Days 37 & 38 – HOME

There was nothing eventful as we drove to Toledo, OH, hence no blog report. On Saturday, we decide that we were close enough to home that we combined the last two days of the trip and just drove home from Toledo. We did make the stop at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, as planned. It was a bit expensive ($22 each) and I enjoyed it, but Jeanne was just so-so about it. Combining the last two days required 8 hours of driving and we arrived home at 8pm. It was the first driving that we did after dark but it is going to be good to sleep in our own bed tonight.

The trip turned out to be 8,700 miles of driving, which is 1,200 more that I expected but I only counted the point-to-point driving, not the driving in the national parks, around town, etc. The estimate of 150 hours of driving was reasonably accurate but I don’t have a good way to check that as our GPS stopped recording time after we hit the 100 hour point.

By the way, in case you were wondering, we would do it again and just might at some point in the future, but just not for a while.

Day 36 – On the Way Home

Today and tomorrow we are driving without much in the way of sightseeing as we are pretty much headed home now. We drove from Mitchell, SD, to Iowa City, IA, passing through a tip of Nebraska. Tomorrow we will reach Toledo, OH. 7.5 hours driving today and about the same tomorrow.

The only sights we saw, besides farm land, were the capitol building in Des Moines and the University of Iowa campus, which is Iowa City.

As today is my birthday, we celebrated with a steak dinner featuring local Iowa beef, which was excellent.

Day 35 – Iconic Sights of South Dakota

We travelled over 300 miles today and saw some of the iconic sights of South Dakota along the way. Our first stop was Wall Drug. For us east coasters, it is the equivalent of South of the Border. You see signs for it for miles. That is a picture of me on a jackalope at Wall Drug. We have yet to see one in the wild.

We then drove through the Badlands National Park. It was our eight and last national park on this trip. The scenery there is a moonscape on one side and vast grasslands on the other. The park has a nice visitor center and we were lucky enough to see three bighorn sheep, an eagle and more prairie dogs during our drive.

We are spending the night in Mitchell, SD, the home of the iconic Corn Palace. The Corn Palace has been there since 1892 and is annually decorated with a corn cob mural. This year the theme is modes of transportation and the 125th anniversary of Dakota Wesleyan University.

In case you were wondering, we are following the Phillies and heard the early part of the game on XM and watched the end in our hotel. Great game!

Day 34 – The Black Hills

We spent the entire day in the Black Hills of South Dakota. From a distance, they really are black. They say it is because the hills are mostly Ponderosa pine, whose needles don’t reflect light very well.

We started the day with a visit to Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane’s graves in Deadwood. Afterwards we took a ride on an 1880 vintage railroad train (Jeanne in the rail car). It was a two-hour ride at high speed – 10 MPH! They use the same rails that took ore out of the hills 130 years ago. We both enjoyed the ride. After the ride we drove to Wind Cave National Park but found that the next available cave tour was in 2 hours so we moved on to Custer State Park. That was a good move as we saw great prairie scenery and tons of animals on the drive – bison, turkeys, mules, pronghorn antelope, deer and prairie dogs. After that we went to Mount Rushmore. I’m not sure I can do justice to the description so I’ll just say it was totally amazing and one of the top sights of the trip. We walked the base trail to see views of the monument that you don’t normally see and on the way we saw a Rocky Mountain goat.

Day 33 – A Day in the Old West

Today we drove about 400 miles, seeing some of the great icons of the Old West along the way. We started with a stop at the Little Bighorn National Battlefield in Montana where Custer made his last stand against a much larger force of Lakota Indians lead by Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. Custer died there in June of 1876 along with two brothers and about 280 soldiers of the 7th Cavalry.

After that we drove eastward passing through some very beautiful rolling grasslands that used to be teaming with bison. Today they are large ranches. We then made a slight detour north to see Devils Tower (see picture) in north eastern Wyoming. If you recall, Devils Tower was featured in the film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” We also both enjoyed seeing the prairie dog town that is at the foot of Devils Tower.

We finally arrived at our hotel in Deadwood, South Dakota. Deadwood was settled in the 1870’s as part of a gold rush in the Black Hills. On our walk to dinner, we passed by Saloon No.10, which is where Wild Bill Hickok was killed while playing poker. This was also in 1876, just about six weeks after the battle of Little Big Horn. That must have been a very eventful year.

Day 32 – Back in Civilization

Not much in the way of sightseeing today, but we did tour the hot springs (see picture) near Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel where we stayed last night. After 3 days and 2 nights in the National Parks, we are in Billings, MT, tonight at a Hampton Inn and it feels like we have rejoined civilization. The hotels in Yellowstone are certainly historic and worth staying just for that reason and the convenience of location, but they are old and lacking some features that we take for granted today. There is no cell phone service in the park, no TV or A/C in the rooms and only intermittent Internet at the Old Faithful Inn, none at Mammoth Hot Springs Inn. Even the lighting at Mammoth was so dim it was hard to read. We are used to being connected and it is something we can’t do without for long.

One positive I will say about the hotels is that the two dinners had in their restaurants were both exceptional. They feature local ingredients – bison, trout, huckleberry, etc. – and not that expensive for the quality of the meal.

Day 31 – Yellowstone National Park

When we left Old Faithful Inn, the sky was clear but it was cold. There was frost on the car and the temperature was 37, but it eventually reached 76. It was so cool that the geysers and fumaroles seemed extra active this morning and we watched Old Faithful erupt one more time before leaving and heading north. We stopped several times to see various sights – the geyser basins, Paint Pot, Artist Paint Pot, Firehole Lake, etc. The park is just a wonderland of various thermal features which make the area, including lakes, seem on fire at times. We then stopped at Canyon Village for lunch but not much was open which left us wishing we had packed a lunch. We then drove to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and the Lower Falls, which is actually the higher drop of the two falls. Of course we went to the obligatory Inspiration Point (translation – hard to get to with scary view).

Today we saw what we first thought was a wolf. It was too big for a fox, but it was alone, in the open in the middle of the day and pretty mangy. After some consultation, we decided it was a Coyote. We also saw plenty of bison, especially in the Lamar Valley region. We had some bison in the Firehole Lake area, but it was a small herd of about 20 to 30 animals. As we drove through the Lamar Valley, we began to see progressively larger herds until at one point we saw over 500 in a large open meadow by the river. That was an amazing sight.

One not so amazing sight is the damage done to the park by fire. The big fire of 1988 which burned over a third of the park isn’t that evident as lodgepole pines are starting to fill in but they are only 15 to 20 feet tall at this point. Other areas more recently burned are not very attractive and there was even a controlled fire burning today up near Lamar Valley. It leaves you wondering if the park service knows what they are doing.

Day 30b – A Meeting of the Elks

I have to give equal time to the elks. We saw a herd of them at West Thumb in Yellowstone. There was a male (see picture) with about 15 females and young elk. They were just wandering through the thermal features like they owned the place. When we got back to the car, we saw another male with 2 or 3 females. This is rutting season so you have to stay far away from the males as they are very touchy. We even heard him bellow out a warning (not at us).

Day 30a – Da Bears

I can’t close with out showing some animal photos. We were very lucky as we saw two black bears, a mother and cub, as we were coming down Signal Mountain in Grand Teton. We didn’t get out of the car as you don’t want to mess with a momma bear that has a cub with her.

Day 30 – Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks

This was a long but eventful day for us. We started in Jackson, WY and drove north into Grand Teton National Park. The sky was bright blue and the temperature eventually reached 73. From what we hear, it snowed heavily on October 1 last year so we were lucky. The Teton mountain range and the valley are magnificent, especially this time of year. The aspen were a vibrant yellow in contrast to the green lodge pole pines and the gray glacier topped mountains. We had planned a short hike at Jenny Lake but we found the boats still running so we took one across the lake. Their last day of operation was supposed to be yesterday, but since the weather was good and they had a charter, they stayed open one more day. From the other side of the lake, we hiked to Hidden Falls and then Inspiration Point. Once again, it was a steep climb at high altitude, which is exhausting. You reach 7100 feet by the time you get to Inspiration Point.

From Grand Teton, you go directly into Yellowstone at the south entrance. The foliage is slightly different in Yellowstone as it is almost exclusively lodge pole pines, at least in the southern part. It is probably just a difference in elevation. We stopped at West Thumb, which is part of Yellowstone Lake, to see our first hydrothermal features. They have all four types – hot springs, geysers, fumaroles, and mud pots. They even have one spot where you can catch a fish in the lake and then turn around and cook it in a hot spring while it is still on the line. At least you could in the old days and the park service doesn’t allow it now.

We are spending the night in the historic Old Faithful Inn, which is pretty cool. It is about 100 years old and built with huge timbers. It is also very close to Old Faithful, which we saw. Very cool show for about 3 minutes. We had a nice dinner later – I had Idaho trout and Jeanne had buffalo ravioli.