No Reservations

7/18/2017

Andddddd we’re back! I bet you thought something crazy had happened to me. Well, a lot of crazy stuff has happened, but all of it has been in the spirit of excellent adventure, so never fear! Jane and I have been adventuring through the Great White North (Canada) and in the process have become an uncontacted tribe. But alas, technology pulls us back, and so I return to society to present you with another blog post, only a week and a half late!

If you recall, last time I posted I was holed up in a dive with a mermaid or two in Great Falls, MT. The stay was uneventful – or as uneventful as a mermaid-laden motel could possibly be – and so I departed the next morning with my sights set on Glacier National Park. I’ve wanted to see this park for a very long time, but it is just so dang far north. Fortunately, this time the distance is no object!

Somewhat unfortunately for us, a large part of the northern half of North America seems to be on fire right now. So we had a pretty hazy ride into the park.

As Glacier’s incredible craggy mountain vistas slid into view with each turn of the road, my ire at the fire-induced haze grew. I knew that what looked like kind of crappy, boring mountains had to be something incredibly awe-inspiring when clearly visible. I took photos of the mountains anyways, haze or not.

Jane and I headed for the valley through which Glacier’s most famous road, Going-to-the-Sun Road (honestly, they could have picked a shorter name), winds. I figured that either the valley would concentrate the haze or would be fairly empty of it, depending on how air currents flow in that area, so that seemed like the best option at the time. That, and I had no place to stay for the night, and Going-to-the-Sun Road links most of the hotels and campgrounds in the park.

I stopped off at the first campground, Rising Sun, to see what campsite availability was like. Glacier National Park is one of those parks that does everything on a first-come, first-serve basis, which is helpful in some parks and horrible in others. I wandered up to the counter at the office and wandered away just as quickly. The girl behind the counter had given me some very unwelcome information: campsite availability for almost every site filled by noon, and people started lining up at 6 AM for the chance to get a spot. Yes, that’s right: SIX O CLOCK IN THE MORNING. For a CHANCE to get a campsite! And you can wait around until noon (the official check-out time) to get a spot, depending on how long the people in the site before you decide to drag their heels (if they decide to leave at all). If you don’t get a spot, well, the next campground over is a good half hour away at a minimum, and there’s a slim chance you’ll get anything because you spent so long waiting around on the first campground.

Clearly, Glacier National Park is one of those parks for which the first-come, first-serve policy works terribly.

Now, I love camping. It saves me money, I like living in my own little house, I like seeing Jane three feet away when I wake up, and I enjoy the great outdoors. But I do not love waking up before 6 AM, standing in long lines, waiting on other people, and wasting the majority of my day in a pursuit that I didn’t choose. So camping got thrown right out the window.

The next problem, then, was that I was in a very busy national park during peak season with no reservations for a limited number of hotels in a limited number of strategically accessible places, with no cellular service. That didn’t really bother me though. I figured I would just continue my slow traverse of Going-to-the-Sun Road, stopping at each hotel along the way to inquire about vacancies. No sweat.

Jane and I wound our way along the road, encountering no vacancies but also encountering diminishing levels of haze. As the smoke parted, we were greeted with astonishing beauty. Soaring mountain peaks reached up into the sky as grassy meadows and spotted evergreen forests spread down their flanks, cut only by impossible cliffs or quick-running streams and waterfalls. Wide, U-shaped glacial valleys, criss-crossed by animal tracks and pathways, connected the mountains somewhere far below the road bed. The road itself was a wonder at times, clinging tenuously to the side of one mountain, a tall cliff face bordering one side of the narrow winding asphalt strip and a steep drop-off the other. I saw some of the park’s famous 1930’s red tour buses trundling up and down the road, leaping free of other traffic to reinstate their own bubble of time.

 

 

Two red buses framing Lunch Creek

Even better, there seemed to be some kind of Model T cruise in the park, as they were everywhere! I must have seen at least 30. I must say that I was pretty offended when not a single one of the drivers waved back to me. Maybe it’s a Model T owner thing. Regardless, it was still cool to see them all driving around the park.

 

Look, I finally found snow! And a Model T.

Come to think of it, I have seen more classic cars driving around Montana than I have any other state, barring California. I don’t mean seeing them at car shows, all prepped and polished and pretty and waiting to get back on the trailer, I mean seeing people really just driving them. I’ve seen all kinds of old cars, ranging all the way back to the 1940’s, just driving down the road like that’s what they normally do. And that thought really warms my heart. Not that there’s anything wrong with a show car, but I believe that something of the heart and soul of a car can only be fed by using it for its intended purpose – barreling down the pavement towards a new destination, ever seeking the horizon.

Of course, I’ve yet to ever see another classic car pass Jane and I. It seems that we move a bit faster – call it the influence of young blood, I guess.

I spent the afternoon driving Going-to-the-Sun Road, stopping at overlooks and just enjoying the scenery and relative coolness that I had finally found. It only took driving north 1800 miles to find it! I stopped at every hotel along the way, looking for reasonable vacancies. Two and a half hours later, I had reached the west side of the park with no luck. But at the last hotel, I finally was able to find a vacancy that had opened up… at a hotel on the extreme east end of the park, where I had come from a few hours ago. I would have been infuriated, but hey, this way I got to drive all the way back along that lovely road again.

Jane and I reached the hotel in St. Mary as evening fell. It occurred to me that she had accumulated quite a veneer of grit over the past couple of weeks, and that eager hands would likely smear that dirt right into the paint as soon as I left her unwatched in the crowded park. So I whipped out my miracle product – an all-in-one waterless wash called Chadwick’s Triple Play – and set to work cleaning Jane up. About thirty minutes of work saw her cleaned up and ready to match the beauty of Glacier National Park.

 

The "Barn Find" patina, acquired at an accelerated rate.

Dirty on the right, cleaned up on the left. Now that's what I call a transformation!

Til tomorrow morning… Kelly signing out.

P.S. - The lesson for today? If you are visiting Glacier National Park and don't want to be stressed out over lodging, GET RESERVATIONS! Don't fudge around with this camping thing or driving all over the park trying to find a hotel. It may not have bothered me too much, but it definitely has the potential to be stressful.

Reasons why photography is terrible

7/17/17

I woke to a bedraggled campground and a slightly-cleaner Jane. Almost 2000 miles of dust had been partially washed off, and what was left had pooled in random places and was in the process of drying to create a leopard-spotted effect. Jane had progressed past a “barn find” level of dirtiness and was now approaching an “abandoned in a field” rating. I left her that way, being under the belief that the extra dust and bugs would help protect the paint from chips from flying rocks.

Fortunately, everything dried up quickly and I was able to leave camp in good time without having a ton of wet gear in the trunk. I avoid mold as much as I can because, you know, I have to live in this thing for over a month. So having dry stuff is paramount!

Today was another long driving day. The plan was to get to Great Falls, MT, where I would stay in a hotel (no good camping available). So we got on the road and ate up some more blacktop. Jane also ate some more dragonflies, a terrible habit of which I have been unable to break her.

Disgusting.

I'd love to know the story behind this creek's name.

We got quite a ways down the road before I was distracted. But how could one not be distracted when alerted to the presence of Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, the site of Custer’s Last Stand? I pulled off to stretch my legs and do some learning. 

I am not a big history buff. In fact, history may be my worst subject. I just don’t have a head for remembering names, dates, places… anything, really. Hell, I can’t even remember what I do in a day, so I guess it’s unsurprising that I can’t remember what anyone else has done either.

Regardless, I was familiar with the fame of Custer’s Last Stand. And I have to admit that I was curious how the park would handle such a double-edged sword. After all, the story can be told from both sides. Custer could be portrayed as a hero, nobly standing against overwhelming odds against savages. Or the Native Americans could be portrayed as the heroes, desperately standing against the government to preserve their way of life. Towards that end I was really impressed with how the issue was handled. Both sides of the story were told, and I think that that really helped impress upon me the sadness of the whole thing. The museum and exhibits were excellent and a ranger talk was even more so.

I wandered up to the crest of Last Stand Hill, where a large obelisk commemorates the graves of hundreds of soldiers. Little white gravestones dot the prairie spread below the hill, marking the final resting spots of many. The solemnity of the site is overwhelming, and it’s hard to imagine the chaos that took place in that time. Now, the prairie is quiet and peaceful, long grass rustling in the gentle breeze thoughtfully.

Across the street stands the memorial for the Native Americans. Not just the Native Americans who fell in battle, but all that ultimately lost their lands and their way of life to the path of progress. It’s an incredibly sad and touching memorial that features stories and quotes from those who lost what was important to them.

I left with a lot of respect. I’d highly recommend Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument to anyone with an interest in history, particularly Native American history, as the site really has a lot to say. I was very impressed – and that coming from someone who is never really that interested in solely historical sites.

Jane and I then trucked on towards Great Falls. Late afternoon passed, and then evening, and still we traveled the vast plains. A couple of wind farms were our only break from the emptiness of it all. Emptiness isn’t quite the right word, as it implies a lack, and the plains did not lack. But they were devoid of human influence for the most part, and that was what made them seem empty. Rays of sunlight streaked down from the clouds, kissing the hills far off in the distance and shyly spreading across the plains, throwing the subtle dips in the land into sharp relief. The beauty of it was almost crushing.

And that brings me to the title of today’s post: reasons why photography is terrible. You see, photography is kind of awful. When I’m on the road I bring two cameras with me: one little point-and-shoot, which can easily be set up on the dash to take photos over the hood with minimal distraction, and one better point-and-shoot with all kinds of settings for taking all kinds of pictures. But neither of these cameras can show anyone else what I am really seeing. They take the vastness of the world and distill it down into a single two-dimensional frame, frequently losing all kinds of details that are what really made the scene wonderful. Things far in the background get condensed down in favor of those in the foreground, because normally the foreground is what people care about. But I’m not that kind of person. I care about the whole scope of the scene, all the little details, even far away. Zooming in to the details far away causes you to lose the rest of the scene, which is even worse. And so to you, those photos above probably look kind of boring, like some flat fields and some hills in the background. But it was so much more than that.

I wish that I could show people the true scale of the world. For many, my photos – menial as they are – are all they will ever see of a particular location. So photography endlessly frustrates me, because what I see and what the camera sees is never the same thing. With a better camera this effect could be somewhat improved, but never completely erased. You all must view my world through a machine’s eyes, not through mine. Oh, how I wish that I could really show you!

My frustration with cameras aside, we finally arrived at the O’Haire Motor Inn, our divey stop for the night. And when I say divey, I mean divey… literally. This place had a bar/lounge with a big tank in it, and swimming around in that tank were live mermaids! That is, people dressed as mermaids with the tails and everything. How odd! Bit of a weird contrast from the solemn battlefield and the vast silent prairies I had come from as well. I eyeballed it for a while and then went to read my book, being too at-odds to really enjoy it. And so ended that night.

Kelly signing out.

Close Encounters

7/16/17

A cool front blew in overnight, resulting in me not having to wake up to blistering heat for the first time this trip! I celebrated by being as lazy as possible (well, and working on blog posts, since of course I’m overdue). Jane and I were finally packed up and on the road at noon, but that was no big deal – we didn’t have far to go.

We spent a leisurely (well, as leisurely as 80 mph gets) couple of hours driving back through the Black Hills and into Wyoming.

 

First classic I saw on the road this trip!!

No need to be rude...

Then we saw it, way off in the distance: a giant column, looking much like the stump of a felled tree, looming over the surrounding countryside from the crest of a hill. Mysterious, mystical, and centerpiece of a classic sci-fi alien movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Devil’s Tower!

The closer I got to this tower, the more awe-inspiring it was. This thing truly dominates the landscape in the most spectacular way. I couldn’t wait to get closer.

I set up camp in the on-site campground, succeeding in getting a great view of the Tower from my spot.

It's also National Ice Cream Day, so, you know...

Then I headed up to the visitor center for a walk around the base of the Tower. There’s a longer hike that circles around the Tower from a greater distance, but I really wanted to see it up close! The closer you get, the more fascinating the Tower is. It’s composed entirely of massive hexagonal columns of igneous rock, which were formed as the rock cooled and shrunk after its initial intrusion up into the overlying sedimentary rock. You can see a similar pattern and process in a dried-up puddle of mud – so think that, but on a really really large scale!

The Tower is popular with climbers and I saw quite a few on my lap around the base. You really don’t get a sense of scale of this thing until you see someone actually perched on top of one of the columns. Then, suddenly, it seems impossibly large.

Many Native American tribes hold Devil’s Tower sacred, and it’s easy to understand why. Its commanding presence, beauty, and the hushed silence that surrounds it lends it a spiritual feel that will not be shaken. The Tower is the center of many Native American summer ceremonies, and consequently the trees surrounding it are hung with many prayer bundles that are beautiful to behold. No pictures of those though, as I didn’t want to be disrespectful.

After my nice little hike, I cooked myself dinner and then attended a ranger talk at the nearby amphitheater. There’s a few different hypotheses on how this tower formed - or, more accurately, the source of what we see today – but as much as I puzzled over it, I couldn’t see which would be more likely. Of course, I’m not an igneous geologist, so it’s not like I would have figured it out anyways.

The Tower becomes an imposing shadow as night falls.

Flashes of lightning off in the distance alerted me to the possibility of a nighttime storm. Last time I was camping and saw a storm coming, for some reason I just piled all of my stuff under Jane and called it good, with fairly disastrous results. This time I was smarter! I packed up all of my cookgear and grill and got it into Jane or my tent (whichever was closer) as fast as I could. And good thing, too – I finished just in the nick of time as a howling wind came ripping through the campground, bringing with it pelting rain. I hopped in my tent to read my book and enjoy the storm.

A storm in a tent is only great if you have a good tent. Fortunately, I have a good tent, and I’ve long since learned the strategy of using tall luggage items in the corners to prevent it from laying down on you in strong winds. So I was quite happy to be in there. I looked out the “window” of my tent at the Tower, and was very surprised to see two small lights about halfway down the side. There were still climbers up there! I watched those little lights flashing around for quite some time, imagining the struggle of trying to climb down those columns in a storm like this. Eventually the lights settled down – guess the climbers found a good ledge to weather the storm in and decided to just stay put. Probably a pretty exhilarating (and miserable) experience for them!

With that, I settled into my sleeping bag and opened up my book. Jane stood guard outside, as always. The wind whipped and the rain pattered on, and I confess that I didn’t make it far in my book before I fell asleep.

Kelly signing out.

The Badlands get bad

7/15/17

I awoke this morning to the sound of trains in my backyard. At 5:45 AM. It turns out that everywhere in Wall, SD is within earshot of the train tracks, and they cannot be escaped. However, my willpower when it comes to sleep is a lot stronger than the mere shrilling of trains 300 feet away.

I awoke again this morning to blistering heat inside my tent as the sun hit its sides. At 8 AM. This was a more reasonable time to be awake, and there was no way I was going to sleep through heat of that magnitude, so I got up.

You would think that after driving more than a thousand miles north, maybe temperatures would have cooled off a little. But through the stupidity of local geography and weather patterns, that was not the case. The weather forecast said it would be 98*F (5 degrees colder than Austin! Whoo!) with a “real feel” of 105*F.

Perfect weather to go hike every trail in the Badlands!

I took advantage of the nicer cool weather to snap some photos at little overlooks and other minor spots, in order to maximize the amount of time that I would spend baking and hiking my legs off in the afternoon. Remember a couple of posts ago how my brain pretty much got fried, and then a post later where I wondered if I may be stupid? I’ve kind of concluded that yes, I have definitely gotten dumber.

Jane and I trundled down the highway to the other end of the park where the visitor center informed me that I would need lots of water (duh) and that the heat was reaching dangerous levels (pshhhh). I was then given a sheet of paper with 6 trails on it.

I started with the Gap Trail, a short quarter mile boardwalk away from the parking lot that looks over a super dramatic looking canyon.

Then I moved on to the real challenge, the Castle Trail. Normally, it is 5 miles long one-way, but if you combine it with the Medicine Root trail nearby, it becomes a 7-mile round trip. Perfect for the hottest part of the day!

The trail takes you across grassland and meanders through some of the formations jutting up through the plains. It’s a great chance to see some amazing rocks from both near and far, and wildlife frequently appears in the grasslands there. Not during the hottest part of the day, of course – that would just be silly! Consequently, I saw a lot of rocks and a lot of grass and exactly one chipmunk and some birds.

Despite the lack of wildlife, I really liked the trail a lot. No one else was on the trail, so it was just me and the blue sky and flat grasslands and these remarkable colorful banded formations holding out against the trials of time. It was a far cry from yesterday’s Mount Rushmore visit; instead of feeling awash in the flood of humanity, I was grounded, just another part of the frontier. But at the same time, I felt the impermanence of it all. These outcrops shrink at a rate of an inch a year – so even in a hundred-year time scale, they will look drastically different. Eventually, they will melt away like ice, adding their dust to the soil of the plains. There’s something profound in that, I think.

A pile of winnowed dust at the base of this outcrop reveals its ultimate fate.

Less scenic, more "bad" lands

After a few hours of contemplating life and marching around in the blistering heat, I was feeling a bit ragged. But the end was in sight! I got back to the trailhead only to find that I had dropped my handkerchief (an essential item for removing sweat and dirt from yourself when you start feeling a little overwhelmed by it) somewhere back along the trail. Ugh. I was determined to go back and get it and ended up backtracking about a mile and a quarter, which was foolish and which changed my 7-mile hike into something like a 9-mile hike. Fortunately I had plenty of water, but my legs were definitely hollering and I was covered in this white Badlands dust which tends to get everywhere and scrape your skin raw. It would have been miserable if I hadn't been having so much fun! Call me weird, I guess.

I returned to the trailhead finally and my legs informed me that they were done for the day, having gotten used to a cushy Austin life in which they were never required to go further than 6 miles. I informed them that I was not done for the day, because I still had the Notch, Door, and Fossil trails to finish!

I started with the Notch trail because the rangers had told me that the best views in the park could be found there. By this time the afternoon light was getting long, and it was approaching the time when the Badlands were best viewed. The rangers had warned me though of the strenuous nature of the trail, which included a long ladder and quite a bit of cliffside walking that could be questionable for those scared of heights. I thought back to Angels Landing of Zion National Park, Utah, and kind of scoffed. If I can walk across a knife-edge ridge 1800 feet above the canyon floor, how bad could this be?

The answer is: not bad at all. Honestly, I don’t know who is freaked out by walking within 10 feet of the side of a cliff that maybe could drop you 20 feet. It’s not like you’re going to spontaneously trip and fall to a point 10 feet away from your start point. And this ladder was a joke! A lady was very, very slowly crawling down it and I confess I got a bit fed up. You see, half of the ladder is resting on the side of a slope… a slope that can definitely, positively, be walked up under any normal circumstances, even in flip flops. So I walked up that slope past the lady crawling down, and I think she felt a bit silly because after I passed her she promptly stood up, went “Oh,” and walked the rest of the way down. C’mon!

The view from the top of the Notch was worth the silliness, though. The rangers weren’t wrong about it being a spectacular view, though I contest that some of the other more “dense” badlands-y outcrops may be more dramatic and beautiful in the right light. Nevertheless, that valley overlook was an incredible sight to behold.

I didn’t stay too long, having two more trails to visit before nightfall. Both were short – the first was Door, which is a short half-mile boardwalk trail that culminates in a bowl of maze-like Badlands rocks. You can wander around in that bowl for hours checking out the amazing vistas and the crazy coloration in the rocks of the Brule Formation (the banded rocks that make the Badlands famous primarily belong to this formation).

And finally, I hopped up the road to the Fossil trail, which advertised itself as a short loop with fossil replicas. In my head I had envisioned a trail that wound through the Badlands, showing how and where fossils were found in addition to providing information about the types of fossils found. I admit to being pretty disappointed when I saw a boardwalk loop that just stopped at different waysides briefly describing different animals found in the ancient pre-Badlands environments. While that was cool in and of itself, I really would have liked to see more information about the scientific process that proceeds before, during, and after the discovery of fossils in the field. Since Badlands is so big on citizen science (having visitors report on fossils they find), I thought that they would have emphasized this more. Alas! Maybe a future exhibit will address this. I guess I really only care because I have a paleontology background, and I love to teach people about how the field of paleontology actually works.

Anyways, after that loop I drove back up towards Wall again, thoroughly exhausted after over 11 miles of hiking on a very hot day. I’m a bit disappointed in my hiking ability as it stands currently, but I’m sure it’ll be back up to snuff in no time flat! The heat really takes it out of you.

Jane acquires admirers.

My last stop of the day was, of course, Wall Drug. I’m just totally fascinated with this weird place. I spent quite a while wandering around checking out their old photos documenting early Western life – can’t say I didn’t enjoy the air conditioning either.

Fifteen seconds after parking... lol.

Tomorrow I’ll be heading on from Badlands to Devil’s Tower, continuing the theme of “weird geological landmarks”. But for now… Kelly signing out.