Natalyn says hi!
In Rexburg and a few of the surrounding communities the schools get out in the fall for a couple of weeks for the potato harvest. I am not sure how large a percentage of the school's students actually participate in the harvest but it is a great little break all the same. We decided to take the time from school as an opportunity to get up to Yellowstone. Even though we had been in Idaho since early July we had not yet made it the hour and a half north to Yellowstone, some business about a baby if I remember correctly.
Jacob is smiling a lot more lately it is a lot of fun.
Must have been a real knee slapper Jacob.
David playing on the picnic table at camp.
Ty and Dallin are in a phase now where they seem to always need to be sword fighting.
I was very excited to get up and hear the Elk bugling. Three years ago we had made a fall trip to Yellowstone to listen to the Elk and we had a fantastic experience. Something that caught me by surprise when I got there was how empty I felt. The trip three years ago had been with my Aunt Barbra. Being in the same place brought back happy memories as well as the feeling of loss.
We learned from the camp ground attendant that last winter was very hard on the elk so the numbers were comparatively low. That withstanding we were able to get a great view of a nice little heard of elk with a huge bull.
We were able to get some great views of the elk.
Yellowstone is a truly special place.
I am nothing of a hunter and not much of a naturalist, but I believe those are elk scrapings, that's what I told the kids they were anyway.
We are having an electrical problem with the trailer. We took it into Bish's to get it repaired but they failed to do anything about the problem. Without having anything running our batteries will die in about an hour. If anything is running it is sooner. Most of the Yellowstone campgrounds allow running generators until 8PM an after 8AM so during that period it isn't a problem. The problem is that without electricity to run the fan our trailer's heater won't come on. That made for very chilly mornings. After 8AM it was very nice to get the generator and hence the heat running.
On Thursday night we went to Gardiner and stayed at a Good Sam campground in town. We were very pleased to see deer right in the camp site and then an elk in the morning. It was also nice to have internet access. We took the opportunity to download a movie. I had never been to Gardiner. Even though there isn't much that I found outstanding about Gardiner being somewhere I hadn't ever been before was quite energizing. I was excited to read about several camping locations in the area.
We were delighted to see deer right in camp in Gardiner.
During the trip I had been working while Lexie went out with the kids to do activities. One of the purposes of the trip, not that Yellowstone requires anymore purpose than the fact it is Yellowstone, was to get a dry run of returning to road life before we gave up our Thornton camp site. I know I had extra panic every time the kids were slow getting ready or I was having trouble getting focused on my work because I would worry about the implications on our future success. By Thursday it seemed like we were getting adjusted to things. I was delighted to get a full work day in while having a camp site transition in the same day. I was also delighted with how well it worked to run the generator intermittently to keep the laptop charged. Some of my favorite camping happens off grid, so the ability to work off grid was very welcome.
Tyrell, Dallin, Natalyn and David viewing the paint pots.
Natalyn out on the trail.
Tyrell, Dallin, Natalyn and David viewing the paint pots.
David is a natural tree hugger. This is a candid shot.
The cold weather and frost added a nice element to the scenery.
The trail was a bit long for David.
Last week I made a defense for the american's right to stupidity. Those of you who deduced that it might have been an argument toward self preservation would have been accurate. Not seven days have passed and I have already fully embraced and enjoyed my unalienable right. Well to be truthful I didn't enjoy my indulgence in my right to stupidity, but I am happy to have made it through without any more hardship or collateral damage than I did. So with three more sentences of build up than this probably deserves, I will get around to what I was talking about.
Friday, Lexie came back from the museum and said, "They are closing roads all over the place and predicting snow all weekend." Those of you who guessed that my response to her statement was part of my indulgence in stupidity are well tuned to me. My response was "I don't think it will be that bad, let's hang out here a while longer".
I had been expecting the snow to melt off the road by 10AM, noon at the latest. I was wrong. (I think men get points in heaven for saying things like the former) I was distressed to look at the weather report and realize that the day's predicted high was 33 degrees, not exactly a bright prospect for melting snow. I honestly am not sure what was going through my mind after that. In retrospect, I would say there probably wasn't a lot going through my mind and definitely not a lot in the way of productive thought. As we decided to "try out" the road we soon realized that in the route between Mammoth and West Yellowstone, particularly between Mammoth and Norris does not offer one much chance to turn around. Also a good general rule of mountain driving is that conditions do not get better as one goes up. We also learned that our traction left quite a bit to be desired. Knowing how easy it is to get our trailer stuck on ice added quite a bit to our anxiety. There are several miles of 6 and 7 percent grades on the route we were covering. I did some white knuckle driving as I maintained enough speed as to prevent simply spinning out on the hill and forcing an all but impossible back down and going slow enough to not slip over one of the edges. We were distressed to find all of the pullouts full of snow. We didn't dare take them because especially as we were headed up the hill it was likely we would not be able to get out of them again. Finally as we were near the top of the first pass we found a pullout that looked promising to offer an exit. We immediately took the opportunity to find out if our new suburban's tires were the same size as our old suburban's tires by putting on the snow chains we had. Somehow, even though a blizzard isn't the best place to learn how to put on a pair of snow chains, I would guess it is the most common class room. After getting the fingers properly frozen and holding in all of the appropriate bad words and requesting far above my quota of favors from God, we got the chains on. I still wasn't sure they would stay on but as long as they were on I felt secure about our chances of staying out of the river far below at the floor of the canyon.
Not long after getting the chains on we came upon a group of stopped cars, being Yellowstone of course our first thought was that there must be an animal at the side of the road, however upon seeing an emergency vehicle we took cue and pulled over behind the cars. I went out to talk with people and discovered that there was indeed an accident and traffic was stopped. There may have been a moment of curiosity to move closer toward the accident scene but the curiosity if at all existent was soon overtaken by a bunch of nasty flash backs and I went immediately back to the car. Lexie did eventually ask one of the rangers if there had been any injuries. We were relived to learn that there hadn't been any life-threatening injuries. In as much as we were not all of the way off the road and things were chaotic we did not let the kids out of their seat belts as we waited for the accident scene to clear. The kids did great. We enjoyed several chapters of "Old Man Coyote" by Thornton W. Burgess. It was about 2 hours when we finally got moving again. After we were moving, and knowing that no one died, I got enough of a surge in curiosity to look at the crashed car as we drove by it. Would I surprise anyone if I told them it had Utah plates? Probably not anyone who had driven in Utah. The car was all the way on its top half a roll from being in the river. Given the prejudice which I just expressed I would guess the driver was probably going way too fast around the curve. With that said, ice being what it is, I would also easily believe that an inopportune tap of the brake from a reasonable speed could have also brought about the same result. Which, of course, was what was causing the white knuckles coming up the pass. On the way out it was pretty easy to guess who had, and who had not seen the accident in as much as there was about a 20 mile per hour difference in their speed. Cars leaving the accident scene were traveling at about 10 miles an hour while those headed toward it were doing closer to 30.
At the visitor's center in West Yellowstone we learned that the snow and ice road conditions extended all the way to Ashton. With the chains on that made Ashton about a 2 and half hour drive best case. After some discussion we agreed that with the chains on and going slow we didn't really have unacceptable risk and that it really wasn't a sure thing when the roads would clear anyway, it made the most sense to continue and get out before things got any worse. The rest of the drive went really well. The West Yellowstone-Ashton leg had larger shoulders and with the chains on we felt very secure. It was actually quite nice to travel slowly in as much as it prevented the annoying speed up, slow down driving requisite through Island Park as one goes through their many little communities. We passed another accident on the road that didn't look like anyone was hurt but served as reminder of the severity of the conditions. One of the thrills I find in mountain climbing and in this case that I was able to enjoy through mountain driving is observing the climate changes with the elevation changes. It was surreal to watch the snow thin and the road clear as we made the decent off the Island Park Caldera into Ashton. I often use memories of such things to get me through bad moods and discouraging times. In Ashton just as we were looking for a place to park and take the chains off the driver side chain popped off, indicating to me that my guardian angel must be off duty and attending to some other person in a more sticky situation than my current one.
This was a very difficult stretch to come up in the snow.
I love the view of snow on pine trees. I also deeply enjoy seeing a river with snow lined banks. The park in winter is gorgeous. The cold weather made it very easy to find hot spots. The steam freezing on surrounding vegetation made gorgeous crystal like structures. I felt very fortunate to be able have some time in the park this fall.
I think snow lined rivers are beautiful.
A truly marvelous trip to Yellowstone.
During our drive home both Lexie and I considered making our exit to the South happen immediately. We really do not want to go through another experience of winter driving with the trailer. By the time we were in Thornton we decided that we could indeed hang out a while longer to fill some immediate commitments and have a little more time to prepare. Now our current plan instead of leaving at the end of November is to leave at the end of October or early November.
Given the excitement of the week it isn't really surprising we didn't get the best behavior from the kids during Sacrament meeting. There really is something cute about a little kid being lead down a hall while they are covering their bum protesting "I was calming down, I was calming down!" After Natalyn got her spanking I took her outside because she was being very loud. I told her she could come back in when she was quite. After a while she told me, "Dad, I want to be warm, but that was a really hard spanking." She finally did quiet down and we went back in. I sometimes wonder if spankings help, but I do believe that if I promise one for a behavior I need to deliver.
So while on the subject of people needing spankings seems like a good transition into politics. Does anyone know anything about Ralph Nader? I read a bit about him last week after my rant. I liked a lot of his answers concerning the "recovery plan." I know I don't like his nuclear position and I am not quite sure about his union support. I am not convinced unions solve more problems than they create.
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