A Counter-Clockwise Loop

When last seen we were heading east from Dubois, Wyoming for a brief second visit to Casper before heading north again.  This time we took the opportunity to pull off the road to admire Crowheart Butte and read the details of how it came to be called such.  Like Devil’s Tower, Crowheart just pops up out of a rather flat and undistinguished landscape and like Devil’s Tower it is considered a spiritual place by Native Americas.  We were fortunate that the smoke from the Wind River fire had abated somewhat and our view of the butte was better than expected.

As we drove on I-90 through Buffalo (Wyoming) I could not resist the impulse to call our friend Roger in Buffalo (New York) to tell him we were passing through Buffalo on I-90.  Had him going there for a minute but I couldn’t keep up the pretense – I could hear him mentally clearing his datebook for our surprise visit.  It did give us an opportunity for a nice phone visit which happens all too infrequently these days.

Our next stopping spot was in Sheridan, Wyoming where we once again stayed at Peter D’s RV Park.  Mrs. D has a wonderful little garden smack in the middle of the campground and is gracious in sharing the bounty with their guests.  We had some yummy lemon cucumbers, which we’d not encountered before. 

In the past we’d done a thorough job of exploring Sheridan and so one day we ran back to Buffalo to meet Russ and Rochelle who are spending the summer in Gillette.  First we toured the Jim Gatchell Memorial Museum and then had a late lunch at the historical old Occidental Hotel’s saloon.  The room is “decorated” by a number of dead animal heads and I find it an appetite killer to be stared at by a long-dead elk.  After lunch we all took a stroll down the main street with its plethora of funky shops, poking our noses in when something caught our eyes.

We then went our separate ways until we reunite back in Geezer Gulch in the fall.

The next stop on our itinerary was Billings, Montana where we intended to get two new tires for the coach and new shoes all around for the car and to visit as much as possible with one of my college roomies, Gayle.  For some reason it seemed easier to visit her in Billings during the summer than to traipse across Phoenix to see her during the winter months. 

We also found the time to avail ourselves of the many antique and thrift shops around town.  The week just flew by and we soon found ourselves pulling up stakes during a massive but much-needed downpour.  Driving the Interstate in a drenching rain is no fun at all, speeding semis creating mini-hurricanes as they whiz by so we were very happy to drive out of the storm by the time we reached Laurel.  And there were blue skies and lovely scenery all the way to Helena where it began to cloud up again.

During our visit to the capital city, we were able to reconnect with Mike and Darlene, long-time RVing pals, for lunch and a nice chat before going our separate ways yet again.  Darlene has done a lovely job of decorating their new home with its view of the mountains and we wish them much happiness in their wheel-less abode.

Helena has closed off an area of the historic downtown to vehicular traffic and made it into a pleasant place to stroll, poking into one interesting shop after another.  Many were closed on the day of our visit, it being a Sunday, but at least that kept the budget in balance and gave us an opportunity to admire the many architectural surprises that the old town has to offer.  Today’s Last Chance Gulch does not offer many hints to its heyday as a gold mining town of the wild West.

Our next stop was Deer Lodge which we had toured in depth on a past visit so we made the longish drive to Butte for a day spent trying to imagine its past glories  when it was known as the Richest Hill on Earth.  Now it’s a city of crumbling sidewalks and boarded up buildings, not to mention the noxious hole in the ground known as the Berkley Pit.  Our first stop was the William A. Clark mansion, the first and most modest of the copper king’s palatial homes.  Currently operated as a bed and breakfast, the mansion is open for tours at a fairly spendy admission fee. 

Set halfway up a hill on a corner lot, the mansion offers a glimpse into the life of a mogul able to afford some of the finer things money could buy.  How’d you like to be the cook who had to prepare meals in this early version of a pressure cooker?  It’s scary looking, isn’t it?  Even with all the safety features available on the latest models, I find these kitchen time-savers very intimidating.

And how’s this for an improvement over bathing in a fast-moving stream?  The water comes out from top to bottom so the bather can imagine being bathed in a gentle waterfall.  But was it warm water or icy cold from the well?

 

 

Butte is obviously a cash-strapped city and many of the historic buildings have been neglected.  A splurge has made a recent restoration of the stained glass dome of the Silver Bow County Courthouse with its soft pastel colors – a lovely sight.

 

 

Continuing westward on I-90, we found ourselves back at Jim & Mary’s RV Park just west of Missoula.  It’s always such fun to stop here thanks to masses of flowers planted here, there and everywhere in the camp-ground.  And, on previous visits, we’ve always met up with one set of RVing pals or another, sharing potlucks or overdosing on all things huckleberry.  This time we made the acquaintance of an interesting couple from the Tucson area with whom we shared several happy hours and the chance to re-cap our day’s adventures.

We had two purposes in visiting Missoula – a tour of the Marcus Daly Mansion near Hamilton and a visit with one of my college roommates, Kathy, and her husband Fred.  For the drive south to Hamilton, the mountains were veiled in a smoky haze due to fires near Yellowstone and along the Idaho border but it is still one of my favorite areas of the country.

 

Our GPS, which has been giving me fits this entire trip, took us right past the turn to the Daly Mansion and into town after which she threw in the towel and refused any further information.  Fortunately I’d glimpsed a sign that was more promising than what Nuvi had to offer and we eventually made our way to the Daly Mansion in time for the noon tour.

And what a tour it was!  We were the only two on the tour and were lucky enough to draw an exceptional guide who made the history of the house come alive.  I have only vague recollections of the house, having driven past it several times back in the early ‘60s.  It has such good bones that I had no idea that it was actually boarded up and abandoned back in those days – and remained so for many years.  I only pictured it as a place where the super-rich led idealized lives.

The Daly family tree had a lot of dead branches and so when the remote heirs found themselves in possession of this white elephant, they had a yard sale of the furniture and artwork in an attempt to raise the money to pay the death taxes.  That left the house boarded up and denuded.  Since restoration has begun, many of the original pieces have “come home”, either donated or loaned by the families of those who acquired them at the yard sale.  Bravo to those generous folks—originals of furniture and art are so much more interesting than those “of the period”.  I couldn’t resist including this photo of the dining table set for an elegant breakfast party. 

Another not-to-miss aspect of being in Missoula is to attend the Saturday farmers’ market.  Actually, there are three and on the weekend of our visit throw in a music festival at Caras Park and you can just forget about finding a place to park.  We were so lucky to find a spot within reasonable walking distance of the first farm market under the Higgins Avenue bridge.  The array of fruits and veggies rival those at the various Oregon markets.  No arts or crafts at this market – just edibles including home-made pastries, canned goods, bread.  The crafty items are at an outdoor market on closed-off side streets along Higgins and the grand finale is the farmers market at the old Northern Pacific depot at the north end of Higgins.

We made a stop at the Monte Dolack Studio to purchase a print of “Montana” to replace the one destroyed in the flood last Labor Day.  The copper frame was salvaged but the matting and print were ruined by mold. 

We availed ourselves of two huge heirloom tomatoes and a big bunch of rainbow swiss chard before heading back to the campground for a quick refresh before meeting Fred and Kathy for lunch.  Thank heavens the restaurant wasn’t very busy by the time we finished our lunch so they didn’t make any attempt to throw us out; we occupied the booth for three hours while we caught up on each other’s lives.

It had been a notion to head south on U.S. 93 to the Idaho border, cut across to I-15 and stop for a few days in Dillon.  However, the smokiness of the area grew worse and it seemed prudent to take the Interstate since photo ops along the scenic route promised to be less than perfect.  We made quick stops in Dillon, Pocatello and Brigham City, having visited all three places on previous tours.

Again this year Labor Day proved to be an un-holiday for us.  Last year we had a call from The Posse telling us our house had flooded and this year we got rear-ended while stopped for a light in Logan, Utah.  Thankfully no one was injured and the car is driveable but the trunk is now seriously pleated and will have to repaired as soon as we get back to Geezer Gulch.  Just another snafu we don’t have time to deal with.

We have only a few more stops to make and we’ll soon be back to our winter routine.  There may be updates as we wend our way out of Utah, through Nevada and back into Arizona. 

Heading Toward Cooler Weather

We’ve been to Santa Fe several times and felt no need to explore the city itself, so the only major day trip on the agenda was a visit to Los Alamos.  It’s a fairly substantial drive from our campground and all that sitting had caused me severe back and leg pain so I was not exactly in a good frame of mind to enjoy the glories of Los Alamos.  It’s a very pretty drive up up up into the mountains where the city sits perched on a flat-topped mesa. 

Once arrived, we found there was not much to see or do.  The Historical Society Museum was in transition, housed in two rooms with a bare-bones display and short film while a new facility is being constructed down the street.  The Bradbury Science Museum tells a more complete story of atomic energy and the work done at Los Alamos but it’s a fairly sterile museum, relying more on story boards and photos than on actual artifacts.  After trudging through museum after museum over the years, we have come to appreciate the enthusiastic docent who can bring to life what we are seeing.  Bradbury did not offer such a docent, just some fairly brusque people pointing visitors in the right direction.

And what goes up up up must come down down down.  The homeward trip did not require much fuel but the brake pads got a good workout.

Our departure from Santa Fe was questionable thanks to a high-speed chase that ended in a police stand-off near Glorieta Pass.  The highway was closed the evening before our departure and only reopened an hour or so before we headed out.  As we drove past the Glorieta exit, there was still a large police presence gathered around the SUV in which the suspect had made his escape.

We made a brief two-day stop in Raton and then went up and over the pass to Monument, Colorado where we were crammed face-first into a site meant for a much smaller rig.  The campground, which is on a hillside and heavily wooded, is a challenge to enter and leave and on this visit was crawling with small children and barking dogs.  It’s nice to know we don’t have to go there ever again.  But the housing situation did not keep us from enjoying the area thoroughly.  We visited Colorado Springs and Florence to troll the antique shops and made several nice finds.  On another day we raced south to Pueblo to meet Marcia for a fine lunch of Sloppers at Gray’s Coors Tavern.  It remains to be seen if I can duplicate that little taste treat in my own kitchen; the last attempt didn’t quite get there, perhaps because of the raisins in the green chili.

Due to a conflict with Frontier Days, we weren’t able to get a site in Cheyenne so we pushed northward to Wheatland, Wyoming for a few nights.  As the owner of the campground said, it wasn’t the middle of nowhere but if you stood on a five gallon bucket you could see it from there.  He was not kidding.  We were surrounded by wheatfields as far as the eye could see.  Thank heavens the campground offered a strong wifi signal so we had something to distract us ‘cause the t.v. sure wasn’t any help.

And because our original plans had been to stop in Cheyenne, we had an extra day to kill in Casper.  We had to check in to one campground for an over-night and move again the next day, not something we usually do.  But the second campground promised cable t.v. and wifi and by that time we were suffering from current news deprivation.  As it turned out, neither was terribly functional.  One of our biggest pet peeves is a campground that charges “resort” prices for various amenities and then doesn’t deliver.  Cable reception was fuzzy and the wifi erratic. 

In earlier stops, we’d pretty much “done” Casper so we confined our touring to a meager number of thrift and antique shops, stocked the larder and headed west to Dubois for a much-anticipated tour of Grand Teton National Park and Jackson Hole.

Our campground in Dubois is delightful with an enormous treed site and a view of the Wind River.  Within moments of arrival I spotted a deer tip-toeing across the river and into the bushes.  A flock of Canadian geese shows up frequently along the shoreline, guarded by an overly vigilant gander.  The cable t.v. situation is pretty good but the wifi comes and goes at will.  A short distance away one begins to see the fantastic color striations of the Painted Cliffs, always with the fast-moving Wind River at their base.

Unfortunately, for a week before our arrival a fire has been burning in a heavily forested area perhaps 15-20 miles away and a great pall of smoke lies over everything.  Known as the Lava Mountain fire, it had burned 12,000 acres already and threatened some populated areas.  People were evacuated and the small town of Dubois was bursting at the seams with firefighters.  They come from all over and are being kept particularly busy this summer.

On our first full day in Dubois we visited the Bighorn Sheep Center and the Historical Museum plus the usual stops at libraries and thrift shops.  It seemed like a good idea to head away from the forest fire so we took a day to make a giant loop to Lander and Riverton before returning to Dubois.  It’s a long trip but the roads are good and traffic is light…very light.  Seeing another vehicle became cause for celebration.

Lander is home to the Fremont County Museum, a large new building with nicely displayed artifacts.  Everything was in fine condition, clean and labeled.  One of the first things we spotted was this fabulously beaded deerskin, intricately worked with size 11 seed beads.  As a beader of only modest skills, I can scarcely imagine the hours of painstaking work it took to complete this project. 

 

Except for an uncommunicative person at the front desk, the place was devoid of humans who might be able to add to what we were seeing.  We were the only people wandering around although two other couples arrived just as we were leaving.  The museum struck us a fine resource being totally under-used.  On the same grounds are numerous small beautifully restored buildings, early examples of Fremont County structures…but they were all locked.

There was slightly more traffic on the highway between Lander and Riverton, but not much.  Plans had been to visit another branch of the Fremont Museum but we got snagged up at the Jake Korell Wyoming Wildlife Exhibit on our way into town and just ran out of time.  What the Lander museum lacked in interesting docents, this little museum more than made up for.  Riverton is known as the Rendezvous City, where mountain men came to trade, and Jake Korell was a latter-day mountain man who kept the tradition going with re-enactments.  The front part of the museum is crammed with dead animals, most killed by ol’ Jake.  The docent told us perhaps a little more than we’d care to know about taxidermy but it was so nice to share his enthusiasm for what we were seeing.

To the rear of the building was a Wax Museum that was moved to Riverton from Cody.  The buidling was not air conditioned and it was a surprize that most of the manniquins weren’t just puddles of molten wax on the floor.  Maybe that’s how “Broken Hand” Fitzpatrick lost his fingers. 

 

Some of Wyoming’s most famous and infamous characters were on display and it was here that we had a reunion with our old friend, Big Nose George Parrott.  Here he is being operated on by Doctor (soon to be Governor)  John Osborne but, as the docent pointed out, George’s manniquin was damaged on the trip down from Cody and Richard Nixon’s likeness was used instead. 

 

The reason for being in Dubois in the first place was to visit Grand Teton National Park so, fire or no fire, we took off for the longish drive to the Park.  Like Glacier NP, Grand Teton is not meant to be seen from the road and most of her glories are accessible only to those to can hike, bike or ride in on horseback.  Being ‘way too old for any of that, we had to content ourselves with what could be seen from the car, which was severely compromised by the poor air quality from the Lava Mountain Fire.  We could barely make out the glaciers on Mt. Moran and there were no mountains reflected on the calm surfaces of Jackson and Jenny Lakes.  As we progressed south in the park, the air did clear a bit and the crags of the Tetons were in better focus.  Smoke or no smoke, the park was crowded with tourists and traffic was quite heavy.  We did not see any wildlife, which was a major disappointment.

On the way home we were detained by a flagger allowing only one-way traffic as the road was being chip-sealed.  The stop was at the eastern most edge of the Lava Mountain Fire and we could see wisps of smoke still drifting upwards.  Charred trees were in evidence, some quite close to homes and  businesses.  This is dude ranch country and the fire is certain to have harmed the local economy in ways too soon to tell.

On The Road….Again

It was approaching time to begin planning a road trip to escape Phoenix’ blazing summer heat but the heat arrived sooner than expected and not much in the way of planning had been done.  There was a vague idea of heading toward Oregon to spend time on the coast with faux family Ruthee and Gail but then Ruthee got scheduled for foot surgery and would be recuperating right smack in the middle of the best time to be on the Oregon coast.  That’s a long way to go to not be able to do what you wanted to do so we modified plans to include a giant circle which would take us to Grand Teton and then back to some of our favorite haunts along the way.

An arbitrary date was selected for departure.  The weather forecast was for temperatures to be slightly over 115^o F at the time we’d be loading up the coach and we just couldn’t face the prospect so we postponed departure by a week.  Temperatures never did moderate much but we had to bite the bullet and start the chore.  There was even less rhyme or reason to our packing process this time and, as we’ve since learned, many useful items were left behind. 

Our first stop, as has become habit, was to be Camp Verde.  Shortly after passing through Black Canyon City, not an hour from home, Howie noticed a plume of smoke ahead of us and it wasn’t long before traffic on I-17 slowed to a crawl and then stopped completely.  We could see planes and choppers dropping water and fire retardant not far off in the distance.  There we sat in 107^o heat, bumper to bumper, for three hours.  We were more fortunate than most, being able to run the generator to keep the a/c and refrigerator operational, with convenient access to cold water and a bathroom of our very own.  The CB radio kept us informed as to progress or lack thereof of the fire crews ahead of us.  The southbound lane reopened in pretty short order but we northbound folks seemed to be stuck in place.  There are stretches along I-17 where exits are few and far between and even where there are exits, there’s nowhere to go once you get off – just some dirt roads wandering off into the desert, no services, no nothing.  By late afternoon we had inched our way to one such exit and there was nothing to do but to exit and get back on southbound and find a campground for the night.

And so we did, arriving in Anthem in time to cook supper, watch a little (very little) t.v. and hit the hay for an early start the next day if the highway had been reopened northbound.  And it was.  As we drove past the exit we had used, we could see that the fire had burned right up to the edge of the highway and traffic was confined to one lane as work crews replaced the guard rail posts which had burned in the fire.  But the fire was out, no homes were lost and many travelers were inconvenienced but not harmed.

Camp Verde was at least ten degrees cooler than The West Valley and the nights considerably cooler but it was still a little too warm to turn off the a/c and open all the windows.  One of the plans on our agenda was to meet friend Pat for a trip to the Pine Strawberry Arts and Crafts Festival.  I had a notion that the festival had something to do with strawberries.  Nope.  Pine and Strawberry are two small towns up in the mountains on the road to Payson.  It had always been an intention to visit Payson.  Okay, you can check that off the list.  Yes, it’s pretty and yes it’s cooler but there’s only one road in and one road out and the tinder-dry pine forests seem dangerously close.

Another day was spent poking around in Prescott and Prescott Valley.  We visited a number of RV parks with an eye to perhaps booking ourselves in for a few months next summer.  But nothing struck our fancies in particular and we more or less shelved that idea.

With the 4th of July upon us, Pat had invited us to her place to watch the fireworks from her back patio.  We had an not-so-old fashioned picnic dinner.  Her house is on a hill over-looking the Fairgrounds so we had a fine view of the fireworks.  But they were overshadowed by an enormous black sky filled with stars and we realized once again how nice it is to get away from big city lights.

One of the reasons for making Camp Verde our first stop is to be close enough to home to run back for any really important things which might have been left behind.  We had our meds and eye glasses with us but did have to shop for things like nail clippers and assorted other small items.

After doing a rather thorough job of checking out the antique stores and thrift shops (and acquiring a few small treasurers) in the area, we moved on north and eastward, spending several days in Grants, New Mexico, a place we’ve not stopped in the past.  Grants is one of those small cities along Old Route 66 that slowly faded away when I-40 came into being and traffic kept on moving.  The cluster of chain motels at the highway’s exit seem busy enough but there are plenty of vacant buildings along what once was the Mother Road that still serves as the town’s “main drag”.  We had hoped to visit the Acoma Pueblo, known as the Sky City, but their brochure indicated that it would be closed for an extended period of time, including our time in the neighborhood.  And, yes, Grants is plural because it was founded by three brothers named Grant; had there been only one brother we’d be spending time in Grant.

We had about given up hope of having something interesting to do during our visit in Grants so we had rather low expectations when we wandered into the New Mexico Mining Museum and stumbled into another one of those magical circumstances that make RVing so much fun.  A gentleman at the front desk offered to be our tour guide and we always say yes to those offers.  We quickly learned that what was once mined in this part of New Mexico was uranium and that there were once 25 mines operating between Gallup and Albuquerque and that we had as our guide someone who had worked in those mines for an extended period of time.  Using a real uranium mine for display purposes would be hazardous so a condensed but very realistic (this assessment was re-enforced the next day by a real life geologist) replica has been recreated in the basement of the museum.  By realistic I mean that there were pieces of actual (and well-used) equipment lying about, sandstone dust and chucks of stone on the floors.  Nothing looked the least bit new or clean and we had Mr. Jack Farley to give us a blow-by-blow description of life in a uranium mine.  His love of the topic was obvious and he made us feel a small part of the experience.  The mines are all closed now because it’s cheaper to buy uranium from other countries than to mine it here.  These mines once employed 7500 people; nowadays you’d probably have trouble finding a half dozen willing to do that hard and dangerous work at any price.

When we got back to the surface, which also serves as the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Farley pointed out a small display of rocks and other items of interest which were displayed in tidy glass cases around the room.  An item of special interest was a dinosaur bone, the interior of which contained iron pyrite (fool’s gold) crystals which Jack had unearthed 800’ below ground in one of the area’s mines. 

El Malpais National Historic Monument is located not far from Grants so we took off on Saturday morning to do a bit of exploring.  It turns out that El Malpais (which means “the badlands” in Spanish) is a park best explored on foot…if you are young enough and strong enough to tackle it.  We watched the brief film and headed down NM 177 which runs along the east side of the park, stopping again at the BLM ranger station for further advice on what to see and how to get there.  It turned out that the 1 1/2 mile long access road to the Sandstone Cliffs overlook is not paved.  While it is a pretty decent road, it was just not comfortable in the Saturn so we turned around and headed back toward pavement.  Progressing further south, we came upon La Ventana Natural Arch which had the good sense to place itself near the highway.  By then it was noon and we had no inclination whatsoever to hike even the shortest distance to see it.

There were beautiful sandstone formations, sculpted by eons of wind and rain, some free-standing, others clinging to cliffs and hills.  And there were plenty of lava flows from the ancient volcanoes that dot the area.  This park is one best explored in a more moderate season and with much younger knees.

On the way home we stopped at the Route 66 Vintage Museum located in the Double Six Gallery.  The museum tells the story of Route 66 in and around Grants through a selection of enlarged postcards which show Grants during the heyday of The Mother Road.  Most of the buildings pictured still exist, although not now serving their original purpose….or any purpose at all for that matter.  The docent volunteered the information that carrots had once been a huge cash crop in the area, something we never would have guessed, this being a high desert area.  Uranium and carrots, what an interesting combination. 

And now it’s onward and upward towards Santa Fe….stay tuned.