There are two kinds of winds that come out of thunderstorms: tornados and derechos. We know that we don’t want to be in the first; this trip gave us to opportunity to learn we also don’t want to be in the second.
The original plan, the one that involved “seeing” Montana in four days (ha ha), had us leaving Livingston on August 8, which would put us crossing Nebraska and Iowa on August 9th and 10th. That would have been a bad thing. On the night of August 9th, a derecho, which is an area of straight-line winds blasting out from a line of thunderstorms (from the Spanish word meaning “right” or “straight”), blew across the Midwest. This particular storm, incredibly, was a line of severe thunderstorms 600 miles long. Ahead of that fearsome monster were straight-line winds of at least 58 mph across essentially the entire front, and winds clocked in Iowa in excess of 110 mph. All across the area, roofs were torn off of buildings, trees were uprooted, semi tractor trailers were blown over, grain elevators were toppled, and thousands of acres of corn fields were flattened. At one point, power had been knocked out to nearly one million homes. The effect was essentially an inland Category 2 hurricane, spreading the same kind of destruction, except that unlike a hurricane, this one didn’t lose force over land, it gained it. Our route would have put us right in the middle of all this on the very night it happened.
We didn’t think to capture a screenshot at the moment the storm passed over where we would have been, but this gives you the idea: the dark red/purple blob passed almost directly over Grand Island, NE, where we had spent the previous night.
But, as it turns out, we were miles away. Since we decided we are basically morons for thinking we’d see Montana in four days, and having resolved to come back to Montana for a month next year, we realized we might as well get a head start on the trip home and leave on August 7th. That meant, instead of spending the night of August 9-10 in Nebraska, in the middle of unimaginable destruction, we were 300 miles southeast, watching on network news the devastation occurring in where we would have been had we left per our original schedule.
I assume that, had we been in the jaws of this beast when it hit, we would have taken shelter in the campground bathroom building, or some other suitable shelter, but the RV likely would have been damaged, maybe totaled. Instead, it’s just a story of what might have been. We’re pretty much devoted Presbyterians, so we don’t believe in luck or coincidence. But whatever you call it, providence or luck, but for a spontaneous decision to leave a day early, this would have been an entirely different post.
Wendy and I have driven through Montana probably a half-dozen times over the years, and every time we do, Wendy says, “Wow! This place is SO beautiful. Instead of just driving through, we should stop for a while and see Montana.” So, having wrapped up Grand Teton National Park, we headed up to Livingston, Montana, for a week. Two of those days were spent in Yellowstone, but that gave us four days to see Montana. Hold that thought.
You know how sometimes you hear someone say something and you wonder, “Are you serious? What are you thinking? Are you actually that clueless?”
Now, back to seeing Montana. Yes, we actually are that clueless and no, I don’t know what we were thinking. “Seeing” Montana in four days is nuts. Montana is almost 150,000 square miles in size. (Compare that to Georgia, which is about 60,000.) Montana is roughly 570 miles by 315 miles in length and breadth. It has 70,000 miles of paved roads, and an immeasurable number of dirt roads. So, what were we thinking that we could “see Montana” in four days?
Needless to say, we didn’t “see” Montana. What we did see was one little sliver of the south-southwestern part of the state, specifically the Gallatin River canyon, and then the Madison River valley. Seriously. Two riversheds. And it took all day.
This is it, and it took all day, and it was a L-O-N-G day. In our own defense, though, (and it’s not much of a defense), it’s easy to forget how big the states are out west. One doesn’t just bip on up from the bottom of the state to the top.Gallatin River Canyon: At this point, the canyon is fairly wide. Over most of its course, though, it’s steep-walled with fast-moving currents.
The Gallatin River canyon, though, provided us with a quality experience that overcame the shortfall in the quantity of Montana that we actually saw. As usual, we stopped for a picnic along the river’s edge and then simply sat there for an hour, doing nothing but taking in the beauty of that particular place. Which was different than the beauty of the place a mile down the road, which was different than the beauty of the next mile, and so on, and so on, for a hundred miles. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” True indeed.
Usual deal: we found a wide spot in the road along the Gallatin River, set up the lawn chairs and the folding table, and had a picnic sitting by the river. And then just sat there and enjoyed the scene.
Here’s something else that’s great about Montana (and essentially every other western state). Almost 40% of Montana is “public lands.” Actually, for the western third of the state, probably 80% is public land. It’s hard for eastern people to appreciate what that means. But realize that every mile or two there’s a fishing access point, a trailhead, a canoe launch point, a pullout, or a picnic area. Mile after mile of profound beauty, with nearly limitless access.
What this means is that to really “see” this little sliver of Montana that we explored, to hike the trails, spend time at a sample of the campgrounds, fish the streams, even head back to hunt the backcountry, would take years. Really. Years. One could never really “see” Montana, even the western third of Montana, is a lifetime. But it would be wonderful to try.
Halfway through the trip, we headed up to Big Sky, a resort area just west of Highway 191. Back in the early 1970s, several investors and developers (including Chet Huntley, the newscaster of the Huntley-Brinkley Report) began the development of the area, which now claims to be the largest ski resort in the country. It has a permanent population of almost 3000, and swells to several times that during the winter.
Big Sky is an area of unspeakably stunning beauty, billing itself as a place not only for skiing, but for hiking, fly fishing, mountain biking, camping, horseback riding, whitewater rafting, and hunting. I’m sure all that is true, although to look at it one might think it was developed mainly as a resort area where nice rich people could go to hang around other nice rich people. How nice? The guy with spotting scope in Yellowstone who set it up so Wendy and I could see the wolves? He lives in Big Sky. And how rich? The spotting scope that he let us look through was a $4000 20-60X Swarovski. Seriously. The cost of his spotting scope was more than the down payment on our first house. That’s OK, though. He can probably afford it: a small, two-bedroom condo in Big Sky would go for somewhere between $400K and a couple million, and single family homes start at around $1 million and range upwards to you-don’t-want-to-know.
And, of course, given the Big Sky clientele, everything about the area is perfect. All of the homes, businesses, sidewalks, even the trails, are immaculate. Following one spur-of-the-moment impulse, we did a short hike down to see a waterfall and, as you would expect, even an otherwise nondescript stream was perfect.
Ousel Falls in the Big Sky development: Reachable by a short hike down a perfectly manicured, engineered trail, which also connects to a number of Forest Service trails that surround the Big Sky area.One of the nice things about developments like Big Sky is that the wildlife are trained to pose in photogenic locations for the enjoyment of the residents. Really. Look it up.
I’m not sure that Big Sky is the kind of place we’d ever like to live. Among other things, I expect one can only live a “resort” lifestyle for so long. But especially nowadays, when rancor, bitterness, ugliness, hatred, etc. etc. etc. all seem to be de rigueur, it might take us a pretty long time to grow weary of living in the company of nice rich people.
In any event, we left Livingston substantially short of our goal of “seeing” Montana, but now we have a new plan to “see” Montana. On some upcoming trip (maybe next year), we’ll divvy up the western portion of Montana into a half-dozen areas and spend several days in each.
Some of the areas we’ve identified for future trips so we can actually “see” Montana. I guess it says something about us, or the state, or both, that we’re already excited about these trips.
We’ll see. But our prior impression was true. Montana is an unimaginably beautiful state and we can hardly wait to go back.
The original plan was that we would explore Yellowstone for a day or two during the Grand Teton stay, and then spend a week exploring Montana the following week. But, Grand Teton turned out to present more opportunities than we had time for, and Yellowstone (at least part of Yellowstone) was more accessible from our Montana location anyway. So, change number 37 to this itinerary: Do Yellowstone from the north.
Then, we then further modified that modification to spend time focusing solely on the Lamar Valley and the Northern Range area of Yellowstone, skipping all of Yellowstone’s more familiar geothermal features, Hayden valley wildlife, canyons and waterfalls, and the gazillion other things that Yellowstone has to offer, to follow a concept much like we did at Grand Teton: select an area that was relatively unknown to us and then just wander around, with no particular objective in mind, and see what happens.
This was by far the best two days we have ever spent in Yellowstone. I’ll leave the highlight of the trip, though, for last.
The northeast corner of Yellowstone is the least visited area of the park. It consists of three regions, the Northern Range, the Lamar Valley, and the Soda Butte Canyon (which leads up to the northeast entrance to the park).
So, to explore the area, we did our usual motor touring and day hikes.
Undine Falls: No hike was required — the falls were visible with a walk of about 20 feet off the parking area.Wraith Falls (although it might actually be more of a cascade than a waterfall), which required an easy, half-mile hike. And along the way we saw blacktail deer, including a cutesy-putesy little fawn (still with its spots).One of the things we like doing is the self-guided trails put up by the park service along the roads. This one explained the flora and fauna of the Northern Range, along with the incredible forces that created the topography in this area, including at least three massive volcanic eruptions (the last one of which occurred a mere 600,000 years ago and was so powerful it blew debris into Louisiana). Experts say the next one could happen at any time.This pretty much represents our standard M.O. for the trip: find a scenic place around lunchtime, set up the lawn chairs and picnic table, haul out the sandwiches and chips, set up the camera, and spend an hour or two enjoying life. It really doesn’t get any better than this.Wendy and I disagree about the story here. I think these are two not-quite-fledgings, waiting impatiently for mom and dad to come back with some fish. Wendy thinks this is two fledglings with an adult perched in a nearby tree, and with another fledgling (making in all, three) and the other parent off on a training mission. Either way, I missed seeing the other birds take off from the nest, so Wendy and I set up our lawn chairs (see above), had a picnic lunch, and waited for over an hour for those birds to come back. Didn’t happen. But even still, what could be more fun than sitting by a deep canyon, in the beautiful splendor of Yellowstone, watching nature and anticipating action?Upper Soda Butte Canyon. Trout Lake: We actually didn’t plan on doing this hike. Well, we actually didn’t “plan” on doing any hike, or anything else for that matter. But one benefit of this kind of travel is that we just do whatever strikes our fancy at the moment, and we fancied hiking up to this glacial lake.
But none of that is what made our exploration of this area so special. The Lamar Valley has been called the “Serengeti of America,” and it is an apt designation. Coming over a rise and descending into the valley, one sees this:
A herd of several hundred buffalo, and this is only one of a dozen or so herds. Seriously. Mile after mile of herds of buffalo. There are probably 1000 or more buffalo in this area. As we drove through the area, we tried to imagine the 19th century experience when the plains were home to maybe 60 million buffalo.This may indicate that we’re incurable dorks, but we actually found it interesting to watch the buffalo cross the Lamar River. I know it’s like watching cows. A different guy crossing a different water body. Exciting, eh?Maybe this just cinches the dork assessment, but we think buffalo are just interesting. We spent hours sitting in our lawn chairs watching them. Apparently the rut is just beginning and Wendy saw one pair engaged in, shall we say, a “romantic moment.” We were going to send a photo home to the families of “the act” so the parents could use the photo as an opportunity to have “the talk,” but the moment was over before Wendy could grab her camera.
And, something truly exciting for me, we got to see a wolf prowling the valley floor.
Trust me. That little dot is actually a wolf.See? Told ya. OK, so this one isn’t that much better, but the wolf was a long way off and I haven’t been able to sweet-talk my dear, loving, beautiful, and understanding wife (in case she’s reading this) into letting me buy a new super-telephoto lens. Maybe this insufficient photo will persuade her. In any event, I know that watching a little black dot work its way across a distant slope may not seem all that exciting, but I believe it’s the first time I ever saw a wolf in the wild. In any case, things are about to get a lot better. Keep reading.
Finally, here’s the highlight. It’s hard to explain, but Wendy and I have been RVing and camping since the early 1970s. Although all of these trips have been special for us, and are chock full of memorable moments, in reality they are largely the same kind of thing that anyone would likely have spending time in the same area. But not this time.
It started when we struck up a conversation with some random guy, who mentioned to us that there was a buffalo carcass up the road, and earlier that morning there were wolves and bears on the carcass. Even more, if nature holds true to form, the wolves and bears would be back around 5:00 or 6:00 later that afternoon. So, we drove off, marked the location of the carcass, and vowed to return at the appointed hour. Except we got nervous and returned at 2:30 instead, setting up our lawn chairs and the camera, binoculars at hand, and waited for the appointed hour. And waited, and waited. Waited for two-and-one-half hours sitting in the sun to be precise. But, that’s us. If you’ve ever seen a dachshund waiting outside a chipmunk hole, you know where the phrase “dogged determination” comes from. Well, that’s us. “Dogged determination” for two-and-a-half hours.
The buffalo carcass, with a (former) buffalo cousin walking by. According to a professional photographer with whom we were chatting, the most likely cause of the buffalo’s demise was a rut-induced sparring match between two bulls competing for the affections of a buffalo temptress. It occasionally happens that the fight results in a puncture to a blood vessel or a lung, and it’s pretty much cookies for the loser.
At around 5:00, a guy with a spotting scope standing next to us said that a pack of nine wolves had emerged from the woods, quite a bit to our left, and was headed towards to carcass. Sure enough, all nine wolves in the pack worked their way across the sagebrush prairie, and pretty soon we saw this:
There are only seven wolves visible in this picture. The other two are in the sagebrush somewhere. Seriously. A pack of nine (!) wolves, roaming the prairie, and feasting on a buffalo. We are totally engaged: this is reality, not some nature show. It was fascinating. The pack’s behavior was not what I expected. No howling, snarling, fighting over pieces of rotting meat, whatever. They basically just walked around, taking a bite every now and then, sometimes moving off or laying down, and pretty much nonchalant about the whole thing. More like a table of finger food at a cocktail party than anything else.
After 30 minutes or so of doing buffalo munchies, the wolves meandered off. And not in a “pack” per se. The just sort of separately wandered up towards the woods, laying down in the sage from time to time, sometimes going one way, sometimes the others, until after another 30 minutes they happened to all be near the woods edge more or less in one group, and then they disappeared. At this point, Wendy and I are counting this as one of the best days we’ve ever had.
Then, as if this wasn’t enough, what swoops in but a bald eagle! The only eagle we’d seen our whole time in the park. Seriously. I was hoping he’d also fly down for a tasty morsel, but after flying around a couple times, he just perched in the tree and kept an eye on the goings-on below. But wait … there’s more.
At this point, the professional photographer standing next to us said, “Stand by. There’ll be a bear here soon enough.” As it was explained to us, a grizzly might be able to drive a pack of wolves off of a carcass if he wanted to, but a black bear certainly couldn’t. So, said the photographer, there was almost certainly a bear watching the wolves from the tree line, waiting for them to finish up. And, sure enough, a few moments after the wolves entered the woods, we saw this:
This medium-size (estimated 400 pound) black bear, literally running across the sagebrush prairie towards the carcass...…and then he settled in for about 30 minutes to get his fill of delicious, sun-roasted buffalo steak. Just like with the wolves, this was completely fascinating. The bear would wander from place to place, pulling off a piece of something here and there, then pause, look around, and go back to munching. Just like the wolves, he seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.
At this point, we’ve been watching the wolves-bear buffalo-buffet going on for over an hour and then the unthinkable happens. A bunch of onlookers headed down the hill from the roadway and started walking towards the bear! Yes, there’s a river between the bear and the tourists, but it’s the same river that the buffalo waded across a few moments ago and one that would take a charging bear about 10 seconds to cross at full speed.
So, this is the moment of truth. In a way, we were rooting for the bear, not wanting any of the tourists to be eaten per se, but a nice mauling would be OK. Unfortunately, though, the bear decided that mauling a tourist might mean he’d end up getting euthanized, so thinking that discretion is the better part of valor, he decided to vacate the carcass instead. A-a-a-a-a-r-g-h! These stupid tourists had managed to drive off our bear!
But then, ta-da!, the heat showed up. A ranger walked down and rousted the tourists.
Eleven morons being escorted away from proximity to the carcass, although at this point they had already shooshed away the bear. The photographer explained that, even though approaching wildlife close enough to disturb its behavior is an offense, the rangers usually settle for “education” and simply remove the tourists to a more appropriate distance. On occasion, they will issue a citation, and in rare circumstances will actually double-tap the offending tourists, but unfortunately not so in this case.
At around 6:30, we decided we needed to head back to the camper. There was a chance that the wolves would return for second helpings, or maybe even a grizzly would show up, but we had a two-hour drive home and wanted to get there before dark.
So, for this last day, we had spent nearly 12 hours simply wandering around the northeast corner of the park, with no particular plan in mind, taking up whatever delights we happened to come across, culminating with watching, in the wild, unaffected by human presence (until the very end), the wild behavior of a wolf pack, a bald eagle, and a brown bear. What a day!
In an earlier concept for this trip, we were to meet Cliff and his family here, with all of them staying in a cabin, and with our RV serving both as our lodging and as the combined gathering and eating place for both families. The COVID situation pretty much killed that idea, and for a while we considered whether traveling to Grand Teton National Park on our own would be worth it. Oh well, we figured, we can either stay isolated in Atlanta, or we can stay isolated in our RV as it sits in a national park. Phrased that way, it seemed an easy call.
Not a slam dunk, though. Although the park is technically “open,” it’s more like open-ish. None of the lodges are open, none of the museums are open, the restaurant at Colter Bay is the only available eating place, and it’s take-out only. Only a few of the amenities are operating (like the Jenny Lake ferry). Colter Bay has a grocery store, laundromat, showers, marina, and the like, but it’s all limited and masked up. Everything else is lock-the-doors-Nellie closed.
And, for us, the biggest disappointment is that all of the ranger-guided hikes and evening ranger talks are cancelled. Over the course of forty years of RVing, staying regularly in national parks, we’ve probably attended hundreds of ranger-led activities, and yet the absence of them for this trip was almost enough to cause us to pull the plug.
Even still, it’s the Grand Tetons, we had nine days reserved, and hiking, touring, and photography are all largely unaffected, so off we went. Let’s face it. COVID or not, this is one spectacular place.
This is the view that Ansel Adams made famous, done here to lesser effect on one of our afternoon drives. Even when the weather is dark and cloudy, the Tetons are dramatically beautiful.Typical Skip frolic and detour: up at 4:00 a.m. to make an hour-long drive to be in the right spot to photograph the John Moulton barn, just as the first rays of sunlight hit it.
So, what follows are a few impressions from a trip in a distinctly unique time, which should be taken as a complement to our account from the last time we were here four years ago.
Crowds. To be sure, even though the park isn’t fully operating, there are beaucoup people here. Some of them are staying in the campgrounds (which are all full), some are driving up from Jackson, some must be spontaneously generating from the pavement. In any event, they are all over the place.
But not exactly all over the place. There’s a statistic that I can’t recall exactly, but something like 95% of the people who visit national parks never go more than 100 yards from a paved surface. That matches our experience — venturing a tenth of a mile from any form of pavement means we were essentially alone in the woods. Every day, save one where it was cold and rainy all day and we stayed in the campground with friends, we ventured off into the woods with no other purpose in mind than to enjoy the sheer beauty of this place. And each such experience was mercifully free of crowds. Even free of crowds when it shouldn’t have been free of crowds. For instance, there’s a little dippy two-mile trail that leads off from the campground for a loop along the lakeshore. It’s literally a matter of stepping out of the door for a one-hour walk. Even still, we saw only a couple people.
Here’s another example. One day we hiked up to the top of Grand View Point. In all the years we’ve been coming here, this view, from the western side of the park, looking width-wise across the park to the mountain range on the other side, was new to us and completely unique. (As opposed to partially unique, which is what happens if something is one-of-a-kind but there’s more than one, whatever that means.) This is the view:
Grand View Point.
Priceless. Anyone who ventures into GTNP would surely seek out this trail just for the spirit-filling beauty of the place, right? Nope. How many people did we see over the course of three hours on the trail? Less than 10.
Wendy and I spent hours trying to figure out what could possibly account for the overflowing crowds along roadways, in turnouts, in parking lots, and generally hanging out in Colter Bay, while simultaneously there are few people just a fraction of a mile away. We haven’t settled on the definitive explanation. One possibility occurs to me: ever since the turn of the 20th century, simulations of reality have been displacing reality itself. In the current visually overloaded era, everyone knows what the Grand Tetons look like, and in some ways the reality of the location is just another version of what’s more accessible virtually. So for many people, the purpose of being in the park is not so much to experience the park itself as it is to document one’s presence in the park. Why spend hours walking the woods to do that? That would explain the M.O. we often see: people show up at some scenic overlook, jump out of the car (leaving the engine running), turn their backs on the scene, snap a few selfies with the view in the background, and then jump back in the car and drive away. For Wendy and me, the process of slogging away to get to a scenic vantage point yields a qualitatively different experience than the effect of any virtual substitute. Perhaps for many, though, there is no meaningful difference. Whatever the explanation, “crowds” in national parks, except at designated selfie locations, is largely a myth.
Well, almost. For most of our time here, we thought we’d do something a little different and explore the lesser-known, western side of the park. So, we spent 5 days hiking around in areas where we’d never been before. But, our favorite locations, and some of the most scenic, and hence most popular, are on the eastern side of the park, right along the base of the mountains. So, we decided to spend our last couple days revisiting those locations.
String Lake — looking at the outflow end.On the trail to Taggart Lake at about 8:15 in the morning and zero people on the trail.Taggart Lake, where we actually did encounter people. Two of them, to be precise. A nice couple from Winter Haven, Florida, with whom we chatted for a few moments before hitting the trail in solitude again.Brantley Lake Trail. Same deal: at this point we’re about 4.5 miles into the hike and seeing other hikers only rarely.
These locations are something of “tourist spots,” so they can get crowded. For example, the short hike from the ferry dock to Inspiration Point can be pretty much elbow-to-elbow people. On our hikes to Taggart and Brantley Lakes, shown above, another “tourist” hike, we were on the trail at 7:45 but even still we probably saw 20 to 30 people over the course of five miles. Not a lot, but not exactly isolated either.
Until we were almost back to the starting point, and then things got weird. Really weird. Like nee-nee-nee-nee weird. At 11:30 am, 1.1 miles from the parking lot, at the Taggart-Brantley Lakes trail junction, we noticed people were streaming up from the parking lot. Streaming. Like a stream. No, more like a river. One group after another. Some huge groups, like 20 people in one group. Eventually we started counting the people streaming by us and we got to 162! What this must mean is that, on those occasions when people actually get out into the woods, they all go to the same places and move in herds.
And another weird thing. In a COVID era, there’s an etiquette to hiking. People step off the trail as they pass each other, trying to create a proper six-foot social distance, and most people pull up their masks over their face for that moment just as an additional precaution and to show proper sensibility and courtesy. Not during the aforementioned weird interval. No pretense of stepping off the trail to maintain distance, and mask discipline was pretty much gone. It’s like, in all of the vast expanse of the Grand Tetons, there was one little trail section dedicated as a hiking area for morons, and that section happened to be the last segment of our morning hike.
And since I’m on a roll about weirdness, here’s another one. One of the groups we passed consisted of about 20 Asians. Asians always wear masks, right? It’s sort of a cultural thing. They wear masks in a non-COVID era. But not this group. What kind of a world is it where Wendy and Skip wear masks and Asians don’t? Maybe we stumbled into a parallel universe where everything is the same except cultural norms for masks has been reversed?
OK, one more. One of the groups we passed consisted of a half-dozen twenty-something, garishly tatooed dipsticks. Not only were we subjected to a loud, constant blather as they walked along, one of them had discordant, tinny music blaring out from her iPhone. Seriously? The Grand Tetons is the place you go to socialize with your friends and listen to music? Please shoot me.
Anyway, that last 30-minute stretch was unlike any hiking experience we’ve ever had. We can only conclude that we happened to stumble upon the time and place established by the Park Service as the portal through which weirdness enters our universe.
Bears. GTNP is definitely bear country. There are bear warning posters all over the place. And every now and then, one hears of some hapless hiker who gets mauled by a bear. So, that presents a question: venture into the back country, bear territory, or not? The approach Wendy and I take is that, if one says I’ll never go anywhere if there’s a chance of getting eaten by a bear, then one will never go anywhere in the park. That’s not an option. So, instead, we educate ourselves about bears the best we can, hike sensibly (using good technique and being alert, especially where there’s a chance of surprising a bear), equip ourselves with bear spray, and then venture forth. If one of us gets mauled by a bear, so be it. There are things in life worse than getting eaten by a bear. (Although frankly, none come to mind.)
Which is a good theory, except for our hike around Christian Lake. The trail worked its way through twists and turns, with high brush on either side, and we kept seeing bear sign on the trail. Seriously. On the trail, like stepping over bear poop as we walked along. And, plus that, no other people. None. We found ourselves totally alone in thick brush. We kept wondering whether we were being as smart as we think we are. The next day, we got our answer: in talking to a ranger, he mentioned that the Park Service doesn’t recommend people hike in that area except in groups, and seeing signs of bear activity in that area would have made him “nervous.” Oops. I wonder if we were in a different but equally distinct designated moron area?
Campgrounds. OK, so we call this “camping,” but it’s really not. Our RV has a large-screen TV with satellite television, we have a full-size bedroom, and separate bath and shower, and a fully equipped kitchen. Our “camping” spot provides water, power, and sewer service. But even still, RVing constitutes a mode of travel that is more rustic and less luxurious than staying in the resort hotel down the street. And it has a different feel. A campground is a qualitatively difference experience than a hotel lobby. Especially for kids. Children are free to run around unsupervised, make noise, ride bikes, whack trees with sticks, and do whatever kids do when they’re free from the constraints of civilized living (a form of liberation that produces consequences adults can only begin to imagine).
Our campsite at the Colter Bay RV campground. This is just a short walk from Jackson Lake, as well as all the Colter Bay facilities, most of which were open to some degree.
So, “camping” provides a sort of cultural norm that ought to prevail even in an “RV park” like this. And generally that’s true. But not always. At one point in this trip, we were subjected to some bozo who set up his RV, and then opened up his outside television so that he could set his son up with a loud, very loud, military combat video game. Seriously. We were 50 feet away from someone who thinks that the Grand Teton experience mostly involves the sound of machine gun fire. And even worse, he was instilling in his son that version of the “outdoor” experience. Suffering that was bad enough, but then it was made worse listening to this cretin encourage his son by yelling out, “You got him! You got him!” He topped off that bit of depravity by saying, “This is great! It’s just like being in a movie theater!” I was seriously considering whether I should call DFACS and have the child removed from his custody, or simply write a blog post and move on. Wendy thinks DFACS is unlikely to respond, so here you are. In any event, he was gone the next morning. Unbelievable. This miscreant pulled into a campground in Grand Teton National Park, encouraged his son to spend their time here playing video games, never walked down the path to see what lay before him, and then left.
Other memorable moments at campgrounds abound, but most of them are heart-warming, or at least funny. Campgrounds are uniformly family locations, and there are kids all over the place. Yesterday, we heard one father admonish his ten-year-old son, “There’s nothing funny about being rude.” He’s obviously got a lot to learn. Being rude can be pretty darn funny, especially to a ten-year old boy. But somehow, even the rudeness of little boys seems a little less bothersome here than in other places. There are several family reuinions going on, and one sees a dozen lawn chairs assembled around a grill, with grownups and kids laughing it up. What a wonderful place for a family to assemble. I know there are people who find five-star resort hotels, like the Jenny Lake Lodge, the preferable accommodation, and there are people who find resort cities, like Jackson (which is sort of like Aspen with a buffalo motif), the preferred locale, but I can’t imagine any place I’d rather be for a Grand Teton visit than this campground.
We’re already making plans to come back next summer.
RV travel has a lot to commend it: beautiful locales, a slower and more relaxed pace of travel, destinations that would be difficult without mobile accommodations, and, in a time of pandemic, the previously mentioned advantage of being able to see the country while essentially self-isolated. But there’s another side to RV travel, a darker, less romantic, and decidedly less enjoyable aspect. Perhaps the best way to put it is to paraphrase the oft-heard warning to those thinking of cruising the oceans: if you don’t like tinkering with things, facing a constant stream of maintenance, dealing with a never-ending series of breakdowns and repairs, and being able to keep an even keel when faced with being stranded, don’t even think about RV travel.
What brought on this moment of sudden realism? For the second time since we’ve owned this RV, we found ourselves locked out. The insidious little cause of this latest bit of frustration is a poorly designed and/or stupidly manufactured door mechanism on most RVs. It turns out there’s a little plastic part that connects the door handle to the latch bolt that engages the strike plate. And as you’d expect from a cheap plastic part, certainly made in China by virus-spreading worker bees whose mission in life is to weaponize RV parts in order to foment rebellion in the West, the little stupid connecting part breaks with some regularity. Really. Any Google search on the web will turn up thousands of accounts of people finding themselves locked in or out of their RVs with no way to retract the latch bolt and thereby get to the other side of the door.
Fortunately, having been through this once before, we at least understood the concept for a temporary fix. I was able to climb in through the driver’s side window (don’t even try to picture a seventy-year-old, corpulent, crinky old man trying to contort himself enough to make it though an opening 18-inches square). Once inside, I was able to remove the interior molding to get access to the latch bolt. Being unable to force it to retract last night, we decided to have dinner and sleep on it overnight, which necessitated Wendy doing a similarly ungraceful entry to the motorhome. Then, last night, as my over-energized, sleep-depriving brain ran through an infinity of possible jury-rigging options, another idea came to me. We got up this morning, implemented my overnight epiphany, retracted the latch bolt, and opened the door.
We’ll be fine for the rest of the trip. We’ve removed the latch bolt, so there’s no need to worry about having to retract it using the now useless door handle, and we can use the deadbolt to secure the door, both inside and outside the RV. Once we get back to Atlanta, I’ll replace the door handle, reinstall the molding, and wait in dread for the next door handle failure, which is certain to occur too soon. Or maybe it will be something else. It will certainly be something. Such is the nature of RV travel.
But now, off to Grand Teton National Park, and in the grand scheme of things, who cares about door handles?
For about 700 miles of this trip, we found ourselves driving through corn fields. Not all of the corn was as high as an elephant’s eye. Actually, none of it was. But that’s not the point. The point is, why are there hundreds and hundreds of miles of corn? The question particularly came to mind driving through Nebraska, which is, after all, the “Cornhusker State.”
It turns out, corn is the most widely grown crop in America. The reason crop fields go on forever is because about 96 million acres of land (about 150,000 square miles) in the U.S. are dedicated to corn production. In Nebraska, for example, over 20% of the area of the entire state is dedicated to corn production. Iowa is the biggest producer of corn (over 37% of its land area dedicated to corn production), with Illinois in at number two (I thought the Illini were too busy passing stupid gun laws to do much else), and Nebraska is number 3. Corn is grown in essentially every state, even Alaska.
For some reason, agricultural production is measured in bushels. If I knew anything about farming, I’d know why, but I don’t and I don’t. Just take it that a bushel of shelled corn weighs about 56 pounds. In any event, annual corn harvest in the U.S. is about 15 billion (“billion,” with a “b”) bushels of corn, which works out to 420 million tons of corn produced every year.
And what do people do with all that corn? 33% goes to livestock feed (spread about equally among dairy, beef cattle, hogs, and poultry), almost that much goes to ethanol production, 10% goes to distiller grains, and about 10% goes to other uses (like high corn syrup and sweeteners), and 10% to export. The corn used in livestock feed is the “carb” component of the feed; the protein component comes mostly from soybeans, which we also saw miles and miles of as we drove along. And the “other uses” of corn, although small fractions, are pretty interesting: breakfast cereal, tortilla chips, grits, beer, soda, cooking oil, and even bio-degradable packing materials.
Since one-third of corn production goes to animal feed, I thought it might be appropriate to insert a note here to my vegan friends. But then I realized I don’t have any vegan friends. Nor do I want to.
And, of course, people eat corn directly. Sweet corn (like for corn-on-the-cob and canned corn) is one such use, but it turns out it’s a trivial fraction of overall corn production (less than 1%). But how’s this for a weird fact: Popcorn is also a corn crop, grown and harvested so that the corn kernels retain some moisture in the center of the kernel, which is what causes it to “pop” when heated. That’s not the weird part. The weird part is that Americans consume about 17 billion quarts of popcorn every year, meaning the average American consumes 58 quarts of popcorn per year. I like popcorn as much as anyone, but I guess I’m just a slacker when it comes to serious popcorn eating.
For some reason that I’m sure has to do with political correctness gone berserk, internet searches for “corn” often redirect to articles entitled “maize.” It is true that corn (OK, fine, maize) was originally domesticated in Mexico about 10,000 years ago, but so what? If we want to call it corn, we get to call it corn. Sheesh. Oh, and besides that, reading about corn production inexorably leads one into the thorny political thickets of farm subsidies, a blog post for another day…
One last tidbit. Some alarmists go off the deep end worried about “fixed” resources. You may recall the panic in the 1970s about us “running out of oil.” Ha — that’s a funny one. But the truth about the infinite expandability of “fixed” resources is nowhere more apparent than in agricultural production. In 1900, an acre of farmland could product about 25 bushels of corn; today that figure is 180 (!) and is limited not so much by nature as by the economics of farming. Change the economics and it could go even higher.
So, we’re out of corn country now and almost to Grand Teton National Park. But there’s an infinity of fascinating things to learn, and one of the things we love about cross-country travel is that each passing mile gives us an opportunity to check one more off the list.
The caption is right on all counts, starting with the fact that I’m writing this while sitting in the RV in the Peculiar Park Place RV Park, located in Peculiar, Missouri. Seriously. There are a variety of explanations as to how this town came to earn its moniker, but the leading candidate is that the guy who surveyed the town wanted a unique name and kept submitting various unusual names to the state, all of which were rejected, until in exasperation he said, “I don’t care what name you give me, as long as it’s peculiar.” He asked for it…
The reason we’re here in Peculiar, though, is that we finally got into the RV for an actual trip. It took us FIVE tries. First was a trip to North Carolina with all four families. That didn’t work because Robert got eliminated by the flying fickle finger of fate (AKA DoD), which imposed a 250-mile travel limitation. Version 2 was three families in the same location, which got nixed when we decided, correctly, that two families in one RV during an epidemic was a tad too risky. Version 3 was a two-family trip to some random state park in Virginia, which got cancelled because, well, who wants to go to some random state park in Virginia? Version 4 was the same two-person group, but headed to Grand Teton National Park. That got cancelled because Cliff realized that the prospect of flying cross-country with three children, connecting in O’Hare, dodging infected people, dousing the upholstery with antiseptic sprays, while everyone was wearing masks, including a four-year-old, was nuts.
So, here we are with version 5: Wendy and I travel cross-country over 4-1/2 days and we do Grand Teton National Park on our own.
1892 miles, over 4-1/2 days, from LaGrange to Colter Bay, Grand Teton National Park.
RV travel during a pandemic presents a unique combination of considerations. On the upside, RV travel means no hotels, no restaurants, and no public bathrooms; we can, in essence, self-isolate while we travel around and see the country. That explains why most RV dealers have found their inventory depleted and the RV rental companies are booked for months in advance. The downside of RV travel during a pandemic is that it occurs, well, during a pandemic. That, in turn, means that places and activities where people naturally congregate are closed, such as the Grand Teton’s ranger stations, visitor centers, ranger talks, and ranger-led hikes. That’s a significant issue for us — we enjoy all of those activities. We always start out a visit to a national park by reviewing all the information and displays at the visitor center, no matter how many times we’ve been there, and we pretty much go to the ranger talks every night. Still, it’s Grand Teton National Park, the singularly most beautiful place on earth, and we look forward to a great time, add-ons or not.
It is said that Walt Disney World is a land of adventures. Adventures, indeed. Consider, in particular, the adventure experienced by grandson number 2:
Right. What appears to be a fracture line in the ulna and a fracture-induced bulge in the radius is just that.
The course that led to this particular adventure began in the ordinary way. The first night we did the campfire sing-along and marshmallow roast.
Part of the “camping” ritual at Ft. Wilderness involves an infinity of activities, this one being a Chip ‘n’ Dale s’mores production and sing-a-long.
By 6:45 am the next day we were at the Ft. Wilderness dock for the boat ride to the Contemporary Resort, then the monorail over to the Magic Kingdom, then a morning of racing from place to place, doing the usual stuff, except that Chris was the only boy interested in Space Mountain.
Things begin as they should...
Eventually it was lunch, then back to the campground for a brief respite, with a plan to return later for more rides, then the fireworks show, and then to drag three depleted boys back to the campers.
But during the interlude back at the campground, we decided on an excursion to the nearby playground, which turned into some kind of a game wherein, for reasons only little boys can imagine, there was “hot lava” only on the highest parts of the play equipment, and escaping the lava required one to climb up to and then jump from the top or, in Chris’s rendition of that maneuver, jump from the top and then cushion the fall by landing squarely on an arm.
So, after a lengthy “is-it-broken-or-not” discussion among the grownups, all the time with Chris crying and insisting, correctly as it turns out, “I’m telling you my stupid arm is broken!”, Robert took the little guy to the emergency room and the rest of us did what all sympathetic family members would do under such circumstances, which is to say, we went back to the Magic Kingdom.
The untoward turn of events created something of a crimp in the plans, but (except for Chris, of course) not as much of a crimp as one might think. The remaining five of us still had a great time at the Magic Kingdom, culminating in the most amazing fireworks show that the world has ever seen.
It’s hard to describe, but animated images cover the entire castle, and the fireworks are choreographed to the images. And while all of this is happening, music appropriate to the images plays over the park’s loudspeakers, while tens of thousands of little children all sing along.
The next day was scheduled to be one hanging around the campground anyway, and even for a little boy with a broken arm there’s no shortage of things to do.
While the other kids were off at the pool, Chris and I spent a couple hours hauling fish out of one of the canals, including some remarkably large catfish. “Catching” the fish involved my holding the rod while Chris cranked away furiously on the reel. Not exactly artful, but it worked.
All things considered, it was another wonderful trip to Walt Disney World. As before, I’m amazed at how Disney, whatever it does, does it to a degree of perfection that one never sees anywhere else in our modern world of mediocrity. And, also as before, when I hear the carping of cynics who say that Disney is too commercialized, too artificial, too expensive, too American, or too whatever, I’m just glad that no such sentiments occur in this family. For all of us, Disney really is a magical place and, as was remarked to me by a visitor once before, “I guess if you’re not happy at Disney World, there aren’t a lot of places you’ll ever be happy.”
The last two posts summarized various aspects of this year’s Experimental Aircraft Association “AirVenture” gathering in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A recent article in Flying magazine details the record-setting statistics for that event: “The Numbers Are in For AirVenture 2019.” Just to highlight a few of the most unbelievable metrics:
Total attendance was 642,000, an increase of 7%.
More than 10,000 aircraft were flown to the the event, resulting in 16,807 aircraft operations, an average of 127 takeoffs/landings per hour! [Compare this to Atlanta Hartsfield airport, which averages 91 operations per hour (2236 per day), and it’s supposedly the “busiest airport in the world.” Sorry, but not during the week of AirVenture it’s not!]
Besides the thousands of plain ol’ general aviation aircraft, there were 1,057 home-built aircraft, 939 vintage airplanes, 400 warbirds, 188 ultralights and light-sport aircraft, 105 seaplanes, 62 aerobatic aircraft, and 7 in an “other” category.
There were 12,300 camping sites (tent-, RV-, and airplane-sites), which together accounted for 40,000 visitors.
At one point, when I was grousing about the shortcomings of the camper registration process, I thought to myself, “If I were a decent person, I’d quit complaining and get out and help.” I should have. AirVenture relied on 5,500 volunteers who contributed more than 250,000 hours of volunteer time!
When we were talking to friends about what to expect at Oshkosh, I would often say, “Well, I’ve been to lots of airshows before…,” to which the response was always something like, “No, you don’t understand. This isn’t an ‘airshow.’ It’s an aviation experience in a completely different category from anything you’ve ever seen.” Truer words were never uttered.
After loitering around for a day, waiting for EAA to give us an all-clear to head to the campground, and with nary a peep from Campground Central Command, we decided to head on over and take our chances. Good call. The campground was open, although in the throes of thousands of like-minded campers all converging on the airport at the same time, and after 4+ hours of creeping along at a turtle’s pace in the camper registration line (which is baffling since we were pre-registered), we finally made it to the campground and got set up.
It’s easy to have mixed feelings about the campground: there are (literally) four thousand (!) campers, all jammed together elbow to elbow, with no amenities (or even shade, for that matter), which creates an environment like what you’d expect it would create. But, all of that pales in comparison to the convenience of walking just a fraction of a mile to the flight line, displays, and everything else that AirVenture has to offer. So, even with EAA’s conspicuous campground management deficiencies, we decided that staying in the campground is definitely the way to go.
And AirVenture is everything we were told it would be, and more. It really is hard to convey the atmosphere of a place where over the course of a week, there are 600,000 airplane kooks flying around, walking around, lounging about, visiting exhibits, and watching airshows, interspersed with nearly a thousand vendors, and God-only-knows how many displays, programs, and seminars. We were in and amongst this AirVenture frenzy for two-and-a-half days, and saw only maybe a tenth of what there is to see, and only half of the activities we had flagged as things we definitely wanted to do. I have thousands of pictures trying to capture the feeling (don’t worry, I’m not going to post them all), but understand that all of what follows falls woefully short of adequately communicating the experience.
The first thing one notices is that this is not just an airshow; it’s a pilots’ convention. Many of the attendees flew here in their own planes, and the assortment of aircraft is as varied as you’d expect for a group named the “Experimental Aircraft Association.”
The General Aviation area has all the popular private aircraft, with parking (and camping) areas like this going on for hundreds of yards in multiple areas.Aficionados of particular makes, such as these 1930s-era Beech Model 17 Staggerwing biplanes, a model that was eventually done in by the Bonanza, all park together.Acres and acres of home-built “Experimental” aircraft.As well as a full complement of several hundred float planes.
Of course, Airventure also included four hours of air shows every day, featuring not only aerobatics but demonstrations and flights of a wide variety of aircraft.
Twin Tigers (Yak-55s)Rocky Mountain Renegades (flying Van’s RV-8, Van’s RV-4, Giles G-202)Red Bull: Kirby Chambliss in Edge 540The announcer claimed that there was something about this Red Bull MBB Bo 105 helicopter that gave it special capabilities. No matter. It was still terrifying to watch a helicopter do not only loops and rolls, but front- and back-flips.The legendary Patty Wagstaff (in her Extra 300S), three-time National Aerobatic Champion (!), slicing the ribbon, inverted, at about 20′ high.
And there were a large number of military demonstrations…
F-35 Lightning II. The U.S. stated plan is to buy 2,663 F-35s, which will provide the bulk of the crewed tactical airpower of the U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps in coming decades. Deliveries of the F-35 for the U.S. military are scheduled until 2037 with a projected service life up to 2070.F-22 Raptor. Originally, 750 F-22s were to be purchased. However, in 2009, the program was cut to 187 aircraft due to high costs, a lack of clear air-to-air missions, a ban on exports, and development of the more versatile F-35. The last F-22 was delivered in 2012.F-22 Raptor being escorted by three World War II P-51 Mustangs. There were dozens of warbird aircraft present, and what’s amazing is all of them are privately owned, restored and maintained by private individuals purely to assure that this country’s heritage of vintage military aircraft remains available for future generations.
The military aircraft, though, we’re limited to the hair-on-fire fighters. This year’s airshow included a special series of flights by military training aircraft…
A Stearman PT-17, the airplane of choice for naval aviators’ first introduction to flight during World War II. My father received his initial training in one of these.A pair of AT-6 Texans (although the Navy called them “SNJs”), the advanced trainer during World War II, after one graduated from the PT-17. My dad also trained in one of these.A doubly special moment: a Beechcraft T-6 Texan II (the current Navy trainer) flying alongside an F8F Bearcat (one of the last fighters made during the World War II era).
… and besides the trainers, AirVenture also featured flights of little-heralded, but extremely important “observation” aircraft, mostly used to spot enemy positions and call in hell’s fury on top of them, something that gives me a nice warm feeling in my heart.
A pair of O-1 “Bird Dog” Army aircraft. During the Vietnam war, these planes were used for reconnaissance, target acquisition, artillery adjustment, radio relay, convoy escort and the forward air control of tactical aircraft, including bombers.
A highlight of the show was the aerial firefighting demonstration:
Besides all this, there were also demonstrations by aircraft that, well, defy understanding by normal people.
This guy, for example, took an old barnstormer biplane and for some reason, mounted a jet engine on the bottom. “Wild Side” indeed.Not to be outdone, these guys took two Yak-55 stunt planes, welded them together in the middle, and then mounted a jet engine under the center section.
But this is the weirdest:
This is some guy flying around on a jet-powered contraption that looks for all the world like a decapitated seagull. And you might notice he looks somewhat nervous. Here’s why…… this guy is actually laying down on top of the wing, strapped on, I’m sure, but obviously holding on for dear life nonetheless.
But the real highlight of the show was the night airshow.
The Aeroshell demonstration team performing close formation aerobatics at night.More of the pyrotechnics that characterized the night air show.
I have probably been to over a hundred airshows in my life. As a kid, I grew up at airshows, and air races, and airports, and air-everything. Nothing in my life prepared me for this.
Just one concluding thought. If one is an airplane nut-case, Oshkosh is a little piece of heaven on earth. But it likewise holds a parallel appeal even to normal people: this is also a gathering of people who just love America, who support the military, and who aren’t hesitant or embarrassed by conspicuously patriotic celebrations. Every afternoon show began with the National Anthem, and everyone (as in “everyone”) stood, removed their hats, faced the flag with their hearts covered. Essentially every event, every performer, every display included some kind of a stated thanks to current and former military members, without whom (it was always said) as a country we would have nothing. At one point, Wendy (who is by no stretch an airplane devotee) looked at me during one of the more patriotic moments and said, “These are our peeps…” True, true.
