughly enjoyed the pictures and of course all the captions. I felt like I was on the trip with you guys. Great Job Luke in putting it all together.

[caca]

cool