USA – Page 4 – Road and Ocean

Yellowstone

July 15, 2014December 7, 2016 Chris TannerLeave a comment

Not wanting to hang around for a second day at the festival, we packed up on Sunday morning and made our way south towards Yellowstone. Leaving Butte, the mountains changed character yet again. Nestled among the trees on the hills around the highway were hundreds of squashed round boulders, sat on their narrow ends – just like a plague of huge, swollen ticks gorging themselves on the folds of the mountain.

Early afternoon we arrived in West Yellowstone, on the border of the national park. We poked our noses into the park to see what the story was with camping, but as we’d expected, it was busy busy and all campgrounds were full. There are a few that allow reservations – which I’m sure would book up months ahead of time – but all the others are first come first served, sometimes filling up early in the morning. So we turned around back into town, found a campground, got settled with some lunch and then set out to explore the place. Lots of tourist tat everywhere – but not too many tourists – I guess they must all be in the park filling up those camp sites. The heat of the last few days is generating plenty of thunderstorms, this evening we sat outside the Buffalo Grill drinking our beers in the rain, hoping optimistically that it was going to stop and dry out before our tacos arrived. It didn’t, so we ate inside.

Monday / Tuesday

The battle plan for Monday was to get up early and go straight into the park to find a camp site. We arrived at Norris campground, pretty much right in the middle of the park, at 9am, and found a few free spots, vacated by early risers. Wanting 3 days in the park, we booked in for a couple of nights, paying the usual $20 per night in a little cardboard self-registration envelope. After a quick coffee it was time to explore the park.

The next couple of days were a blur of geothermal sites; hot springs, geysers, steam vents, mud pots, boiling pools – all a bit overwhelming, but very impressive. The park does well to soak up the 3 million people that come here each year; most geyser areas are quite large with trails and walkways over the fragile earth that go on for at least a mile or so. But it still felt busier than any of the other parks we’ve been to. Most car parks had a queue of people waiting to get in. All very well organised, just like the other US National Parks.

The range of springs, vents, pots and pools was unbelievable; with different coloured bacteria living in different temperatures. The Morning Glory pool was stunning. These pictures are not enhanced. The colours really were like that. Amazing.

And the prismatic spring blew me away. From way up the road, as we approached, we could see steam just like with all the other geyser sites, but here there was so much colour in the spring below that the steam itself was coloured in vivid orange, turquoise and yellow.

We managed to dodge the thunderstorms and get enough sun to take a bunch of pictures. Too many pictures. I often wonder why I don’t just download professional photos of the tourist sights. They can do better than I can, and it would leave me to just soak it all in without having to think about getting my own shots. But no, just like the gazillions of other snap-happy tourists, there we were, going for the best angle, best lighting, click click click.

Waiting for geysers to erupt is a funny game. Some of them are predicable, to a point. Sometimes the expected eruption times are posted by the rangers. Some geysers erupt pretty often, perhaps every few minutes, so it’s easy to catch it in action. Others erupt once every few hours, plus or minus an hour or so, and if you want to catch these doing their thing you need to get there early and just wait. And some only erupt following earthquakes, or only once or twice a century. We didn’t get any of the predictions, and just followed our noses around the park, but still managed to see a fair few geysers spouting and hissing into the sky. Perhaps the most impressive was Riverside Geyser, where (following a tip-off from a well prepared German) we waited about half an hour for it to spew its insides out all over the river.

For us, the rest of the park – the wildlife, the scenery, the history – took second place to the geothermal sights. Sure, we saw bison, elk, a bunch of small rodenty things, some birds, impressive cliffs, waterfalls and canyons, but that’s “just more nature”. Having been amongst jaw-droppingly beautiful country for over a month now, I think we’re actually getting a little desensitised.

A ridiculous number of pictures …

Montana Folk Festival

July 12, 2014December 7, 2016 Chris TannerLeave a comment

A hot, hot day at the Montana Folk Festival, which is set up among the streets of “Uptown Butte”. One of the stages is on a field, in front of one of the old mining towers, but the others are all tucked in between the buildings. Saw a bunch of different acts, some good stuff and some not so good stuff, and got roasted sitting out in the sun. We were done by early evening, partly overwhelmed by having so many people around after being in the wilderness for weeks, so we headed back to the van for an early night.

Butte, Montana

July 11, 2014December 7, 2016 Chris TannerLeave a comment

After a not-so-comfortable night lying on the hard rocky ground, we rustled up porridge for breakfast and then headed back down the valley. Various people we met on the way down (and on the way up yesterday) mentioned that they had seen a blonde coloured bear on or near the trail, but we didn’t get a glimpse of it. Perhaps we were making too much noise (intentionally, since we didn’t fancy surprising a bear on the path). We were armed with bear spray – I would have liked to see a bear at close quarters in its own habitat – but no luck this time.

Back at the car park we had a refreshing shower and then headed south. Not far from the park in Browning, in the middle of the Blackfeet Indian Reserve, we passed a mass of tepees, horses and RVs – preparing for a “powwow” we were told by the guy in the drive-through burger place where we grabbed a bit to eat for lunch.

The scenery changed rapidly – the mountains fell away into open hills, with silver, lifeless, leafless trees covering the hills. There was no obvious sign of fire, and yet every single tree was dead. Perhaps some disease that had stripped them of their bark and killed them. It was not so long ago – new growth had not yet sprung up between the dead trunks.

Soon even the dead trees were gone, and we were in the middle of wide, open grassland. The start of the great prairies, stretching from here all the way across to the east. I’m looking forward to seeing the huge, open skies and flat, flat land. Need to catch up with learning Spanish from my CDs too! Tucking back towards the mountains again, we ended up in Butte, where we’re going to be for the weekend, at the Montana Folk Festival. We’re camped in a local park with a hundred or so other people, watching a thunderstorm crash and flash on the hills behind the town. The full moon is rising behind the bank of clouds and it’s muy dramatico.

Next to us on one side are a couple travelling around in their van for the summer. He’s from Pennsylvania and she’s from Costa Rica. The other side is a couple from Billings, the capital of Montana. They moved over here from New York a few years ago for his work. Even the largest city in the state only has about 100,000 people – it’s a pretty empty place – pretty different from New York, but they love it. The state tagline is “GET LOST … in Montana”, it’s definitely a place where recreation is high on the agenda.

We’re skipping tonight’s festival activities, going to catch up on some rest and attack the crowds tomorrow.

Okotomi Lake

July 10, 2014December 7, 2016 Chris Tanner1 Comment

Expecting another scorcher of a day we started early. Cooked up some pancakes with maple syrup then hit the trail up to Okotomi Lake. The 5 miles and 2,000 feet of climbing took us 2 and a half hours, first through thick forest growth and big fir trees, then through smaller, more open subalpine trees, and finally across open scree slopes to the camp. To make sure that people and wildlife don’t get in the way of each other, the camp ground was divided into separate areas for sleeping, preparing food, storing food, and toilet. In Yosemite, they are trying to teach the bears that humans don’t provide easy food by enforcing every visitor to keep their food in bear proof canisters. Here, we have a pole where we have to hang our food and anything else that smells, well away from hungry claws and paws.

We spent the afternoon sat on a small gravel beach by the side of the lake, reading in the sun. Ground squirrels became more and more confident as we sat there, scuffling around in their incessant search for food. When we peed in the bushes, they smelt it immediately and raced to the crime scene to get a taste of salt.

Glacier National Park

July 9, 2014December 7, 2016 Chris TannerLeave a comment

Just a few miles on from our Hungry Horse pull-out [layby] is the entrance to Glacier National Park and the start of the “Going To The Sun” road – an ancient route that the Indians followed up into the mountains to bond with the gods. The plan was to hike a trail up to the ptarmigan tunnel, but the guy in the back-country permit station said that it was still closed due to snow – in mid July! Speaking to other folk a few days later we found out that they’d had 3 feet of fresh snow on the peaks just last week, finishing off a winter season with 1.5 times the normal precipitation. Not like California where we had a pitiful winder for snow.

Not able to do that hike, we got a permit for a shorter route up to Okotomi Lake. A shame, since the ptarmigan tunnel trail looks incredible – a high country route winding along cliff faces and over knife edge arêtes. The back country camping permit system here is really strict – you need to book your site a day or so ahead of time, and watch a video which explains the dangers involved. It seems like this park has a much higher bear population than other parks – both Brown and Grizzly – and as a result, the rangers need to make sure that people are sensible. Okotomi Lake camp only has 3 spaces, which looks fairly typical for the twenty or so back country camps around the park. This in turn limits the number of people that can stay out overnight and restricts the impact that people make on the pristine natural mountains. It’s pretty clear that the human presence in this park is well managed – the high country is so sensitive to people that if it wasn’t managed well it would be overrun and destroyed in no time. There would be trails everywhere, scree slopes scarred by human traffic, probably rubbish in the trees and no doubt the wildlife would have done a runner and moved elsewhere.

We drove over the Going To The Sun road, an impressive 50 mile route that wound its way along vertiginous cliff faces and past hissing waterfalls to Logan Pass, where all the tourists congregate for photos and perhaps a short walk up the hill behind the visitor centre.

Knowing that the campgrounds fill up early (previous day “full” times are posted at the entrance to the park), we headed straight for Rising Sun campground on the east side of the mountains, and took one of the last spaces at about 1pm. It was hot hot hot – and with the sun overhead there was no shade. We rigged our sheet from the van as an awning to give some shade, hiding us from the blazing ball of fire, and got down to some drawing.

Just as the sun was setting there were shouts of “bear!” further up the campground. As the bear moved down the valley, a group of campers followed its progress, until it ended up just a few yards from the back of our site. It was a small brown bear, which was actually more blonde in colour – completely ambivalent to everyone watching it. Not finding much of interest to eat round our place, it wandered off back into the bushes.

Whitefish

July 8, 2014December 7, 2016 Chris TannerLeave a comment

Another early start this morning. I wandered down to the lake to see the sun rise over the hills. An army of small clouds was marching across the sky, the lake was calm, creating amazing reflections. Every degree the sun rose higher, the clouds got smaller, until they were all burnt away. As I sat watching the show, an eagle of some sort flapped its way casually across the lake and settled in a tree behind me. I think it was a bald eagle – with a white head.

We put our new camp toaster through its paces; egg muffins with marmite for breakfast. Mmm. Then carried on south to Whitefish to hunt down a coffee shop and a laundry. The laundry was a couple of miles out of town, so while our clothes tumbled around we read the local papers, and discovered that the nearby mountain (innovatively called “Big Mountain”) had chairlifts and mountain bike trails open. That settled the plan for the afternoon! We gobbled down a crepe, popped into a huge mountain sports store to pick up some padded shorts for Rose, and then hit the hill mid-afternoon for a couple of hours riding.

Two hours wasn’t nearly enough. With lots of steep, dusty, technical trails I could easily have spent a couple of days here, but riding them solo wasn’t appealing, and we wanted to get through Glacier National Park before hitting a folk festival in Butte at the weekend … so we found a shower at a local state park campground and then drove on to find a place by the side of the road near Hungry Horse Dam.

The mountain sports stores here are huge – in fact all stores are huge. While there are a lot of people just buying kit for the sake of it, I also get the feeling that there are lots of people really attacking their outdoor pursuits seriously. I seems that every other vehicle driving around has either kayaks or bikes on top. It would be great to spend some time in a place like this (or any of the other outdoor centres we’ve stopped at) and meet a crew of adventurers. Passing through in a self-sufficient van, with fairly tight timings, doesn’t lend itself to getting really into a scene. Of course California is pretty hot for outdoor stuff, and there’s the sea too. We’re constantly wondering where we’re going to end up in the future. No firm plans yet!

Rockies

July 7, 2014December 7, 2016 Chris TannerLeave a comment

Nearly back in the USA. Nearly, because we’ve been sat here in a traffic jam just north of the border in the hot, hot sun for over an hour, with various emergency and traffic vehicles coming up and down the road. One guy says that there’s a trailer turned over further down. We passed an overturned haulage trailer a few miles back up the same road, too. A few police cars are starting to come back up this way, so maybe it’s clearing. We’ve been sat here long enough for the trailer folk in front of us to get out their generator to power their AC.

On Wednesday last week we left Marble Canyon and headed via Kamloops towards Jasper. It was another hot drive, through arid canyon country and then back into endless trees and meadows flanking the North Thomson river. We found a campsite by the river and cooked dinner while the mosquitoes swarmed in. The river was really full, and moving fast. All the rivers in the Rockies over the next few days were the same, and some lakes were overflowing.

Thursday morning; on towards Jasper, where we stopped off for a shower before heading south on the Icefield Parkway – supposedly one of the world’s best drives. Yes, it’s a pretty amazing view, all the way. So much BULK in these mountains.

The trees are very different from those on the Pacific Northwest coast – they are smaller, skinnier and more open. I guess they get a much harsher winter. I keep meaning to read up on all the different types on fir, pine and spruce trees – we’ve seen so many different species.

We spent a few days camping at Waterfowl Lakes campground with family; Iain and Helen, cousins Andrew and Alastair, their wives Kara-Lise and Kim, and two baby/toddler boys. Not doing a huge amount of activity, and staying in the same place for 3 nights in a row has been nice. We had a short walk up to Bow Lake Summit on Friday, and a kayak around Waterfowl Lake on Saturday. Plenty of eating and resting.

Last week we had our first mechanical breakdown – the 12v plug for the fridge melted and shorted a fuse. We didn’t have any spares so I stole the wiper fuse, expecting not to have any rain. We did end up having a bit of rain over the weekend, but we weren’t driving. Last night we discovered the gas regulator off our cheap cooker had failed, and even after multiple dis-assemblies, tweaks and re-assemblies it still wasn’t working. I don’t like it when I can’t fix something. So today we spent a while looking around stores in Cranbrook for a new cooker, ended up with a cheapo from Canadian Tire. The reviews are good, let’s see if it survives the next couple of months on the road.

We’ve got three weeks to get across to Thunder Bay where we’re meeting Olly and Kate, so we’re going to head south into the USA and spend some time in Glacier National Park, Yellowstone and a few other places along the way.

Eventually the traffic cleared and we arrived at the US border. The guard waved us through and told us to park up and go into the office, where we filled out an immigration form and waited while they searched the van. We’d declared our fruit and veg, but not our firewood … luckily we were just scolded and allowed to continue on into Montana – a new state!

So far, nothing to report other than the Rockies have disappeared and made way for rolling, tree-covered hills. There’s a LOT of this kind of driving up here!

We’re now camped at Dickey Lake, about 30 miles south of the border. There are a few camp fires flickering in the trees, and the half moon is bright over the lake. One thing we’ve not seen much of so far this trip is the night sky – we’ve always been tucked away in mountain valleys amongst tall trees. I’m looking forward to the desert and open plains.

Far away in the darkness I can hear the rumble of a train coming closer, along with the characteristic hoot of a North American diesel engine. Over the past few weeks we’ve camped close to train tracks many times – the roads and the railways tend to follow the same winding routes through the mountains.

It’s another warm night, just under a sheet, with the van all closed up apart from one window with a net over it. Need to make a net for the other cab window so we can get some through breeze.

Mount St. Helens

June 20, 2014 Chris TannerLeave a comment

Had an awesome ride up Mount St Helens today. Rode up through fir trees by the side of a huge boulder and gravel-strewn valley for a while, then cut up onto a ridge on quiet singletrack. After an hour or so, we came out above the tree line at the top of the trail. Rose hung out here while I carried on up onto the Plains of Abraham; desolate volcanic flat lands covered in rocks of all types and sizes. Black lava, grey pumice and everything in between. Then back down through the woods to the van for a late morning coffee. Great to be mountain biking on a mountain, on remote trails. We saw one other couple with bikes, and another couple walking. Otherwise, it was an empty mountain.

We wanted to carry on around Mt St Helens up onto Windy Ridge where there’s a viewpoint over the 1980 eruption zone, but the road was closed. On the twisty, mountainous Washington roads we’ve seen a lot of rock falls – I guess they are still clearing up the road after a harsh winter. Even the roads that are open can be a bit dicey at points; lots of subsidence and sharp dips. Gotta drive carefully.

So, quick change of plans; now with an extra couple of hours on our hands we decided to keep heading north. Mount Rainier National Park was tempting, but to be honest we’ve kinda had enough of mountains and fir trees for the time being. Time to head back to the sea. We skipped past the Olympic National Park as well; the Pacific coast here is supposed to be incredible – I read in a local tourist brochure that “nowhere else can you experience majestic old growth forest running right down into the Pacific Ocean” … but that’s exactly what we’ve seen quite a lot of so far in California. And we want to spend some good time in BC, on Vancouver Island and in the Rockies, so it’s now time to head to Canada.

After a mediocre (but typically American-sized; huge) noodle meal at a roadside restaurant and a quick and dirty Wal-Mart stop to buy mosquito net for the van we found a motel in the small town of Hoodsport. Time to wash off the dirt from the ride this morning. Right on the edge of the small gravel beach, the Sunrise Motel has a wonderful view over the water, with its own dock that squeaks with every wave that comes through. We’re a long way from the open ocean here at the southern end of the Puget Sound. Seattle is to our east, across a number of estuaries, islands and waterways. We had no reason to stop in there, and generally want to avoid the big cities.

Portland, and into Washington

June 19, 2014 Chris TannerLeave a comment

We left the campground pretty late this morning, and continued on west to Portland. Low on fuel, again. Why don’t I learn? We left Hood River last night with a quarter tank. It would have been so easy to full up then. “Yeah, we’ll manage. We’ll get there on what we’ve got left.” My optimism is going to bite us in the ass one day. When the van was in the garage I learnt that it’s actually a 5.7 litre V8, not a 4.3 V6 as I thought. 5.7 litres! That’s crazy. It sure doesn’t feel very powerful for an engine that big. We only get 15 miles per gallon, which means 300 miles from a tank at most. We crept into a local store that sold fuel, well over the 300 mile mark. Oops. But we made it.

In Portland we had a couple of hours in a super-hip café, me getting some writing done for work and Rose doing some drawing. It’s clearly the hub for the local bike courier scene. Outside on the pavement a bunch of dudes in their trendy cut-off trousers and extravagant facial hair were swigging tea from thermos flasks and getting calls for jobs on their radios.

We thought we’d go for a healthy lunch today – a couple of doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnuts. This place must be a national legend, the queue outside was maybe 50 people long! They were pretty tasty. We also had a quick peek around the National Centre for Crafts; pottery and clothing mainly.

Then onwards into Washington! First stop; Mount St Helens National Monument. I’d read that there was a good bike ride up the southern face of the mountain so we headed that way. I hadn’t written down any details, and going by the seat of our pants we ended up at Ape Cave (I actually needed Ape Canyon, which we got to later). Ape Cave turned out to be an amazing lava tube; 3rd longest in the USA. We explored half a mile or so down the tube with my bike light. Walking on a river of solid lava through a sewer-sized tunnel, you could easily visualise this being hot and molten.

Back on the surface, we carried on a little way to Lava Canyon; again an unplanned side-trip. Always the best way; drive around a corner and see something unexpected. That’s what road tripping is about! Reminds me of a saying; “Tourists see what they go to see. Travellers see what they see”.

I’m starting to experiment with more non-perishable food, in preparation for longer trips on the boat. Tonight’s gourmet dinner was a curry with canned chicken. Worked just fine! In fact it was amazing. But food always is when you’re hungry, and our two-doughnut lunch wasn’t really setting us up for success. We have a fridge in the van – it runs off 12 volts – but as we can really only run it while we’re driving, it only gets a few hours of cooling each day. The cooler device isn’t very powerful, so it’s more of a “storage box that doesn’t get too hot” than a fridge. So far so good, nothing has gone off. It’s going to be a different story in Utah in August though … might get a solar panel that we can later transfer to the boat. That at least will mean we can run it all day.

We’re still parked just by Lava Canyon, where we’ll stay tonight. The van is all sealed up to make sure that no mozzies get in. I don’t think we’re in a mosquito hotspot here but Rose would not be best pleased if she woke up covered in bites…

The car park is in thick trees, and the moon is not yet up. There are a few stars shining in the small patches of sky between the tall firs, but most are hiding behind clouds. It’s very, very dark. It’s warm. Even though there’s a lot of snow on the slopes not far above us, we can’t be very high here. I don’t know what the altitude is though. The van is all smoky because we’ve been burning a mosquito coil inside. I can hear loads of crickets. In the distance is the rushing of the creek. Earlier we heard frogs and what sounded like jays in the forest. It’s really peaceful. No thundering trains tonight! I wonder what creatures are going to walk past before the sun comes up…

Hood River

June 18, 2014July 6, 2018 Chris Tanner2 Comments

Kite surfing day! It was still blowing a hoolie. My smallest kite is a 9m and I knew that still had a puncture in one of the struts, so first stop was Airtime Kites, perhaps the world’s leading kite repair centre, conveniently based right here in Hood River. They fixed me up with a new strut, so off we went down to the launch site. So many hyper-cool dudes and girls all in one place, just like every other kiting spot in the world I’ve been to. It can be pretty intimidating, especially in a fairly hardcore spot like this, where the wind is cranking, the river current is running and the launch is on a cross-wind sandbar which you have to wade across to. At least all the riders head way upwind once they’ve launched. Even though there must have been over fifty kites on the river, it wasn’t a crowded launch zone.

Pumping up on the grass by the river, it didn’t take me long to find out that one of the other struts also had a delaminated valve. Ugh. Back to the repair shop. Repaired the valve and bought plenty more repair kits – it’s only a matter of time before every valve on my ancient kites has the same problem. Hopefully not when I’m out kiting…

Hood River town is full of dudes driving beat-up trucks with some kind of extreme sports accessory on the roof or on the back; windsurf, kite or bike gear. It’s got a relaxed feel about it, with a bunch of nice cafes, and everything (in the centre at least) within walking distance. I could definitely see myself spending some time here.

Back at the launch zone it was still blowing well over 30 knots; really too much for my 9m kite, but there’s no way I was going to pass up the opportunity to have a session at a spot I’ve been reading about ever since I started kiting. I launched the kite, and yes it was a struggle to hold it down but I was on the water! The experience from the middle of the river was amazing. The white snow-covered peak of Mount Hood rose above the southern edge of the gorge, and the view both up and down river was dramatic – cliffs and forest right up to the water.

At one point I got caught by a strong gust, was hoisted into the air, and lost my board on re-entry. The current runs upwind, and I’d heard horror stories of people losing boards for ever, so I went into body-dragging overdrive, swimming hard upwind to get it back. Back on the board I decided it was really too windy for a 9, so headed in. Great to get a session though.

We drove down the I-84 a short way towards Portland and stopped in another State Park campground, again with a train track running along just behind the van!

The van’s been a bit cramped and cluttered so I spent some time making a couple of extra storage areas for the things we use frequently; a shelf on the dash for books and a shelf in the back for cooking stuff.