Road Trip – Day 3 – Grand Tetons

Posted on June 21, 2014 by Robin

Morning of the third day.This is the Snake River near where we camped. We were on the road to Primary Destination #1, Grand Teton National Park. Moose is the headquarters and main visitor center for the Park. We found a campsite and chose a place to hike.We purchased the necessary supplies. That’s Bear Spray on the right. Yikes! These warnings were everywhere you look – at trailheads, in restrooms, on brochures. OK. I believe…But it won’t happen to me? Right? (Read the fine print on this–that’s scary.) We chose the Hermitage Point trail, about 9.5 miles. Here’s a view across Jackson Lake. The hardest thing about writing this blog is choosing only a few photos.The stunning Arrowleaf Balsamroot was everywhere.On the trail.I don’t think National Geographic will be calling me anytime soon, but it was fun to try and get wildlife photos. I think I do better with flowers because I can get closer and they don’t move. But maybe this isn’t bad considering that my longest lens is only 135 mm. Ruffed grouse, according to my bird book. These tent caterpillars were everywhere. They eat all the leaves in the area of their tents and can be quite devastating when in large quantities. I didn’t see any swans in Swan Lake, but there were plenty of geese… …and a sandhill crane.

We were less than a mile from the end of our hike and nearing dusk when we came upon this in the trail.OK. Time for 2 photos and then retreat. This is an enhanced closeup of the photo above. The signs all say that the bear is supposed to go away. She didn’t. We backed up and Dan fumbled with the bear spray. I had read the instructions while he was driving but I don’t think he paid attention. “Flip off the orange safety catch with your thumb and then position it in spray position. No, point it at the bear, not us…” Did you know that you have only 4 seconds of spray in one of those cans? Not like the wasp spray we have around here. The bear approached a little more and we retreated more. We were less than a mile to the end of the trail and I really didn’t want to go back. Then we saw other people coming up the trail towards us. These were 3 kids (well, college age) who we had seen on the trail before. It turns out that they didn’t have a map with them and had taken a wrong turn to a dead-end trail, backtracked, and were running to make up time back to headquarters. They were thankful that we stopped them or they would have been running straight at the bear. When we saw a cub come out from behind a log and it was evident that this mama bear was not going to retreat we turned around and started walking the other way. It added only about another two miles to the hike for an 11.5 mile day. (Is this over-dramatic to those of you who live in bear country? I’m sure that I have hiked in bear country before, but I’ve never seen them. The difference is that these animals are not as wary of people as they would be other places–which is great if you want a deer or grouse photo, but not so much an animal with big teeth and claws.) Sunset over Jackson Lake.

Road Trip – Day 2- Craters of the Moon

Posted on June 20, 2014 by Robin

NOTE: As I was writing this I realized that I am back-tracking over yesterday’s post. Oh well. Just like the book that I read on the trip–jumping around from generation to generation.

On Day 2 we awoke at the rest stop to trucks rumbling out and millions (it seemed) of moths folded up in the truck. We shooed out as many as we could and packed up. As we followed the California Trail east we pulled off at the CA Trail Interpretive Center about 10 miles west of Elko. This looks like a brand new facility and is probably worth a stop on another trip, but it was closed at that hour.

At the town of Wells, NV (population about 1300) we turned north towards Twin Falls, ID and there we saw a marker for a CA Trail historical site. It showed a view of the route of the pioneers–dry, desolate, rough terrain, sagebrush. The town wasn’t much. There were many abandoned old brick buildings but there was one in use and it showed a sign for the Wells Society for the Preservation of Western Heritage. Their CA Trail Museum was open. We were shown around by a young woman who grew up in Wells and told us that most of those abandoned brick buildings were in use until 2008 when the town was devastated by a 6.0 magnitude earthquake. DSC_4192 - Version 3 DSC_4192 - Version 2

Now we catch up to the photos of lunch and “Welcome to Idaho” in the previous post. Driving past Twin Falls to Shoshone and beyond we were awed by the green landscape. I am used to California’s huge agricultural landscape but there was something different about this. Maybe because of the miles of wheat with huge pivot irrigation systems. Unfortunately I didn’t take many photos and although this photo shows the huge pivot it doesn’t give the feel of the landscape. Deep, deep green over rolling hills to the distant horizon. We read later that this area is fed from aquifers that are a result of the volcanic landscape north of us. And of course there is the Snake River and the dams up the river, including the 15-mile long Jackson Lake in Grand Teton National Park which was dammed in 1911 for irrigation in Idaho.

But Idaho isn’t all green landscape. We stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument. There was a short trail to the top of Inferno Cone.Can you tell it was windy? So windy that Dan’s sunglasses blew off and he had to chase them down the slope. We gave up on wearing hats.This is the view from the top of Inferno Cone. The Visitor’s Center is just right of center. Notice the plume of smoke on the horizon at the left. That continued to grow and drift across the whole landscape through the afternoon. This is on the trail around Broken Top, a cinder cone. Still windy.There are caves to explore. This is the path to three caves. Getting out of the wind to the quiet of the cave was a relief. This is Indian Tunnel, a cave with areas in which the roof has collapsed.Most of the time it’s too dark in a cave for photos. The beauty of this area is in texture, color, and shape. (Hey, weavers, substitute structure for shape and we’re describing cloth.) Craters was not our primary destination so after seeing what we wanted to see (and being tired of the wind) we got back on the road. The evening was spent driving through more beautiful ag land in Idaho, following the Snake River. At dusk we found an almost empty campground along the Snake River. After a meal of beans and popcorn we went to bed. No moths. No wind. Perfect.

Next installment: Grand Tetons.

Road Trip – Day 1

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Robin

Since last year I had decided that I would take a real vacation with my husband and, being jealous after seeing photos on a friend’s blog (Claire, that’s you!), I made Yellowstone the destination. I kept two weeks open in my schedule. I did everything I could to make it easier to take care of animals and I got my kids to farm-sit. I had events or people here up to the time we were to leave. We didn’t make a plan other than to visit Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and the Pendleton Woolen Mill. (I had lots of other destinations marked on the map, but when you’re in the West an inch on the map is many hours of driving so there will have to be another trip.)

We left about 4:30 on Monday afternoon. That was only 2 1/2 hours behind my announced time of departure, although 4 1/2 hours behind the time I’d thought about trying to leave. We drove west on I-80 over the Sierras and into Nevada. I didn’t take many photos the first day driving although now I wish I had. By the time we were finished with this trip I knew that the theme was the grandeur and beauty of this country, and even though NV gets a lot of flack (especially from my fire-fighter sons who spend a lot of time there), it can’t be beat for it’s share of wide-open spaces. Making trail mix before leaving.Packing books and projects for traveling and sitting around camp.The Nevada desert from the truck window.We drove until after dark and spent the first night at a rest stop in Valmy, NV. Dan had made a plywood platform in the truck so that we could stash our stuff beneath and sleep on top. He has an old foam mattress and I slept on a couple of yoga mats topped with one of the new large sheepskins I just got back. Not to make this a sales pitch, but you can’t beat a nice thick sheepskin for making a soft, warm, cozy bed for camping. We will remember this night as the MOTH STOP. I don’t have any photos but the bathrooms and eventually the truck were filled with big moths. In fact the next night we had to take everything out of the back to rid ourselves of the moths. We talked to someone at a coffee shop the next morning and she said that there were enough moths in the area for it to be newsworthy so I looked it up. These are miller moths, the adults of the army cutworm and are thought to be more abundant this year due to the mild winter.

Since we had no time-line we could stop at all the roadside markers that we wanted to. We discovered that we were following the California Trail on our outward bound journey (although in reverse direction of the pioneers) and the Oregon Trail on the way back. My kids have always teased me for pointing out “what it would be like if you were a pioneer” when we have traveled through the deserts and mountains, but Dan and I continue to be in awe of these stories. It made the trip interesting to follow along with some of the history using pamphlets we picked up on the way and what I found on my iPhone. Lunch break near the Nevada/Idaho border.My friends who just came back from France posted photos of their meals along the way so I guess that’s what you do when you’re on a trip. What do you think? Horse mural in Shoshone, ID, taken quickly from the truck window. Near the entrance to Craters of the Moon National Monument. Stay tuned….