All Yellowstone, All the Time

We left Jackson and headed for the south entrance of Yellowstone by way of Moose, Wyoming (I just had to mail letters from the Moose post office for the fun of it). As we arrived at Yellowstone, it started to hail, not too badly only about the size of gumballs as compared to the hail the size of golf balls that fell out of the sky for about an hour once when I was driving through Indiana. When you say “hail the size of fill in the bank,” you have to say it like Gilbert Gottfried – it’s a rule with hail. Off we went to see Old Faithful, Lewis Canyon and Kepler Cascade. The drive wasn’t too bad from a Cece on the brink of a nervous breakdown perspective. She was not too happy about the canyon and just refused to exit the car at the cascades. But the fun really began when we headed out of the park via the eastern access road for Cody, Wyoming, our next stop. Our guide in Jackson had told us that he loves the East Entrance Road (which is also the east exit road) at Yellowstone because it has great views. Apparently, when someone tells you that in connection with western Wyoming, it means the roads are narrow, twisty, have crazy elevation changes and may or may not have guardrails. It’s a really beautiful drive with fantastic views, but to paraphrase Jay-Z, I should have slipped Cece an Ambien. We met up with a motorcycle gang on East Entrance Road; I was a little concerned about them at first because they all had their faces fully covered except for their eyes which makes me think robbery, but then one of them turned around and I saw that the “gang’s” logo was “Cycling for Jesus” so really how scared can you be of that? And they had just left Cody and gave me some tips for things to do there (I told you about the nice people and the motorcycle gangs). I did not drive us off the road and off we went through the Shoshone National Forest, following Route 16 and the Shoshone River to Cody. By the way, it was in the Shoshone River that we saw our first two mooses. Something about that last word does not seem right.

In Cody, we stayed at the Cody Legacy Inn and Suites. It’s a cute little place but it is a motel as in you park your car outside of your room. But, it is super cute but not luxurious and the furniture looks like it was hand hewn by a decent but not great woodworker, but it is the “greatest hotel ever.” Before Cody, we had stayed in SLC at the Grand America – five star, European style luxury hotel with spa. Our room was a huge suite because of an upgrade with an air tub, kitchen with laundry, marble everywhere, etc. I mean this is a hotel where the house band played a jazz version of ”Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” just because Eric asked for it during Sunday brunch. Then in Jackson, we stayed for couple of days at the Teton Mountain Lodge, which has the western lodge approach to luxury going on – suite with kitchen, fireplace, whirlpool tub, spa, steps from the lift to the slopes, etc. So, we get to the Cody Legacy Inn, go to our room and are looking around and it is nice and we open the curtains and Eric looks out the window and says with great emphasis: “This is the best hotel ever!” Why? The hotel has a full on view of McDonalds. And every day in Cody, he would fling the curtains open and show us the McDonalds and remind us that “this is the best hotel ever.” And, of course, ask for a Happy Meal for lunch or dinner.

We used Cody as our base for exploring the eastern side of Yellowstone and saw the Yellowstone River and Lake, the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, the mud volcanoes and Lamar Valley. We saw so many bison that the children stopped looking up when we said bison and together with Cece wrote a song called “Don’t Call Me Buffalo” that sounds a little bit like the “don’t call it s comeback” line from “Momma Said Knock You Out.” We saw just about every animal (moose, elk, bison, big horn sheep, deer, wolf) that is in the park except for bears and we just missed seeing a mother bear and some cubs and some grizzlies one day. But that could have been all for the best. After all, the coffee ladies (the really nice ladies who wear big turquoise jewelry and run the drive through coffee hut across from the “best hotel ever”) told us one morning as we were discussing the wind gusts of 60 mph that were blowing through town (I told you – crazy weather) that a bear had killed and partially eaten a guy near Cody. I did not believe them. I thought that they were pulling my leg, but I played along to be polite. I should have known better. I am not sure about the eating part. Check out http://www.cody-wyoming-network.com/2010/06/areas-of-shoshone-national-forest-closed-due-to-grizzly-mauling/ if you do not believe me. I did learn an important tip from the ladies for dealing with bears and this is a direct quote: “Always carry your bear spray . . . and a sawed off shot gun.” Those are words to live by, pretty much anywhere you go -- hope for the best but plan for the worst. By the way, you can get a pretty good espresso in Cody. There is more than one place but I like the hut run by the ladies and it is conveniently located across from the “best hotel ever” in the parking lot with McDonalds.

We also went up, down and around Yellowstone’s highest peak. I am pretty sure that by the time that we completed the return trip on that peak, Cece thought that nothing could be more stressful. I know that I was worried about her and my sanity. Hers because she was starting to sympathy drive and read all the warning signs out loud because I had yelled at her a couple of times about telling me how to drive. Rather than tell me to slow down she would say out loud to herself “Hmm, I think that sign said slow down to 25 mph because the road curves.” And my sanity, because she is a passenger seat driver who is admittedly afraid of heights and that puts a lot of stress on the real driver. But, I did not know stress until we crossed the Big Horn Mountains on our way out to South Dakota by way of Montana. Next trip – Ambien for one of us for sure.

Next post, will finally get us out of Wyoming by way of Greybull (population around 900 including one really nice cowboy and a very busy taxidermist), Emblem (population 10), Shell (population 50), Ranchester (population around 750) and Sheridan (population around 18,000), a pit stop in Montana and on to the next one, South Dakota.

Kepler Cascade


Lewis River and Canyon


Yellowstone Lake



Don't Call Me a Buffalo


Yellowstone Canyon


Upper Falls at Yellowstone


Lamar Valley at Yellowstone


Moose in the Shoshone River along the road to Cody, WY


Lower Falls at Yellowstone


Old Faithful (but did we really need a caption for this one)

I posted some pictures from my trip from Palo Alto, California to New York on my Facebook page and some of my friends asked me to start a blog about the trip. So, here goes.

Planning for the trip got started last year when I became obsessed (not sure why) with going to South Dakota to see Mount Rushmore. It also fit nicely with my stated goal of visiting all 50 states. When the trip started, I still had Maine, Washington, Oregon, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho, and Wisconsin to visit and going to Mount Rushmore would kill a lot of those birds. If you are thinking of driving across the West and upper Midwest don’t do it if any of the following things bother you:

· 75 mph speed limits

· Lots and lots of RVs most of them going 90 mph

· Wild animals

· Everything costing less than you think and really huge portions (more about that later)

· Crazy weather (more about that later)

· Motorcycle gangs (more about that later)

· Really friendly, chatty people who look really wholesome (more about that later)

Utah and Nevada

So off we went with Andrew driving us non-stop pretty much to Salt Lake City. It’s a lot of fun driving through northern California and then you hit Reno and the vast nothing of the deserts of northern Nevada. There is probably no greater psychological transition than the change from Nevada to Utah. Interstate 80 has bill boards for brothels and then you hit Utah. It’s a total and I mean total change of pace. You can barely buy a drink in Utah much less a brothel. We stayed at the Grand America Hotel. Having been to Nevada and Utah a bunch of times before, this stage of the trip felt like the preamble for the big deal: Andrew flies home to Palo Alto and I drive from Salt Lake City to New York by way of the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore (finally), Sioux Falls, Fargo, Bloomington (MN), Chicago and the rest TBD during the trip. The main thing about this trip to SLC was Rose from the spa. She literally gave me her home (yes, that is home) phone number in case I had any questions about skin care while driving through the mountains. And there was the super rainbow that the children and I saw on our way to get my sister-in-law from the SLC airport. By the way, in case you have any doubts, SLC shuts down at around 9 p.m.

Idaho

Of all the states that I planned to visit, Idaho caused me the most concern. I had this image of Idaho as the Aryan Nation and that as my son would say is “not good, it’s bad.” But, I decided why not? Just make sure that you stay in southern Idaho. Well guess what, Idaho is really pretty hence the license plate “Scenic Idaho.” The famous potatoes part is a little lame, but whatever, at least we did not meet any white supremacists and we met an African-American woman with dreadlocks styled a la Rick James, bangs and all. Idaho Falls is really cute. The falls are adorable. I wonder what it looks like in the winter, but in early June – yummy. The scenery all the way to the Wyoming border was amazing. Unfortunately, it was driving over Teton Pass that I first began to realize that my sister-in-law is afraid of driving (or being driven) over mountains and is the kind of passenger who keeps giving the driver unnecessary instructions and gasping with fear. This was “not good.” When you hear “pass” when you are crossing mountains, you know that you are going to driving on switchbacks, etc.

Wyoming

Wyoming is sick. Western Wyoming is so beautiful and dramatic that when you get to eastern Wyoming, you are totally unimpressed and in any other state, you would be having a fit about how pretty it is. In Jackson, pretty much everyone is really cute in a pink cheeked, “I just went hiking/fly fishing/snow boarding or any other random outdoor activity” kind of way. I think that they have a rule there that if you work in Jackson, you have to be cute and do at least one nutty outdoor activity each day. We stayed at Teton Mountain Lodge, which was great. Our guide through the Tetons was tall and handsome and looked like he should model for some outdoor gear company. Of course, he fly fishes, knows everything about every animal in the Grand Teton National Park, hunts elk for food, leads snow mobile tours in the winter, works on a winter rescue team and had scaled some of the Tetons. No surprise really, because like I said before you have to do that. It’s a rule in Jackson. The Tetons are magnificent. I mean really, they really do just jut up out of the valley. The snow capped peaks are amazing with the lakes and the Snake River. And Jackson is kind of like Greenwich but out west so you can find decent food, boutiques, etc. I can’t say that I would ever live there, but I definitely want to go back. Check out this picture and just call me Ansel Adams.

Then just when you think, okay the Grand Tetons were great. Really, what else could there be in this state of 700K (rounded way up) people. Then you drive an hour or so and you are at the south entrance of Yellowstone. Yellowstone is like this natural freak show. Any weird geo-thermal activity that you can think of you can find there. And the views – crazy. But, don’t forget about Cece (my sister-in-law) and her fear of heights. Again, “not good.” Mere words cannot express how nervous a passenger she was as we drove through Yellowstone or really all of Wyoming. I have to go back to Yellowstone. The place is huge and I did not get to see a lot of things that I wanted to see. As to the weather, June in Yellowstone is apparently winter. On our first day, hail the size of gumballs fell as we were arriving and on the second day, we had snow.

Next post, I’ll tell you about Cody, Wyoming and the bear that killed and (according to my coffee ladies) partially ate a guy and the best hotel ever according to my son.