We Be Home!

We made it and now have a cool little egg in our driveway!



We have already plunged into a great dinner with Mary and Zanna and now, Fiddle Tunes.

Mary welcomed us home with fresh fruit, milk, bread, cheese, and a wonderful THREE PAGE poem in rhyming couplets! (And it scans!)

The house is already in complete uproar. Lots of music, lots of mail to sort through, and lots of weeds. Feels like home!



Happy summer, everybody!

Wed. June 30: Almost Home!

I was up early, having not slept too well, relieved that it was sunny and warming up. While I love the beauty of the Lochsa, if I return it will be after bug season or better prepared!

We packed and ambled down the road a bit more until we got to the teensy town of Lowell and the beginning of people besides just the occasional fisherman or camper.

And then I finally started seeing trams! I was really excited by these the first time I saw them in 1995. I had been looking for them all along and realized that of course they're for private houses on the other side of the river, so they wouldn't be in the National Forest.

How cool would it be to have your garage on one side of the river and your house on the other, with a tram taking you back and forth? We saw a bunch of these, and I wished I could ride them. We also saw KOA type places, and just downstream of Lowell, the Goose Creek CG right on the river but with no beach. We also saw the Three Devils Picnic area with a nice big turnout and then the Syringa Lodge, where we celebrated Judy Lungren's birthday a few years back!

We saw rooster tails for sale. Is this a fishing thing? Do I want to know?

Gutbust
This is another word of ours. Today we just kept going. Easy driving on Hwy 12 through Lewiston, Clarkson (yay, in WA! and a lot nicer if I do say so), Walla Walla, Tri Cities (big fancy grocery store in an Anywhereville stip mall), Yakima, White Pass (fond memories for me from the wonderful Simco music gathering), the amazing Rimrock Lake, Riffe Lake, and we're coming into home turf at last.

We had eaten way too much junk food, but we had done it.

Have any of you from around here noticed that this is a banner foxglove year?

Monday, June 28th: Lolo!

We drove through the great green beauty of the Lolo State Forest. We crossed the timeline and were happy to gain an hour and be back on "home" time. We saw signs for Moose Crossings and, we think, we saw some girl mooses (meese, moose)? (I actually am pretty sure the singular and plural are the same, like in Old English except did they have moose there?) We thought about A River Runs through It. A sign said, "Winding Road Next 99 miles." Alright!

And we finally found the campground with flush toilets--Powell. However, we never used those toilets. This was due to the fact that we did not want to really be outside very much, and believe me, the irony was not lost on us.

Lewis and Clark actually camped here--where their Shoshoni guide led them to a fishing camp to get around and then back into Lolo Pass.

No-see-ums (spelling according to Scott)
As we drove in, swarms of bugs were everywhere in the twighlight! It was scary, like a blizzard of insect malevolence, or rather, indifference to the fate of their mere mortal food supply. And, like the night before, we dove into the trailer and didn't come out. But this strategy didn't work so well. The no-see-ums came pouring in through the screens and proceded to drive us nuts. We saw 'em.

Scott, who, as most of you know, is much more stoic than moi, assured me that it would all mellow out at dewpoint, which it finally did. However, it was also too late. We were a mass of bites and itching.

Oh, and did I say it was hot? So we had to leave the windowns open. It took forever to cool down.

That night, the loudest closest thunderstorm I'vwe ever heard made the one in Iowa look limpwristed. Rip Van Winkle's little guys had morphed into Arnold Schwartzeneger and Sly Stallone duking it out with bowling balls the size of Mt. Rainier. With the flashes of lightning and fat splatting of rain, it was a great night to be in a trailer. But it was still hot.

Tuesday, June 29th, Apostles' Feast Day!

You would never have known anything happened last night. The air was gorgeous, the sun shone, the bugs were a little bit better. Scott settled down to making a pancake breakfast with eggs and cheese, and I was glad to help him eat it and even clean it all up. We strolled down to the river, but then we were off on our quest--to find one of those sandy beaches and hang out! My new word of the day is "decamp."

The following is an inventory of camping on the Lochsa as you drive down toward Lewiston for them as is interested:

Whitehouse
Primitive=$8 a night and pit toilets and usually, water. However, it's a good idea to bring your own just in case or be prepared to boil it. Most of the sites were like this.

This was prettier than Powell, but I'm not sure there was any water. Just 4 miles down the road. Great river acess.

Wendover
Primitive. Water but not at sites. Sites paved but not as close to the river as at Whitehouse.

Warm Springs Trail #49
No, we didn't hike it (and there are tons of trails, which was making me twitchy), but right by it is the Jerry Johnson Day Use area. You walk across a neat ped bridge (there are a bunch of them along the river) and you can hike into hot springs just 1.5 miles away. Trouble was, it was hot, and the last thing we wanted was hot springs! Still, a reason to return in the fall! Just before MP 151.

Jerry Johnson Campground
Hmm, who is JJ? Anyway, this isn't too great a legacy for him. It's not on the river, been logged out, so no shade, and primitive. Ugh!

Lots of pull offs as we continued to explore, very helpful.

White Pine River Access
MP 139. My favorite, but not a campground. Sandy beach! And these incredible black and white (with some having yellow, some orange) butterflies that flew right up to us and T-Lou, who tried to eat it. We saw these constantly after this area.

Eagle Mountain
Another bridge and trailhead over some cool rapids, before MP 135 with a pit toilet.

Ninemile River Access
OK, pit toilet but not a good sandy beach.

Wilderness Gateway CG MP 123
Big! On the river, but logged, steep rock cliffs, fast water and lots of young boy things with fancy little river kayaks that looked like sneakers. Actually, my 20-year-old self was drooling over those things. (The kayaks, not the boys.)

As we continue, we see lots of sandy little beaches...on the other side of the river! :(

We also got to see some kayakers in action and it looked like way too much fun.

Knife Edge River Access
Pretty cool with a few camp sites, pit toilet, rough road, between MP 108-9.

Apgar CG: At Last!
We were so glad we held out! We finaly found it. Delicious water (this had been an issue for most of the trip), beautifully clean and spacious pit toilet, about six sites, and NO ONE THERE. We picked the site with river acess to a--yes!--sandy little beach. While eventually a few folks showed up, we were the ones who had the beach and were right next to the toilet and water.

We kind of swam (the water was too cold to do much more than dunk), and it felt wonderful on our bites and in the hot sun. I lay out in the sun. Scott puttered around the trailer. T-Lou was in heaven. He kept going in, staring down in the water, plunging his face in, and, when successful, bringing up a stick and dragging it onto the beach. When we went out to dunk ourselves, though, he had his usual panic attack and gibbered and yowled and then swam out, checked us and swam back. It's annoying if you're out too deep because his pawnails hurt!

We had a great broccoli-salmon-red onion mac 'n cheese kind of campy thing for dinner and retired, praying we wouldn't be completely devoured. It wasn't as bad, but right on time again came the crash, flash and the storm began approaching. This must be a nightly thing up there. I looked out the trailer just after the first storm and saw pink sky, so we ran out to see it better. It had gotten dark because of the storm, but looking back at the trailer and sky, we saw a rainbow against the pink, and it became more and more defined, a beautiful end to the day!

Our Glorious National Parks

In the morning, things were changing fast at Buffalo Bill SP. We remembered driving through Wyoming 15 years ago and watching the darkness chase us with inky fingers across the plains. This time, we saw the darkness come in spectre-like towering wraiths whose feet touched the earth and heads touched the sky--rain and storms coming our way. It all looked more dramatic in the approach than in the actuality, though. Some rain and scurrying on our part to get the trailer all shaped up and everything closed. And we were on our way...to Yellowstone!

Fifteen years ago, we had "seen" Yellowstone as we hustled through, hardly stopping on our way to one of Scott's innumerable cousin's wedding. (At this wedding Scott couldn't get into the reception until the country club supplied him with a tie. You can still get him going on this one.) That said, Scott's cousins are a lot of fun.

This time at Yellowstone, we decided to take time. We were going to be tourists.

Winter
As we ascended up to the 8000-foot level, the grey skies and occasional snow patches made us feel right at home. A little way into the park we stopped behind some folks who were photographing a bear munching along the side of the road. This is how you see wildlife here, by inching around a zillion people photographing it. While we fell into some of this photography idiocy, all I could think of was Google-->Flickr-->Yellowstone.

Summer
The clouds started to part, the sun emerged, and now it was summer in the high country. Huge vistas, snow capped mountains, mobs of tourists like us that were all remarkably amiable. We did the south loop, which really is the one to do if you want to check out the amazing volcanic stuff. Everyone knows about Yellowstone and/or can find out, so I'm not going to bother with all that. Suffice it to say that we schlepped ourselves from one mud volcano to fumarole to geyser. Old Faithful was completely gross--we got there just after it had held forth, and New York City was pouring out the gates. We got some really overpriced ice cream and booked out.

We did see a bunch of bison (and got tired of people photgraphing them in unruly crowds as if these were creatures from outer space) and the really cool white pelicans. We saw elk once and there were tons of ravens up close scavenging like crazy. The bison kept crossing the road and sending everyone into ecstasies, but at least no one was posing an infant near a bear for a Kute Photo Shot like the last time we had been in YS.

Where Do We Stay?
We had gotten pretty loose about schedules, so we tried a few Yellowstone campgrounds and they were closed. We resigned ourselves to driving through the park for a long day and into the night and then finding something to the north. At the last moment, we found a campground, which was wonderful since we could then take more time the next day.

It was COLD! I did not sleep well, but I got a lot of a great New Yorker issue read--all about a brilliant economist at MIT who does trials to see what really works to help alleviate poverty.

Sunday
I woke up cranky and pretty quickly had to apologize to Scott. Great way to start a Sunday, but we thought of everyone at St. Elizabeth's and missed them. (Well, at least most of them.) ;) It was even hotter than yesterday, but before we knew it, we were hiking around and going down this insane "trail"--Uncle Tom's (what a name!) which was over 300 steps that went straight down to the bottom of a waterfall. It was actually a lot of masochistic fun.

On the upper loop (east side), after that there weren't as many thermal wonders, so we drove, oooed, ahhhhed, went through the pass at 9K+ feet and passed Mt. Washburn (10K+ feet) finally came to the northernmost part--Mammoth Springs. Cool old stone buidlings and things, but the heat and hike were a bad combo for me. Also, the springs actually were best seen from the road!

I was overwhelmed by YS, and not in an entirely good way. It was almost like too many rides at Disneyland or too much chocolate cake (I believe this IS possible). This is pathetic on my part, but there it was. As we emerged into the tourist craziness (but in miniature!) of Gardiner, on the north side, it was nice to come down to about 3K' and the empty sweeping green of so much of Montana. All the way, we could see the mountains of Yellowstone, and now that I was out of it, I loved it again. (Does anyone else almost enjoy trips more when it's all over?)

Lewis and Clark Caverns SP

We came from Yellowstone to I-90 and the demands of necessities. It had been a glorious few days of freedom from wifi and phone, but now I checked in and also needed to post some stuff for the grammar class. We came upon a McDonalds and, yes, bought some of their horrible but scarily compelling food, only to find out their wifi was down. This really ticked me off since the big sign on the door was advertising their free wifi.

Why I Am a Democratic Socialist
So, what to do? We decided we would hunt up something in Bozeman, which was on the way. I was going to drag my McDonalds cup in to the next McD's and demand wifi, but lo and behold, we drove by the absolutely gorgeous Bozeman library. Big parking lot too! It was closed, of course, on Sunday night, but on the front porch were plugs and picnic tables. When I tested the wifi, it was for the City of Bozeman as well as the library. While I sat and worked, Scott took T-Lou off to the park. If you have to work, this is the way to go.

Seriously, libraries are amazing, wonderful places. I personally support them through all the late fines I pay for DVDs. I never resent paying these, though I feel kind of dumb.

Bug Haven
We pulled up to the park after driving for miles south of I-90 through the incredible valleys of Montana. It was feeding frenzy time at the grassy little campground. But the trailer set up was quick, and we yanked T-Lou in ASAP (he was cabled outside and biting himself all over). I almost bit myself too.

We hit the beds, both just trashed. Great sleep!

Caverns!
I have been nattering about caverns this whole trip, with my old and brief spelunking days rising up. At college, I joined the Spelunking Club and ran around in caves and old lead mines by the Mississipi. I was a lot skinnier and loved squeezing through a mudhole into a cave or running around bent over (with hard hat and head lamp).

On our last trip, I had convinced Scott to go to this cave in Wyoming that was a small affair, and it was great. The guide was from Seattle and we had to climb these funky ladders. He told us a great story about how they had put a little fish down there and told the tourists it was a cave fish. Somehow, word of this got back to Jacque Cousteau's son, who wanted to come and investigate it. They guys who ran the cave freaked and somehow got him off the scent.

The cave here was a different affair, much more organized and all that, but it was still small enough not to be some big obnoxious affair like Luray Caverns or something, which I visited with my brother years back. (And even then I loved that cave!) I had seen ads for Mammoth Cave near Nashville, a boat tour through a cave, and I had read about all those caves in Missouri. Now, at last, we were going to go in a cave.

It was insanely hot. Thankfully, they had kennels for people's dogs. We left T-Lou (he's going to need a doggy psychiatrist after this trip) and signed up. We had to wait a little while, but there was all sorts of neat stuff to look at, including a big stuffed cougar. That is an animal I never want to meet.

In a group of about 20 other people, we walked a loooong way up Cave Mountain to the entrance. A Mennonite family caught my attention. The older women had long skirts and little hair things that barely showed, and they huffed and puffed. The young men looked like young men you would see anywhere, but the teenage girl had a cool little hat and a utilikilt as her skirt. You could tell she was about the hippest Mennonite around.

Inside the cave, it was wonderfully refreshing.It's smart of the park to have you do the hard work first and then go down stairs and such in the cave and amble out. All kinds of wonderful formations with guide patter, but folksy silliness that somehow didn't drive me mad. Stalactites, stalagmites, limestone fountains, a place we had to slide through on our butts. It was cool in every way.

We rescued the dog (who had some other companions, so I think he wasn't quite as freaked), and were on our way. We drove through country that had me singing the Bonanza theme song and remembering my crush on Little Joe. How oh how could he turn into Pa in Little House on the Prairie? That was so WRONG!

50 miles or so east of Missoula: "World Famous Bullshippers"

Exit 154: "Philipsburg" with one "l"!

Milepost 140: An add for the Testicle Festival

Construction, more construction. Roads are being worked on all over this country, let me tell you!

Another Wonderful Library
We were aiming for the Lochsa river and envisioned lounging around on its sandy beaches we had fallen in love with years ago. To have that kind of freedom, I needed to engage in a major grading session, so we headed to Missoula's Public Library, which is open till 9 p.m. How great is that?

But first, we got an oil change (ugh, they found a beautiful messed up butterfly in our air filter--it shouldn't have gotten in and maybe we have rats!), bought groceries, and then, as usual, Scott and the dog hung out and found a park where everyone was inner tubing along the river, while I slaved away in an air conditioned, beautifully set up library. Got everyone graded, and we were off, for Lolo Pass!

And Then, Heaven!

We decided, looking back (literally), that it had been a good thing we stayed in Sheriden because we got the Bighorns in the morning. The drive up them was splendiferous--suddenly the air felt good and green trees were showing up. These mountains are my favorite place we've been so far.

The view over the plains from whence we had come was overwhelming. All along the way, signs pointed out rock strata billions of years old and their geologic ages: goose egg, 10 sleep, etc. Throughout this part of the trip, it's been obvious that rocks rule the world. In SD the mounds and buttes looked as if they would get up and roar out songs or mysterious folks would emerge from them to proclaim a new world order. Here, the uplift and layering was all the drama you could need.

Broo ha ha! Narnia and the North! (Anyone know who says it and in which book?)

Due to some cancellations of plans with relatives, we also realized that we could now slow waaaaay down. We climbed up through what the park people said were Doug Firs but looked more like Lodgepole pines. And then down into some more barren, but beautiful land, with sunburned layers of grey, red, and white rock in fantastic formations. We saw thousands of grey, dead pines and soon came to a turnout where we could read about them.

A giant tornado had swept through the place in 1959. (Tornado! Not again!) Then, a pine bark beetle had come and infested the trees. They were dealing with it in interesting ways, but it was an awful thing to see.

Shell Creek
We continued heading down and came to this wonderful throughway of green and saw displays on how important this creek was for the whole valley below. In the store was a CD by "The Singing Rangers"--fiddle, banjo, etc. I was tempted! They were all so cute in their ranger outfits.

They had feeders out for hummers and listed about five kinds, including one we heard that is distinguished by its chattering. None of them seemed as agressive as ours, which will go right after you the minute you step out the door.

Cody
Down we plunged into stark, dramatic country with even more geologic uplift, red rocks, startling formations. We cruised through Buffalo and then came to Cody. An Albertson's! Hurrah! I even liked seeing a Tully's, a place I've never visited. The place felt like a mini-Aspen as I imagine Aspen. The usual tourist cowboy stuff (including a cowboy revue that was, at least, tempting to me).

Buffalo Bill SP
Past Cody, a giant resevoir opened out along the side of the road, in completely barren country. Scott was entranced by the idea of a lake, so we stopped and decided to camp there for the night. The wind blew hard across the lake, the campsites were stripped down, but the sun shone, it was early in the afternoon, and we just kicked back.

We saw these cool birds--black and white, noisy, with looong tails. (And we kept seeing them later--postscript). Bigger than a jay, smaller than a crow. What the heck are they? Anyone? Quenn? Dixie?

While I've had almost no allergies (or asthma!) ever since sinus surgery, I had been waking up in the middle of the night with goop. Here: nada. This is allergy heaven, at least, I think, for most people. And NO BUGS. We're finally feeling as if we're on vacation. We played some tunes, had some dinner, took a walk. Then, to top it all off, the full moon rose and told us good night.

To Hellhole--oh, I mean Sheridan--WY

Thursday
We left Mitchell, SD in beautiful bright weather, greatly refreshed after our hot weather ordeal.

Little Did We Know.
I decided I want to learn how to tesseract to the next place you see. Anyone have any information on that?

We passed through "Philip" (look, Phil--one "l"!) and yes, I admit it, we did stop at the Corn Palace and I went in for about 5 minutes. Very sad when you looked at a picture of the original, which was all made of corncobs and really LOOKED like a palace, with swirly towers and sudden lurches of building lines. The new one is an unhallowed cross between Disney and Barbie.

We PASSED Wall Drug. Been there, done it, 15 years ago.

SD I-90 had billboards, unlike ND I-94 (except going into Fargo, of course). They were really a pain--stunts as tourism.

The wind picked up and we remembered that the KOA folks had told us about a semi being overturned the night before. And on and on...



At the Black Hills gas resumed its usual expensiveness.

We cruised into Wyoming and my big excitement: Devil's Tower!



It was hot and sunny as we turned off and drove through the hills, no other cars in sight. Suddenly there it was, peeking out, and not mashed potatoes neither. As we came down into it, though, we saw more, and suddenly, at the base, a circus of craziness: a KOA (of course), a store for tourists, and about a zillion other concessions and crap. Well, everyone has to make a living, but Native Americans aren't happy about it all.

We looked and left. Things got more barren. We saw oil wells. And, in the distance, hope--the Bighorn Mountains. We had planned to go camp in there, but we were really wiped out and yes, once again, we went to a KOA. Oh big mistake!

KOA from Hell
OK, first off, the usual right next to the freeway thing. Fine. Relatively cheap (though not SP cheap). Fine. Cute little rabbits hopping around. Yeah.

(You might be able to see the bunny hiding behind the grill's post.)

A zillion people. The most ferocious mosquitoes encountered yet, but stifling heat. Wifi horrible. I end up in the laundry room on my computer, listening to two women talk about how Obama isn't really a citizen and all their freedoms are being taken away and how sad it was that Obama had really had a chance to do something for black people and had blown it. One told the other to read "1984," a really good book about it. As I'm leaving, I finally lose it. "Ladies," I stated in a nasty rage, "George Orwell was a dedicated socialist. Just check it out."

They promptly asked me if my rights weren't being taken away and then where I was from. Mentioning Seattle obviously wasn't helpful. At that point Scott, who had shown up, helped hustle me out, telling me all the while how unclear I had been and that they hadn't understood a thing I said. I had to go sulk for a while and then snap out of it. It's no good coming at folks that way, and I felt bad about it. It would have been more interesting to ask them how they got to those beliefs.

We slept badly, itching all over. This includes T-Lou.