Bozeman to Kalispell

We headed up to Kalispell today, on the way to new tires, alignment, and a visit to Glacier National Park on the way to Canada.

On the way, we took a side trip into Butte (or "boot" as the nice lady on the Ford referral switchboard called it ;-), which is a neat old mining town. It reminded me a little of Santa Rosalia in Baja, but bigger; it was very historic, on the side of a hill, with lots of neat old brick buildings. And a HUGE copper mine, bigger than the town. Apparently, Butte is the place to be on St. Patrick's Day - lots of Irish in the town and the whole town goes nuts. Sounds like fun, if you're into that sort of thing. We just liked the view from the Butte Hill.

Other sights along the road:

A big smelter chimney - according to Josh it was once the tallest freestanding building in the country. All brick.

As we turned to follow the Blackfoot River from Missoula, we saw Bighorn Sheep - a herd of ewes right on road! Our first bighorns of the trip.

The road paralleled the river, and we saw a raft full of girl scouts waving - and giving the "honk your horn!" sign. We honked and made them very happy :)

Lots of tubers and flyfishers on the Blackfoot - nice river!

Devin saw a bear at Big Fork, our second for the trip (and Devin said maybe his best bear sighting). I missed it, so I can't confirm that he wasn't just making it up (kidding). He said it was standing up to see and when we came by it ran back into the woods. Good call, bear!

We passed Swan Lake (and several others along the road) full of lily pads - beautiful!

The Kalispell area is a nice combination of hayfields, rivers and lakes (like the HUGE Flathead Lake), forests and farms.

Once we got to town, we took a tour of Kalispell RV Parks - they all look pretty nice, but those long-term residents... the "neighbors" can make all the difference in your experience.

We went with a beautiful park right on the river with big trees and green grass, but apparently we chose poorly... we immediately were treated to a screaming foul-mouthed rant argument by guy who must be an announcer for Monster Truck Rallies or Wrestlemania - I could hear the veins bulging out on his neck... I was shaken and a little scared - worried about getting caught in crossfire! THEN... we were given an overflow spot on someone's yard with a regular (20amp) extension cord and a garden hose for water - ewww. At the regular price.

We went across street to another park that was mostly visitors, nice folks, had a spot with full hookups for same price! The first park was really nice, actually - the people that worked there were very friendly and they really tried to make it right, but the only other open spot was next to another motley looking group - cue banjo music - eek! Some spots at the first park were great, but taken. In good "neighborhoods" and on the river, very cool and shady, grassy - nice. Too bad about the redneck crack ho's and meth addicts that live there....

Today was a really long day of driving (over 300 miles) and we are getting new tires tomorrow, and alignment on Friday (...the 13th... dun dun DUN).

Speaking of tires,

"Tire-O-Drama," continued...

The 40 mph shudder, the one that disappeared after getting the new wheel, reappeared today. WTF? We also had a 60 and 70 mph shudder. Devin says they've always been there, but I wonder. Seems our alignment is getting worse by the minute. Hoping the alignment is the cure-all! maybe we've got major suspension problems - but we do have that Continued Service Plan from Good Sam that should help, if so!! We also bought oil and fluid for hydraulic levelers. Devin decided to change the oil himself, and we are having an oil drain quick connect shipped to arrive Friday also. AND, we are also getting an air compressor for our tires, and a new battery for my laptop. So Kalispell/Whitefish will be business days!

We do hope to get a trip through Glacier National Park in, too.

Mo Tires

OMG - our tires were almost bald!! the left front WAS half bald, and it wasn't when we started out yesterday morning!!! So in one day, we had an inordinate amount of wear. These tires have only about 5,000 miles on them!! Bad alignment can really mess with your tires when you weigh 9 tons. No wonder my feet hurt... ha.

We are going to check to be sure we don't have worn king pins or the like that would allow the tire to wobble, but we think maybe it was just cumulative - the tire was so unevenly worn that it pressed even more on the worn side - like driving with it on the side almost. We'll find out when we get our alignment in the morning.

WOW - what a difference!!! The alignment was WAY off and is now fixed, and with new tires, inflated properly, it's like gliding on ice it's so smooth!!! Well, in comparison anyway.

All's Well That Ends Well - no more tire drama! Hooray!!

Tire-O-Drama

We moved up to an RV Park in Bozeman, but ended up having to deal with motorhome stuff instead of visiting my brother-in-law like I had hoped we would do. The main thing I regret on our trip are the people we've missed - I wish we could do this forever so we could take the time to visit everyone! But since this is the only year we'll have to do this huge of a trip, we do feel a bit of pressure to get places like Alaska before winter so we'll have time to get to all the places we want to see.

Wheels, Tires, Aligment - Oh My!

Background:

First, we developed a shudder at 40 mph - this happened after we replaced our spare and flat (from Baja) in southern California. At first we thought maybe the wheels had been moved around, since we did a tire shuffle to make sure we had matched sets, and maybe the wheel that was out of true had been in the back where we didn't feel it. Now we are starting to suspect that it was the alignment we got in San Dimas. I think it was a really, really bad alignment.

But then again, the wheel ~was~ out of true and couldn't be balanced (we found this out in Grand Junction at the Big O Tire Store). Anyway... in Arizona (Dead Horse Ranch State Park), we noticed there was this black residue on the sides of the RV and we couldn't figure out what it could be... we now think it was tiny shreds of our tires being grated by the road and the really bad alignment... the tires looked fine then, on the outside, and they still do. We got all the left side tires balanced in Grand Junction and found out about the wheel.

Now:

We bought a new wheel in Bozeman, and got it put on - no more shudder! yay! But they pointed out that our front tires were really worn. Upon inspection, they were right - they are badly worn on the insides, indicating a very poor alignment. Maybe they couldn't align the tires properly because of the one being out of true, and maybe it was moved from rear to front, which is why we didn't have the problem before, so maybe it's not particularly anyone's fault, but the combination of these things has eaten up a pretty new (and really damn expensive) pair of 19 inch RV tires.

So now we need new tires and an alignment.

Devin called everywhere and no one seems to do alignments on RVs! Not the Ford Dealer, not the RV service center, not the tire store that replaced the wheel and pointed out our bad tires and need for alignment... Tire-o-Rama in Belgrade could do it, but not until Friday. We've already been here almost two weeks, and would really like to move on, before it gets too late to go to Alaska!

And not only this, but no one in Montana, apparently, sells (or has in stock) the Goodyear RV Tires we want!

Finally we found an alignment shop in Kalispell - still no appointments till Friday, but at least it is near Glacier and we can move on a little closer to Canada.

The reallly funny thing about the tires is Devin was searching on the RV.net forum and found a guy that was having the exact same problem about a month ago - he was in Missoula, and was looking for the exact same tires! He finally settled on Michelins and had them installed in Kalispell, so we may end up doing the same thing.

Night of the Living Dead Moth Attack!!

Last night we found out our screens don't work really well. There was a thunderstorm, and some rain - finally! A wonderful relief to the heat, and the smell of the sweet grass and hay in the rain was wonderful. Our RV Park is right on the Yellowstone River, and apparently, there was also a hatch last night.

We had our windows open for the breeze and our lights on inside the RV, and we suddenly noticed the screens weren't holding the thousands of small moths on the outside.... it was like a horror movie! the door screen was absolutely covered with moths and there was a small gap in the screen at the top where it was coming out of its frame. They were crawling through this gap, like orcs breaching the wall at Helm's Deep... AAAAAHHHH!

Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit - ha. But we did see several places in the screens that either were loose from the frame or where the screen frame didn't sit tight against the weatherstripping against the window, where they were getting in. This made us think we need to fix that before going to Alaska, and having mosquitoes, which would be FAR worse, pour in through the leaky screens! Worse because they are smaller and not as easy to notice, and of course, because of the whole biting and itching thing.

I ended up using the vacuum cleaner to get rid of the moths - some survived and could be seen fluttering around in the clear dust container, poor things. Vaczilla won out over Mothra's progeny - Tokyo (and the Moho) was saved!

Beartooth Highway

What better way to celebrate our country's birthday than to visit its first National Park? The National Park idea and system is something that makes me very proud of my country! Today, we went on a drive through the northwestern part of Yellowstone and out over the Beartooth Highway, the longest stretch of alpine highway in the lower 48 which Charles Kurault called "America's most beautiful highway," through Red Lodge, Montana, and back through Livingston to our Yellowstone River campsite. What a fantastic day!

We crossed the Blacktail Plateau in Yellowstone, and the Petrified Tree near Roosevelt, and on through the Lamar Valley. There, we saw a huge herd of Bison, which was crossing the road, grazing alongside the road, rolling in the dirt, and generally enjoying life in the Park. We also saw Pronghorn, a little too far away to photograph. Click here to watch a little video from our pocket camera of the Bison.

Coming through the Lamar Valley, we enjoyed spectacular scenery, a few geysers like Soda Butte, lovely brilliant green meadows, and rugged mountains. The road exits the park through Cooke City, Wyoming, and continues on through more gorgeous scenery to climb toward Beartooth Pass. Pilot and Index Peaks were a spectacular sight near Cooke City, which you could also see from up on Beartooth Pass.

Once we left Yellowstone, we began the official Beartooth Highway Scenic Byway, and the scenery kept getting even better as we climbed higher and higher. We stopped at Beartooth Lake, at the top of one grade, which was spectacular. The lake comes up so suddenly we almost crashed the car in our awestruck surprise! Okay, I exaggerate, but it was quite beautiful and too sudden to get a photo of that first view from the road. We pulled into the campground by the lake, which was nice, got some photos of the lake from the boat launch area, and we saw a moose in a meadow. The views were very nice as we climbed, but there was so much more! According to the Scenic Byway website, "The Beartooth area is one of the highest and most rugged areas in the lower 48 states, with 20 peaks reaching over 12,000 feet in elevation. Glaciers grace the north flank of nearly every towering mountain peak." This statement is no exaggeration!

We began to see snowfields and the vegetation changed to tundra. Wildflowers were filling the alpine meadows and flowers I've only seen when I've climbed high mountain peaks were lining the road! Sky Pilots are a beautiful purplish blue flower that are unusual for tundra species because they grow taller than the usual mats and "belly flowers," and I always get excited to see even one or two of these alpine beauties, so you can imagine my delight to see them as roadside bouquets. Beautiful little glacial tarns - small lakes - dotted the hillsides along the road. And we kept going up!! We kept thinking it must be the pass, but no, the road seemed to go over the top of the mountain instead of a pass. What looked like a natural pass had vertical cliffs going down the other side for thousands of feet - oh, okay, so that's why the road keeps going up! It's amazing a road was built here at all, and for those who can't hike up to the alpine life zone, this road offers a rare opportunity to enjoy life at these great heights. It really made us excited to get to the Arctic Tundra we hoped to visit on our trip, in Yukon/NWT and Alaska!

Finally we got to the pass - there are two summits to the pass, and we went to the west summit. There were dark clouds threatening an afternoon thundershower and some early fireworks, but we enjoyed the view for quite a while. We met some guys on motorcycles who were just as excited about the tundra as we were, and who knew about the Dempster and Dalton Highways (one was from Canada) and told us how much we'd love them, and that in August it will be autumn on the tundra and is just like New England with lovely fall colors, only a foot tall! We can't wait.

After the pass, the road descended a winding steep grade into a steep, avalanche prone canyon with a viewpoint looking back up toward the pass and down the canyon. There was a campground at the bottom that looked really nice for future reference.

The road then led out of the mountains through Red Lodge, which we hit at sunset - a great little town, home of Crazy Creek Chairs (we like ours!), with flags lining the charming main street. We cut over to the main highway through fields of wheat and hay in the rolling hills, and headed home. This was the part of the road where the bugs were so bad that we ran out of window washing fluid - we were running it constantly just to be able to see. We had to pull over at a rest stop and use Windex, which we happened to have in the car. A family in a minivan saw me doing that and asked if they could use some - it was bad out there! A few minutes later, it didn't even matter. We bought a gallon of windshield fluid when we got into Livingston before continuing back to the RV Park. Happy Independence Day bugs! Be free of our windshield!

Along the highway, we saw lots more fireworks - it seemed every little ranch and small hamlet along the way had huge fireworks going off!! What a fourth of July!! Enjoy the slideshow of the day below:

Livingston, Montana

We arrived at the "Yellowstone's Edge" RV Park on the banks of the Yellowstone River north of Yellowstone National Park, just south of Livingston, Montana in the Paradise Valley today. It's a nice RV Park, though we like to call it "Highway's Edge" since it is as close to the highway as to the river, and the highway makes more noise. We ~could~ potentially, put kayaks or rafts in the water here and float to Livingston to visit Josh and Nikki, but we just drove the Jeep in, successfully dodging leaping deer and unsuccessfully dodging the prodigious hatches of stoneflies and other bugs - no wonder there are so many flyfishermen in the river! Leaping Trout, Batman! But I digress... the bugs were so thick on the highways at times that we had to refill our washer fluid, since we had to continually use the window washers to be able to see at times! At least they weren't mosquitoes or deerflies.

Josh, of course, gave us the Grand Tour of Livingston - he is so proud of his little town and loves to show it off in all its western classic glory. It IS a great place, with just enough culture to be really interesting, but not enough to make it snooty. It's a real place, a railroad town with the railroad still the centerpiece. But also with some great restaurants, cafes, shops, and theatre, downtown right alongside the Montana classics like The Stockman and Bob's Outdoor sporting goods. The light was especially good because of a fire in Yellowstone making the sky a little smoky, and giving everything a beautiful glow in the late afternoon light. Lest everyone think of moving there after seeing the pictures and hearing about the town, it does get cold there in the winter!

After we were settled in, we went on a drive in the Jeep - Josh took us up to the Bridger Mountains over Flathead Pass, and we explored almost every side dirt road that led up the mountains on either side of the road. Josh was funny, getting all excited every time we saw another road that looked promising! We found a few really nice little side roads that led up to meadows or views, and some "interesting" dead ends where we all got out to help Devin get the Jeep turned around safely. At one place, an open mountainside meadow with a view of the surrounding countryside, Josh tried to fly a kite, "tried" being the operative word there - ha. There were so many deer flies or meat bees Devin and I stayed in the Jeep to watch, laughing hysterically at ourselves sitting inside watching Josh and his pitiful little plastic kite fight the bugs between small gusts of light breeze - ha. The bugs weren't as bad at all on the other side of the pass, where we found a great road that led up to a fantastic view in the other direction and had a tailgate picnic lunch. Then we went across a little creek where we had to stop and wait for a deer who was getting a drink. Devin and Josh had a laugh coming back on that trail, as they went up the steep side of the trail that I wouldn't "let" them go down - ha. Lots of beautiful scenery and a little Jeep adventure and of course good company - it was a fun day!

Click here for more photos of Flathead Pass

The next day, Devin wasn't feeling well on the day of the parade for the annual Livingston roundup - Josh had told us how great the parade was, and how everyone in the town is either IN the parade or watching it. Sadly, we didn't make it this year, so we'll have to come back again someday.

We did, however, make it to see the Livingston Roundup Rodeo! Devin had never been to a rodeo before!! The rodeo has been a 4th of July tradition in Livingston for something like 75 years. Nothing like going to a big rodeo in a small Montana town to celebrate the 4th! It was one of those all American experiences that take you back to younger days and simpler times. We got tickets for July 3rd, or rather, Josh got us tickets, which was great. The clown was also really funny and sort of like the emcee for the rodeo. For a small town, Livingston puts on a pretty great rodeo, but even more than the calf roping, trick riding, barrel racing, bronc and bull riding, their fireworks display eclipses every other fireworks show either of us has EVER seen! The Pasadena Rose Bowl bills its display as the largest in Southern California, but the one in Livingston was MUCH bigger and better. It just kept going on and on and on... spectacular! We enjoyed it quite a bit! Since it was dusk and we were sitting behind a fence, our photos didn't turn out all that great, but you can still get the feel for the excitement - we were so close that we had to watch out for dirt clods getting thrown from hooves of bucking broncs and kicking bulls! Click play on the slideshow below to see more bronc bustin' action:

Yellowstone

We drove from Jackson Hole to Madison Campground in Yellowstone, where we got a last minute cancellation so we could stay in this central location in the park tonight. Then we explored the southern loop of Yellowstone's scenic "figure eight" roads. Highlights included the new Canyon Visitor Education Center, where we learned that the waterfall we passed on the way in marks the edge of the caldera, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Yellowstone Falls, the Hayden Valley - Where the Buffalo Roam, and apparently wolves - though we couldn't see any, Yellowstone Lake and the West Thumb Geyser Basin, all topped off by a dinner in the Old Faithful Inn and watching Old Faithful erupt by moonlight. Some photos in the slide show below:

More Jeep Adventures - of a different variety

Back in Ouray, Devin threw his keys on the dash at a restaurant, and when he retrieved them, there were less keys... it was then that we noticed the black hole that exists between the windshield and the dash in our Jeep! Looking with flashlights, we spotted the rest of the keys wedged between some wires behind the speedometer panel. We used a coat hanger and tried to fish them out, but only succeeded in pushing them down further to where we could neither see nor access them from any point above or below the dash.

We thought maybe some good bumpy four wheel drive adventures would jiggle them loose and they would fall onto the floor, but no such luck. Devin consulted the Jeep forum and got all sorts of commiseration and advice, ranging from "bummer" to tales of items they'd lost, and advice from take it apart, take off the dash, take down the windshield, and my personal favorite, "take it to the dealer and tell them there is a rattle and let them take it apart, and when they find the keys, say "what do you know?! Those are my wife's keys - she didn't mention she'd lost them!"" ha.

Well, after having tried most other things, such as taking off various panels, center console, stereo, etc, Devin finally decided to take the windshield down today. About 4pm we heard thunder, and Devin radioed asking if we had a tarp. Ha. The Jeep was completely taken apart - the windshield laying down on the hood, the hard top off and resting on the tailgate, the dash torn apart, front roll bars hanging akimbo. Devin thought that people driving through the campground would think we had stolen it and were stripping it for parts. A couple of people did stop - the usual, "how do you like your new Jeep?" questions ("fine, except for the key-eating dash hole!")

And guess what? Still no keys. We both tried a while and different techniques to at least see the missing keys, but no such luck. More poking about with the coat hanger, but not even a jingle. Wherever they are, they are well-wedged and I doubt we'll ever find them at this point. With both of us working, we got the Jeep put back together in about an hour. So now Devin has taken the windshield down and he'll never do it again! Why anyone would want to drive, even off-road with the doors and top off, without a windshield, is beyond me. Especially when taking the windshield down removes the front seat roll cage protection! That feature seems like a relic of the Jeep's days in the army, when you could mount a machine gun on the hood and shoot while driving through enemy territory. Not really needed so much any more. Though it all would have been worth it if we had retrieved the keys. Sigh.

Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole

We dallied about and left Lander quite late - waffling a bit on whether to stay or go. It would have been an easy choice to stay if we weren't running out of time before we have reservations near Livingston, and we had both Grand Teton and Yellowstone to see in the next 5 days. So we finally left around noon, and drove up through the Indian Reservation, which is quite beautiful, and along the Wind River. The Wind River is well-named! Devin was fighting the wind all day, which makes the motorhome act like a giant sail. We drove through Dubois, "Valley of the Warm Winds," which is cute in a tacky tourism sort of way, over the Continental Divide again - this time a 9,658 foot pass through mountains, and down into the Jackson Hole area.

The Jackson Hole valley is incredible - reminiscent of the Eastern Sierra, with a broad flat valley with the Snake River winding through it and the Tetons jutting up suddenly to the west. We saw 3 different herds of bison on the way in, and some pronghorn. We arrived at the Gros Ventre (pronounced "grow-vahnt") Campground, near Kelly and the Teton Science School (where I took a winter ecology course a few years ago - the place looks quite different covered in snow at 15 below zero!). The Campground is very pleasant and quiet - we chose a site in a "no generators" loop with a view of the Tetons over a ridge, surrounded by Cottonwoods and Willows and Sagebrush. It is very quiet - birds are singing, and we may see bears and moose while we are here! Tonight we are going into Jackson for dinner. I better get dressed...

We found a nice little Thai restaurant off of the main street, and it was quite delicious.

The next day, I (Maggie) stayed home in bed and rested all day as I had an eye infection that caused my eyelid to swell up. I thought it might just be a clogged duct, or allergies, so I took Benadryl and soaked it in hot compresses. Devin went out exploring, went back into Jackson, went grocery shopping, shipped off a faulty charge controller for our solar panels (we are boondocking on only half of them now, but it is enough). He drove up Gros Ventre road to the slide - a very large landslide that probably dammed the river when it occured. There is a guest ranch up there that looks awfully nice, and the river looks like a perfect fly fishing river.

The day after we arrived, I finally decided I needed to see a doctor about my eye - it wasn't getting better so was probably an infection. I went to the emergency room - another nice small resort town hospital experience with a cowboy doctor. Got antibiotics and eyedrops, and we had lunch at a great little tacqueria (Pica's). Afterwards, we drove up into the National Park, saw more bison, a couple more pronghorn, a black bear, a moose and an elk. The Black bear was a radio collared yearling that was browsing in the bushes off the main road, resulting in a bear jam. Bunches of tourists with cars blocking the road, out of their cars, practically chasing the bear to get photos and movies. I can't blame them for wanting to see a bear, but it just made me sad. The young bear was obviously already in trouble, wasn't running from people like a "good bear" and all those folks helping it to stay habituated were practically signing its death warrant.

Bears are wonderful creatures - objects of both our fascination and our fear, each of which emotions feeds the other. They are near mythical symbols of the wild, and yet we destroy that wildness in trying to get close to it. Paradoxically cuddly stuffed toys and slavering monsters, depending on the light and distance they are viewed from, bears probably feed our imaginings and longings of wilderness more than any other animal. Long may they roam the wild places of the world, unmolested. Maybe people will learn, someday, that they are merely wild animals, struggling to survive, following instinct and learning, fellow travelers on the planet - neither wild pets nor monsters - unless we make them so.

We drove down a "scenic drive" along Jenny Lake - ha. The main road is MUCH more scenic! You can see all of the Tetons and Jackson Hole from the main roads through the valley, but this "scenic" drive was down in a swale, surrounded by trees and you couldn't even see the mountains! It did go by an overlook of Jenny Lake that was nice, but that's the only scenic part. They should re-name it from "scenic drive" to "road to scenic viewpoint" or something. We thought it was rather funny.

We checked out Coulter Bay Campground off Jackson Lake - it is the other large campground in the Tetons that generally has camping available. The Gros Ventre campground is MUCH nicer! We made the right choice staying here. The sites in Coulter Bay are almost all pull-throughs right on the campground road, and very close to each other. It is in the pines, and each loop looked like a parking lot for RV's with both sides lined with motorhomes and trailers. They had a "no generators" section, but it wouldn't accomodate RV's longer than 27 feet, according to the sign, so we would have been stuck with the big monster RV's running their diesel generators all day - ick. We are camped in a "no generators" loop in the Gros Ventre campground that is open to anyone, as long as they don't run a generator. We really love having our solar panels and not ever needing to run our generator - they are noisy, stinky and obnoxious. Also, the campsites here are very spread out, and it is so large it never fills up, so the spots closest to us have never had anyone in them. As a result, it is very quiet here and we've been enjoying the wind in the Cottonwoods and the birds singing. Robins, Flickers, Bluebirds, Peewees, sparrows, finches and more. It's very peaceful.

The moose we saw was in an oxbow of the Snake River, pretty far from the road, but very picturesque. We'll see lots more in Canada and Alaska no doubt. And the single elk we saw was along the highway coming home, a doe grazing on a bluff overlooking the Snake River. So now we've seen quite the variety of wildlife here in Jackson Hole - tons of Bison, several Pronghorn, Trumpeter Swans and a Sandhill Crane and Canada Geese on the Elk Refuge, and the singles: bear, moose and elk.

While we were up at Coulter Bay, we stopped at the store to get a few things and Devin found the book he had read years ago while staying at a friend's cabin in Kelly's Camp in Glacier National Park. His friend gave him "Night of the Grizzlies" to read, about two separate Grizzly Bear maulings and killings that happened on the same night in Glacier in 1967. Some friend, huh? Ha. Devin said he was already nervous about bears, and then he couldn't put that book down, and it all happened right near where he was sleeping outside - I bet he didn't sleep at all! I figured I should read it, too, since he has talked about it and we are heading up into Grizzly country (there are Grizzlies here, too - some areas were closed due to bear danger). So we bought it, and like Devin, I wasn't able to put it down until I had read the whole thing. It read like a Jon Krakauer book - giving lots of background details, and painting the larger picture of the setting of the park itself, the bears, and the park service mission, as well as observations of folks with cabins in Kelly's Camp, with folks new to the park like the manager of Granite Chalet (who fed the bears nightly), and other campers. It is so easy to see how the NPS was complacent about the danger of bears - no one had ever been killed by a Grizzly in the park up to that time, and there were lots of people-bear interactions. It was at the end of the open dump era, but some places still had no other options and the bears ate their garbage nightly. It was a tragic tale, not just for the two young women, both park concession employees, who were killed, but for the bears themselves. In the end, I ended up crying for the loss of wildness that dead Grizzlies represent as much as for the tragic loss of lives, and the horrible guilt and second guessing that plagued the survivors and would-be rescuers. I am glad there are still Grizzlies in a few places in the lower 48 - a few places wild enough to still contain them.

My friend Shelton Johnson, a Yosemite Ranger, has used Faust as a metaphor for Grizzlies - replacing hell with wilderness and the devil with the bears - "Where I am, there is wilderness, and where there is wilderness, there I am." In an equally spiritual metaphor, Aldo Leopold, famous naturalist and author of A Sand County Almanac, stated, "There seems to be a tacit assumption that if grizzlies survive in Canada and Alaska, that is good enough. It is not good enough for me. Relegating grizzlies to Alaska is about like relegating happiness to heaven; one may never get there." Heaven or hell, wilderness is a necessity to our spirit. Wallace Stegner said,

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of wild species into zoos or extinction; if we pollute the last clean air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will [we] be free from noise, the exhuasts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. for it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."

And back to Aldo Leopold, who said, "The richest values of the wilderness lie not in the days of Daniel Boone, nor even in the present, but rather in the future."

What will we do to keep the remaining bits wild? Is it possible? I hope so.

Lander and Shoshone National Forest

As we approached Lander, we first saw the "Sleeping Bear Ranch" RV Park, with a relocated ghost town, in the countryside about 8 miles south of Lander. It looked nice, but we decided we'd try the one in Lander first, and missed it on our first pass, so we ended up doing a little tour. Lander is a neat little town! I think the very large presence of the NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) headquarters has injected the town with some youthful culture. A restaurant called Cowfish was packed, and there were neat looking coffee shops and bookstores. We turned around and went into the Sleeping Bear RV Park.

We chose the Sleeping Bear because Devin is active on a forum for our new 2007 JK model Jeep (JK-forum.com), and the owner of this park, who goes by "Papa Bear" on the forum, is a Jeep nut, er, afficionado ;-p, and one of the moderators as well. When Devin posted that we were traveling through the west with our Jeep and asked for suggestions on where to go, he had invited us to stay at his RV Park and said he would take us out and show us some trails near Lander. We didn't really know what to expect, but we were immediately welcomed as long-lost friends and part of the Sleeping Bear Family. Dave (Papa Bear's real name) has a new 2007 JK Wrangler Rubicon, and has already done quite a few "mods" on it (Jeeper word for modifications). It has huge 35 inch wheels with bead locks (extra bolts that lock the bead of the tire down so that when you air it down for rock crawling, the tire won't flex so much it pops off the rim). He had it re-geared to go with the larger wheels. It had a lift kit which made it even higher, he had a swing-away spare tire holder on the aftermarket rear bumper, and he was waiting for his new front bumper. He had all four doors off, and I have to admit, it looked pretty sweet. Devin had Jeep Envy. Ours looks a little wimpy next to it. But Devin (and I) would have trouble getting into and out of one lifted so high, and we probably won't need all the extra features on that one. It's a Jeep that could do just about anything, though.

The RV Park is nice - up on a hill overlooking Lander with trees and an irrigation ditch of water running behind it. It is convenient for both town and back road explorations of the beautiful areas around Lander, which include the Wind River Range, many lakes and rivers, Red Canyon Wildlife Refuge, The Sinks, and more. The best part, though, were Dave and Chris, the owners, who are genuinely warm and friendly folks, and love sharing their considerable knowledge of the area with others.

Dave was excited to meet us in person, and immediately treated us like old buddies. He was going to take a couple, Scott and Marcy from Michigan, up to a trailhead for a backbacking trip the next day, and invited us to tag along, and we could do some exploring on the way back in our Jeeps.

We had a great day driving around up in the mountains, saw the backpackers off at the trailhead up in the Shoshone National Forest, and came back past numerous streams, lakes, meadows and great campsites, through Red Canyon, which is quite beautiful and is now an Elk refuge owned by the Nature Conservancy. Below is a slideshow of our day:

Dave apparently knows everyone in Wyoming! He's the kind of guy that's so friendly and nice, he'd probably literally give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He also obviously really cares about this place - he has an attitude of stewardship about these back road areas and will stop to pick up trash or let people know if they are not behaving properly (driving too fast, for example). As we drove along following him, he would stop and talk to several of the people we passed, and we got out and met the local off-road ranger, who was an old friend of his. It was surprising to us how heavily used this area was - there aren't that many towns nearby, yet the Shoshone National Forest/Bridger-Teton National Forest area of the Wind Rivers was being enjoyed by scores of campers, anglers, ATVers, hikers, backpackers, boaters and just sight-seers like us. It had more recreational use than the Sierra National Forest, where I used to live and work, and that is near several major cities and has many beautiful, accessible places to camp, hike, fish, and explore as well.

After a fun day out exploring, we came back to the RV Park and their evening barbecue and campfire, and hung around and swapped stories and enjoyed the beautiful sunset until quite late. Dave and Chris are creating a neat community of campers at their park, getting folks out of their RVs and around the campfire, which makes it more like camping used to be. We would definitely recommend a stay at their park if you are going through Lander!

See more photos of our Lander explorations - click here