A few Updates......make sure you scroll down :)

There are quite a few journal entries added so make sure you scroll down a bit to check them all out!

We have to go to a central location here in the campground to get internet, so we had to upload multiple entries at one time!

Grand Tetons; A First look

We made our way over to Grand Teton National Park yesterday! Here is look at Grand Teton glacier, another North American glacier that could disappear in as little as 10 years!


We decided to go check out Jenny Lake. They had tour boats which went across the lake to a place called hidden falls; Ah, but Laura had a better idea! They also rented canoes by the hour. We decided to take our own canoe across the lake to check out the falls.

Of course, the wind picks up while we are about a quarter of the way across the lake. We both had to work much harder then anticipated to get across. I did manage to snap this picture of Laura with the Tetons in the background.






It was a nice little 1/2 mile hike up to the "falls" (after sitting and paddling for 40 minutes, the hike was nice). Here is a look down the falls.








Back at the coach for the evening; Snuggles decided she wanted to explore the trees in our campground. It's a good thing Cockatoos are not native to North America, there would be a lot of bare trees around ;)

Wrapping up Yellowstone!

The Swimming Hole

On the drive through Firehole Canyon, earlier in the week, we came across this swimming hole. We waited for the weather to be warm enough to enjoy a swim and a "shoot" through this little canyon. Good thing the weather was warm, because the water was cold....About 65 degrees!





Laura got this pic of me, about to go over the "falls". Well, not really because where I am, it is about 4 foot deep and there is a rock ledge that prevents people from going over the edge.....But it does look dramatic, doesn't it?

Drowning flies.........some might call it "Fly Fishing"

Fly fishing is something I have always had a desire to learn. I've seen it done, many times. To me, it always looks art in motion when it's done correctly! Since we were here, in Yellowstone, what many believe to be the greatest trouting rivers in the country, I had to give it a try.

I got permission from Laura to do a guided trip and lesson. (We have never gone over our monthly "attractions and Entertainment" budget, to this point) This one would break the budget and deserved some discussion and approval. I went to a few different shops to get the low down on prices. I just couldn't bring myself to spend the $275 for a 3 hour trip and lesson. But there were options!


The guys at Bob Jacklin's Fly Shop were awesome and they had the perfect solution for me! Bob holds a fly fishing "clinic" free every Sunday night. They even have a little casting pond across the street from the shop. The guys spent some time showing me gear and the flys the locals use on the river. For $75 I got a decent beginners rod and reel. For another $10 bucks I picked up some fly's, leaders and tippets(boy, I sound like I know what I'm talking about!) It was $10 for a 3 day fishing license. So for $100 I got the gear and a great free lesson.....It's time to soak some flys!

Here I am trying to make sense of it all.


I got it! The lessons helped and for the next couple of hours I drowned flys, watched the elk and bison and just enjoyed the park and the surroundings. It was really a great way to waste a few hours and there really is an "art form" to the whole process; I have a ways to go before my cast look anything like art..... but at least I have my own gear now to continue practicing.


Next time I'll have to try to put the "fishing" into fly fishing :)

-Rich-

Business Has Been Brisk...........

......Especially on our own vehicles :(

The Montana DOT's favorite way to repair roads is to spray a coating of tar on the road, spread gravel over the tar and let traffic compact it all down. If that works for them, great, it sure has been good for the windshield repair business!

I've been doing at least 2 repairs per campground, usually more. However, 3 of my last 8 repairs have been on our own vehicles. Two on the motorhome and one on the Suzuki.

No sooner then we pulled into our campground, here in Thyne, WY, there was a knock on the door for another repair!

Here is a "before" shot:

Here is the "after" :

I'm only going to give this repair an "8" out of "10". The black marks you see on the lower left leg are air remaining in break. I also get a few point deduction for being able to see my drill mark in the center of the repair. This not an unsucessful repair, in fact, its better then alot of what I've seen out there; But I strive for prefection in every repair I do;)

-Rich-

Moving on to Thayne, Wyoming

Today we drove 177 miles (all state highways) to an RPI park called Star
Valley Ranch Resort. It's further from Jackson Hole & the Grand Tetons
(60 miles) but at $8 a night, the price can't be beat. Tomorrow we'll
spend the day in Jackson Hole. There's three sushi places there. I'm
craving sushi in a major way. I haven't had any in over a week!
-Laura

Firehole Canyon

Yesterday Rich and I went on bike rides, although seperately because I can't keep up with him. Rich rode a total of 36 miles round trip in & out of the park. I only rode 12. Being up at 6600' is hard on the lungs. Anyway, Rich rode into Firehole canyon and wanted to show it to me today. I saw a bald eagle on my ride and wanted to show Rich where. Much to my surprise, the eagle was still there! Here's a pic. Click on it to get a slightly better view:














After about 15 miles, we came to Firehole canyon. What a beautiful place!!! I took a picture of Rich looking at some rapids. There was also a chipmunk that came right up to Rich's shoe, looking for food. When Rich tried to take a picture of him, he ran, as if to say, "no food, no picture!" Rich made clicking noises & held his fingers together, as if he had food; when he saw the chipmunk looking up at us from where he'd run. The chipmunk ran back up to Rich's shoe, and again, when we tried to take a pic, he turned tail and ran away. So no food, no chipmunk pictures. *sigh*















We also saw a swimming hole, where the current ran into. There were a ton of people swimming, so the water couldn't have been too cold. Rich said there were only 3 cars parked there yesterday (when the high was only 65), but since it was 72 & sunny today, there were a lot more people. We're going to go tomorrow since it's going to be 76.

Rich bought a fly-fishing package today for a very reasonable price. The shop where he bought it gives free fly fishing lessons on Sunday evenings at 7:30. Free beats the $250 lesson & walking trip most places want to charge. I didn't get any pictures of him casting since it was dark by the time I got there.

-Laura

Waterfalls and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

Today we drove into what's essentially the center of the park to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It's 40 miles one way, which doesn't sound like much until you remember that the speed limit is only 45mph & there's lots of cool stuff to stop and see. One good thing to remember is that wherever you see a lot of cars pulled over, there's usually something good (i.e. wildlife) to see. We found that out yesterday when we pulled over with about 20 other cars to watch a herd of elk cross the road. This one was across the street already and calling the others. Notice the radio collar with the cellphone-type antenna?













Or this guy, who was in the same spot alllll day:














Another time we saw a line of cars and found this bull elk just 40' or so away. He saw the people, but seemed completely unconcerned:











After awhile, we finally got to our destination, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This where we saw the upper and middle falls from both rims.

























Upper falls:


























Middle Falls:




















The rest of the evening was spent chilling with grilled lamb chops and a glass of red wine. Ahhhh!

And that's all folks!

-Laura

The Yellowstone Fires of 1988

I'd heard about the Yellowstone fires of 1988, but until we got to the park, I didn't understand the full extent of it. Unlike Rich, this wasn't my first time here. I went to Yellowstone with my family when I was about 11, in 1980. I remembered the hot springs and lots of really tall trees. Well, a lot of that is gone. As soon as we drove into the park at the west entrance, there's evidence of past fire everywhere. There's dead trees standing up and laying down everywhere. But as signs that nature heals itself, there's signs saying, "naturally reseeded after the first of 1988". Because among the dead trees are growing evergreens that are 10-15' tall, signs of rebirth. Apparently the national parks policy of natural and man-caused fires used to be to let themselves burn themselves out, but that was changed in 1988. According to this article, a series of weather conditions (along with a few human-caused fires) caused a total of 706,277 acres of Yellowstone's 2.2 million acres to be burned. On August 20, now known as "Black Saturday", more land burned than in any other DECADE since 1872. Over 10,000 firefighters helped in the over $100,000,000 effort to save Yellowstone. They did manage to save the historic Old Faithful Inn.

So that's the scoop on the fires. Interesting and sad at the same time.

-Laura

Waterfalls and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

Today we drove into what's essentially the center of the park to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It's 40 miles one way, which doesn't sound like much until you remember that the speed limit is only 45mph & there's lots of cool stuff to stop and see. One good thing to remember is that wherever you see a lot of cars pulled over, there's usually something good (i.e. wildlife) to see. We found that out yesterday when we pulled over with about 20 other cars to watch a herd of elk cross the road. This one was across the street already and calling the others. Notice the radio collar with the cellphone-type antenna?













Or this guy, who was in the same spot alllll day:














Another time we saw a line of cars and found this bull elk just 40' or so away. He saw the people, but seemed completely unconcerned:











After awhile, we finally got to our destination, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This where we saw the upper and middle falls from both rims.

























Upper falls:


























Middle Falls:




















And that's all folks!

-Laura

Clean up and Work Day; West Yellowstone

I spent most of the morning working while Laura checked out houses(on the web) and scheduling showings for us when we arrive in Denver in mid September.

After lunch, we spent the afternoon cleaning the coach, both inside and out and washing the car. We were really behind on our cleaning and everything was a dusty mess!

I know, all of this makes for really compelling reading ;)

I did manage to update our rafting entry with our actual pictures from the trip. You can go back here: White Water Rafting; Glacier National Park

or

You can just see them here:


We plan on heading back to National Park today to hike around "The Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone. Check back tomorrow for, hopefully, a more interesting jounal entry :)

-Rich-

Yellowstone; First visit

Here it is, our shot of the most famous destination in the park! The plan for today was to stick to the main road attractions. We'll spend other days "off the beaten path", exploring the interior of the park.


Here is Laura on the "boardwalk" with Spasm geyser in the background.























One of the many Geothermal pools that create these magnificent colors in both the water and ground around the pools. Our camera just doesn't capture the brilliance of these colors!









The painted pots were pretty spectacular. The bubbling molten minerals had many different colors. Again, our little digital just can't capture the colors. Boy, we just gotta look into a better camera ;)








One of the best things about Yellowstone is the wildlife. On this visit we watched a herd of mule deer cross the river. We also caught a couple of single Bison in various spots around the park.


















Almost more amazing then the closeup animal experience was the human experience. After the mule deer crossed the river they came up the bank to cross the road. Another part of the herd was already across the road and calling the rest of pack (really weird howling noises). As they tried to pass, in between parked cars, people would actually block their path to get their pictures. Hello, people, do not realize this animal could freak out because you are blocking its path to it's group and could knock you down and crush your skull?!?

As we shot our picture of the Bison, about 20 yards from the road, we watched a college kid hop of his car run across the road towards the bison to get his picture. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea, run up BEHIND a big male bison while its feeding!

So, we're not sure if it's more fun watching the human element or the animal element in the park. I always live by the, respect mother nature, motto. If you don't, she'll eventually bite you in the ass :)

Arrived in West Yellowstone, Montana

After one of our shortest drives ever (163 miles), we arrived at Yellowstone Grizzly RV park. It's a very nice park with free cable & pay wifi. In the mornings they have free cappuccino (push button kind), coffee & hot chocolate. It's pricey at almost $300 for the week, but then, everything is pricey around here. I got us a backin site because it was $5/day cheaper. The bonus turns out to be that we are backed up to national forest, so it's pretty quiet. We could have stayed in Yellowstone, as this is one of the few nat'l parks that we'll be visiting that has spaces long enough for us. I didn't try because they are first come, first served and have no hookups. We spent the rest of the afternoon setting up and chilling. They say it gets cold here at night (40'ish), which will make great sleeping weather.

-Laura

Traveling

Today we drove from just outside of Glacier Nat'l park to a Wal-Mart in
Butte, Montana, a 269 mile drive. This Wal-Mart is the only one for
miles around, so I expect it'll get full of RV's. Last time we stayed
here, there were 10! Today there's 5 so far. On our way here we saw a
billboard for "The Testicle Festival. Everyone have a ball!"

Tomorrow we drive 169 miles to West Yellowstone.

Travel Day to West Yellowstone!

This morning we head out of Glacier and begin our way to Yellowstone. We are taking 2 days to make the 400 miles to West Yellowstone. We are stopping, for an overnight, at the Wal-Mart in Butte, MT. We are going to be sure to load up on groceries and supplies for the comming week; We've already been warned that good groceries are hard to come by and expensive in West Yellowstone.



We'll be out of commission for a day or two while we travel. Check back for a report from West Yellowstone Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning!

See ya!

Rich & Laura

White Water Rafting; Glacier NP

Today, we took a 1/2 day white water trip. It was the first white water experience for both of us. We had a blast!

Here is a couple of photos of us on the white water! We're in the back of the raft.






We did not take our camera, by the raft company suggestion, for fear of water logging it or having it fly out of the raft. So, of course, we get the best wildlife opportunity EVER.

Right as we start out and momma black bear and her 2 cubs were on the shoreline. We passed probably 6 feet from them in the river. It was an amazing close up experience that will have to live with us in our memory banks! Thanks to Google Images, this gives you an almost identical view of what we witnessed today, but add in two litte cubs in the tree on the bank!

-Rich & Laura-

Return to Big Mountain; Glacier, NP

We had so much fun downhilling at Big Mountain Ski Resort, we just had to return!


Here we are on the ride up. They alternate chairs and gondolas. Our first time here we took the gondola up. We did not make the same mistake this time. They may be great in the winter to block the wind, but they're like ovens when it's 85 degrees out!










Here, Laura catches my "good side" as we make our way down the mountain. We are about 1/2 way down at this point. The lake you see below is at 4,000' and we are at about 6.500 feet at this point.













"If ya' ain't bleedin', ya' ain't pushin' yerself hard enough!" I have no idea who said this to me, a long, long time ago but I always remembered it :) I got a little over confident on a really loose section and the mountain reminded me who's boss!

-Rich-

Road Trip and Meeting Blog Readers; Glacier. NP

Today we decided to make our way up and over Going to Sun Road to visit with fellow full-timers' Peter and Patty, who have been on the road full-time since 99. They are camp hosting in the Many Glaciers Campground on the eastern end of Glacier National Park.

We stopped along the road to get this self portrait with Jackson Glacier in the background. Don't you just love the self-timer?

Another shot of Jackson Glacier. This is the one Al Gore talks about disappearing completely within 15 years in "Inconvenient Truth".

There was a huge fire in the St Mary's area 2 weeks ago. We passed through the area on the way back to West Glacier. The fire devastated 32,000 acres of forest! If you enlarge the picture and look real hard at the mountains in the back you can see smoke from hot spots that are still burning. They were much clearer in person. A completely different experience seeing this type of devastation in person, then on the news or in the paper.

This is the road to Many Glacier campgrounds. It sits just below the glacier in the background. It would have been great to stay there for a couple of days.

Patty and Peter were great to talk to . We hung out for a couple of hours and shot the breeze on a number of subject. I wish I could give you a link a journal for them. However, according to Peter, "we had an on-line journal once, I just don't remember where we left it." Although they've only been full-time since 99, they have been camphosting summers in Glacier for 16 years, can you blame them!?

-Rich & Laura-

Uneventful Day in Glacier, NP

This is the view we enjoyed this evening from the trout pond while trying to catch dinner for tomorrow night. We were not successful, but the sunset and weather was amazing!

After all of the activity of the past few days, we needed a break. Today we went to get haircuts and lounged around the motorhome. Neither of us felt like cooking dinner. One of our neighbors recommended a pizza place down the street as having great pies, they were right.

I did run this morning and moved up another level. I moved up to doing 3 minute runs, 2 minutes walks for 5 repetitions 3 days per week. The improvement, slow at first, is starting to come at a faster rate. I still think I'm far away from "officially" calling myself a runner!

-Rich-

Riding downhill at Big Mountain

Today we headed out to Big Mountain Ski Resort for a little downhill mountain biking! The resort is in Whitefish, Montana. The scenery and mountain were spectacular. About 1/2 way through our 8 mile downhill run, they had a skills park. It was not in the best of shape but was fun to play around on some of the stunts. Laura even got into the stunts.

Here are some photos form the ride:







After lunch it was starting to look like rain, so we opted out of doing another run. We are definitely going to go back to Big Mountain before we leave on Sunday. On the way back to the campground we stopped at a rafting center to inquire about rafting trips. We are going to try and do a half day raft through Glacier before we leave.

In the afternoon, one of our neighbors knocked on our door and asked me repair his windshield on his coach and his tow car. Later in the day, I sold some No-Wet. We just paid for our rafting trip and have spending money for the week :)

We didn't get a chance to add to our trout we caught yesterday, so we went with what we had. I filleted it up and sauteed it in olive oil and lemon. The trout and steamed vegetables wasn't quite enough for dinner for 2, so we'll augment it with some popcorn later this evening. There's something really satisfying about catching and preparing your own dinner :) We'll be trying our luck in the trout pond again before we leave here!

Boy, we've a lot to do before we leave!

-Rich-