Wyoming 2008

…New Mexico, That Is!

            Well, it’s been quite a while since you’ve heard from me from the road.  It seems like forever since my last trip.  If you are new to this experience, here it is in a nutshell.  Every few days I have to download what I’ve experienced during my travels into written form and send it to someone.  It is your misfortune to be one of the recipients.  If you decide you’d rather not be on my distribution list, consult your internet provider about getting a new e-mail address and remember not to share it with me.

            This trip is different than the last in that I am travelling with my friend Frank and not Christiane.   Don’t be sad for her, she is having fun too.  She is in Quebec Province, Canada visiting her brother and his family.  It’s not my fault she was born into a family that lives in the great white north… du-whu-du-du---du-whu-du-duu! (If you don’t get the reference, watch old Saturday Night Live reruns).

            As have been all my travels with Frank, this is a three-pronged attack to seek out aircraft museums, Mexican food and western historical sites.  We may throw some other stuff in there as well… we are very spontaneous.

            This venture’s ultimate destination is the Western History Museum complex in Cody, Wyoming.  Yes, that’s right, Cody, Wyoming… a far piece by any measure.  You will hopefully understand why when I describe what we see there.  I’m not sure how long it will take to get there or when I will be back but Frank’s wife, Michele, has Michael Buble concert tickets for May 2 so we are to be home no later than May 1.  Frank is praying for severe snow storms, keeping us in Wyoming until June.

            We have been planning this trip since last fall and I, being the old Boy Scout, dutifully followed the weather over our planned route.  I think it has snowed every day since Christmas in Cody.  As it looks like that pattern could continue, we decided to take the southerly route along I-40 out to Albuquerque and make the requisite left turn taking us north on I-25 through New Mexico, Colorado and into Wyoming on the east side of the Rocky Mountains.  This should protect us from mid-Spring snow storms as much as possible.

On The Road (Again)

            We left San Diego Monday morning, April 14 and achieved Flagstaff by early evening.  Everybody has been to Flagstaff (or will be in the future… you just can’t go anywhere in the west without travelling through Flagstaff… and if you have, you did it wrong… read a book about Route 66).  Suffice it to say, we ate at the Galaxy Diner and then carried our distended stomachs back to the motel.  Next time you are in Flagstaff, eat at the Galaxy Diner on Old Route 66.  You can thank me later.  The next day, we motored on to Las Vegas, New Mexico, taking the opportunity in Albuquerque to cruise Route 66 before taking Bugs’ advice and making the left turn north on I-25.

Isn’t Las Vegas in Nevada?

            Well, there is one in Nevada, but it does not achieve any historical prominence until the middle of the Twentieth century.  Who cares?  The first Las Vegas was (is) in New Mexico.  Las Vegas (The Meadows?) was established in 1830 by a group of Spanish settlers who had received a Mexican land grant.  In 1846, General Stephen Kearny (yup, that’s right, the guy they named “Kearny Mesa” after) “liberated” the good citizens of Las Vegas from onerous Mexican rule.  In due course, New Mexico Territory was ceded to the U.S. as a result of the Mexican-American War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848).  I will not make any comments on the imperial aggressions of the Nineteenth century U.S. government, but I am glad I had the American Southwest to grow up in, if you know what I mean.

            The city is located on the Santa Fe Trail (look it up, I’m old and have only so many keystrokes left) which made it one of the most important points of commerce in the early American west.  In 1880, the Santa Fe Railroad made it to Las Vegas en route Santa Fe (Did they know the way to Santa Fe?  Ask me sometime about Lamy, New Mexico.)  While the arrival of the railroad spelled the demise for the Santa Fe Trail, it was a boon for Las Vegas.  Between the Trail and the Train, just about everybody who was anybody in the tale of the American West travelled through here.  History oozes out of every crack in the sidewalk.

            This is my third trip through here but I will concentrate on just what Frank and I have seen and done.  The most recent honor bestowed Las Vegas was the filming of numerous scenes for the academy award winning movie, “No Country for Old Men”.  When we arrived in town Tuesday evening, cruising for a motel, we were confronted with the sight of the motel in which Llewellyn first hides his ill gotten cash.  It is the Regal Motel on Grand Ave. and the sight of it gave us chills.  If you haven’t seen the movie, there is no way you can understand.  If you have, you are probably huddled in a corner right now, rocking back and forth and murmuring, “Please don’t hurt me. Please!”  See this movie.  If you own a gun, keep in on your lap.  It will be a false sense of security but it will help.  If you don’t own a gun, you will buy one soon to make the nightmares go away.  The director must have altered the motel’s sign for the movie because the top half is a New Mexico flag… and as the movie was set in Texas, that just wouldn’t do.  We kept our eyes open but didn’t find any other obvious shoot locations… we probably slept better for it anyway.  That night we followed the advice of our hotel clerk and ate at Raphael’s.  Now I am no slouch when it comes to eating Mexican food but this stuff had sweat beading up on my forehead and snot running out of my nose.  I love red chili.  The posole was killer but Frank was too much of a weenie to finish his… so I ate it.  Mmmm!  Posole!

            The next day, we made our way north about thirty miles to Fort Union National Historic Park.  There is a decent interpretive center and fascinating ruins to see.  Fort Union is remarkable as the largest military outpost of the old west.  It sits on the Santa Fe Trail at the junctions of the Mountain and Cimarron cutoffs.  There were actually three iterations of the fort over its forty year history.  In addition to being the largest fort, it was also the logistics supply depot for all other area military outposts and boasted the largest hospital of the area at that time.  If you are a student of history, it is a must see.  Be prepared, it is always windy there as it sits on the cusp of the eastern boundary of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and the Great Plains.

            And now for those of you who complained about the lack of pictures in my last journal, you asked for it.   Pictured below is of the Officers’ Quarters.  The construction was of adobe, so the weather has taken its toll since the fort was abandoned in the 1890s.  The chimneys, however, are cinder bricks and have stood up very well against the elements.  The foundations, which look to be made of limestone, have also remained in excellent condition. 

 

            The next image is of the Prison Blockhouse.  As adobe is very weak, the cell walls of the blockhouse were made of the same material as the foundation and have weathered time with no discernable erosion.  You can see the little bit of adobe outer wall of the building that has survived the ravages of the constant wind and other elements at the extreme right of the picture.

            This picture (below) shows one of the storehouses and the difference between the lighter foundation material of the basement and the red adobe walls.  I am not sure why the warehouse walls have survived so much better than the any of the other buildings of the fort.

The final picture from Fort Union is ruins of the Officers’ Quarters with the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the background.  If this doesn’t make your travelling juices flow, well you’re just not the New Mexico type.

            After braving the wind for about an hour or so, we retired to the visitors’ center where we swapped lies with the ranger on duty and I bought about eighty dollars worth of history books.  I am a sucker for this part of the world.

            We returned to Las Vegas to visit the Rough Riders Museum on Grand Avenue.  There are a few Spanish-American War artifacts associated with the American Volunteer Group (AVG), the official title of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, and some artifacts from the Santa Fe Trail.  It is free and worth a visit for western history buffs but only takes about half an hour.  Next, we set out to find Montezuma’s Castle.  No, not the fabled burial place of his treasure of gold, but a hotel built by the Santa Fe railroad (AT&SF) to exploit some natural hot springs about five miles west of Las Vegas known as Montezuma’s Hot Springs.  Legend has it that Montezuma used to travel here to take a soak.  It’s a long way from Mexico City for a bath.

            It was very common for railroads, especially the AT&SF to build tourist attractions along their routes for the purpose of boosting passenger business.  Probably the most famous is the El Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon.  Yup, it was built by capitalists, not the government.  Once these resort destinations were built, they were run by the Fred Harvey Company.  “Why is Dale so familiar with this piece of trifling history?” you ask.  My grandmother was a Harvey Girl.  If that means nothing to you, look it up.

            But I digress, Montezuma’s Castle was built, then burned down… built again… burned down again and finally rebuilt out of red rock only to be a financial failure.  It seems that Las Vegas was a bit too far for anybody just to come and take a bath.  The hotel building passed from owner to owner until it was purchased by Armand Hammer for renovation and conversion to be used for his “United World College”.  It is really a prep school for young persons preparing to enter international business schools.  Armand Hammer is a “one-worlder” who believes that all borders should be erased, just like George Soros.  I guess once you possess all the wealth of a mid-sized nation, you don’t see the need for such an archaic notion as national sovereignty.  They are wrong, resist communism.  But I digress, below is a picture of the castle from as close as you can get.  Communists are very secretive.

Notice the soccer field in the foreground.  It is just one of three.  Is there a football field, or a baseball diamond?  No, but you can play soccer all you want.  Communists!

            Back in town, we went to check out the old Plaza.  Like most Southwest cities whose origins were Spanish, Las Vegas was built around a central plaza.  Although many of the buildings are vacant, there is still a sense of the town it used to be.  Of those still operating, the Plaza Hotel is the flagship.  It is still a working hotel doing a thriving tourist business.

            By contrast, in the “new” part of town, the AT&SF built the La Castaneda Hotel next to the railroad tracks.  It is one of a series of hotels built along the Santa Fe Route and operated by Fred Harvey for the convenience of the wealthier passenger trade.  They all tend to be monuments to the age of excess before the Great Depression.  But alas, with the decline of rail travel after the Second World War, most of them have closed, or even worse, been demolished.  While El Castaneda is mostly vacant today, there is still a lonely bar serving drinks to locals on the south side.  We found it by accident and spent about twenty minutes talking to the bartender.  She didn’t have any customers anyway.  Hopefully, the citizens of Las Vegas will find a way to restore it to its former glory as they have the Santa Fe passenger terminal next door.

That’s about all from Las Vegas.  I’ll get back to you as we make our way north.

If This is Wednesday, It Must Be Wyoming          

On Wednesday morning I woke up to find it snowing in Las Vegas, New Mexico.  Now unlike some California weenies, I don’t mind snow… as long as I can watch it through a plate glass window while sipping Kahlua spiked hot chocolate next to a roaring fire.  As it was, I had no window, chocolate or fire so we were left with my general distaste for snow.  We braved the wind driven snow, loaded up the truck and hit I-25 north on our way to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

              In the interest of fairness, the weather wasn’t really that bad.  The temperature was only in the mid-thirties, the snow was light and not sticking to the pavement and the wind was a non-factor for driving… as of now… stay tuned.

The prairie is a pretty bleak place.  If you have never been there, it is best described as miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.  Some will tell you that it is beautiful in its stark nature.  Those are the same people who buy Jackson Pollok paintings… they’re being different just to be different.  A dusting of snow gives it a whole different feel, however.

The sky meets the plains with a nebulous uncertainty in the distance.  If Jackson Pollok paintings could evoke the abstract sense of wonder about what lies over the horizon as a snow storm does, I’d buy one of his paintings.  Yeah, right!

The storm petered out as we drove further north and it was interesting how all of a sudden, almost as an arbitrary line was drawn by some unseen hand, the white ends and the gold of the prairie reappears.

The Test You Have to Pass to Enter Colorado

            As we approach the Colorado border, we pass through the town of Raton and begin a climb out of the prairie onto Bartlett Mesa.  The highway ascends through Railroad Canyon, so named because the Denver & Rio Grande RR also crosses the heights here, to Raton Pass.  Interestingly enough, the summit of the pass sits exactly on the New Mexico, Colorado border at an altitude of about 7,200 feet.  As with most mountain passes, this one is somewhat curvy.   And guess what, it’s snowing again.  No, not the wimpy New Mexico, wouldn’t stick to anything even with glue kind of snow.  Yup, this is real Colorado, call out the snowplow snow, piling up just where I want to drive.  You must remember I am a son of California and have driven in snow just a handful of times.  And I hate it today just as much as the first time I did it.  Cars with Colorado license plates go whizzing by like it’s a bright sunny day, drivers staring at the cowards from out of state.  Amidst all of this I am still able to devote enough attention to our surroundings to realize this is all very scenic.  I’d like to share a picture but Frank, gripping the sissy bar and muttering something about striking a bargain with God, was too busy to operate the camera.  But, as seems to always be the case, we made it down the mountain in one piece.

            The first principal city in southern Colorado is Pueblo.  Its name demonstrates the close cultural ties with New Mexico that make the southern part of the state different from what you expect.  This is a good thing for the wandering gourmets because we found a Mexican restaurant for lunch named Mama’s Cocina.

            I had carne asada burritos (instead of one big one, they give you three small ones) smothered in red chili.  Have I mentioned that I love red chili? They were good, made me sweat.  I think it is important to note, that outside of Southern California, carne asada is not often on the menu.  And at Mama’s, it was very different than what we normally encounter.  This was shredded beef rather that marinated steak strips.  It was not what I expected but it was good.  The flavor is so influenced by the red chili that I’m not sure how it would compare without it.  Frank, being the free spirit that he is, had the carne asada burritos with green chili.  He did not look like he was as happy as I.

            We stumbled onto Mama’s while searching for an air museum that had posted a sign on the freeway.  It took a little doing but we found it in spite of the road improvement going on around the airport where it resides.  And just in the nick of time, too.  The red chili was doing its magic and I was in danger of blowing a gasket.  One thing I can definitely say about this air museum, it has a nice men’s room.

            The Pueblo-Weisbrod Air Museum is located at Pueblo Memorial Airport which was Pueblo Army Air Base during WWII.  The mission of the base was final training for newly assembled B-24 crews before their deployment to combat squadrons in the various theatres of operations.  An interesting San Diego connection; many of the B-24s were built at the Consolidated Aircraft plant that sits along Pacific Coast Highway downtown and is now used by the Navy for its SPAWARS program.  Oddly enough, although much of the museums non-aircraft displays are devoted to the base’s history and the B-24, they do not own one.  They do have a great collection of aircraft however, including a B-29 (rare), a F-104 Starfighter, and a US Navy P-2V anti-submarine patrol bomber.  The latter being significant because Frank’s dad, Frank Sr., served as an aviation ordinance crewman aboard such a plane during his Navy service.  If you are fan of planes or WWII history, this is a worthwhile visit.  The docents were very generous with the amount of time they spent with us.  They have a website at http://www.pwam.org/museums.html.

            From Pueblo, we pretty much just jetted up I-25 through Colorado Springs, then Denver and north to the plains and into Wyoming.  The route is very scenic as the view to the west is of the Rocky Mountains.  But aside from the view, the feel is very metro-suburban for most of the way and if you didn’t have the mountains as a point of reference you would feel like you were in Southern California.   I’ll leave you at the border of Wyoming then because I want you to be well rested for the next leg of the trip.  But I will leave you with this teaser.

…Wyoming?

            Wyoming (why-oh-ming) – The origin of the word Wyoming is still debated.  Some academics attribute the name to the Goose-bump branch of the Shivering tribe roughly translated as, “Does this wind ever stop?”  However, the old timers believe it was first used by the Bunion clan of the Sore-foots and means roughly, “Walk and walk but the mountains never get closer”.  Whichever is correct, both are fairly apt descriptions of the least populous state in the Union. 

            Our first stop was in Cheyenne, which is both the state capital and the most populous city.  They have done a good job of maintaining the early western feel of the town.  Maybe they just can’t afford to renovate anything.  I don’t know but it sure feels like you’ve taken a step back in time.  It was Thursday and I don’t think that was of any great importance.  It would have been windy no matter what day, week, month or year it happened to be.  The only time it is not windy is when you are somewhere else.

            We had dinner at a place called Stafford’s, which is like the progeny of a union between Applebee’s and T.G.I. Friday’s if they were brother and sister.   You know all that knickknack stuff they put all over the walls to make you think you’re going to have fun but it’s really there just to distract you from the bland menu offerings?  Well Stafford’s has so much of that stuff that I’m not sure they even have interior walls.  They just slapped all the crap on the structural members to avoid paying the high cost of drywall.  And guess what else.  It was an ineffective way to distract us from the blandness of the menu offerings.

            The next morning we looked around town a bit and found the old Union Pacific passenger terminal.  It has been refurbished and houses a very impressive Union Pacific Railroad museum.  Cheyenne, as it turns out, is a very important freight handling center for the UP.  Rather than being the run of the mill general railroad history theme, their thrust is the marriage between Cheyenne and the Union Pacific.  It is well done and has several interactive exhibits that I couldn’t pry Frank away from.  I mean, how many times does he have to click the working telegraph model?  One of the aspects of the museum I really enjoyed was the illustration of the change from steam to diesel locomotion.

            While I was in the museum, some crusty old Australian guy attached himself to me like a limpet and wouldn’t let go.  I think he was a retired railway worker making his way around the U.S. touring railroad museums with his crippled old mum.  But I’m not sure because his accent was so bad the only word I could identify with any certainty was “fuckin’”.  It was the only adjective he used.  One thing he made very clear was that he thought, “Dut fuckin Border Patrol is fuckin’ useless!” He thought it was pretty stupid to “catchum on Mundey, send ‘um back on Tewdey, and catchum ageen on Weendey.” He asked me what I did and we had a short discussion on homebuilding.  Anyway, I was talking about home building.  I’m not sure what he was talking about.  But it was “fuckin great!”  I never did get his name.  He told me enough times, I just couldn’t make it out.  Oh well, I hope he has a nice trip.

            I finally was able to get away from him and found Frank hiding behind this display of a hand carved model of a Union Pacific “Big Boy’ locomotive.  The model is about eight feet long and pretty accurately represents the real thing.  “How would you know?” you ask.  Well just go on down to the next page.

This is the real thing on display at Holliday Park in Cheyenne.  The “Big Boy”, with some qualifications that I won’t go into here, is the largest steam locomotive ever built.  They were used exclusively by Union Pacific and only to haul freight across the Rocky Mountains between Cheyenne and Ogden, Utah.  Of twenty-five built, just eight survive.  The beast weighs 1.6 million pounds.  Early models, such as Cheyenne’s 4004, logged over a million miles during their service lives.  That “little” boy looking at the locomotive with awe is Frank.  Whoo-woo!

Boots and Saddles

We left Cheyenne and set out for Fort Laramie.  I won’t go into the nuances of the name but it is important to know that Laramie and Fort Laramie are not in close proximity to each other.  Fort Laramie is on the way from Cheyenne to Casper.  It is located on the California-Oregon Trail at the confluence of the North Platte and Laramie rivers.  It began as a private enterprise fur trading post and was eventually acquired by the U.S. Army for protection of the Oregon Trail.  It was one of the more important army installations during the Plains Wars with the various Indian tribes.  It is in remarkably good condition due to restoration efforts and the practice of local civilians to make use of some of the buildings after the fort was abandoned by the Army in the 1890s.  This is a National Historic Park so interpretive displays abound.

            This is one of the enlisted men’s barracks for the cavalry troops.  The inside has been redone and filled with the furnishings and equipment of the time.   The effort to detail is amazing.

            The officers’ lives were somewhat different and their quarters reflected the privileges they enjoyed.

There were the requisite parade ground and guard house.

            And two constants; the wind never stops blowing and Frank has to play with his big gun.

            We spent so much time at Fort Laramie that we decided to add another day to our trip with an overnight stop in Casper so we could visit Fort Caspar.  No, there is no spelling error.  Fort Caspar is named after Army Lieutenant Caspar Collins who was killed in an area skirmish with Indians.  The Army used his first name because Fort Collins (Colorado) had been previously named for his father, an Army general.  The area is generally uninteresting and the fort is maintained by the City of Casper.  No one knows when, or by whom, but the documents incorporating the city contained this erroneous spelling of poor Lt. Collins’ name and the confusing difference will remain part of the lore through eternity… or until the wind stops blowing, whichever comes first.

            We started the next day with a visit to Fort Caspar.  The fort is small and of the stockade type.  It is not very picturesque so I have included no pictures.  There is a nice interpretive center with excellent displays about the fort and the general history of this part of Wyoming.  Stop in if you get into this area.

Buffalo Bill Lived Here

            After Fort Laramie, we pushed on toward our ultimate goal; Cody, Wyoming.  To this point, I had learned one thing about the Great State of Wyoming.  It is Plains.  You cross what seems like endless miles in pursuit of a faint mountain range on the horizon.  Just when you think you can make out some detail, the highway changes directions and you are chasing another unidentified range at an even greater distance.

            Finally we made it to Cody.  It is, of course, named for the famous frontiersman and showman, William F. Cody; better known as Buffalo Bill.  I will not strain your patience with his quite extensive personal history.  But if you don’t know who he is or why he is famous, all I can say is read a book.  Any book about comprehensive western history will do.  What makes the town of Cody an attraction, other than its proximity to Yellowstone National Park, is the William F. Cody Museums of the West.  There are five museums in one complex including (you knew this was coming, didn’t you) the largest collection of firearms in the world!  Now I don’t particularly like snapshots of museum displays as they don’t really do the subject justice.  So I include only one picture of the museum as a tease and tell you that this is only one small section.  It took us two seven hour days to see the whole thing!

              The brass sculpture is a one-tenth scale model of a cavalry charge statue at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C.  Behind it are several displays devoted to military arms of U.S. History.   If you are ever in the Yellowstone area, make the fifty mile drive from the east gate to Cody to visit the museums and the town. 

            Cody is a charming town with charming people.  Of all of the towns we have been to on this (and maybe all of our previous) trips, I think Cody has been the friendliest.  Interestingly enough, almost nobody we talked to was a native.  They had all come from somewhere else.  And there only complaint was, you guessed it, the wind.

            The town is targeted for the tourist trade coming out of Yellowstone so there are lots of motels, restaurants and gift shops.  But they have not suffered (yet!) from Californication.  The town still feels like a small bit of the West making its living from ranching.  If it weren’t for the wind, I could probably live here.  Warning, they have a late spring.  It snowed two of the three days we were there and the temperature could get into the twenties.  But it was colder when the sun was shining and the wind was blowing, even if the thermometer said it was warmer.

            Monday evening, before sunset, we drove the highway towards Yellowstone.  We could not get into the park as the east gate does not open until sometime in May, depending on the year’s snowfall.  We gained considerable elevation, got into some very pretty country and saw a greater concentration of wildlife than I have experienced anywhere else in my travels.

            This is Buffalo Bill reservior just west of Cody on the Shoeshone River.  Note the clouds and the fading sunlight.  As we climbed on the approach to Yellowstone, it began to snow.  Snow is fate’s way as getting even with Californians.

            Just a few miles up from Cody is Wapiti.  Frank worked with a woman who had grown up in the area, her father being in the ranching game.  It hasn’t grown much.  She told us to be on the lookout for the one-room school house she attended.  It’s still in use.

            The farther we went, the more wildlife we encountered.  Much of it was too far off the road to photograph.  As you can see, game coloration makes it hard to see the critters against the background.  That’s why they come out to feed in the evening.  We saw mostly mule deer and Elk.  But the most interesting was the Mountain Sheep.   People in California put great effort into photographing these sheep, I slowed down the truck and rolled down the window.

            This final shot is the mountain that seperates the reservior from Cody.  If you look closely, you can see the street lights and tunnel entrance about half-way up the face.  The tunnel is about a half-mile long.  Frank pouts if I don’t honk the horn when we go through a tunnel.

The Big Titties

            Because of the time of year, we could not cross Yellowstone National Park to get from Cody to out next destination which was Jackson, Wyoming.  The east gate was scheduled to open May 2.  As a result we had to backtrack to the southwest along State route 120 and US-20 through Thermopolis and Shoshoni (I know, the spelling seems to be wrong, but that’s the way they spell it… maybe we can blame the same guy responsible for the great Fort Caspar/Casper City debacle).  This cost us over 130 miles or two hours and forty-nine minutes by comparison.  Thank goodness diesel is only going for $4.29 a gallon up here!

            On the other hand, we did get to retrace our way through a feature named Wind River Canyon.  Both the highway and a railroad line wind their way along the Wind River.  The cut exposes billions of years of geology and the State of Wyoming has labeled them with informational highway signs that give both the type of rock, the age and the geologic period.  It is very interesting although not very informative to the non-geologist who doesn’t know his Jurassic from his Permian.  Another interesting phenomenon is that as you descend northeast to southwest; the river cuts the opposite direction and gives the illusion of flowing uphill.  I cannot explain it.  It just makes my head hurt trying to accept that it is happening.

            Once we hit the bottom of the big “V”, as I like to call it, at Shoshoni, we shifted our course to a northwesterly direction and began a gradual climb out of the prairie into the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains.  This is where John C. Fremont, the great surveyor, and Kit Carson the scout, attempted to find a trans-continental winter railroad route with near disastrous results.  If you are interested in western history, I recommend you read about both Fremont and Carson.  Both figure into San Diego history during the war with Mexico in 1846.

            The Wind River Mountains are huge and, while not the highest pass I’ve ever crossed, it is certainly one of the most picturesque.  While there was fresh, very deep snow (Remember the snow storms I reported on in Cody… well this is from whence they came), the weather was good and the roads were clean and dry.  But at this altitude, the temperature was just about freezing.

These mountains are a classic representation of the Rockies and don’t yet seem to be infested with the yuppie vermin that have ruined the western slope of the Colorado Rockies ala Vail and Aspen (sorry Cindy, but you have to admit that they have trashed a once beautiful piece of nature).  Maybe it’s because the population of all of Wyoming is probably less than that of the metro Denver area… and there is no Boulder.

Note the bottom number of on the GPS display… that’s the elevation!

            After loitering in the rarified air above 9,000 feet for a while you begin to switchback down the western slope of the range into the Snake River Valley, otherwise known as Jackson Hole.  I imagine that if the weather had been better, I would still be there staring at the unbelievable panorama of the Grand Tetons.  When the French trappers first descended into this depression and saw the mountains they named them Les Trios Tetons for the three principal peaks.  It translates into “The Three Tits”.   You gotta love those French guys.  Luckily for those of us whose emotional development was arrested in junior high, the early American mapmakers retained the same general meaning when assigning the name “Grand Tetons”.  Maybe they didn’t know what it meant… or maybe they just giggled and moved on.

            Once out of the Wind Rivers, the highway runs south along the Snake River and the Teton Range until you get to Jackson (that’s the cities’ full name, Jackson Hole is the name of the geologic feature that makes up the river valley.   I will expand on Jackson in the next chapter.

Jackson’s Hole

            After the spectacular beauty we encountered on the trip from Cody to Jackson Hole, the town of Jackson is, well, a disappointment.  It has been yuppie-fide to the point of Nausea.  You have seen a picture of Jackson.  It is one of the four arches made of stacked elk antlers that serve as gateways to the central park.  That’s the only picture of the town you’ve seen because there is nothing else in the town worth photographing.   That is unless you are an insurance claims adjustor and it’s your job to record the images of someone else’s tragedy.  I did not take any pictures of Jackson.

            We decided to stay in Jackson for two days so we could go back out to Grand Teton National Park and spend some quality time with nature.  We found the Days Inn and met Claudia the friendly desk clerk.  Her pronounced accent prompted me to inquire as to her country of origin.  It turned out to be Rumania; more about that later.  As it turned out, the Days Inn had a party of some kids doing something coming in later and all of their doubles had been booked.  So we went to the Super 8 Motel and got a room there.  The only restaurant we could find that looked at all interesting was a bar-b-que joint named Bubba’s.  Now as it turns out, we had eaten at the Bubba’s in Cody.  The food was good and the servers were very friendly, just like everyone else in Cody.  The food was about the same in Jackson, but the servers were very unfriendly, just like everyone else in Jackson.

            The next morning we drove out to the visitors’ center of the National Park and found that a front had moved in and the whole range was shrouded in clouds.  It turned out to be a good thing that I had taken pictures the day before.  I was hoping for a blue sky though as it would have made for much better contrast than the ones I had already taken.

            Did I mention that it was cold in Jackson?  It was cold in Jackson.  So we decided to drive across the Teton Pass into Idaho.  It is a typical mountain pass that reaches about 8,800 feet.  It was snowing but we made it over without trouble.  The first town you encounter in Idaho is Victor.  It turns out that Victor is a bedroom community for Jackson.  People in Jackson must be pretty desperate for a place to live if they are willing to drive the twenty miles and 3,000 feet up and down to get to work every day.  We did not find a lunch place in Victor.

            Just up the road, however, is a little town named Driggs.  No, I don’t know.  But as we drove the length of the town, we saw a sign for the “War Birds” café at the airport.  Now this airport is totally out of proportion with the town.  There are dozens of hangers for executive sized jets.  We learned later that Driggs (no, this is not a joke) has become the prestige address for winter vacation homes for the rich and famous.  Honest.  I wouldn’t joke about rich people.  Celebrities that have winter homes in Vail aspire to have an address in Driggs.  Go figure.

            Anyway, when we finally found the café, it turns out it is closed from April 14 to May 2 for “mud season”.  I don’t know what mud season is.  And I wasn’t going to ask anyone for fear of being ridiculed as a small town rube from Victor.  Actually, I’m not sure I want to know what mud season is.  We headed back into Driggs proper and found a little pizza place.  In the doorway was a hand lettered sign that said, “No Dine-in Service on Wednesday, Take-out Only”.  Hanging on the wall inside was a Rotary Club banner and a stuffy looking guy with a briefcase walked passed us into the restaurant without giving the sign a second look.   Using my superior deductive reasoning, I identified him as a Rotarian arriving to attend the Wednesday weekly Rotary Club meeting.  We found a very nice Irish Sports Bar and dined with the rest of the population of Driggs.  Some of the patrons looked as if they would really rather have pizza.

            We went back over the pass to Jackson.  It was snowing.  Later that day, I treated Frank to dinner as it was his birthday.  He wanted Chinese Buffet, and as it was his birthday, I acquiesced.  It seems that just a month ago I attended a birthday dinner for Frank’s father, Frank, Sr.  As I recall, it was at a Chinese Buffet.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.  The next morning, we awoke a bit late and missed the motel’s continental breakfast.  As a result, we decided to breakfast at Village Inn on the way out of town.  Our server, Tatiana, had a rather pronounced accent, so I asked her where she was from.  It turned out to be Rumania.  Seems there is an exchange program whereby Rumanian students come to America for a year to work.  Tatiana knew Claudia.  Either her English wasn’t strong enough to answer my questions about why anyone would pick Jackson out of the whole of America to spend their exchange time, or she just pretended and blew me off.  I’ve been blown off before and this seemed very familiar.

            Well, we were still a week away from our drop-dead return date and had seen everything we were scheduled to see.  Frank had mentioned that there was a museum dedicated to Elmer Keith in Boise, Idaho.  So off we went.  Oh, I’ll tell you who Elmer Keith is when I write about our trip to Boise.

            Oh yeah, the weather was so bad or the town was so uninteresting, I took no pictures.  It’s amazing how much faster these files download with no pictures, isn’t it.  Now, all those who complained about my last trip’s journals not containing pictures raise your hands.  Uh-hum, I thought so.

Boise, Elmer and Submarines

            The trip from Jackson to Boise is 344 miles and over seven hours long.  It was mostly prairie and high desert.  I’m not sure when we crossed from Wyoming to Idaho.  There were farms and ranches and nothing.  It snowed.  It snowed a lot.  There were times when we couldn’t see two hundred yards down the road.  But as we left the farm country of Eastern Idaho, the weather broke and the views lightened.

            As we approached the town of Arco, deep in the high desert of Idaho, we passed a complex of government installations with clusters of buildings well off of the highway and small signs identifying them as part of the INEEL.  From time to time, we would come upon a huge parking lot filled with dozens of cars and no apparent reason for it.  By the time we got to Arco, it was time to use the bathroom so we pulled into the Shell station at the edge of town.  As we left, entering the center of town, we encountered a strange sight that took a few seconds to register.

Right in the heart of Arco (pop. 100?) is the conning tower (or more correctly, sail) of a nuclear submarine with the hull number “666” painted on the side.  Well, we just had to stop and see what this was all about.

            “What”, you ask, “is a nuclear submarine doing is the middle of the Idaho desert?”  Well, it turns out that the INEEL is the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory which was started as the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory sometime in the 1950s.  It is somewhat amusing how after the 1970s, the word “environmental” was added to the title of every government facility involved in the development of nuclear technology for the military.  Anyway, it turns out this facility was responsible for development of nuclear reactors to be used in our fleet of cold-war submarines.  So, after the cold war was won, the Navy and Idaho, with the help of Senator Larry Craig (that’s right, the old toe tapper himself) secured the sail of the USS Hawkbill, SSN 666, when it was decommissioned and had it transported to Arco, Idaho as a monument to this areas contribution to national security.  There are also some other mementos to the US Navy’s “Silent Service” at the sight.  As a side note, in 1955, Arco became the first city (?) in the world to have atomic powered electricity.  Albeit just a test, the distant laboratory generated two kilowatts of electricity for two hours using a “boiling water reactor” and fed it into the grid that provided electricity to Arco.   Thus, the Navy’s nuclear program was born.

            Proceeding onward, and not too far from Arco, we encountered Craters of the Moon National Monument.  This is a lava field like you have never seen before.  Apparently, this is lava from the volcano that sits underneath Yellowstone National Park.  If you don’t know about the volcano, just the biggest in the whole wide world, you should look it up.  …‘Cause one of these days, Alice; pow, zoom, right to the moon!

            But I digress.  The hot spot under Yellowstone erupts cataclysmically every so many millions of years and creates quite a mess.  Yes, we are overdue.  But as the earth’s crust was moved along by tectonic activity, these lava fields were moved west with it.  They continue to be active, giving up new lava every few thousand years even though they are not still over the main caldera.  Yes, we are overdue.  It is an eerie looking landscape of pure jet black pumice frozen in time in all manner of shapes.  The scene we witnessed was even more dramatic with the contrast of the new fallen snow.

            I asked the ranger there about the INEEL and apparently they employ between seven and ten thousand people being the largest employer in central Idaho.  The cars we saw parked in the lots off the highway belong to employees who are bussed into the facility from various collection points.  I guess it cuts down on the theft of nuclear material if you have to sneak it out in your underwear.

            Unfortunately, because of the snow, we couldn’t take advantage of the loop drive through the park.

 

            The remainder of the trip to Boise was long, flat high desert.  If you’ve seen one steppe, you’ve seen them all so I won’t take up space with pictures.  But it is a long way across Idaho and a trip you have to want to make.

            We found the Elmer Keith museum tucked away in a corner inside the Cabela’s store in Boise. It was just like being in Disneyland.  But instead of Mr. Lincoln, there was an animatronic figure of Elmer Keith sitting at a desk in a replica of his home office telling stories of his life.  “And why are the stories of his life worth a museum?” you ask.  It’s because Elmer Keith is a noted hunter, outdoorsman, shooter and gun writer.  Aside from his magazine writings, he wrote the book on high-power handgun loads being primarily responsible for the development of the .44 magnum cartridge and revolver.  For serious shooters, he is an icon and the display of his guns and trophies a shrine. The whole experience took about fifteen minutes, not counting the time it took us to find our way out of Cabela’s.  Boy, are their stores big!

            Now I refer you back to the beginning of this chapter; 344 miles and seven hours; if it hadn’t been for that submarine in the desert…

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig

            Having made it to Boise, we decided we were just about at our diverse culture limit and decided to make the sprint for home.  When you are in Boise, that sprint takes three days.  We chose a route that would keep us off of the interstates as much as possible and out of the big towns.  Essentially, we headed west on I-84 and then turned south on Wyoming-155 until we hit US-95.  This took us through the eastern part of Oregon and along the loneliest road I have ever driven.  It is even more sparsely populated than US-50 across Utah, which is touted as the “Loneliest Highway in America” (you may remember my description from last year’s Colorado trip).

            While US-50 runs through a barren desert basin, at least it offers interesting geology.  US-95, by contrast makes its way across a featureless high-altitude prairie with snow covered mountains in the distance.

            Frank got so excited when he saw another car on the road; he had to take a picture.  After our experiences in Wyoming, the snow covered mountains in the distance made us a little nervous about crossing another mountain pass.  Although this highway presented the longest straight-aways I have ever driven, each time we got anywhere close to a mountain, the road would curve ever so slightly to point us through a wide gap between sub-ranges.

            By the time we hit Burns Junction, it was time to pee.  The only structures there were an Oregon State Weigh Station and a run-down service station/restaurant.  It was pink.  The gas pumps all had hand-lettered cardboard signs duct taped to them announcing they were temporarily out of gas.  A sign on the door warned that the restrooms were for customers only.  When we entered, we were greeted by an elderly woman who may have been a descendant of Jabba the Hut.  I took the offensive, “What do we have to buy to get to use the restrooms?”  I noticed a display of hand wrapped cookies on the counter, “How about some cookies?”

            “That’d be okay.” and I headed for the restroom.

            When I came out, she had been joined by another woman; maybe her sister, maybe her daughter.  It was hard to tell.  Now remember, I had negotiated this deal without knowing the price of the cookies going in.  I was at their mercy and it wasn’t like we were going to be able to fight our way out.  It turned out okay, each three-cookie, saran-wrapped pack was only two dollars.  Whew!

            When Frank had finished and we had selected our packs of cookies (I choose chocolate chip, he was daring and picked the “cowboy cookies”) I asked her when they last had gas.  She said it had been about three weeks and wasn’t going to buy any more until the price came down.  I didn’t share that I thought that was as likely as the two of them making the finalists list in a swimsuit competition.  She shared that she was afraid she would get a delivery at the current prices and then the bottom would fall out.  I guess she’d had her share of experience with falling bottoms.  She then launched into some tirade against President Bush and how it was all his fault and I hoped that she would think that because we were from California that we were Democrats.  There is more than one reason I don’t display an NRA sticker on my truck.  We grinned, uttered some unintelligible agreement and blew town.

            As we were driving along, two thoughts haunted me.  The first was how they got two pounds of butter into a half-pound cookie.  These were good!   The second was, what if these two made a practice of selling spiked cookies to wayward travelers then followed them until they pulled over from drowsiness, trapped them, and had their way with them before butchering them for the larder and grinding their bones into powder for their makeup.  I had one eye on the rear-view mirror until we crossed the Nevada border.

            It was interesting how the vegetation changed from the green of Oregon to the brown of Nevada at the border.  Do Democrats have the corner on green, too?

            At any rate, we made it to Winnemucca, NV by lunch time in good shape.  Winnemucca is an old, big town.  We toured around after securing a hotel room and found that there was this unexpected amalgam of old and decrepit and new and prosperous.  A funny thing about this town; it has two rail lines.  Not a double section of track; two independent rail lines.  Union Pacific has a line on the west side of town and BNSF has a line running through the middle of town.  This was such an exciting place that when we noticed the Salt Lake City bound Amtrak was at the station (actually, there is no terminal, just a covered bus bench beside the track) we parked next to the track to watch it leave.  It took about ten minutes because the passenger train had to wait for a southbound freight to enter the yard and clear the right-of-way.  It was pretty exciting when we got to see the Amtrak release its brakes and roar out of town at a screaming two miles per hour.

            The next morning we were back on the trail south.  We stopped at a Starbucks in Fernley, NV because it was the first we had seen in two weeks.  We sat at an outside table, drinking our frappacinos, in our shirt sleeves.  This was the warmest weather we had experienced on the trip.  It was sixty-five degrees.

            We crossed into California on US-395; cruising the Sierra Nevada.  If you have not been along this stretch of highway, you have denied yourself one of the truly great visual experiences to be had.  The highway runs along the eastern foot of the range and the views are inspiring. 

            We stopped in Bridgeport to use the restroom and had a conversation with the station attendant.  It turns out that he grew up on a ranch around Casper, Wyoming.  We shared notes about the country, the wildlife and the history.  I guess it was one final connection to Wyoming.

            We are spending the night in Bishop, the “capital” of the Owens Valley.  The hotel clerk directed us to a Mexican restaurant named Las Palmas.  They had a salsa bar.  The food was good and the salsa I picked made sweat bead up on my forehead and my nose run.  I guess this closes the circle on the great Wyoming expedition of 2008.