West Yellowstone, MT

Today started and ended with rain but in the middle was very nice.  We drove from Butte, through Bozeman, and into the edge of Yellowstone.  It was fascinating to see the cities I’ve read about in westerns.  The road bringing us across the edge of Yellowstone ran pretty much parallel to the Gallatin River.  This is a pretty river with some rapids.  We saw several rafts going down the river.  We also saw a lot of fishermen.  We had to stop and wait for a pilot truck to lead us through construction and luckily were right beside the river with a nice view.

I took a few pictures of the scenery we drove by but as Danny said, the mountains and trees are pretty much beginning to all look alike.  For that reason we probably will not go to Grand Tetons Park.

One of the best decisions we made on this trip was to buy a national park pass.  For senior citizens, the cost is $10 and that covers the member and three other people.  I bought the pass which covers both of us.  We have not had to pay an entry fee at any other parks.  This has much more than paid for the cost of the membership.  I would advise anyone planning on visiting several national parks to get that park pass.

We are staying about two blocks from one of the main entrances to the park, in West Yellowstone.  After we checked in to the hotel, we headed for Old Faithful.  The park encompasses 3,472 square miles. Ninety-six percent of the park is located in the state of Wyoming, another three percent is in Montana, and one percent is in Idaho.  We went into Wyoming and are now back in Montana.

In 1988, there were bad forest fires in Yellowstone.  Some regrowth can be seen among the dead trees.  It’s amazing to see tree trunks that have been there all this time.  We drove by the smaller geyser basins and saw a lot of steam.  We got to Old Faithful with about 40 minutes to spare before her next expected eruption.  The rangers compute the expected time of eruption based on the length of the previous eruption.  At our viewing, she was about 20 minutes later than the ranger had predicted.  While we were waiting, another geyser, Beehive, erupted within view of Old Faithful.  After several false starts, Old Faithful finally blew.  The eruption lasted about four minutes.  I don’t know what that means to the time for the next eruption.  Apparently, she blows around every 92 +/- 10 minutes.

While we were waiting for Old Faithful, we could see storm clouds brewing.  The wind was blowing and it was cool.  When we left the parking lot, it was 62 degrees.  A few miles away, it started raining fairly hard and the temperature started dropping.  By the time we got back to the hotel, it was 48 degrees.  We have heat on in the room.  We’re staying here two nights.  West Yellowstone is a neat town built on an “Old West” theme.  I want to ramble some and we want to visit the other geysers and see more of the park tomorrow.  

Rafters on Gallatin River

Damage from the 1988 forest fire can still be seen.

While damage can be seen, regrowth can also be seen.

If you have to wait for construction, this is not a bad view.

Steam along the geyser basins

While we waited for Old Faithful, Beehive blew.

There she blows!

Butte, MT

We knew we had a longer than usual drive today and a planned stop at Glacier National Park so we started out much earlier than usual.  It has been a LONG day but oh, the scenery.  I only took 143 pictures today compared to the 5 yesterday.  I don’t even know how to describe what we saw today so I will mostly let the pictures do the talking.  We went through periods of clouds and rain and periods of bright sun.  The fog and clouds give the mountains an interesting look.  Part of the time we had heat on in the car and part of the time we had AC.  It was just that kind of day. 

The majority of our day was spent at Glacier National Park which is part of the Rocky Mountains.  The lady at AAA in Anchorage said you really get the best views if you drive across the park on Going-to-the-Sun Road.  This is a 51 mile road, some of which was dirt due to construction, which meandered across the park from the St. Mary’s entrance to the Apgar entrance.  The road is very narrow.  At times, I could have reached out and touched the rocks we were so close.  Driving in a city makes Danny nervous but if I had been driving that mountain road, I would have been a nervous wreck.  There were frequent areas where you could pull off and take pictures so that extended the drive.  It took about four hours to drive 51 miles.

The rest of the trip we breezed along at anywhere from 50 to 75 mph.  We saw large herds of cattle and a lot of beautiful horses as well a large fields of some kind of grain.  We could see storm clouds building and were hoping it was not raining when we got to the hotel.  It wasn't; the rain was much closer than that, so we drove part of the time in pouring rain.

Tomorrow on to Yellowstone for two nights.

This is Chief Mt.  It was the first mountain from Glacier we saw.  Within two minutes of taking this picture, the mountain could not be seen at all.  The clouds had completely covered it.

The moose was on the side of the road eating leaves off the trees.

Most of these are just pretty scenes.  Without my guide book, I don't know which mountain each is.

There were a lot of lakes and streams.

There were also a lot of water falls.  One section of mountain is called Weeping Wall because water is dripping from the whole mountain wall.  I could not get a picture of that because we were too close to it.

At times, the snow/ice was right beside the road.

There were several tunnels.  This is one of the shorter ones.

I don't like squirrels that eat my bird seed from the feeder but these little ground squirrels are cute.

Lake McDonald is a glacial lake.  About 10,000 years ago a river of ice 2,000 feet thick moved through gouging out huge amounts of rock forming this large lake.  The waves were washing up on shore almost like at the beach.

Mother deer and fawn.

Stormy sunset

Lethbridge, Alberta, return trip

It was another relatively boring day traveling the same roads we had seen before.  This area is much more populated than we have traveled in Canada.  Edmonton, Calgary, and Lethbridge are big cities.  Calgary may compare to Charlotte.  Danny happened to be driving when we got to Calgary.  I thought he was going to have a panic attack before we got around Calgary on the bypass.  He also drove into Lethbridge.

Most of the area we traveled today is agricultural.  We saw huge fields of barley then in a distance would be a grove of trees.  In that grove of trees would be the house and buildings associated with the farm.  Some of them had really fancy entrance gates at the driveway.  Around the Calgary area, there are a lot of horse farms.  Calgary is a big rodeo destination and according to a sign I saw, the home of the first indoor rodeo.

In the middle of some of the fields, with barley or wheat growing all around it, are oil pumps where some lucky farmer struck oil.

There are a lot of long trains around here.  We have seen cars stacked with two layers of shipping containers.  We saw car after car of coal.  

Tonight will be our last night in Canada.  Not long after we leave Lethbridge, Alberta, we will cross the border and head for Glacier National Park.  It will be good to be in the USA where the money does not look like monopoly money and where distance is measured in miles.

Just because I thought the clouds were pretty today.  Just as we finished getting everything into the hotel, it started thundering and lightening and the bottom fell out.  It poured buckets for about an hour.  Maybe that took some of the construction dust off the car.

One of many oil pumps we saw today.

Where the trees are will be the house and other farm buildings.

When I see trains, I think of Lanie and Shawn.  Lanie used to love trains.  We once drove from Madison to Ridgeway so she could watch the train as we were near the tracks.  Now Shawn is the one who loves trains.  We saw some really long trains.

Edmonton, return trip

Driving the same route is not much fun.  After tomorrow, everything will be new.  I didn’t take but five or six pictures today.  We are back in farming country.  There are huge fields of wheat or barley that have been cut and baled.  These fields are gold.  Nearby fields are lush green.  The contrast in colors is very pretty.  There are pastures with herds of cows and some horses.  The road between Dawson Creek and Edmonton is mostly a four-lane divided highway but it is rough.  If you drive the speed limit of 110 kph (68 mph), your head may hit the ceiling when you hit a dip or bump in the road.

Fields of gold and fields of green

 

We are off the Alaska Highway now.  We saw a sign in the museum in Dawson Creek that perfectly describes the highway.  It dips and curves.  We were told that the engineers in 1942 went around obstacles rather than through them so the road is curvy.  If they had to dynamite a mountain, they took off only enough to make room for the road.  It’s a long road but I wouldn’t take anything for having seen it and driven it.

Dawson Creek, return trip

There is not a lot to say today except we drove from Ft. Nelson to Dawson Creek.  It was an easy drive with very little construction.  Dawson Creek is where the Alaska Highway began so when we leave here in the morning, we will bid the Highway goodbye.  I drove on the strip of old highway and across that beautiful bridge again today. 

We saw two black bear and a moose with big antlers – all dead on the side of the road.  That was it for wildlife.  Well, except for ravens.  I have never seen so many ravens and every time, I think, “Quoth the raven, `Nevermore'.”

Ordering dinner was a comedy.  There is a KFC across the street from the hotel so we decided to walk across the street and eat rather than drive somewhere.  Usually we will not eat where we could eat at home but we decided to break the rule.  Turns out, this was nothing like eating KFC at home.  There were three women at work and they obviously were not from either Canada or the US.  They could barely speak English and certainly didn’t understand Southern. They had original chicken, mac & cheese, mashed potatoes, and slaw.  I ordered 1 piece, white meat, mashed potatoes, and slaw. 

Waitress:  “What kind of meat?” 

Me: “White meat, breast.”

W:  “You want two piece chicken?”

M:  “No, 1 piece, white.”

W:  “What else?”

M:  “Mashed potatoes and slaw.”

W:  “And to drink?”

M:  “Ice water.”

W:  Looking at Danny.  “What you have?”

Danny:  “Dark meat chicken.”

W:  “You want leg or tigh.”  (H intentionally left out)

D:  “Thigh.”

W:  “One piece or two?”

D:  “One”

W:  “You want leg or tigh.” 

D:  “Thigh.”

W:  “What else?”

M:  “Mashed potatoes and slaw.”

W:  “To drink?”

D:  “Soft drink” (They had self serve drinks.)

W:  “To drink?”

Me:  “Soda”

W:  To me “You want soda?”

Me:  “No.  He wants soda, I want ice and water.”

Me:  “I don’t suppose you have biscuits?”  Stupid, idiotic, thoughtless question!

W:  “No, we just have these.”  Pointing at the dessert menu.

At that point, I lost it and started laughing out loud and shaking my head.  I know it was rude but I could not help it.

Me:  “No, I meant bread.  Never mind.  That’s all.”

W:  “That will be $16.94.”

The Colonel would be rolling in his grave if he knew what was being sold under his name.  The thigh was tiny and it was maybe half a breast.  The cups of slaw and potatoes were about half what is served in a small cup in Eden.  The chicken and potatoes tasted pretty much like we have at home.  The slaw was nothing like we have at home.  It was vinegar based instead of mayo.  I usually like KFC slaw; this was not KFC slaw.  Anyway, who would have thought ordering a meal at KFC would turn out to be the highlight of the day?

We had a sandwich at lunch on the bread we got yesterday at Jack's place.  I made one sandwich with the ham and a tomato I had bought and cut it in half.  The plate is a 10-inch plate.  Danny ate about 1/3 of his peanut butter cookie and I ate about half of the carrot cake.