As American as the Fourth of July

We woke up on Independence Day, July 4, to some strange noises coming from outside our motel room. Upon investigation, we learned that we were on the parade route for the Cody Fourth of July Parade. The good news is that the parade was a really big deal - long, with a lot of floats and interesting characters. The bad news is that the only road we could use to get out of the motel was closed for the parade until 11:30. That made for us getting a very late start for the day.

Here are some pictures from the parade. It was really a Cowboy Parade. (Cody is known for its rodeos - they have one here EVERY NIGHT in the summer.) I never saw so many horses in a parade in my life! An added bonus was that I got to see former Senator Alan Simpson in the parade. So though I missed Bob Dole in Russell, Kansas, I did get to see his friend. This Cody parade must have been a big thing throughout Wyoming as the marching band from a high school in Cheyenne showed up to take part in it.

We soon stopped for lunch at McDonald’s – again. Jon vowed that this would be the last time! We occasionally stopped to look at some beautiful scenery along the route through Wyoming, which is a long state to get through no matter where you are going. Climbed to 9666 feet in elevation and let the kids have a snowball fight on July 4. That's something they will always remember. We figure that will be our last snowball fight on our trip.

We filled up the van and Debbie strongly recommended we get a car wash. No amount of logic could dissuade her that it was just going to get all buggy and dirty again imminently, so we got it washed.

The next big thing was going to Devils Tower, which was America's First National Monument. It seemed kind of appropriate to be there on July 4, especially when we learned that it had historically been a gathering place for neighboring ranchers on July 4ths of yesteryear.







We hiked the loop trail all the way around Devils Tower. At first Katherine was pretty grumbly about this, but she soon made friends with a little three-year-old boy named Oleg who wanted to walk with her and hold her hand. (Little kids always seem to like Katherine!) We struck up a conversation with Oleg's parents and learned that they were in the midst of a move from Florida to California and had been camping along the way. They had just spent the previous night at Mount Rushmore and saw the July 3 fireworks there. They were headed to Yellowstone, where we had just been. We gave them some suggestions, and they recommended Wind Cave in the Black Hills to us.

While at Devils Tower, we also saw a large and active Prairie Dog Colony. For family fun, we decided to all make up our own legends about how Devils Tower formed since there are a variety of Indian legends and scientific theories.

Since we were in a hurry, we stopped for supper at a convenience mart where all of us (except Debbie) found something to eat.

We arrived in Custer just as the fireworks were going off. We pulled off and managed to watch most of them.

Now came the first real problem of our trip so far. You might call it the "wicked glitch of the west." Although we had made a 3-night reservation weeks earlier at the Custer Motel and verified it with a credit card, they had given away our room which slept six. They told us that we would be given equal accommodations at two cabins in a campground 2 miles down the road. Somewhat disgusted but without recourse, we fought the fireworks traffic to make it to this new location to find out that they didn’t have any accommodations there for us, but that they would “upgrade” us to a great room at the All-American Inn 2 miles back up the road for our three nights. When we finally made it to the All-American Motel – getting very tired by this time – we were given a very standard room with 2 beds in it. We complained that we had (already) paid for a room for 6 and were given a room for 4, but there were no other options so we very reluctantly checked in. We hope to get this straightened out and get satisfaction tomorrow.

Yellowstone (Part Three)

On the eve of our last day at Yellowstone, Jon went out to look at the stars one final time. They were as bright as ever!

On Thursday, July 3, Jon got up early in the morning again. It was Katherine's turn to go with him this time, but she opted to stay in bed. (She's the sleepyhead in the family now!) He walked down to the Old Faithful Geyser, but the Visitor Center was still closed and there was no prediction posted for the morning yet. After waiting a short while, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, Old Faithful began acting up, so Jon videotaped this eruption from start to finish (NOT the video below.) Very few people were at the geyser at this hour. This was the fifth time he saw it erupt on this trip.

After that, Jon did 2 loads of laundry. Yes, you read that correctly. Of course, all our whites turned pink, but, hey, you can't have everything! Debbie was busy packing and making sure we had all of our stuff ready to load up in the van. We checked out by 10 a.m. and hit the road for our farewell tour of Yellowstone. Here is what our cabin looked like from the outside (except we weren't always standing right in front of it!)

We started off by driving up the road a few miles to see the Grand Prismatic Spring in the Midway Geyser Basin.

We had been hoping to have a chance to see this one and finally got the opportunity. It's called "prismatic" because of the variety of colors. Living micro-organisms called thermophiles (because they love the heat) are what gives the hot springs their vibrant colors. Blue is the hottest, and you see that in the center of many springs. Then the other colors such as yellow and orange are the organisms that like it a little cooler. Those colors tend to be around the edges.

After the Midway Geyser Basin, we drove to Biscuit Basin and saw several more geysers that put on a good show for us.

Then we drove to Black Sands Basin and yes, you guessed it, saw several more geysers. These geysers are all located within several miles of each other to show you what an active area it is!

And good news: in the parking lot, Jon spotted the Rhode Island license plate - that just leaves Hawaii!

And about Bethany Lewis - we heard later from Tal that she is recovering well and there is no permanent damage to her arm, but it sure was scary for awhile.

We returned to the Old Faithful complex to eat a really good and reasonably priced lunch at the Geyser Grill in the Snow Lodge. Then we walked one of the shorter geyser boardwalk loops right near Old Faithful called "Geyser Hill." Daniel made some crack about it being "Geezer Hill" due to my advanced age. (I think he's still sore about being thrown in the creek!)

We witnessed Old Faithful erupting one last time among a great throng of people around 1:30. We quickly left the area and were determined to leave the Park, but our resolve weakened and we stopped one last time to see the Kepler Cascades.

We did pull off periodically to look at mountains and lakes, but we stayed in the van. We saw an incredible potpourri of waterfalls (some nice-sized, some small, some just a trickle) on the way to the east entrance. We finally took our family picture at a Yellowstone National Park sign as we were leaving at the East Entrance.

We continued heading east through some beautiful country with very interesting-looking rocks and canyons on the way to Cody. Teddy Roosevelt reportedly said this was one of the most scenic areas of the country.

We saw the impressive Cody Dam and went through 3 tunnels before arriving in Cody.

We checked into a very decent room at the Rainbow Park Motel. We drove to the Rodeo Arena and got our tickets for the special "Stampede Rodeo" that evening. Fortunately, the tickets were reserved so we didn't have to worry about arriving early to get good seats.

We ate dinner back in our motel room that we had bought from KFC and Burger King.

Then we went to the Rodeo! Now, this wasn't MY first time at a rodeo, but it was for my family! We tried to get Debbie up on this bull for a picture, but she said, "No way!"

As it was July 3, there was a lot of patriotic elements to the show.

The reviews on the rodeo were mixed. Daniel loved it, especially the bull-riding. Bethany and Katherine enjoyed seeing all the horses and the cowgirls' barrel-racing event. Debbie was prety much horrified and appalled as people were continually getting hurt. I told Daniel to tell her later that evening that he wanted to grow up to be a cowboy in the rodeo, but she wasn't buying it.

We came back to our motel and pretty much collapsed in bed once again from a very full day!

Here are some video shots, if you can get them to work, of a snowball fight, Old Faithful Geyser, and Grotto Geyser. I have one more to add later of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone, but for right now the blog isn't letting me upload it, so I'll try again tomorrow!

Yellowstone (Part Two)

A hot spring.

This morning, it was Daniel who got up early with me to go exploring. We walked up a steep half-mile trail to Observation Point. We witnessed Old Faithful's eruption at 7:58 a.m. It was a very nice vantage point. We saw a colony of groundhogs (Daniel insists that they were yellow-bellied marmots) living in a pile of rocks.

When the girls woke up, we walked a nearby trail full of geysers. We saw Grand Geyser erupt - it is taller than Old Faithful, but it erupts less frequently. We also saw Daisy Geyser erupt. Daisy is an angled geyser that goes off every few hours.

Daisy Geyser.

We saw many inactive geysers, such as Giant Geyser. It is really big when it erupts (one of the biggest in the Park), but it hasn't erupted since April.

Grotto Geyser.

We were quite impressed with Grotto Geyser as it was a system of three inter-connected geysers, and they were all erupting quite a bit and putting on a good show. We hiked as far as Morning Glory Pool which was a long trail, especially for Katherine. We saw a wolf along the way. We also saw Sawmill Geyser erupt and others from a distance.

Morning Glory Pool.

We bought some lunchmeat and picnic foods at the Hamilton General Store and then drove to a beautiful spot near the Nez Perce River to enjoy a picnic. After our lunch, the kids and Jon went creeking.

The water was cold and the rocks were hard. After Daniel splashed Bethany and made her cry, Jon threw him completely into the creek.

Then we drove through Firehole Canyon Drive and stopped to see beautiful Firehole Falls. We saw lots of buffalo, including ones that were just walking down the street. One of them was a very young calf.

We drove the Virginia Falls loop and saw Virginia Falls. We stopped near Canyon to get out and looked at the Upper Falls.

We then took a hike down a steep path to view the Lower Falls. Jon and Katherine turned around halfway there, but Mom and Bethany went further and Daniel went all the way to the bottom.

We saw a huge herd of buffalo (which we call "tatanka" as Jon learned from "Dances With Wolves") of over 150 grazing near the road. Jon and Daniel stopped to see some sulphur springs (whew!) and a mud volcano.

Mud Volcano.

Dragon's Mouth Spring.

We were supposed to have supper with the Lewis Family, but Bethany Lewis fell in the late afternoon and hurt her arm very badly. She had to be taken to a hospital in Jackson by ambulance. Since Tal may have needed picked up that evening, we cancelled our dinner plans with the other Lewises and drove back to Old Faithful.

We ate supper at the Old Faithful Lodge, arriving just as Old Faithful was erupting again. Mom and the girls did some shopping while Daniel and Dad checked out other eruption predictions at the Visitor Center. Bethany and Katherine each bought a gray wolf stuffed animal and named them Dawn and Rose.

While we waited to hear back from Tal, we went to Castle Geyser and saw it erupt at 8:35 (prediction was between 7:30 and 9:30). Thus we witnessed eruptions of five of the six geysers that are predicted: Old Faithful, Great Fountain, Grand, Daisy, and Castle. We only didn't catch Riverside. It was never going off at a doable time for us.

Then the whole family went and did more shopping in the Hamilton General Store. We saw another wolf or coyote. We came home to our cozy cabin and wrote postcards, watched TV, and prepared for our last day in Yellowstone. We heard back from Tal that Bethany Lewis needed surgery and was to stay in the hospital overnight, so Jon was not able to go pick them up. We settled in for our last night at Yellowstone.

P.S. Here is an update to our license plate game. By the time we arrived in Yellowstone, we only needed to spot four more plates! Jon saw Massachusetts and Debbie found Alaska, so now that just leaves us with Rhode Island and Hawaii!

Yellowstone (Part One)

First, some pictures related to my last post:

The Truax Family and the Lewis Family!

Arriving at the Grand Teton National Park.

Bethany, Katherine, and Daniel at the Grand Tetons.

Now, on with the story . . . On Tuesday morning, July 1, Jon and Bethany woke up early and went out to explore the area while the others slept in a little longer. We found out where the Old Faithful Geyser was located in relation to our cabin, as well as the Visitor Center and eating places. We walked through the Old Faithful Inn and were duly impressed. At Bethany's request, we brought back some breakfast for the rest of the family.


The whole family was soon up and we trooped out to watch Old Faithful at its 10:10 a.m. predicted eruption time. Unfortunately, Old Faithful wasn't very faithful and went off almost 20 minutes late! Still, we were all excited to get to see this famous geyser erupt!

Old Faithful.

According to the Visitor Center, the "Great Fountain Geyser" was expected to erupt at 11 a.m. It is located a few miles north, so we quickly drove there and arrived just as it was going off. It was good to catch this geyser, because it only erupts about once every 11 hours. This geyser was even more impressive than Old Faithful as it seemed to be taller (and we could be closer and even get wet with the spray) and more powerful. But I didn't get any good pictures.

Near Great Fountain Geyser is an area called Firehole Lake. We saw a lot of "hydrothermal" activity today (that was the word for today!) We even saw one area we nicknamed "Marlington Falls" for its distinctive orange and black coloration.

"Marlington Falls"

We also saw a lot of smoking dry holes called "fumaroles." Some of them made hissing or humming noises. They're kind of spooky.

Nearby, we drove to an area called the Paint Pots, where we walked along a boardwalk trail. There we saw more fumaroles, hot springs, bubbling mud pots, geysers, and other interesting "hydrothermal" activity.

We were starting to get hungry by this point, so we drove to Canyon Village for lunch. We saw buffalo and elk on the way. We filled up with gas at $4.35 per gallon (that really made me miss Missouri!) We set a new record for filling up the van - $72!

We continued to drive north, always pulling off to look at scenic areas, such as waterfalls and mountain views. (A word here about pictures - we took hundreds of pictures at Yellowstone and cannot post them all. If you really want to see them, we can show them to you later. A lot of them look the same, and hardly any of them really capture the grandeur of the place. The pictures I post on this blog will be our best ones and the most representative of what we saw.)

At one pull-off, we clearly saw the Caldera Boundary. The Caldera is the sunken part of Yellowstone that once sat over a magma chamber that erupted in a supervolcano. The land in the Caldera region has a lot of that "hydrothermal" activity.

We were also up and down in elevation quite a bit. We pulled over at one point and had a snowball fight (well Jon and the kids did. Debbie just took pictures!)

We saw Tower Falls.

We saw a petrified tree. (I told the kids it didn't look petrified to me, just a little scared. This comment completely cracked up another visitor to the park who overheard me. I didn't think it was that funny!)

Around the mid-afternoon, on the way to Mammoth, we went through a brief but powerful hail storm. It chased 3 big elk out of a field and they ran across the road right in front of us in an attempt to get out of it!

We continued on into Mammoth where we spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the hot springs. We drove the upper loop and walked the lower loop. In Jon's opinion, the hot springs looked drier and duller than his trip here 21 years ago, and they had moved farther away from the boardwalks. Debbie thought they were some of the ugliest things she had ever seen.

Debbie was wearing her Marlington sweatshirt and we met someone here from North Canton who recognized the school's name. The man asked if anyone in our group went to Marlington Middle School. Daniel looked a little nervous when he found out that this man was a very good friend from college of Mr. Viscounte, the principal!

For supper, we drove to Gardiner, Montana, just outside the north entrance of the park. Along the way we saw a magnificent rushing river full of rapids. We ate at a little "drive inn" place and took years off our lives with the fried foods. For all 5 of us, this was our first time in Montana.


We stopped and saw the Roosevelt Arch at the North Entrance. We would have taken our family photo at the Yellowstone National Park sign, but there was a line and it was getting late.

On our drive back, we paused to see numerous pronghorn, buffalo (including adorable calves), elk, and a coyote.

We also saw this beautiful waterfall that I dubbed “Wedding Cake Falls” because of all the layers. I think it is my second favorite waterfall after Niagara Falls. We saw other waterfalls, too, such as Gibbon Falls. We arrived back at Old Faithful at 9:45 and pretty much collapsed, exhausted but filled with amazing images and memories.

We're back in Wi-Fi range again on July 5, but I'll just pick up our story with where we left off . . .

It was Sunday evening, June 29, our last night with the Lee's. Adam and Patti took us out to look at the stars in Colorado. Ever since I was in Estes Park in 1987 with our high school trip out west, I have felt the stars look bigger and brighter out here. (I wonder how they compare with Texas?)

On Monday morning, June 30, we got up early and did the last-minute hustle to get everything packed, loaded and ready for our long drive to Yellowstone. We said our good-byes to Patti and Addison (Adam was already at work) and departed Longmont at 8:16 a.m.

We drove north, crossing into Wyoming and skirting around Cheyenne. Then we headed northwest for the rest of the day toward Yellowstone National Park. After a couple of hours, we stopped at a neat rest area where we saw stone tipi rings preserved there and a pronghorn mom and baby wandering around.

Wyoming is a big state! Along the way, we saw tall wooden fences built back from the highway. At first I thought they were to keep the wildlife off the road, but we eventually found out that they are to block snow drifts to try to keep the roads open in the winter. There are miles and miles of this fencing, but they say it is cheaper than trying to plow the road. We saw another windmill farm (like in Kansas) but these mills were actually turning. And we saw thousands and thousands of cows in the wide-open pasture land. The amount of vacant, empty land is really incredible. Many times we were the only car you could see on the road. We saw some incredibly beautiful mountains and hills (buttes?)

Under protest from Jon, we stopped in Rawlings for an early lunch at a McDonald's. Debbie felt that it would be the last bit of civilization for a long time. It actually turned out that she was right. (I can admit it when I'm wr - not right.)

In the afternoon, we must have been climbing in elevation, because we began going through snowy areas. The Wind River area was extremely beautiful. It looked like scenes out of the Grand Canyon! If we ever make it back to this part of the world, we hope to stay a day here and do a raft trip down the Wind River.

We were slowed down in the late afternoon by construction work in the mountains just before the Grand Tetons. Traffic was reduced to one lane and the driving was a bit difficult. After getting through the construction, we pulled off for a bathroom break at a gas station. I took the opportunity to study the map.

UNBELIEVABLY, there was a knock on my window. I turned to see a good friend of mine from seminary and ministry - Tal Lewis! Tal and I had car pooled to Ashland Seminary together back in the mid-90s, and our families always had dinner together every year at Conference. Tal and his family are now ministering in the Cortland, Ohio, area and had picked the same window of time as we did to travel to Yellowstone! Neither of us knew that the other would be out here, and here we just happened to see each other at a little gas station in a remote section of Wyoming! Our families were glad to see each other, we exchanged travel itineraries (they had just been in Colorado Springs[!] and were planning a week in Yellowstone and then home through the Dakotas) and caught up a little, and made a plan to get together at their campsite (in Grant Village in Yellowstone) for a cookout dinner on Wednesday evening. Very cool!

We came to the Grand Teton sign and took our picture. We enjoyed exploring the Tetons for a couple of hours, travelling up to Lake Jenny for some incredible pictures. When we entered the park, we saw a dazzling, golden-colored cloud that was catching the late afternoon sun. I stated my opinion that it was snowing; Debbie insisted that it was pollen blowing off the trees. Later, we asked a Ranger, and Debbie was right! Twice in one day! (Did you really think I'd be able to post these stories if the opposite were true?)

We ate a nice meal at a campground area in the Tetons before heading north into Yellowstone National Park. Here is where we first began to see some amazing wildlife. We saw a bunch of cars pulled over with people out with binoculars and cameras. We saw what they were all looking at: a baby moose and its mother! Along the way, we also saw a coyote running along the road and several elk grazing.

We also noticed that there were many areas still burned out and desolate from the 1988 fires. Young pine trees are growing along the dead trees, but they are still pretty short. We later discovered that much of the Park looks like this. In some areas, there are little or no young pines yet.

A minor tragedy hit us when we stopped to try to take a family picture at the Yellowstone South Entrance sign. Mosquitoes attacked! They were vicious - you could see them swarming! I guess it is too much to expect the National Park to spray for mosquitoes, but still! While trying to get the picture, our family broke ranks and ran back to the van for bug spray. Running back to our picture spot, Katherine tripped as she approached the curb and went down hard. She cut her knee very badly and lost a lot of skin. Debbie patched her up with our first aid kit, but she howled the rest of the way in to our cabin.

We arrived at Old Faithful at dusk (too late to see the geyser that day, unfortunately!) but got settled in a really nice cabin with adequate space and clean facilities. We agreed this would make a good home base for us over the next several days!

Since I'm having troubles with our internet connection, I'll post pictures in the next message.