Archive for Uncategorized
October 4, 2007 at 8:53 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
A cold light rain is pattering on the aluminum roof tonight. It’ll probably turn to snow in a few hours. We’ve been disconnecting the water line at night and switching to the onboard fresh water tank because of the freezing temperatures.
This morning it was partly cloudy, and West Yellowstone warmed up into the low 50s. This constantly changing weather is expected to continue for a few days, but it hasn’t really impeded us. This morning Bert and I headed back into the park to a marshy spot about eight miles north of Norris where he’d seen a cow moose and calf yesterday. The grass was wet and covered with light snow and branches, hard for us to navigate, but it was exactly the type of marshy, protected area that moose love, so we figured she’d still be around somewhere.
As with the Great Gray Owl Hunt, we struck out on finding the moose, but still managed to have a great time. We slogged past muddy moose tracks and forded a small stream, climbed over downed trees and came out covered in wet debris. Bert was mightily disappointed about the mystery of the missing moose and yet we were both glad we’d come out to Yellowstone for another hike. It’s hard to get tired of the place.
Up the road we found some spectacular views of Electric Peak and Sheepeater Cliff, along with Roaring Mountain. A bit further south we dropped in on Norris Geyser Basin and toured a piece of it that I hadn’t seen last week with Eleanor and Emma. Bert and I kept saying to each other, “Yellowstone is just an amazing place!” He’s been here many more times than I, and yet he’s still amazed with it, so I know we’ll enjoy another visit someday.
Today is our last day in the area, so in the late afternoon we all went into town to walk the center of town and see the historic buildings in West Yellowstone. I hadn’t even noticed the collection of old Union Pacific Railway buildings that line Yellowstone Street, nor the little fragment of the original rail line built in 1907 that still remains. But the local Chamber of Commerce has a brochure that describes all the buildings and does a fine job of explaining how West Yellowstone came to be.
The town has always been a terminus of the railroad. It was originally a collection of buildings on land leases in the Madison National Forest, until Woodrow Wilson signed the land over and the town was officially established in 1920. You’d ride the summertime-only “Yellowstone Special” up from Idaho and then hire a stage ride into the park. It was pretty expensive for those days. A stage ride from Norris to Canyon (about 14 miles by today’s roads) was $5.00 in 1915, about equal to $102 in today’s dollars.
Now the railway buildings still stand, even though the railroad was abandoned in 1977 (passenger service ended in the 1960s). The huge and elaborate timber dining hall is on the National Historic Register and is currently undergoing renovation. The depot is now the Yellowstone Museum. The baggage building is now the police station. All of them still have the rustic timber-and-stone construction that predates the quasi-Adirondack “national park rustic” style that was popularized in later decades.
I gathered another professional opinion about our battery charging situation. The advice was to replace the Parallax completely with an Intellipower unit, which has a better reputation for reliability and will also offer 3-stage charging. It’s not a direct-fit replacement, but the cost of the swap is similar to the cost of upgrading the Parallax, so I’m considering that option as well. We can also get a unit that incorporates a true-sine wave inverter suitable for the laser printer (for a lot more money), which I’ll consider but probably won’t do.
September 30, 2007 at 8:59 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
31 degrees at 8:30 a.m. / -97 amp-hours cumulative (24 amp-hours used overnight)
Yesterday a couple known to Bert and Janie through the Outdoor Writer’s Association showed up. Eric and Sue are a photographer/writer team who have been published just about everywhere. Last night Eric showed us some incredible photos he’d captured of a Great Gray Owl here in Yellowstone, and we resolved to go out to the same spot and find that owl again.
So began the Great Gray Owl Hunt. We hit the road in the late morning and pulled off about 20 miles from our campsite in the area where the owl was known to be living. This was the moment I’d been waiting for — not to see the owl, but to simply have a chance to go tramping around in the forests of Yellowstone on a beautiful clear day in September.
Up to this point all of our explorations had been roadside. In Yellowstone, that’s where most people should remain. There are dozens of interesting pullouts and sites to see, and you don’t really have to hike the backcountry to get a good feel for the park. In fact, it’s better if the average yahoo doesn’t leave the roadway because they aren’t equipped to stay safe in a region where bears, bison, and boiling water are concealed around every turn.
There’s a book you can find in the visitor centers called “Death in Yellowstone.” It documents all the interesting ways people have managed to kill themselves here. Some of them are just painfully stupid (a tourist trying to mount a wild bison, or feeding a grizzly bear) and others are more the result of inadequate foreknowledge (freezing to death after getting lost, stumbling over an elk carcass that a bear had already laid claim to, falling through the fragile sinter surface near a thermal area, etc.). Anyway, if you don’t know what you are doing, it’s best to stick to the roadside attractions. A can of bear spray and a “never say die” attitude does not constitute sufficient preparation for a backcountry hike.
Our little hike was more of a meander. Bert, Janie, Eric, and I all split up and explored separate quadrants of the search area, checking dead trees high and low for the large gray owl. The sky was blue, the air was comfortable (about 45 degrees with no wind), and the forest was filled with interesting things. We found a clump of bison fur, a mud wallow, all kinds of scat, elk bones, volcanic rocks, some gray jays, a woodpecker, and even — gulp — an elk carcass (fortunately too far gone to be of interest to anyone except insects). But no gray owl.
I didn’t really care at all. It was so pleasant and beautiful everywhere we went that I was happy just to roam around in the meadows and trees, crunching through the dry grass and finding little natural items to show Emma later. I think we all felt that way, because after two or three hours of hunting the owl we were all in great spirits and not really disappointed. I would have been happy to pitch a tent and stay there for a few days, just listening to the trees and the bird calls.
In the evening Eleanor told us of a large male elk posing in the meadow adjacent to our campground. Bert and I headed over and caught some nice shots of this fellow and his three cows at sunset. He has seven prongs on one side, and eight on the other. Six prongs on a side is a “royal”, seven prongs is an “imperial” and eight prongs is a “monarch”, according to the ranger at Rocky Mountain National Monument.
We weren’t the only ones taking pictures this evening. Everywhere you go in Yellowstone, photographers are out with huge lenses and tripods, snapping away at the wildlife. Everyone wants to get that perfect shot, and when they’ve got it, they go back for more because you can always hope to find a better one.
I can understand this. Normally when I’m shooting I have to work fast and hard, capturing images under time pressure before we move on or the subject does. Here in Yellowstone, I was able to slow down and take photos for the sheer pleasure of it. Bert and I stood out in the grassy field for over an hour just shooting this one bull elk as he ate, herded his cows, bugled, and finally sat down at sunset. A dozen other photographers were there the entire time as well. It was a fun exercise taken for no other reason than simply wanting to stay and observe this magnificent elk.
Our solar gain report for the day:
Clear. At 7 p.m. cumulative amp-hours were -67. 30 amp-hours gained.
September 29, 2007 at 7:43 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
41 degrees at 8:00 a.m. / -70 amp-hours cumulative (25 amp-hours used overnight)
It was surprisingly warm last night, thanks to a blanket of cloud overhead, but the gray skies have wrought havoc with our solar budget and our outdoor activities.
We started with a ranger talk at “The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone”, in a light rain, but soon the temperatures fell and by the end of the talk we were being snowed on. Emma was thrilled.
Despite a general chill, we dropped in on the Norris Geyser Basin and Artists Paintpots (bubbling mud pots that put on a most entertaining show of burping).
As I expected, Bert volunteered to let us use his generator for re-charging, but my estimate at this point is that we can still easily last for five nights. In fact, we’ve decided to stay an extra day so we can join the Gildarts for a tour of the Grizzly and Wolf center in West Yellowstone on Monday. We’re not using the laptops much, nor the cell phone, and with stringent power conservation measures it looks like our net loss per day will run about 24-27 amp-hours per day. That’s no problem for the four-battery bank installed in our trailer.
Work-wise I know that taking Monday off will probably cause me some grief, but I’m enjoying being disconnected so much that I’ll take my chances. I haven’t dropped out of sight for more than a couple of days since last March, when we went to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and Mexico.
Part of the Norris Geyser Basin
Our solar gain report for the day:
Cloudy. At 7 p.m. cumulative amp-hours were -73. 3 amp-hours lost.
We actually lost ground today rather than gaining. It was quite cold and gray all day and so the furnace was required in the afternoon, when normally the trailer would stay warm just from the sun shining on it. This is the first time I can recall that we’ve netted less power during the day while on solar, which just shows the huge impact the furnace has on our overall power budget.
September 26, 2007 at 7:25 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
We’re back from Yellowstone National Park and I’m backdating a week’s worth of blog entries now that I can once again get online.
From the moment you leave Cody, the road begins to climb and the scenery becomes stunningly rugged and fascinating. Even though Yellowstone starts about 40 miles away, it feels as though you’ve wandered off into the rocky wilderness almost immediately.
Two short tunnels and one long tunnel later, the first unexpected sight is a large reservoir and the Buffalo Bill dam. The dam was the tallest ever when it was built in the early 20th century, and a superb little visitor center will tell you all about it. The wind is also terrific, so fierce that steel bars atop the dam sing. Amazingly, you can walk out on the top of the dam and experience the awesome view and wind, even in this age of rampant security precautions.
A little further down is Buffalo Bill State Park, right on the shores of the reservoir. We noted it for a visit next time. Cell phones work there, somewhat amazing considering the remote feeling of the place.
Last time we went to Yellowstone we were unimpressed by the crowding in July and August. Eleanor was frankly not thrilled to be back, thinking that it would be the same, but the crowds have left and the park is much more pleasant, although the frequent visitors tell us that for September it still seems crowded to them. The East Entrance, by the way, is now completely re-paved and makes a fine entrance once again.
At the Canyon Visitor Center we heard a fellow talking on his cell phone. (This briefly depressed me since it meant I could get online and work near Canyon, but I decided to file that information and not make use of it on this visit.) He was excitedly telling someone, “Did you hear what happened to me yesterday? I hit an elk!” He appeared uninjured, but I expect the elk didn’t get off quite as well.
Sites at Madison campground are generally a bit tight for bigger RVs. We spent ten minutes wedging into our site so that we could park without scraping a tree or leaving a wheel off the pavement (there are fines for that). The other obvious problem is that our site is partially shaded by tall lodgepole pines to the east and west, which will reduce our solar gain to much less than I had anticipated. This could be a problem after five nights. Everyone else here seems to have a generator, and they run them a lot, probably because the nights are freezing.
On the plus side, our neighbors have two homeschooled kids, ages 6 and 10, and Emma managed to make instant friends with them. They have a lot in common as a result of their schooling. We can tell homeschooled kids now just from their generally outgoing behavior and their comfortable attitude toward adults.
It’s time to make a small announcement: we have decided to continue homeschooling Emma for at least another year. It has been a great success and since her Montessori school in Tucson has had no openings thus far, we see no reason to stop traveling anytime soon. We gave Emma some placement tests for second grade and found she was pretty much on track or ahead of the game in all areas, so our confidence in our schooling technique has been raised. In the morning before we left Cody, we ordered a curriculum from the Calvert School which will be delivered to Bert & Janie’s house next week. I’ll talk more about that later.
September 18, 2007 at 10:41 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
One night in Rocky Mountain National Park is like one bite of a chocolate cake. We’ll come back for seconds, the next chance we get.
We swung the Airstream down Rt 34 from Estes Park, down through the tall walls of Big Thompson Canyon and eventually out to Loveland and I-25 again. Our destination was Cheyenne, to meet blog readers (and Airstream Life fans) Jay and Cherie.
I’ve corresponded with Jay from time to time over the past couple of years. We’ve had a few near misses of their Airstream Safari 23 and ours, but never quite managed to get together. Finally, they were home for a while and it seemed an ideal opportunity to meet. Unfortunately, they don’t have courtesy parking, but Jay called over the Sierra Trading Post, which has plenty of RV space, and got confirmation that we’d be welcome to spend the night in their lot.
We’ve never unhitched the Airstream in these circumstances. Normally when we park overnight in a non-campground environment, we leave the trailer hitched up to the truck. But since we had permission, and needed the truck to get to Jay & Cherie’s house, we broke the rule this one time and left the Airstream alone, wedged among a row of UPS trailers at the boundary of the parking lot.
This gave me an opportunity to think about security for the trailer. We leave the “stinger” of the Hensley hitch locked into the trailer with two padlocks. This prevents it from being removed. It also makes it virtually impossible to hitch a truck to the trailer without breaking the locks. But the trailer could still be broken into, so the best security is to be in a safe environment. This parking lot is lit all night and the warehouse operation runs 24 hours a day, which helps a little.
Notice I’m in the picture this time? That’s twice in the past week that I have borrowed a tripod from our hosts and taken a group shot with the timer. I may have to start hauling my tripod to dinners from now on.
Jay and Cherie gave us a wonderful dinner, and afterward they were full of useful information for planning our route through Wyoming. This was very helpful because I realized something absolutely fabulous today: we have no deadlines or scheduled events for the foreseeable future. This is almost unprecedented for us — since we began traveling we’ve always had something out on the schedule to think about down the road. It might be a rally, a meeting, or a weather deadline, but something was always there to be thought about.
But in the past few days, our plans have mutated and our concerns about beating the winter have been alleviated by those changes. Without going into the full explanation, the conclusion is that we don’t have to be anywhere in particular. Freedom! This is a form of luxury that is hard to imagine while still working: a complete and total lack of commitment. I know it can’t last for long, but we’re going to run with it as long as possible.
The initial thought is to use this opportunity to spend extra time in Wyoming, looking at slightly-off-the-beaten path things that we might have passed on if we were in a hurry. We might even find a few spots where Internet and cell coverage are not available, so if the blog disappears for a night, don’t be too surprised.
September 14, 2007 at 10:42 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Tonight we met up with another magazine contributor, Jody Brotherston, and her husband, at her son’s home. Jody writes the “Interiors” section of the magazine and coincidentally happened to be here in the Denver area for a month. We’re working on plans for her next articles, which will cover healthy and environmentally friendly Airstream interior finishes, and also review a series of custom renovations submitted by our readers.
After all the restaurant meals we’ve had lately it was nice to sit down with a family and eat in.
The week has flown by and there are still many things we’d like to do in the area. I wanted to visit a local history museum. There’s a new movie at the Imax theater. We missed visiting some friends in the suburbs. So we have decided to extend our stay in Denver a day or two in order to catch up on more things before heading north to Wyoming. But our extra day will probably be spent on work, laundry, and re-stocking of the trailer, rather than fun stuff. Sometimes that’s how it goes.
September 13, 2007 at 11:20 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Last night Eleanor’s new opal and ironstone pendant broke … apparently there was an invisible fracture in it. This meant another trip downtown to the rock & fossil show, to exchange it for another piece. We met up with Jim again and this time roamed across the street to another venue of the show to check out turquoise and cabochons of all sorts of stones. While we were there, Emma was given a pair of interesting stones for her collection. One was a piece of “snakeskin agate” which is really a piece of ancient coral that fossilized and later became agate. We’d never seen it before. It’s remarkably smooth and feels soft to the touch.
We were already near downtown so we headed to the 16th Street Mall and dropped in on Barnes & Noble. Airstream Life magazine is supposed to be in over three hundred Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Books-A-Million stores, but I’ve yet to find it. Not every store will carry it, and the downtown Denver location seems to be one of those that didn’t stock it.
Have you seen a copy of Airstream Life for sale in a bookstore? If so, drop me a line using the “Contact Us” link, or put a comment on this post. I know some stores have been carrying it because I’ve heard from people who bought it, but I’d sure like to see it for myself.
This is the third time we’ve been to the Denver area while full-timing. Not only is Cherry Creek one of our favorite places to stay, we have a lot of good Airstream friends living here. The Rocky Mountain Airstreamers are very active, especially with vintage trailers. Two of them (Fred and Forrest) are regular contributors to Airstream Life magazine.
We met with Forrest and his wife Patrice for Chinese lunch a few miles from the state park, and then this evening joined some other local vintage Airstream owners out in Edgewater. Shari and Rob hosted. They are restoring their second vintage trailer, a 1955 (?) Airstream Safari. It’s currently lacking an interior but the project seems to be coming along well. I expect it will be done in time for next summer, and I hope we’ll see it at a vintage trailer event somewhere.
It’s amazing how long we can talk about an empty aluminum shell. Like car buffs, everyone has some expertise to contribute to the project, and everyone has a question or an opinion to offer for group discussion. It’s a good thing we stopped at Barnes & Noble to pick up another book for Emma, otherwise she would have been terribly bored.
After an appropriate period of time admiring the project trailer, we headed over to the neighborhood pub for dinner. In the photo you’ll see (from left to right): Emma, Rob, Chris, Jim, Eleanor, Shari, and Fred.
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