Crater Lake

When I awoke in the morning, the car thermometer registered 36 degrees, but there was frost on my tent fly, so it must have been even colder than that during the night. I had slept in the back of the car, which I do by moving everything out of the trunk and folding down the back seats. I still put up the tent as a storage place for some of the nonfood items in the trunk. The morning was still so cold that my hands went numb from the process of folding the tent and getting everything back in the car. At one point I had to take a break and sit in the car with the heater on for a while until my hands thawed. When I started this trip I was grateful that the air conditioner worked so well. Now I'm grateful that the heater works so well!

Once on the road, I drove thru the Winema National Forest and up to Crater Lake. I stopped first in the Visitors Center to ask about the patches of brown earth that I saw beside the road on my drive there. The park ranger explained that this was pumice from the earlier volcanic explosion and the even now 100,000 years or so later, it was so hard that nothing would grow on it.
The park ranger also told me a little about the lake:
"And you can even go for a swim in it."
"Must be pretty cold,"
"Yep, it wouldn't be a long swim, but it quickens the heart."
I decided that my heart didn't really need any quickening and passed up the swim.
Along the way I also stopped to check out the red flowers along the roadside; it turned out that the red was from the leaves; the flowers had already died off.
Crater Lake was beautiful and well worth the drive. The lake resulted from a volcano which had exploded and imploded a hundred thousand years ago (more or less) and left this huge crater which became a lake.

While I was there I struck up a conversation with a motorcyclist who was standing beside me admiring the lake.
"This is my first trip here," he said, "even tho I've lived all my life just 60 or 70 miles from here. This is also my first real trip on this motorcycle. I promised myself if I lost a hundred pounds, I'd buy myself a big motorcycle. I lost the hundred pounds and I bought this motorcycle back in May, and here I am. I also had a heart attack a few months ago, and it really got me thinking."
"I can see where it would do that," I said.
"Yep, my next trip is to Mt. Rushmore."
I mentioned that I had been to Mt. Rushmore recently and that, "You should be sure to take the audio tour for just five bucks. It gives you a real good picture of the political and the artistic story of the monument."

I drove Route 62 and continued on my way south. After a careful look at the calendar and my itinerary, I decided that I would have to skip Yosemite and Redwoods National Park and just take the coast road instead. It was a bit of a disappointment, but I guess ten weeks just wasn't enough to see it all. In any case, I have already seen a fair number of redwood trees and would see more on the way to the coast.

Along the way I saw a hitchhiker! I have not seen one of them in years. I thought briefly about stopping for him, but I didn't. He was a middleaged man, bigger than me, and the truth is that I was afraid. It probably would have been just fine and provided me with some interesting company, but the perception is, I guess, stronger than the reality. I suppose that's why there are hardly any more hitchhikers. We've all become afraid of each other - whether we are the hitchhiker or the driver.

Late in the day I found the Siskiyou Lake Campground, a few miles off Rt. 101. It's the only campground I've ever been to where they showed a free movie at night. I was curious and went to see it. It was pretty much a kids cartoon movie about an elephant, a tiger, and a cartoon animal who rescue an Indian baby and return it to his parent, but it was just about right for me after a long day of driving and I watched the whole thing - alone - the amphitheater was completely empty except for me. Actually, the whole campground was fairly empty. I guess most of the kids in this area are back in school now.
It was dark by the time I got back to my campsite, but I still made myself a good dinner by the light of my electric lantern. I don't like to go to bed hungry. It was too much trouble, however, to set up my tent in the dark,so I just slept in the car.

Stopping at Government Camp

Today my GPS got me off to a good start that I couldn't have done by myself. On my map it looked like Route 26, which I wanted, connected directly to I-84, but actually there was a small connecting road from I-84 which eventually led to Rt. 26. I could have spent a long morning looking for a Rt. 26 exit from I-84 that didn't exist, but fortunately my GPS lady knew about this and got me on the right track.

I had intended to cover a lot of miles today and end up very close to Crater Lake in Oregon.
I stopped just briefly at the Government Camp Visitors Center just to pick up a map of Oregon. Government Camp was neither government nor camp but just a small roadside town. It had been a government camp briefly a couple hundred years ago but not lately. It was here I was waylaid by the nice lady who was running the tourist office. First, she told me that I should go upstairs and see their interesting museum of the area. She made it sound really great, so what could I do? I went upstairs. In fact it was interesting. The object I found most interesting was a "mourning picture" of a not very attractive and rather grim looking lady. Seems that it was the custom "back then" to take portraits of people at funerals. This picture had apparently hung in someone's house for many years. I can't even imagine waking up every morning to this dour face. Why would anyone do this? A wedding picture? O.K. A birth-of-a-new-baby picture? OK. Even a bar mitzvah picture. But a mourning picture? Just one more piece of evidence that we human beings are a strange species.

Next the lady at the Visitors Center told me I shouldn't miss Timberline Lodge about seven miles up the mountain. It had been built in the 1930's by the WPA or CCC (I can't remember which) and did turn out to be a popular tourist site/sight for good reason. What could I do? I went driving up the mountain. Sure enough although there were too many clouds to see Mt. Hood, and even the skiing had been cancelled for the day, there was still a good view of surrounding mountains, mostly brown from being above the tree line. The lodge itself was indeed something to see, with a huge fireplace/chimney in the center, 12x12 wooden beams and handcarved oaken furniture.
I also learned some invaluable information from the Visitors Center lady. Hemlock trees have very short needles. Fir trees also have short needles but longer than hemlock trees, and cedar trees droop a little like willow trees.
In front of the building were some very pretty yellow yarrow flowers. Yarrow is very common in Pennsylvania, but I've always seen it in white and never before in yellow.

I stopped at a restaurant on the highway that ran through an Indian reservation in the midst of beautiful but barren countryside . The restaurant contained eight computers most of which were being used by their Indian customers.  In front of the restaurant was a big tepee, quite a contrast with the computers inside the restaurant!

At about 4:30, I found the LaPine State Park and set up for the night. It was still warm enough that I could prepare my dinner at the campsite, but the night turned out to be quite cold with my car thermometer eventually dropping to 36. I slept in the car and had a restless night. I'll probably need a long roadside nap tomorrow.

On the way to Portland, Oregon

I haven't really used my GPS for quite a while, since my maps and roadsigns have been quite adequate to get me where I've wanted to go, but I've started using it again to find specific campgrounds listed in the AAA campground book and also today to find specific locations in Portland, Oregon. This GPS's notice of specific turns is not as good as with my old GPS, but this one also will find specific intersections even without specific addresses and it will find the center of a town even if given no specific address - things my old GPS couldn't do.

After a couple of mishaps related to finding a campground, I decided that maybe it was time for me to look for a motel again. I had originally anticipated going to a motel once a week on a rainy day. In fact, however, altho there have been a couple of rainy nights, there haven't been any rainy days except one at Glacier, so I've just been using the tent and , sometimes on especially cold nights, the car.
I finally found a motel just 20 minutes from downtown Portland for $55.00 which included free WIFI, use of a microwave oven, a refrigerator and also a laundry room.

In Portland I visited the art museum. It is in two very attractive buildings, although as one might expect, their collection does not begin to compare to Philadelphia's. It does have a small collection of Impressionist paintings but the focus is much more on modern abstract art.
Portland also has a street which includes several blocks of tree shaded parks with lots of park benches. The street is named Park Street - not very imaginative but certainly descriptive enough. I enjoyed just sitting there for half an hour and watching people stroll by. I then took a walk around the downtown area which took me past their concert hall and their main theater which was playing O'Neil's "Long Days Journey into Night." Portland seems to have a cultural district somewhat like Philadelphia's Avenue of the Arts.

I had thought of going to Israeli dancing, which is held here on Sunday evening, and had even looked up the address on the internet when I was still back in Philadelphia; when I was in Israel several years go at the Carmiel Dance Festival, where a thousand people dance all night on the tennis courts after the performers have finished their performances, I danced with a woman from Portland and thought it would be nice to run into her again, but in the end the prospect of spending a nice warm evening with a hot bath in my own personal private bathroom was just too good to give up. In this case Israeli dancing just couldn't compete with the hot bath.

Sign for the day:While I was sitting in the park across from a sign among the flowers which said, "Please keep your dog(s) out of the flower beds. Thank you," a dog came along trailing a leash, went over to the sign, lifted his leg, and took a pee. I figure it was an act of defiance on the dog's part, or maybe he/she just couldn't read.

Stopping in Morton, Washington

I drove back north out of Mt. St. Helens National Monument to Route 12 and then west to Morton. I had breakfast here at a very nice cafe. I asked the waitress if they had WIFI, and she said, "No, but they have it next door and if you're lucky you may be able to pick it up through the wall." I was lucky, got very good reception and did one more blog along with finishing off the eggs and hash browns.

I spotted a notice taped to the door that there was a multifamily garage sale somewhere down highway 508. I was interested because I had also lost my red jacket and needed a replacement for those cold mornings and colder nights. I looked down the street I was on and sure enough it was highway 508 (also Main Street). I just followed it for a mile or so until I came to a garage loaded with stuff. This was a real garage sale out of a real garage overflowing into the driveway. I found a nice jacket for $5.00, chatted a bit with the homeowner, and then continued on my way to Portland.
 Around 4:30, I found a campground about 45 minutes north of Portland and called it a day.

Mt. Rainier/ski shop/Mt. St. Helens

I was up bright and early at 6:00 to beat the rush from my campsite in Glacier National Park to Sunrise Peak, which is a prime location for viewing Mt. Rainier. I didn't want to arrive  late and not find a place to park . It was a 23 mile drive over curvy roads but I still arrived in plenty of time for an almost private viewing. I suppose most of the campers were still in bed waiting for the weather to get a little warmer. There were clouds around the mountain but not enough to obscure a good view of the peak (6,400 ft.) all covered with snow. It was definitely a sight worth getting up early for.

From there I drove back down the mountain the way I had come and headed for Mt. St. Helens, where the volcano exploded in 1982. I made a couple of stops along the way, the first one to get a cup of coffee, a delicious blueberry muffin, and time to do one more blog. I'm often surprised when out-of-the way places turn out to have access to WIFI, but now I always ask, because just as often as not, they do.

A little further along I stopped at a ski shop/sporting goods store to buy a new poncho. I believe my old poncho is with my red jacket, and I wouldn't have needed a new poncho if I knew what has become of my red jacket but I don't so I did. In any event, for $3.95 I got a new poncho and an interesting conversation with the store owner. He was a man of about 45 who used to work in Portland. He was a mechanical engineer and had hoped to retire in about six years, but he said his wife talked him into doing it early. He liked to ski and hike and do outdoor activities, so they decided to settle in this area. When this store came up for sale last winter, they decided to buy it and he would run it. That way he could work at a much less high pressure job and still have time to do all the things he liked to do. His wife worked from home for a firm that had its headquarters in Atlanta and a subsidiary or a branch in Portland. Now if that isn't a sign of the times, I don't know what is! The man seemed very content with his new lifestyle. Although it was none of my business, I asked him anyway how he managed to retire so young. He said that he and his wife had worked hard, skipped vacations, and decided not to have any children. He said that he came from a three-child family and had seen how difficult it was for his parents financially to provide for all of the children the way they wanted to. I mentioned that my wife and I (well, really my wife) had also decided to have just one child and it's doubtful if I could have retired as early as I did or been able to take this trip if we had had more. Given the cost of raising children , I wonder how many other couples out there are making or at least considering similar decisions. Incidentally, there was an article in one of the July issues of Time magazine about "only" children. It said that the research generally shows that they are as well adjusted as other children and often more successful in life (like first-born children) than children from larger families. The writer of the article attributed this to the extra attention that single children receive from their parents.

I reached St. Helens National Monument and took the road through the Gifford Pinchot National Forest all the way up to Windy Point for the best view of the mountain. It was still all brown from the explosion and all around the mountain for more than eight miles there were still fallen trees that had been blown over by the explosion, which actually blew out the side of the mountain and sent a blast of heat and stones across the forest at a speed of 400 miles an hour. Along the way to Windy Point there were a number of scenic lookouts. At one of them there was a lake now half covered with fallen logs. The blast had deepened the lake to the extent that it threatened to flood the region and the Corps of Engineers had had to build a tunnel that could be opened to let out excess water when necessary.

I came back down the mountain to a great campground with large private campsites and everywhere huge redwood trees at least 120 feet tall and with trunks so large that it would take three or even four of me to hold hands in a circle around one of these trees.

Mt. Rainier National Park

A light saying, "Maintenance required" lit up on my dashboard and made me nervous, so I drove to Yakima, WA, the nearest large town on my route to Mt. Rainier and found a Toyota dealer. In Philadelphia I would have had to wait a few days for an appointment and then paid a couple hundred dollars. Here a very polite and helpful gentleman told me that a 5000 mile checkup including oil and filter change and tire rotation would cost me about $60.00 and would take about an hour and a half because there were other people ahead of me. In addition, for no extra charge, he drew me a map to the best campground in Mt. Rainier National Park - what a deal!

The scenery on the drive through the mountains to the park was magnificent. On one side of the mountain, the slopes were brown with just occasional patches of green bushes. On the other side the slopes were green with fir trees. I read that rain clouds blowing east from the Pacific drop their water when they reach these mountains, so there is a lot of rain on one side of the mountains but very little on the other.

I treated myself to a good dinner of liver and onions, mashed potatoes and a salad at the Drift Inn Restaurant and shortly afterwards took a good nap in the car for almost an hour at a roadside pulloff. I don't like to miss my afternoon nap - especially when I'm driving.

When I reached Mt. Rainier, they were doing roadwork and I had to wait for a "pilot car" to lead waiting cars down the one lane that was open. While I was waiting, I chatted with the young lady who was holding the stop/slow sign and she explained exactly what they were doing to the road. Every two years they resurface it so that they won't have to tear up and rebuild the whole road. Working in quarter-mile sections, they lay down a layer of oil on top of the present road and then drop a layer of gravel on top of the oil - all with big machines. Then a steamroller presses the gravel into the oil to make a solid surface.

I found the campground that the car dealer had recommended, and I think I got the last of the available sites in the park. I think this site was still available because although there was a post with a site number in front of a parking space, there was no apparent table or fire circle, so it didn't really look like a campsite.  Since the park was pretty cold,  I had already decided anyway that I would just sleep in the car, so I pulled into the space. When I pulled in, I noticed a small footpath leading through some trees to where there was a table and fire ring - just like at a real campsite.
I just hung out and read for a couple hours, cooked myself a spaghetti dinner, and then went to an evening program by a park ranger at the outdoor amphitheater on the topic of interacting with wild animals in the park. I didn't learn that much new, but the ranger had some good slides and made his presentation interesting, so that was fine. The temperature was somewhere in the forties, so I took my sleeping bag along and wrapped myself in it. Not especially aesthetic, but I do not like to be cold!

Davenport, WA and the Columbia River

Today was another driving day. At the beginning, the field beside the road was blanketed with yellow flowers. I took out the flower book I had bought for Miriam to see if it would help me identify them, but they weren't included.

I stopped at the Visitors Center in Davenport to pick up a map of Washington State. The Center itself was nothing special, but it was staffed by two elderly men (even more elderly than I) who were especially friendly. One even gave up his seat at a desk so I could use the office computer to do some blogging. The man had some speech difficulty from a recent stroke, but we chatted a bit anyhow. I mentioned my daughter being in Costa Rica, and he said that his wife had also lived there for ten years. Our interaction was brief, but like so many of my interactions with people along the way, very pleasant.

Later in the day I was driving  beside the Columbia River, a beautiful stretch of road. At one point I stopped at a scenic overlook to look down on the river from the cliffs above. There was a sign there to "Watch out for rattlesnakes." I was watching out, but I didn't see any. I did see a historic marker about the Wanapum Indians who used to live in this area. They were peaceful and did not offer any resistance to the settlers moving into their territory. But were they in any way rewarded for this cooperative behavior? Not hardly! Since they were not engaged in fighting, there was never any treaty between them and the U.S. government. Since there was no treaty, they were never given any land. Today there is a state park named after them; there is a dam on the Columbia River named after them; but the Wanapum themselves, according to the historical marker, are "all but extinct."

There is also a campground named after them. I followed a sign and went looking for it, but I didn't find it, although I must say that the drive on a narrow road beside the river on one side and high cliffs on the other left me little to complain about. After giving up on finding the campground, I drove back the way I had come and sure enough, there was the campground with a sign posted about 50 yards off the main road so that it was only visible when driving back on the road.
A little further along the road was a sign saying that all sites were set up for RV's; I could occupy a site  with my tent, but I would still have to pay the RV price of $28. That was the last straw; the campsites did have a view of the river, but they weren't very private, they were charging me five dollars more than I had ever paid for a campsite for the privilege of having RVservices that I had no intention of using, they had given me a lot of aggravation because the signage to the place was so bad, and the campground was named after a tribe of Indians against whom we had committed genocide. Enough was enough!

 I headed out and found a private campground just up the road. It had reasonably attrractive campsites including showers, laundry facility and WIFI for $21.00. I took it. The lady at the store who signed me up had time to talk and we kibbitzed for a bit. She recommended that I take a short walk down to the river to just sit and enjoy the view.
It seemed like a good idea, and it was. I just sat for a bit and watched the cars going over a long causeway and bridge across the Columbia River. There was also a hedge of wild roses in front of me. An altogether pleasant experience.

The road west from Glacier National Park

It was with a certain amount of regret that I left Glacier National Park. I think I could have stayed there two more days and still found interesting things to see, but according to my latest map check, I am still way behind schedule to reach Los Angeles by September 8, so I can catch my plane back to Philadelphia (more on this another time).

The route west from the park was very scenic. On one side of the road was the Flathead River (named after the Kootenai Indians, who did not call themselves flatheads). On both sides of the road there were tall green mountains and sometimes whole fields of yellow wildflowers. As the saying goes, "It's not the destination, it's the journey," and this was one of those days.

Seems like even very small towns in America have libraries. I stopped at Libby, Idaho , a two-street town. One street was the main highway and one street wasn't, but it still had a very nice regional library, and the friendly librarian was perfectly happy to let me use one of their computers to do some blogging.

Most visitor centers have an institutional look and feel about them, but not all. There was the one back in North Dakota that had a little pond in the middle of the room. A business that made and sold these ponds had its office right behind the Visitors Center and they had put the pond in for free. At Bonners Ferry's Visitors Center, where I stopped today, the Visitors Center had a corner furnished with a small sofa and a couple of very comfortable looking recliner chairs. Very comfy.

I had difficulty finding a campground today. There didn't seem to be any along the road and my AAA campground book indicated that the nearest one was still at least an hour away; it was already almost 6:00, and I was afraid that by the time I got there it might be full. Then suddenly there it was -a sign by the road that said, "Riley Creek Recreation Area," and he sign also included the symbol for camping. I made a left at the next turn and found the campground. The camp was under the aegis of the Corps of Engineers and wasn't even listed in my camp book. I thought it was 6:30 by the time I settled in, but it turned out to be only 5:30; I had moved into another time zone and was now on Pacific Coast Time. 5:30 - a little later than usual but not too bad.

Signs for the day:
I stopped in at a minimart and bought a prepared wedge roast beef sandwich- to-go for my lunch. "What does the "wedge" mean?" I asked the young lady at the cash register. She explained to me that the "wedge" had nothing to do with the roast beef itself but referred to the fact that the sandwich was cut in half diagonally so that each half looked like a wedge. I learn something new almost every day!
I was on a roll with this cashier and there were no other customers so then I asked her about the road signs that said, "Chain on area," or "Chain off area." She explained that these signs were for truckers in the winter and referred to areas just beyond the signs where truckers could pull off the road and put on or take off chains as snow conditions required. Some days I learn two new things!

I used to think that the bumper sticker that said,"If you don't like the way I drive, get off the sidewalk," was a joke, but maybe not. Today on a walkway beside the road on which I was driving, there was a sign that said,"No driving on the walkway."

Scrawled  in big letters on the rear window of an old green SUV:
"Just Divorced," along with a Happy Face.

A day in Glacier National Park

My plan was to take the 9:00 ranger-led hike to Avalanche Lake, a walk of about an hour and a half each way through a cedar and hemlock forest. To get to the trailhead, I took the free shuttle that runs through the main road in the park and goes to the trailheads of most of the sites one would want to see. A great service considering that visitors are many and parking spaces are few.
 

                                           Avalanche  Lake Trail, Glacier National Park         

 I arrived in plenty of time for the hike and so did about ten other people - but not the ranger. We waited until about 9:20 and then set out on our own. The walk had a lot of uphills (mostly) and downhills (occasionally) and was quite pleasant. Since there was no ranger, it also afforded us more time to kibbitz with each other along the way. We put the person wearing the bear bells out in front, but we didn't see any bears. In the end, we did see a lovely little lake with mountains in the background. We all sat on a log and ate the lunches we had brought along and then hiked back.


                                                                 Logan Pass, glacier National Park

I then got back on the shuttle continuing through the park to Logan Pass, one of the highpoints of the park both literally and figuratively. The temperature was in the low forties and there was a strong wind which made it even colder, but I was wearing a jacket, three long sleeve shirts, a short-sleeve shirt and a T-shirt, so it wasn't so bad. At one point it started to drizzle and I put on my rain poncho which also acted as a wind breaker. This walk was up a mountain with lots of switchbacks. There was open land around the path and beyond that very high mountains. At some points there were actually snow patches below me. Along the way I saw a marmot, which is sort of a cross between a prairie dog and a squirrel - very cute - but the real reward, in addition to all of the beautiful scenery, came at the end of the trail where there was a mountain goat just sitting on a hill not more than 30 yards from the trail. Some folks actually went up to within a few feet of the goat to take its picture; the goat didn't move. I guess it liked getting its picture taken.

After the hike there was an interesting ranger talk in the Visitors Center about the glaciers. Apparently they are fast disappearing and are expected to have melted completely in about 20 years. Also interesting, the ranger mentioned in passing, that the park rangers were only allowed to talk about this effect of global warming about two years ago. That would make it around the very end of the Bush administration. I must confess that I didn't actually get to see any glaciers in Glacier Park. They were all located almost a day's walk (round trip) from the main road, and since I had actually walked on a glacier in Alaska, I felt that I could pass on this, especially since I did a map check yesterday and found that I'm quite far behind schedule and probably won't get to see some of the things I had hoped to see. Ten weeks just isn't enough time for even a reasonably thorough trip across the US.

I then shuttled back to the Avalanche Lake shuttle stop. The temperature there was about 20 degrees warmer and it felt GOOD! From there I transferred to the shuttle back to my campground. On the shuttle I enjoyed a very pleasant talk with a man from Ireland who said he had lived in Philadelphia before his bank transferred him to New York. He was originally from Dublin and was working here for an Irish bank. I asked him if he would eventually go back to Ireland. He said, "No, I like it here very much." He has a green card and expects to get his American citizenship eventually.
In the evening I went to the amphitheater for a program of singing by a trio led by a Blackfoot Indian. He looked more like a sixties hippie, with a long ponytail, so I don't think he was 100% Blackfoot. The trio did songs related more or less to the environment and to Indian culture and it was quite pleasant. One of the songs was "The bear who stole the Chinook (West wind). At first I thought he was saying, "The bear who stole the shnook." "Oh my gosh," I thought. "A Jewish Blackfoot Indian!" but that was not the case.

Arrival at Glacier National Park



                                           outside wall of huckleberry pie restaurant  

 I started on a rainy day not far outside of Glacier National Park. I stopped to investigate a restaurant/gift shop that had a big sign saying that their huckleberry pie was a treat not to be missed. Since they said it was "not to be missed," I decided to stop and not to miss it. It wasn't the most wonderful thing I've ever tasted, but it was quite good.

I arrived at the park around noon. There was a long line of cars waiting to get in, and I was afraid that there might not be any more campsites available in spite of my early arrival. It turned out that I had no trouble getting a nice campsite at the nearby Apgar Campground (one of several campgrounds in the park). It was a dreary rainy day - my first one on this trip - so I just visited the Visitors Center and the surrounding stores and didn't really do much.

In the evening I went to their outdoor amphitheater to hear a park ranger talk about forest fires and their effects, both good and bad, on the parks and forests. Just as she started to talk about the impact of rain, down it came - a really heavy shower. It was actually very dramatic. Almost like she had summoned the rain by calling its name. In any case, I think she gave a 30 second wrapup to her talk, which was quite good and interesting but almost over anyway; I'm not really sure because with most folks I was already hustling out as the rain started to fall. Fortunately, altho the amphitheater wasn't far from the campsite, I had brought my car, so I didn't get badly soaked.

On the way to Glacier National Park

I started my day today driving through Anaconda, Montana. I had lost my fleece pullover, so when I saw a sign for a yard sale, I decided to take a chance that I might find a cheap replacement there. Sure enough I did find a heavy sweatshirt which was no beauty but seemed like it might suffice keep me warm. I was willing to pay up to $5.00 for it, so I had no difficulty accepting the lady's price when she said it was fifty cents. I also asked the two ladies who were there why the town was called Anaconda, since as best I could remember, Anaconda was the name of a poisonous snake. They had no idea.

It's true that every roadside town has its McDonalds or other fast food places, but it hasn't been that difficult to find local restaurants as well. In Anaconda, the main road through the town had no place that looked interesting, but I did find a very nice restaurant for breakfast when I turned off the main road and drove for a short distance on the main street of the town parallel to the highway. The restaurant was covered with beautiful paintings of local wildlife and cowboy life of a bygone era. There were a lot of older people at two long tables with new people coming as some others left. Seemed like a Saturday morning breakfast group. The waitress was very pleasant and took time to call me "honey" and even give me a pat on the shoulder, which was very considerate of her since she was the only waitress and was rushing from here to there to take care of everybody.

I had lunch at a simple roadside rest area with just picnic tables and a rest room; however, the view of the mountains in the distance was spectacular.

Sometimes it's hard to separate good fortune from bad fortune. For example, I got the last campsite available at Wayfarer State Park, within striking distance of Glacier National Park. If it had been gone by the time I got there, I would have had to backtrack to find another campground, so I suppose getting the last campsite was good fortune. I knew, however, that it was the last campsite available because most of the campsites were in a nice wooded area, but my campsite was in an open field. With the next-to-last and the third-to-last campsites not very far away on each side of me, there was very little privacy, so that was bad fortune. I did end up, however, having a very pleasant conversation with four bicyclists who occupied one of the campsites near mine and had biked down from Canada, so that was good fortune. Ah well, who knows?

I did see one very nice thing while I was at this campground that is worth mentioning. A young bicyclist in his late teens or early twenties arrived around 6:00. There were no campsites left. The person running the campground could have just said, "Sorry, we're all filled up," but he didn't. He found another spot on the lawn for the cyclist to pitch his tent and even arranged for him to use the picnic table that belonged to an RV site but wasn't being used. Now that's menschkite!

Talk with the campground owner

It was my intention to do another blog before I left this campground. I wasn't getting a good WIFI signal from my tent site, so like yesterday, I went up to sit on the front porch just outside the office, where I could get a good signal. Before I could get started, however, the owner came out in his bathrobe and we had a long conversation. He was someone who had tried his hand at almost everything in the course of his forty years or so of life - a college degree in photography, jobs as a long-distance truck driver, an administrator, and a restaurateur. I may also have left out a few things. Now he was taking up hunting with a bow and arrow. I remarked on the stuffed deer sitting in his yard beside the porch, and he explained that he spent some time every day practicing his archery on the deer. We talked about problems of unemployment and he mentioned that his younger brother was helping him out there at the campground because his brother couldn't find a real job that would enable him to support himself. At the same time, my host was opposed to the President's stimulus package because, "We can't afford it." I mentioned that a fair amount of the stimulus money seemed to be coming to Montana for highway construction. His only comment about that was, "There are only two seasons in Montana - winter, which is long, and the highway construction season, which is short."  He was also a volunteer with the NRA, teaching rifle safety to kids. By this time he had already offered me a cup of coffee and I didn't really want to spoil a perfectly friendly relationship by expressing my views about the NRA. After more than half an hour, I excused myself and headed out. I could always catch up on my blogging some other time.

I spent most of the day on the road. Around 4:40 I found Lost Creek State Park. The park was aptly named, being located at a side road off of a side road. It was in the middle of a piney woods and was also aptly labeled "primitive." There were pit toilets (but with real toilet seats and very clean), and campsites with just a table and a fire ring. No hot water or showers. My campsite was actually fairly scenic, surrounded by trees and with a creek running just behind it.

2nd day in Yellowstone National Park

I started my day driving north through Yellowstone National Park to Mammoth Springs. Again a great variety of different scenery along the way. At one point I thought I was seeing snowcapped mountains, but it turned out to be travetine which is a white mineral produced by the hot springs interacting with the rocks. I did a short walk at Mammoth Springs . I didn't see any mammoths or any springs, but there were a lot of bubbling pools and a small waterfall. I also overheard my first Hebrew speakers on this trip. It was a family with a little girl who was crying her heart out about something. Actually, I've heard quite a lot of foreign languages as I've moved from place to place. We have really become a polyglot nation.

My first stop out of Yellowstone was at a laundromat. Here I had a long talk there with a gentleman from Iowa. I started off by asking , "Are the animals I saw in the park buffalo or bison?"
He explained to me that they were actually bison and that buffalo were similar but not identical animals that live in Africa or Asia. As far as I can tell, the two names are used interchangeably here. In fact I've seen both names used in material from the Park Service. I guess the confusion is just as well. Somehow "Bison Bill" just doesn't have the same ring to it as Buffalo Bill.

The man with whom I was speaking was part Indian on his grandmother's side and we talked about how Indian babies were at one time numbered when they were born to make it easier for the government to take them away from their parents and send them to government schools. Whew, what a history we have with the Indians -first physical genocide and then cultural genocide!" Now though,"  he said, "It's an advantage to be classified as an Indian because it entitles them to a share of all the money casinos on the reservations are making." How the world changes!

I stopped at a gift shop/snack bar . On the way in, I passed a lady with a cone of real hand-dipped ice cream and exchanged a small conversation with her: "That looks very good!"
"It is."
"What kind is it?
"Moose tracks."
I went right inside and ordered a small moose-tracks ice cream (which turned out to be vanilla with small hunks of chocolate. ) It was quite large for a "small" but it was very good and I didn't have any trouble finishing the whole thing. I also saw the Israeli family again. The little girl was still crying. I was glad she wasn't my little girl.

My next brief stop was to talk with a man by the side of the road who was wearing earphones and holding up a small aerial. He explained that he was a ham radio operator and that he was trying to see if he could pick up any other operators there in the middle of Montana. He said he wasn't having much success.

I spent the night at a campground near Livingston. It had WIFI and very nice hot showers that were a series of cabins where you could lock your own cabin while you were taking your shower. The campground had a large section for RV's and a small section for tent campers. The RV section was almost full. I was the only tent camper.

First day in Yellowstone National Park

I started the day at Yellowstone National Park by going to the Visitors Center and talking with a young lady park ranger who mapped out an itinerary for me for the day, while expressing her enthusiasm for all the great things I would be seeing. Unfortunately, I somehow misplaced the map she gave me so I stopped in to another Visitors Center (The park is so large that they have several Visitors Centers.) and asked a park ranger there if he could do for me what the young lady at the other Center had done. He was an older man who had obviously lost his enthusiasm for helping tourists. He just pointed to a map and said, "They built the road to follow the sights, so just follow the road and stop where you want to." At my request he finally identified a couple of "must sees" and gave me a park map; I must admit that his advice worked reasonably well, but he sure didn't leave me with the same feeling of enthusiasm that I got from the first lady! I think it still pays to ask, but sometimes it pays less, depending on whom you ask.


                                            hot spring at Yellowstone National Park


I then spent the rest of the day driving from site to site in Yellowstone. I started with a visit to "Old Faithful" ; it was impressive as advertised. It performed just a little later than scheduled after a few false starts, but was well worth the wait - a huge geyser rising perhaps a hundred feet or more into the air. This is the most impressive sight in the park but by no means the only one. The park is almost 100 miles long and perhaps 50 miles wide and contains bubbling streams and hot pools and lesser geysers, all with steam coming off of them. There are deep canyons with streams running through them. There are waterfalls and rapids, open grassland and heavy stands of pine and rocky cliffs. Along the way I stopped to see an elk on the other side of a wide creek , who just stood still for a long time to give everyone a chance to get a good look at him.

Towards the end of the day I came to the plains where the bison come every evening to rut. At first there was only one lone bison, who slowly moved up to the road and then crossed to the other side of the road and eventually disappeared across the field. He may just have been an old bison who had come to the wrong place by mistake and was now slowly working his way back to wherever he came from. Even bison don't escape the aging process! Further down the road, however, there was a whole herd of bison. I didn't see a whole lot of rutting going on, but there were a fair number of young bison sticking close to their mothers, so I guess there must have been some rutting going on somewhere. At one point most of the bison came up from the plain, crossed the road right in front of where I was stopped, and then disappeared into the woods.

By that time it was well after 8:00, and I was pretty tired from a lot of driving and also some long walks to look at particular sights, so I went back to my campsite for a light supper and then called it a day. It was warmer than the previous night, and I could have slept in the tent, but since it was so cold the night before I hadn't even bothered to set up the air mattress and the sleeping bag so I just went to sleep in the car again.

a scary experience/to Yellowstone via Cody, Wyoming

My day got off to a good start; I watched a group of wild turkeys cross the road in front of me as I left the campground.

I stopped once at a roadside minimarket and got a 16 oz. cup of Cappucino for just $1.39. What would that have cost me at Starbucks?

For lunch I followed a roadside sign to a nearby picnic area. It had about a dozen picnic tables of which only three were occupied. The area was heavily interspersed with pine trees and I could smell the pine. The temperature was about 70 degrees with a light breeze. Couldn't have been a better setting for lunch.
Along the way I passed Crazy Woman Creek. What's in a name? I don't know what's in this one but I'm sure there's a good story somewhere.

I pulled off the road to rest at a roadside pullover and saw a dirt road leading from it which said "Route 16, eight miles." I thought I was on Route 16, but I decided to follow it and see where I ended up. It turned out to be quite a scenic trip. The route went up and eventually reached an area high above a deep canyon with a river running through it. It was quite striking and quite large. It may not have been the Grand Canyon, but it was certainly a grand canyon.

The road was quite narrow and curvy, however, and at one point a police car driving too fast came towards me around one of the curves. I swerved the little bit I could toward the drop to the canyon, and he swerved to his right enough to just avoid hitting me. It was all over before I even had time to be frightened, but in retrospect it was a reminder of what a chancy business life is. One minute I am driving along minding my own business; the next moment I am within a few inches of being pushed over the side of a cliff and being one of the 40,000 people killed annually in car accidents. A few minutes later I was back on the main road and continued on my way.

I was getting tired and tried to get a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie in a little town called Greybull (Wyoming). No luck. No place in town that served apple pie. I finally settled for a root beer float (with extra root beer) at an ice cream parlor. In a town without apple pie, I hardly expected to find WIFI, but I asked anyway, and to my great surprise they not only had WIFI in the town, but they had it right in that very ice cream parlor. I brought in my netbook, opened it, and found that Ilana was Skyping me. I answered her call and had a pleasant video conversation with her and Miriam (who is still cute!)

                                            statue of Buffalo Bill, Cody, Wyoming

My next stop was Cody, Wyoming, which is Buffalo Bill country. They have a Buffalo Bill Museum, which was closed for the day by the time I got there, and a huge statue of Buffalo Bill on his horse.



They also have a rodeo which goes on every evening. I had called up Yellowstone National Park earlier in the day to make a reservation for a campsite, but I was still anxious to get there and get set up before dark, so I was about to pass up the rodeo, when the thought came to me,"Yellowstone will still be there tomorrow, but I can only see this rodeo tonight," so I went back and attended the rodeo.

I'm glad I did. It was quite an event. First they played God Bless America and America the Beautiful while a young girl rode around the arena holding a big American flag. Sure, it was kind of hokey but it was also very dramatic and moving as well. It might have been even more effective if it had not been immediately followed by horsemen and women riding around the arena in a similar format holding flags of the various sponsors of the event while announcers encouraged people to patronize these Cody businesses. Oh well, I suppose it's all America.

Then the events began. There was the wild bronco-riding and the bullriding which one might expect at a rodeo. I was surprised that no one got hurt; it seems like a hard way to make a living, especially considering that the contestants have to pay an entrance fee and only the winner of each event gets prize money.
They also had roping events where the cowboys had to rope a calf and tie him up. The women were also not neglected. The women did not ride the wild broncos or the bulls, but they did compete along with boys under sixteen in roping events. (I guess they figured there was a certain equality between boys under sixteen and women.) Nor were children under 13 neglected. In one case there was a six year old who actually rode one of the bulls - although not for very long. I remarked to the lady sitting beside me that in Pennsylvania the parents would have been turned in for child abuse.

And just to spice things up - since I suppose just the traditional rodeo events weren't enough - three teenagers were selected from the audience to come into the arena and participate in a dance contest. There was also an event where all the children in the audience were encouraged to come into the arena. Three calves were then released with ribbons tied to their tails, and the children who were able to get the ribbons off of the calves' tails were given some kind of prize from a local merchant. It was quite an evening!

Incidentally, I did eventually get a great piece of apple pie at a restaurant called Grannys there in Cody. It was so good that I asked to talk to the chef so I could compliment him - or her if it was actually granny who baked it. The young lady at the cash register, however, said that the pie had probably been baked in the morning by someone on the morning shift, so I had to forego that request.

I didn't get to Yellowstone until 11:00 PM. When I got there I found out that I had another 50 miles to drive to get to my campsite. At one point I came to a T in the road and the signs there did not include my camping area. Moreover, there weren't a lot of people to whom I could turn for directions after midnight on this very dark road. Fortunately, as I was pondering what to do, a truck pulled up behind me, and the driver was able to point me in the right direction. I did eventually find my campsite at about 1:00 am. It turns out that Yellowstone is 7,000 to 8,000 feet high (the Appalachians are 4,000-5,000 feet) and quite cold at night. The thermometer in my car registered 39 degrees. I wasn't about to even think about putting my tent up at that point, so I just adjusted my car seat to the sleep position and called it a day.

Mt. Rushmore

                                             presidents' heads at Mt. Rushmore


  I went back to Mt. Rushmore this morning and rented an audio tape tour. It was just $5.00 cheap and lasted for almost an hour and a half. The tape told all about the political process to get the project approved, why these particular presidents were selected, and how the huge project of carving the heads into granite at the top of a mountain was accomplished. All quite interesting.

One of the controversies about Mt. Rushmore was that the mountain had also been a sacred place for the Lakota Indians, and now one more land was being taken away from them. I have been reading a lot about our treatment of American Indians, and it is a tragic story. In the gift shop they had a shirt for sale with a picture of the four presidents in the background, but in the foreground it had pictures of four famous Indian chiefs and under their names was written, "The original founding fathers." I'm pretty good at not buying souvenirs, and I certainly don't need any more T-shirts, but this was one I couldn't resist.

After stopping in the nearby town of Keystone to do my laundry and have a huge salad at Peggy's Restaurant, I was on the road again., headed for Yellowstone.
Again, lots of very small towns along the way with unusual names. One of the towns I passed was Tipperary, like in the song:
It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way to go
It's a long way to Tipperary,
To the sweetest girl I know
And of course the joke that comes with it.:
A very tired and bedraggled looking man goes up to a rary and gives it a good push, tipping it over on its side.
A second man is watching him and says,"You really look tired. Where did you come from?"
The first man says, "I walked all the way across Africa to tip this rary.
"Wow," says the second man. "That's a Long Way to Tip a Rary." (end of joke - just in case you were hoping for something more.)

At about 5:00, I still hadn't seen any signs for campgrounds. I decided to stop at a rest area and take a little break. I was the only one there, but just as I was about to throw out my AAA books for the Northcentral States, now that I had moved west into Wyoming, two women drove up. I offered them the books, which they accepted. I then asked them if they knew of any campground in the area, and sure enough they directed me to a state park on a back country road next to a big reservoir that I would never have found on my own. It pays to ask! The campground was just outside the little town of Pine Haven, population 222. What surprised me, however, was that Pine Haven not only had a very modern and fairly large grocery store but even a Supper Club! Even Mt. Airy doesn't have a supper club - at least none that I know about. What is a supper club anyhow? I asked the lady at the cash register at the grocery store where all the customers come from, and she explained that there were a lot of summer people who came up from Minneapolis and also ranchers who lived in the area.



                                            sunset at campground near Pine Haven

 I found the campground at the end of a long dirt road , signed myself in and eventually found a campsite with a fair amount of privacy and a nice view of the reservoir with a perfectly wonderful sunset into the hills behind the reservoir.

I think I mentioned in a previous blog how different this camping experience was from my previous experience where it was always necessary to go ask some other campers to turn down their radio or TV. Well, tonight my luck ran out. A family a fair distance away apparently felt they couldn't have their picnic dinner without the car radio on. It wasn't real loud, but it was loud enough to be irritating. Finally, I just went over and asked them in my most courteous manner ( even tho I wasn't feeling very courteous) to please turn down the radio. The guy who seemed to be the head of the family just gave me a nod, and I didn't think he was really going to do anything, but in fact he did turn down the radio. I could still just barely hear it, but it was a lot better. I suppose we may live in a better world (in some ways at least), but it ain't perfect yet!

Camping at Mt. Rushmore

I started off my day in the Badlands with a  conversation with a professor and his wife at the lodge WIFI corner. He had to be back to his teaching job in Iowa by next week. I can remember when I used to have to be back home by Labor Day, so I could go to work again, but of course that's not a problem any more.

I took the long route through the park out to Interstate 90, and then headed off to Mt. Rushmore.
Along the way I stopped off at Walmart to fill a couple prescriptions and stock up on food supplies. I am embarrassed to admit that I have become a regular customer of Walmart, but they are everywhere; they carry anything and everything I might need; their pharmacy is even open on Sunday, and their staff of underpaid and exploited workers is unfailingly cheerful and pleasant including a greeter (often in a wheelchair) who just stands at the door to smile and say , "Welcome to Walmart," when I come in.

I drove most of the day through the plains that looked not too different from the Dakotas and reached the Horsethief Lake Campsite in the National Park at Rushmore around 5:30. I had a very pleasant site overlooking the lake and with chipmunks scampering around. I saw a few kids swimming but I didn't see any horsethieves. Right next to my site was a site for handicapped people. It was mostly paved to make it more accessible, but it was unoccupied. I suppose there are not very many handicapped people who come tent camping.
I set up my tent and had a good dinner. There is a tendency to skimp on meals. I have to pull everything I need out of the car trunk and prepare it on a picnic table, but I am still trying to eat healthy so I can stay healthy. Tonight I had a nice frozen package of talapia in lemon sauce, which I picked up at Walmart (blush), a small Greek yogurt with strawberries at the bottom, a slice of Sara Lee "Hearty delicious 100% whole wheat with honey" bread, and an apple for dessert (rinsed to get at least some of the insecticide off), and washed it all down with a small box of Minute Maid mixed berry juice. Not bad for a homemade meal at a campsite!

I took a little nap right after dinner but got up in time to rush back to Mt. Rushmore to see it lit up at night. Quite striking.

A windy day in the Badlands

                                                                             tourist in the Badlands


This morning I was up early enough to be at the appointed meeting place for a one hour hike into the Badlands with a park ranger who would talk about the geological development of the area. When I arrived just a little before 8:30, again there was no one else present. I waited until 8:45. Still no one. Then, slowly, it dawned on me. I have been moving west. I have probably passed into another time zone. I may have actually arrived at 7:30 instead of 8:30. That would also explain the missed fossil walk yesterday and the long wait last night at the astronomy evening. I asked a couple young ladies coming off of one of the trails what time it was, and they confirmed that it was a little after 7:30. Mystery solved!
 I did a little of this and that and then returned for the walk. It was quite interesting and informative. Without going into details, I'll just mention that the whole area was at one time part of an inland sea. Geological changes then drained the sea into the Gulf of Mexico. Rivers washed down soil which created the buttes and mounds which are visible today. The rivers then changed course which left the area dry except for relatively little rainfall. Wind and rain continue to erode the buttes and mounds. In about another 500,000 years the area will probably all be flat again, so it's a good thing I came while there was still something wonderful to see.

                                                Badlands National Park, South Dakota

 Just outside the park is one of the storage silos that held missiles pointed at Russia during the Cold War. I viewed a short film about these missiles and then went to see one of the silos with a park guard and a small group. The actual missiles didn't look that big, but they carried more than 12 times the power of the bomb used at Hiroshima. This one missile contained as much power as 60% of the bombs dropped in all of WWII including the atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Russia had bombs ten times more powerful than this missile, but it was explained that they needed bigger missiles because their accuracy was not as good as ours. The really scary part tho, is that the START treaty with Russia reduced our number of missiles from about 1,000 to a "mere" 450, which are still operative today. Quite sufficient, it seems to me, to end human life on planet earth.

After a big lunch, I went for a four-mile walk along a trail through the plains within the park. It was mostly just grassy, but upon closer inspection there were also cacti, a single aster, a variation of dandelions, another violet flower which I didn't recognize and some small sunflowers.
By this time a strong wind was blowing and it looked like it might rain, so I went back to check my tent. This was not a happy experience. Although I thought I had staked the tent well enough, apparently this was not the case. The tent was lying on its side against a post about 30 yards from where I had planted it. The rain fly had a big nine-inch rip in it and a couple of the stakes were missing. It was pretty discouraging! I dragged the tent back to my campsite and then left it there while I went about sewing up the rain fly. After several tries, all made difficult because of the strong wind, I managed to put down my new ground cover and set the tent back on its feet. I had to re-stake the tent a few times until it finally seemed to be holding.
Putting the fly back on top of the tent was even more difficult. My rain fly evidently thought it was a kite and attempted to take flight. Putting it back on top of the tent by myself proved impossible. Fortunately there was a couple just arrived at the tent site beside me, and I asked for help. With two of us working at it , it only took a minute or two until the fly was up and everything seemed to be holding.

 Between the walk and the tent repair, I was pretty exhausted and took a nap for an hour inside the tent. It was chilly and still very windy when I woke up so I decided to go to the lodge for a light supper instead of cooking at the campsite. I left the campsite with a certain amount of trepidation. Would the tent still be up when I got back? Would I have to end up stuffing the tent into the car and sleeping on the front seat again? Would the tent suffer any further damage? Read on!

After a small but tasty spinach salad in the overly air conditioned dining room, I headed nervously back to my tent site. It was quite a relief to find my tent still erect! Now I know (more or less) how Francis Scott Key felt when he saw the "star spangled banner" still waving in the morning over Fort McHenry.

Badlands National Park

I was up and out by 9:00 this morning. Since today is Friday, I was concerned about competing with all the weekend campers and wanted to get to the Badlands National Park no later than 1:00. I was driving the South Dakota speed limit, which is 75 miles per hour.  Even the 2-lane roads have  a 65 miles per hour speed limit.

Just entering the park was a WOW! experience. After driving two days through flat or rolling grasslands, still green because they've had so much more rain than usual this year, suddenly I am seeing these huge brown hills, something like I imagine the moon would be. The only thing I've ever seen like it are parts of the Negev in Israel.  I reached the Badlands Park campground around noon and it was almost empty. I was greeted at my campsite by a bluebird. I couldn't tell if it was the Bluebird of Happiness or not, but it may have been.


The road to the park and the park itself was full of motorcyclists, coming both singly and in large groups. Finally, I went over to one of them and asked what was going on. He explained to me that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was going on this week in nearby Sturgis. Motorcyclists came from all over the world to attend - Canada, Mexico, even Europe. Two cyclists told me that the attendance for the week was about 800,000 people! I was told that this is the largest gathering of it's kind - of any kind - in the US, on planet earth, maybe in the whole universe, altho my informant wasn't sure about the latter.

About half a dozen cyclists and their female partners were sitting with me on the small circle of benches in the lounge where there is the hookup for WIFI, and one of them began telling a story about how he had been working with his family in Tanzania and one night his vehicle turned over on what appeared to be a deserted road. Suddenly from out of nowhere came a whole group of Tanzanians who took hold of the car and turned it back right side up. One of the men rushed up to the woman and said, "Madam, they are stealing your bumper."
"Let them take it," she said. "I just want to get out of here."
The story had a happy ending.Except for the man, who wasn't wearing his seatbelt and needed some stitches in his head, no one else was hurt, and the vehicle was able to continue on its way.

I couldn't resist the temptation to jump in then and tell them the story of my family's car misadventure in Arusha (Tanzania) where my then son-in-law took our nonfunctioning  car to what he was told would be a gas station but turned out to be just an empty lot with a bunch of guys who had some tools. It was getting dark and we didn't like leaving him there with all of these Tanzanians by himself, so we took a taxi and joined him for moral support. The Tanzanians couldn't seem to get the car started so finally my son-in-law just told them to put it back together and give us a push and he would jumpstart it. They did this and we took the car back to our hotel in the town center. I don't know what my son-in-law planned to do about the car next day, but when he went to try to start it up in the morning, the car worked fine and we had no more trouble with it the rest of the trip (except for one flat tire).
Incidentally, in spite of the bad reputation of motorcycle gangs, all of the motorcyclists I have had any contact with here at the Badlands were unfailingly polite and friendly.



                                                       Badlands National Park, South Dakota

 At 3:30 I went to the meeting place for the fossil walk, but noone else showed up including the park ranger. I was disappointed but  I went by myself on the short walk along the boardwalk where several fossils were displayed under glass, so the hour wasn't a total loss.

That night I went to a ranger talk on astronomy. I got there a little before the scheduled starting time of 8:30, and again no one showed up. I was getting ready to leave in disgust around 8:45 when another couple arrived and  two park rangers arrived shortly after that. In the end there were about 60 people in the amphitheater, and the park rangers actually started the program around 9:30.

The talk was light on information and heavy on child-oriented entertainment. It included a group sing of the Roy Rogers theme song "Happy Trails" and a brief film showing very short clips of other national parks. After about an hour they took a break. After the break, the ranger got serious and started pointing out (with a laser pointer) the various constellations, almost none of which have ever made much sense to me except for the big and little dippers. Then he began allowing people to look thru 3 telescopes at the various stars, but I didn't have the patience to wait my turn so I called it a night. The best thing about the evening was just seeing all those thousands of stars in the sky. There is almost no artificial light in the area so one can see stars that are not visible anywhere near a city.

Signs for the day:
      On the road to Pierre, South Dakota as I was crossing a bridge over a river: "Bad River." This raises all sorts of questions. Was it bad because it flooded? because it dried up? because it attracted mosquitoes? Is there also a "Good River" somewhere in the vicinity?
     2nd sign in the lodge in the park: "Free key chain with $100 purchase." I remarked to the sales girl that a free key chain didn't seem like much of an inducement for a $100.00 purchase, but she said it was a very nice key chain and normally sold for $3.95. I asked to see it. I'd say it looked like a $1.95 key chain - not much of an inducement for a $100.00 purchase.
     Miscellaneous fact for the day: The "Badlands" got their name from French fur traders who found the area difficult to pass thru because it was so hot and dry. The full French name translates as "Bad land to travel through."

Driving through the Dakotas

You just never know. North Dakota has about half the number of people as Philadelphia. A gas station, a diner, and a post office constitute a town - and sometimes less than that - but this morning I stopped at a rest area along the way that actually had WIFI. Who knew?!
I caught up on a couple blogs and then headed south into South Dakota.

Well, I may have been wrong about considering North Dakota the least populated place in the United States. Today I drove almost all day down Route 1804 in South Dakota and saw only a few scattered houses and an occasional sign indicating a town in one direction or another from where I was. There were a couple really beautiful fields of sunflowers all in bloom and one of them beside a golden wheat (I think) field that was a work of art , but much of the land was just grassland over rolling hills and fields where the hay had already been cut and rolled into bales that looked just like the paintings of Monet in the Chicago Art Institute.
I almost stopped at a campground at 4:00, but it was so hot (102 degrees according to my car thermometer) and the campground so treeless and unattractive, that  I just moved on.

When I reached Pierre, south Dakota two hours later, I stopped in at a minimart to ask if there were a campground in the area. The nice young lady behind the counter pulled out a map and showed me three nearby campgrounds. I picked one at a state park a few miles away, and it turned out to be a good choice - fairly attractive campsites without too many mosquitoes (well, even a few is too many, so maybe I should just say not many too many) and a very attractive lake.
There was some heavy wind again at night, but it didn't last that long and my tent remained standing. When the wind died down, I got up and staked down the tent, but there was no more wind. I think I got the order wrong; I am probably supposed to stake the tent before the wind starts blowing ; I will try to remember this tomorrow night.

Tornado watch in North Dakota

This morning I said goodbye to Anna and Richard and headed off to North Dakota. According to one of the AAA tour books, a North Dakota vacation is "the most affordable in the US."  I think this is because so much of the state is just prairie with nothing to do and not much on which to spend money. In most of the states I've passed thru, at highway exits there are signs which list all of the gas stations, motels, and restaurants available at that intersection. In North Dakota, most of the signs posted at exits say simply "No services". There aren't even any of the omnipresent Walmart.

So today was mostly a lot of driving. I stopped for lunch at an exit which said Buffalo. After about three miles I came to an intersection where I found Clem and Hazel's Corner Cafe - isn't that a great name? - and as far as I could tell, that was the only store in Buffalo, although there did seem to be a few houses further down the road.

Later I needed to stop for gas. I am very careful about this. I do not want running out of gas to be one of my "adventures". The exit said Windsor and there was a symbol for gasoline, so I took the exit. I came to a small bar and one gas pump that only sold regular gasoline. The bar and the gas pump were all operated by a friendly older woman. When I asked her where the rest of the town was, she said , "This is it." The bar was Windsor - all of Windsor! I paid for my gas by running my debit card thru an antique looking little machine which rang up 40 dollars like a credit card in a store except that it could only ring up multiples of $20.00. I signed the slip and she gave me change.

Around 4:00, I saw a sign for a campground and took an exit into Dawson, which contained two gas stations, one of which was connected to a restaurant and a food market, and a post office. I couldn't find the campground, so I went into the post office to ask for directions. The lady said, "Just take the dirt road across the street for two blocks and you'll see a couple picnic tables. There may or may not be a port-a-potty nearby. It's free." I went there and sure enough there were just two picnic tables and a nearby port-a-potty which was clean but had no toilet paper. It wasn't very fancy, but the price was right and I had the whole picnic area, such as it was, to myself.

It had been a nice sunny day, so I just threw down the air mattress and sleeping bag and skipped setting up the tent.

 I then went to the market to buy some food and stop in at the rest room to refill my canteen. The rest room was reached by going through a door from the restaurant. On the other side of the door were three rooms, one of which was the men's room. I filled my canteen and took care of some other personal needs and then came out - or at least I tried to. The door back to the restaurant was locked. I tried a couple times then banged loudly. No response. I banged again. I was not looking forward to a night locked up in the restaurant rest room! On the third knock, a lady came and opened the door. She seemed very surprised to see me. I was not surprised to see her, but I was very pleased - and relieved! We both had a good laugh together, which was definitely better than a good cry by myself.

Meanwhile, back at the campsite, towards dusk mosquitoes were coming out and the sky started to cloud up, so after I finished my spaghetti dinner, I put up my tent and put the rest of my gear inside.


                                            picnic/campground/Dawson, North Dakota 

I was reasonably well-settled when the wind started to blow - not just a little but a lot. I hadn't bothered to stake down the tent; I had never needed to up until then, and the wind became so strong that it knocked over the tent and my body was the only thing holding it in place. I finally concluded that I needed to get out of the tent before it blew away with me in it, so I managed to get outside during a sort of lull in the wind, just as a policeman rode up to see if I was OK. He suggested that since there was a tornado watch I would be better off in the car. That certainly seemed like a good idea to me, especially since it was what I had already planned to do. I managed to drag my tent with the air mattress (without air) and the sleeping bag still in it into the car just before the rain came down in torrents. It didn't seem to be getting any better and I didn't feel that safe in the picnic ground by myself, so I carefully drove the car back to the road and down the two blocks to "town" where I parked the car beside the market. The rain eventually stopped and I spent the night dozing off and on in the car. Now that was an adventure!

Dent, Minnesota, visiting Richard and Anna

Today was a pleasant and relaxing day as I accompanied Richard thru a series of errands. This was also a sort of "day off" for him from what has apparently become his regular routine of campaigning for a state representative seat by going door-to-door for seven hours. He doesn't really expect to win, but he does expect to get more than 40% of the vote - which is at least a little better than being a sacrificial lamb as a Republican running for office in W. Mt. Airy.

The town of Dent with an official population of 192 is too small to have much in the way of services, but they do have a town hall. It proved to be a bare wooden building about a hundred yards down a dirt road. We stopped there first so that Richard could vote, since today was primary day in Minnesota. There was a table with four registrars with the usual voting registration information. Richard signed in and then went to one side of the room where there were three or four cubbies set up and where he made checkmarks with a pen or pencil on his paper ballot. Quite a change from voting in Philadelphia where I  just go into a booth and push
buttons. Then Richard put the ballot thru some kind of printer-like machine that I had never seen before which recorded his vote. We took a few minutes to chat with the registrars since we were the only voters in the building. Unlike the other polling places, this one hadn't even opened up until 10:00 and by now (around 11:00), only ten other people had voted.

Since Dent is so small,  to do Richard's errands we had to travel to Fergus Falls, about 20 miles from here. Fergus Falls has a population of about 13,000. It's the closest town of any considerable size and does have a little bit of everything. including a very nice theater which seats about 500.
The dry cleaners was the first stop. The woman behind the counter addressed Richard by name. We chatted for a while and Richard left a pile of his campaign calling cards on the counter.
Next stop was the real estate office that is arranging for Richard's rental of a campaign office. This involved a fairly long conversation about how the real estate man was an independent but was leaning toward the democrats. He said he really didn't like the "extremists" of either party.

While walking around I also took a peek thru the front windows of the very attractive senior center where there were several tables of people playing cards. It looked a lot like the center in Israel where Elise' brother goes every day.

Richard was ready to keep going, but it was close to 1:00 by then and I was getting hungry, so Richard let me persuade him to stop for lunch. We went to a pleasant restaurant where I had a very tasty tuna salad and the two of us split a large portion of double chocolate bread pudding which is apparently the house specialty - and rightly so.
  Finally we stopped by the local community college where Anna works as the provost, waited out a heavy rainstorm, and then went back to the house.

Their house is really beautiful with a great view of the lake. I had the whole finished basement to myself; the only problem was that the house was a bit over airconditioned for my taste. I shouldn't have to wear a heavy fleece sweater in August.
Anna prepared a delicious supper of chicken in some kind of very tasty sauce, mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. The corn came from a local farmer. She has purchased several shares in his farm and this entitles her to a share of his crops. If it's a good year she gets more; if it's a bad year she gets less. After dinner we talked for a little while and then called it a day.

It's really been a great visit. One never knows for sure how it will go, seeing old friends after a number of years, but in this case, it was  a pleasure and I'm  glad I included this stop in my trip.

Munsinger Flower Garden, Cloud, Minnesota



                                            Munsinger Flower Garden, St. Cloud, Minnesota

 I said goodbye to Jane and Pavel and set off for Dent, MN so named because of the corn grown there whose kernels each have a little dent in them. If that's not a ridiculous reason for naming a town, I don't know what is. Anyway my friends Richard and Anna live there and I was off to visit them. Richard is my friend of longest standing. We shared a room together during my first trip to Israel on a B'nai Brith Youth Organization tour  after I graduated high school in 1956. I hadn't seen him or Anna in about ten years, but we were able to pick up right where we left off (wherever that was) and found plenty to talk about.

Along the way I stopped off in St. Cloud to visit the Munsinger Flower Garden. It was a rather large area filled with flowers all in bloom. There was a shady area next to a lake on one side of a small road and a larger area with full sun on the other. Many flowers were common flowers that one might see in a Mt. Airy garden , but some were more exotic. I was very proud of myself for having remembered to bring the camera with me as I walked around the garden, and I took several pictures - of a beautiful sculptured fountain as well as of the flowers.


                                                    The Munsinger Garden, St. Cloud, Minnesota  

I reached Richard and Anna's around 6:30. My visit got off to a very good start because my lost envelope with all of my documents in it had already arrived and was waiting for me. We went out for dinner to a restaurant called The Pickle Factory. Happily, they did serve other dishes as well, and I had a very tasty fish dinner. We talked for a long time after dinner, primarily about Richard's current efforts to run for office as a Democratic Party candidate in a very conservative part of Minnesota.



Red Wing and Duluth, Minnesota

When I woke up this morning, everything in my campsite except the inside of my tent and myself was still wet from last night's rain, so instead of preparing my usual breakfast of juice and oatmeal, I packed up my wet gear and decided to have breakfast on the road. Not too far along, I stopped in the little town of Red Wing. On the main street there were a number of chairs set up by the curb, and on two of them an elderly lady and gentleman were sitting. I went over to ask them for a recommendation of a good place for breakfast and they suggested two places nearby. I also asked them why they were sitting there at the street corner at about 9:30 on a Sunday morning. They explained to me that there was to be a parade in about an hour or so. They had come early to make sure they got good seats, and I guess just to watch people going by (of which there were very few).

I headed off in one of the directions they had suggested and stopped in at Bev's Cafe. They were very busy and the lady who was the hostess was also serving as a waitress and as the cashier, so I had to wait several minutes until she could find time to seat me.   The restaurant was full of local people just chatting away. One woman was standing and holding a wood carving of a slightly larger-than-life pilated woodpecker on a piece of driftwood and telling a man sitting at a nearby booth how she came to acquire this treasure. They then swapped a few stories of great buys they had made at flea markets. At another booth a Latino couple was sitting with an English speaking friend. The two Latinos spoke to each other in Spanish and there were also exchanges among the three in English. Once the man tried to say something in Spanish, but I don't think he did very well.

I finally was shown to a seat and the busy but still cheerful hostess/waitress/cashier took my order for a Taco Egg Special, which consisted of two scrambled eggs and homefries that were mixed with all of the fixings that normally go into a taco, the hamburger meat, the vegetables and the sauce. It was different and quite good. As I paid my bill, I asked, "Are you Bev?" I thought she might be since she was working so hard.
"Oh no," she answered, "and Bev isn't here any more either. She left a few months ago. Shiela owns the restaurant now."
"So where's Shiela?"
"She's back working in the kitchen."
So much change. Factories close, restaurants change hands, but a cafe with a good breakfast goes on, well, maybe not forever, but at least for a good while.

 My next stop was at Hastings. Hastings seems to be a town with big aspirations. About eight miles from the center of the town I passed a dirt road labeled 230th Street. Between this street sign and the town were about eight miles of mostly corn fields. I think it's going to take a long time for Hastings to expand to 230th Street. Even Manhattan doesn't have a 230th Street. Maybe Beijing has a 230the St.; maybe not. But I suppose it's always good to plan ahead. Actually, I later saw a couple other towns with similar street numbers. Perhaps all of Minnesota is preparing for a big population explosion once California sinks into the Pacific and Manhattan becomes an underwater island because of global warming.

Minneapolis was my next stop and it should have been easy with my GPS to get there by passing thru Duluth. Unfortunately almost all of the entrances to I94 in Duluth were closed for road work, and my GPS had a really hard time until the little lady inside her finally found an alternate route to get us to Minneapolis. My itinerary called for making the rounds of several scenic sites in Minneapolis. My GPS found the first one, a large park, but the next two I had to find pretty much on my own by checking the directions in my itinerary and asking people on the street. The first two were just large parks and since the temperature was at least 95 degrees, I just drove around them and moved on. The third site, Minnehaha Park and Waterfall had a garden and a waterfall, so I eventually found it and walked through the garden to the waterfall. The waterfall was no Niagra Falls, but it was at least three stories high and about 20 feet wide and I was glad that I had persevered to come see it. The whole experience was like orienteering, where you are given a map and then go thru the woods following the map to find flags at various locations.

My final stop for the day was back to Duluth to my friend Richard's former house. He still owns it but rents it out to  people with the understanding that friends of his could stay there for a night or two. He had called his renters, Pavel and Jane,to  let them know I would be coming. When I arrived, they weren't home, so I just took the opportunity to spread out my tent and ground cloth in the back yard and let them dry. When Pavel and Jane did finally arrive, they turned out to be a lovely and very welcoming couple. They put me on the third floor, which was one of the few air-conditioned areas in the house, offered me full use of the kitchen and also of an extra computer in an otherwise unoccupied room. Pavel was a musician originally from Czechoslavakia and Gabon in Africa and she was an American whom he met here. We had a very pleasant time together swapping life stories. Then they went out for a couple hours and I had a chance to catch up some on my blogging.

The attic room where I was lodged was interesting in that if I stood in the center I could stand up straight but at other places I had to bend down to various degrees to avoid bumping my head. It took me a while to get the hang of it. The area had originally been occupied by Richard and Anna's daughter, who was now away at college. It's most interesting feature was the "ladies toilet" in the bathroom. It was situated in a very low part of the room, so that if a gentleman (in this case, that would be me) needed to urinate, he would have to do it from a deep crouch or else sit down like a lady.

Signs for the day: In Bev's Cafe, not to be outdone by the water skiing sign in the previous community : " Red Wing is the birthplace of ski jumping in the U.S." Well, it may not be all that much, but I suppose it's something.
In the bathroom of my space in the attic: "Brush your teeth" The sign was attached to a picture of a shark with it's mouth open.

National Eagle Center, Wabash, Minnesota

I spoke with Elise by phone today and learned that I had dropped my folder with all of my documents in it at a park in Lena, Illinois, but to my good fortune someone found it who wanted to return it. After a couple phone calls it was arranged that they would mail it to my friend Richard whom I will be visiting in Minnesota in a few days. I hope this works out since the envelope contains my passport, other travel documents and a debit card!

The man camping beside me saw my Pennsylvania car license plate and dropped over to say hello. He was a river ecologist working nearby.
"How's the river doing?" I asked.
"It's doing great. The fish are thriving, so that's a good sign." 

                                           

 He also suggested I stop by at the National Eagle Center a short distance west of where we were, and I did that. The Center was quite large with a fair number of interesting exhibits, but the best part was a class provided by the park ranger. We were a group of about 50 and he not only talked about eagles but also brought out two of them who had been injured, were no longer able to fly, and were now living at the Center. They had been more or less trained, so that he had them on a chain, but perched on his arm, not in a cage. One was a bald eagle (white hair on his head but not actually bald) and one was a golden eagle (a yellowish-brown head but not actually golden) and he fed them bits of rabbit meat. The bald eagle refused to eat anything. The ranger said that this eagle had been at the Center for twelve years and had learned the routine very well. On Sunday, the eagles were given rat to eat, which was their favorite dish, so often on Saturday this eagle would eat little or nothing so he could enjoy more rat the next day.

                                          statue behind the Eagle Center, Wabash, Minnesota  

            
I then continued driving, a beautiful drive alongside the Mississippi River, with excellent views between the trees on a regular basis.

At Lake City I saw a cafe advertising WIFI, so I stopped in to check my e-mail and maybe do a blog. I ordered a delicious scone for $4.00. I didn't know you could spend that much on a scone - even one with apricots and served with cream and jam. Anyway, it was delicious so I'm not complaining. Ha, ha, you thought that was a complaint, but it was just an observation! (Well, maybe a small complaint!)

I spent the night at the Frontenac Campground. I stopped at 3:20, because it was Saturday and I wanted to make sure I got a campsite. This turned out to be a good idea, since there were only two campsites left when I arrived. What was really exciting about this campground was that there were no mosquitoes. There's nothing like three successive nights of mosquitoes to help you really appreciate a campground that doesn't have any.
There was a torrential downpour at night after I was in my tent, but the tent did fine - no leaks. I'm really happy with this tent. It goes up in less than 2 minutes and keeps me dry no matter what's happening outside. Who could ask for more?

Sign for the day: "Lake City, the birthplace of water skiing." I guess everyplace likes to be first or best at something - even if it's just water skiing.