What's next?

We are home now. Despite two of us (Mike and I) getting seriously sick on the trip, we had a wonderful time when all was said and done. We had long lengths of time in the car to talk about what trips we want to take in the future. I have all of our trip goals sorted in my head in terms of short term, medium term and long term goals.

In the short term (like maybe next summer?) we are planning to go to Cascade National Park, and Ranier National Park and points in between in the Pacific Northwest. We also would like to spend some time in the fall when the weather cools off in Southern Utah in the parks there. I would like very much to go back to Zion. Canyonlands and Capital Reef are definately in my sights and a return trip through Bryce Canyon and Arches would be awesome. In the medium term we would like to go to the Smoky Mountain National Park. In the longer term we have Alaska--we would like to take a whole summer for that. And in the distant long term I want to hike in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana. This goal however, is the farthest away for a number of reasons. #1 I don't want to take the kids into the Bob. I think it is way to dangerous for children. #2 I need to get past my fear of large predators before I will be able to do it. The Bob is home to way to many bears and large cats for me to feel comfortable with a backcountry trip there.

You can read more about the Bob Marshall Wilderness here: http://www.fs.fed.us/r1/flathead/wilderness/bmwcomplex.shtml

I hope you have enjoyed reading the trip blog this year. It was a lot of fun writing it.

Fruita, Colorado

Wednesday August 6, 2008 about 11pm

Tonight’s post is coming to you from Fruita, Colorado. We can all give a hearty thank you to the King Family, whoever they are, for having a highly convenient unsecured network that I can hop on. (Post script: this network did not work for posting which is why this is being posted so late.)
As was the plan in the last post, we did spend the day hanging out at Townsend/Canyon Ferry Lake in Townsend MT. The wind died down and we put the canoe in the water. The kids also did some fishing but nobody actually caught anything. It was a very fun day for all of us. After leaving Townsend, we headed down to Yellowstone.
We camped the night in Yellowstone right across from Mammoth Hot Springs. In the morning we ate breakfast across from the old Fort Yellowstone Buildings at a picnic table. After breakfast we headed over to Mammoth and to our shock, there was almost no water. We learned from someone on the trail that there had been an earthquake this past winter and the passage for the water is now blocked. The springs are not totally dry, but they are pretty close to totally dry. Minerva Terrace, which is the big attraction at Mammoth is dry and the terrace has completely bleached out from sitting dry in the sun. They park people say that it is not unusual for water to come and go in the springs, but my personal thought is that if it is being blocked, wouldn’t that mean pressure is building up somewhere under there? I would not think that building pressure in a live volcanic caldera is a good idea. Not that anyone can actually do anything about it, but it kind of makes you uneasy walking in an area where logic dictates that incredible pressure is building up beneath you.
After leaving Mammoth we headed out to Norris Geyser Basin—another area we had not seen previously. It was totally amazing. We also went swimming in one of the rivers we came across with a shallow kid-friendly swimming area. Lastly we went to see Old Faithful, which never fails to amaze—80,000 gallons of boiling water shooting up over the course of 4 minutes. Old Faithful, true to its name, has to be the most reliable geyser on earth; it went off within about 2 minutes of the time it was predicted for.
Oddly we saw almost no wildlife in Yellowstone this year, not a single buffalo, only a few antelope. However, after leaving Yellowstone, we were on our way to Grand Teton—where we ate dinner—and shortly after entering the park we saw a bear, up close and personal. He was walking up to the road right as we were passing and I slammed on the breaks and he froze. Thank God I did not hit him. He ambled behind the car like it was no big deal at all. Of course we were watching him the whole time. He investigated the road and then a bear jam started building and we had to leave. It was the highlight of the day. We are not sure if he was a grizzly or a black bear. He had the snout of a grizzly but he was smaller like a black bear. Perhaps he was a young grizzly.
So here we are today. We stopped quickly by Dinosaur National Monument and we are making our way home. Tomorrow our plan is to see the Colorado National Monument and head out toward home again and we may stop at a thing or two on the way home. I would like very much to be home by Friday. The kids have meet the teacher that night on Friday. I don’t know if we will make that. Two of us are sick—Michael and I have both come down with a ferocious cold. I am miserable right now and I would love to teleport myself back home. I am hoping that I feel better tomorrow. Mike is already on the improving side. It is not fun being sick on the road.

Just can't quit Montana

We woke up yesterday still at the campground outside of Glacier and realized that "holy crap, it's already Sunday and we are still in northwestern Montana!" So we made one final trip to Glacier; Marianne, Christopher and Claire got their Junior Ranger Badges; we ate ice cream for lunch and we visited the Discovery Cabin which has a whole bunch of animal pelts and skulls that are there for the kids to touch. You would never believe how heavy the bighorn sheep horns are. I would estimate that they weigh between 30 and 40 lbs. I was able to lift them, but they were seriously heavy. Grizzley bears are not soft, but black bears are. Mountain lions are so incredably soft as are grey wolves. The wolves have the thickest fur.



I owe you all a correction from a prior post. My description of huckleberrys was actually a description of juneberries. We learned this while on a trail yesterday in Glacier. We came upon a woman in the woods who was picking something and the kids asked her what she was doing and she told them she was picking huckleberries. We told her about the tree we found the prior day and she told us "oh I know that tree, those are not huckleberries those are juneberries." She then offered us some of the huckleberries she had picked and they were very similar, but there was no issue with the seed like there was with the juneberry. I am including pictures in this post of both berries so you can see why we were confused. I did not take these pictures, I got them off of the web. The first picture is of juneberries which grow on a tree, the second picture is of the huckleberries which grow in a patch or a shrub like a blueberry. So the interesting thing about this woman is that she lives one mile outside the park. She is about maybe 60, and she bikes in to the park, picks her berries and goes home and bakes herself a pie with them! She told us she often rides her bike in with a picnic lunch and then parks her bike and hops on the shuttle and eats her lunch up at Logan Pass. All I can say is...what a life!





So we drove out of Glacier and we made the decision to head south and we are planning to fish today in Townsend/Canyon Ferry Lake in Townsend, MT. It is pretty windy so we probably will not take out the canoe. After fishing we are heading down to Yellowstone and we are going to go see Mammoth Hot Springs which we missed last time we were in Yellowstone. I know we will not be capable of passing through Grand Teton without stopping and we are planning to try to stop by Dinosaur National Monument. Then we are going to head for home. I will keep you posted on our progress. It is sure to be a slow circuitious route. I hope the next time you hear from us, it will be from inside or near Yellowstone. If we do camp in Yellowstone, we will not have internet access and you will have to wait until we come back to civilization to do a new post.

A totally perfect day!

Today we spent the entire day in Glacier National Park. At one point Charlie said, "These parks are just incredible; one's better than the next." This pretty much sums up my feelings as well. Glacier is so incredible. There are these beautiful waterfalls that seem to materialize out of the rock itself. There are also what is called "weeping walls" where water literally rains out of the rock. How this happens is a mystery to me, but it is a sight to behold. We saw the glaciers, and snow pack that is not going to melt before the snow starts falling this year.

So today's activities went in this order: we woke up, did a load of laundry, the kids played in the campground playground while that was going on. We got on the road and stopped at a bear zoo. You drive your car in and you get to see black bears just roaming around, eating, sleeping, swimming and doing whatever it is bears do--which is mainly eating--these bears were born in captivity and I am not really sure if they prepare for hibernation like regular bears or what. Seeing the bears up so close was really cool, but the park itself was nothing to really write home about. After the bear park, we headed in to Glacier NP itself. We grabbed some sandwiches and headed up to Logan's Pass. This is the area of the park where you get to take a short hike and you can go play in the snow. It is also where we got to see a heap of wild animals. We got to see mountain goats, bighorn sheep, marmosets and squirrels. After the fun at Logan's Pass, we headed back down the mountain and we put the canoe in at McDonald Lake. This was just so incredible. The water was calm today. Yesterday, McDonald Lake was rough because it was very windy. We paddled around for about an hour and as we paddled back in to shore, there were two people setting up to play alp horns as the sun went down. I had never heard an alp horn before so this was totally cool. An alp horn is the Swedish National Instrument. You can see the picture of the two musicians here. After loading the canoe back up on the car, we headed off to eat dinner. We ended the day at a restaurant called Eddie's. National Park food is almost universally terrible. This food was not great, but they did have a bunch of huckleberry-based desserts. I got huckleberry cobbler, two of the kids had huckleberry ice cream. Prior to my trip to Glacier NP, the only huckleberry I had ever even heard of was Huckleberry Hound. I am not even sure if I was aware that huckleberries are actual berry. For those of you who are as ignorant as I was, a huckleberry is somewhat like a blueberry. The seed on the inside is much bigger so imagine the shape and size of a blueberry but the seed problem of a blackberry and you pretty much have the idea. They grow wild all over the place up here, and if the bears haven't eaten them first you can pick them and eat them right off the tree.

As we ate dinner we reflected on what a perfect day this has been. We don't know yet what we are doing tomorrow, but we are leaving this campground. We are considering heading off toward Cascade National Park in Washington. Another possibility is to head down toward Yellowstone and Teton, but if we do that, I may not ever come home. Charlie is looking at the map now as I type and is figuring out what is possible in the time we have left.

Enjoy the pictures from Glacier. The video is a panorama of McDonald Falls.

Montana

Let me start today's blog post by telling you all that I will be taking my life in my hands if I shout out either "wow!" or "oh my god, look at that!" one more time in the car. I think the family is good and sick of hearing it. But here in Montana it is impossible not to do that. We pulled out of Indian Creek (Deer Lodge, MT) right about lunch time, and although we only had to go about 150 miles, it took us until past 11 last night to get to Kalispell. There was just so much to look at and stop and see. This place is so incredibly beautiful.

We decided to cook our own lunch yesterday which we did at a place called Beavertail Hill State Park in Missoula County. Were were one of two occupied campsites; we had the entire place to ourselves. This place is an incredible state park with two gorgeous teepees that you can camp in. A river for fishing and a self guided nature trail. Here is the link with pictures of the park: http://fwp.mt.gov/lands/site_280871.aspx

The one downside to this park is that because it is so sparsely populated with actual people, the wildlife has taken over. Not too much of a problem except I was really afraid we might run into a bear. Needless to say there were no bear sightings--that would obviously be paragraph one in these blog posts, but there did turn out to be a hornet's nest under the table where we were eating our lunch. Annoying, but no one got stung. This is noteworthy, because we couldn't figure out where the hornets were coming from and Mike kept teasing Marianne and saying, "Marianne, there's a nest under the table!" to freak her out and it turns out that is exactly where it was!

So we got on the road again and made it out to Flathead Lake, which is the largest naturally occurring body of fresh water east of the Mississippi River. It is a beautiful lake and it is really big, way too big for us to put the canoe in.

We are camping now in Kalispell at a place called Rocky Mountain-Hi campground. We will be here for two nights.

Today we are doing the highlight activity of the trip, we are going in to Glacier National Park. It should be amazing. I will report on it either tonight or tomorrow.