Cody

Like Yellowstone, our family visited Cody back in 1972.  Anna Lee also wrote a travel article about Cody in 2012 even though we had to postpone the trip there due to the arrival of Bennett.  We came to see what we missed the first time and what Anna Lee had “recommended.”

Our drive from Yellowstone to Cody was along the Shoshone River with its towering walls.

The first day started with a four-star destination and slipped to negative one by the end of the day.  But we start with our morning visit to Powell, WY, site of the Heart Mountain WWII Japanese American Confinement Site.  This is an outstanding museum that tells the history of one of America’s most undemocratic actions.

Right at the entry are the words of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, an amendment the Supreme Court ignored in 1944.  It is worth note that, subsequently, the Supreme Court declared that its decision was erroneous and should be ignored in future cases.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, American citizens were rounded up for the crime of being Japanese.  They were taken from their homes, deprived of their property and imprisoned in barren, remote areas in the US.

The introductory film “All We Could Carry” documents the story of internees.  Taken from homes on the West Coast, primarily California, Japanese Americans were forced into concentration camps.  Ironically, Japanese Americans in Hawaii did not face this abhorrent treatment. 

Internees lived in barracks divided into small rooms with blankets for walls.

 There was no privacy, even for the most personal of daily activities.  They used the few possessions they could bring to make the rooms into “homes.”

The museum uses first person accounts from those who spent their youth in the camps.  Wisely, the administrators of the camp saw that bored children would get into trouble.  There were sports activities as well as schools taught by teachers whose credentials limited them to teaching in the camp.  There were organized activities such as Boy and Girl Scout troops that let the children participate in activities their peers also did and to meet local children.  One Boy Scout campout led to a life-long friendship between Norman Maneta (Secretary of Commerce under Clinton and Secretary of Transportation under Bush) and Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson.

A display honors those internees who served in WWII, some of whom belatedly received the Medal of Honor.

Towering over the camp is the guard tower.

Outside the museum, is a trail marking the location of the administration buildings.  Nearby are remains of the hospital complex and the tall red chimney that was part of the boiler system.

 The internee nurses earned $16 a month while the white nurses $130.  It took a protest by the white nurses to get the hospital to provide the needed supplies and a healthy environment.

Returning to Cody, we  toured the Buffalo Bill Dam Visitors Center.  Completed in 1909, this concrete and granite dam was then the tallest dam in the world and served as a model for Hoover Dam.

Built to provide irrigation water from the Shoshone River to local ranch land, it later added hydroelectric power. 

The video about the construction of the dam showed the extreme difficulty of carving through granite with hand tools under extreme weather conditions.  All three construction companies failed in the economics of dam construction.  The one who did complete it had its workers pouring cement in sub zero temperatures; they could not work in the summer due to flooding.   

Our walk through Old Trail Town let us see actual buildings from the late 1800s to early 1900s including the Hole in the Wall cabin used by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 

Other buildings include the cabin of Curley, Custer’s Crow scout and a buffalo hunter’s cabin

Coffin school

and the Shell store.

Gravesites nearby told tales of dangerous folks in a dangerous land.

Our day ended at the Irma Hotel with its cherry wood bar.  The hotel was named in honor of Buffalo Bill Cody’s youngest daughter.  The bar was a gift from Queen Victoria following the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show tour in London.

 After we took photos of the bar, we went onto the street to watch the nightly gunfight.  This was the negative mentioned at the top of this blog.   It was a waste of time.  Fortunately the rest of the day had been excellent.

Yellowstone, Part IV

On our way from Lake Yellowstone to Old Faithful we crossed the Continental Divide twice in a matter of minutes.

Everything said about Old Faithful is true and we have nothing to add except the crowds love it.

North of Old Faithful are three geyser basins, Upper, Midway and Lower.  Each competes for being the most beautiful and most odorous. 

Artist Paintpots have even more luminescent colors.

A drive off the main road led to more waterfalls.  It also led to a surprise, a swimming hole.  Perched on a rock was a bird so tame swimmers were petting it.  It looks a lot like an eagle, any guesses?

Pianist and amateur Yellowstone historian Randy Ingersoll entertains each evening in the Map Room of the Mammoth Hotel.  The wooden map created of exotic woods in the late 1800s overlooks the audience in the Map Room.

We went to enjoy Ingersoll’s ragtime and to see the slide show, “Yellowstone 1902–On The Grand Tour,” a scrapbook tour of William and Mary Carland of Albany, NY.  Ingersoll found the scrapbook while vacationing in Arizona.  It sat on his shelf for years until he began to research the photos and the couple who had traveled 9,000 miles cross country by train  with a Shriner’s group stopping to tour Yellowstone by stagecoach.  This show gave an excellent history of the early days of Yellowstone as a tourist destination.  It also showed the disregard for the environment that was common back then.  Tourists walked on the crust of geysers, garbage was piled up for the bears to eat, and geyser holes were the target of rock throwing.  That all changed in the 1960s when Park Rangers created the rules that have returned Yellowstone to its natural wonder.

As we packed up the RV, this elk wandered into the campground.

This spectacular park created by massive earthquakes, eruptions, and fires is an ever changing landscape.  We look forward to seeing what changes and what remains on our next visit.  Our time in Yellowstone is best summed up by the words of a fellow camper, “We were gobsmacked.”

Yellowstone, Part III

Lake Yellowstone is a caldera within a caldera.  It is the remains of eruptions that followed the major upheaval that began Yellowstone.  It is the largest high-altitude lake in North America.  It teems with trout.  Back when this lake was on the stage coach and early car tour of the park, fishermen and cooks would take their catch straight from the lake and cook them in a natural steam pot near the shore.  Now all fishing is catch and release and cooks use the stove.

A drive following the river leads to Mud Volcano and its oozing, odiferous vents.
Dwelling in the vents are thermoacidophiles, microorganisms that convert hydrogen sulfide to sulfuric acid.  They are considered among the earliest of life forms. 

Mud Geyser is filled with thermoacidophiles.

There are more at Sulfur Caldron

 and at Grizzly Fumerole.

The Yellowstone River has cut a deep canyon through volcanic rock debris scattered 640,000 years ago.  Along the way some rock was more resilient to erosion creating the waterfalls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  These falls can be observed from several angles, all of which showcase their power and beauty.

We started our tour at Upper Falls

Then went to the beginning of the canyon at Lower Falls. 

  

 We continued along the canyon as viewed from Red Rock Point

 and ended at Tower Fall.

There is only one Sequoia in Yellowstone and it is petrified.  It is the lone remnant of a forest that stood here 150,000 years ago

Yellowstone, Part II

We shared our Yellowstone experience with people from around the world.  They came from England, Brazil, China, India, France, Canada, Russia, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany and more.  American tourists included a full diversity of citizens.  Young park employees were from throughout the world.  What a great American destination for us all to enjoy.

Since its establishment as the world’s first national park back in 1872,Yellowstone has drawn people from all over the world.  First, under the auspices of the military, the headquarters were at Fort Yellowstone. More military buildings were erected at areas of major attraction.  The personnel were in the army.  That changed with the establishment of the National Park Service. 

The Museum of the National Park Ranger tells the story of the men and women who manage the entrances, answer our questions, and protect us from animals and animals from us.  This museum is in the Norris Soldier Station, built in 1908.

 

Displays show the changing roles of the men and women who have been rangers.  We also learned that both President Gerald Ford and his son were rangers at Yellowstone.

In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt came to the park to dedicate the Roosevelt Arch. 

Visitors came on trains to see the park.  They toured in stagecoaches.  Then horses were banned from the roads to make room for the automobile.  Now the roads are filled with cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and, yes, recreational vehicles.  In fact, the roads are currently being widened to make it easier to come in motor homes such as ours or groups of Prowlers like these.

We next visited Norris Geyser Basin.  Words will not serve so here are some of the photographs we took.

Steamboat whose last major eruption was in 2013

Porcelain Spring

Crackling Lake

Vixen Geyser

The Blue Mud Steam Vent

At the end of the day, our way home was blocked by a herd of elk who find the grassy area
near Mammoth Lodge a safe refuge from potential bear attacks.  The ranger made sure we were safe from elk attack.

 As our cameras clicked, a female bugled.  Her call was answered by a young elk who had wandered off.  Soon they were bugling as they ran toward each other.  Dinner time.

Yellowstone National Park

This was Jerry’s fourth and Anna Lee’s third trip to Yellowstone.  Our visits happened in 1961 (Jerry, before Anna Lee), 1972 (whole family), and 1997 (just us).  We had planned to come in the spring of 2012 but the arrival of Bennett change our plans in a wonderful way.  In the fifty years since Jerry’s first visit much has changed.  What remains is a place that is otherworldly, unbelievably beautiful, and emotionally powerful.  We tried to make this 2014 trip as thorough as we could.

The weather did have a say in our plans.  Thunder and rain sometimes accompanied us, sometimes delayed us, but we did our best and enjoyed it all.  There are eight main areas in the park and we visited them all to different degrees.

We camped at Mammoth Hot Springs.  After setting up, we headed out to see waterfalls and find animals.  A short hike took us to Wraith Falls,

then we drove by Undine Falls.

 After dinner, we went to the Lamar Valley animal seeking and found bison

and pronghorn antelope.

The next morning we braved the off/on rain and went to Mammoth Hot Springs.Terraces  We wondered about Mammoth appearing dry.  The ranger explained that this was a dry cycle, a natural process, in the springs and little water flowed.  He said the steam that we see was from rains 200 or more years ago.  Dry or wet, there is color.

The New Blue Spring

Cleopatra’s Terrace

 Palette Spring

Minerva

Dead trees make for stark photos

From above the Hot Springs we could see the buildings of old Fort Yellowstone.

This bull snake crossed our path.