Thanks...

 Got an email from LinkedIn asking folks to post something about what they are most thankful for this Thanksgiving 2021. My list is way too long to list here, but thankful I am nonetheless. 

Of course there's a lot to not be thankful about as well and that list in this still-in-the-midst-of-a-pandemic is perhaps equally as long so this year I guess the scales of what to be thankful for and what to not be so thrilled about are about equal. I'm a Charles Dickens fan(atic) and this year reminds me of his opening paragraph to one of my favorite novels (if you don't recognize these remarkable, and timeless words I'll tell you which novel at the end of this post...):

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."

Ultimately we are all lucky to  j u s t  be  a l i v e. The Oxford Dictionary defines 'alive' as "living; not dead". "Not dead"... I think that is the worst definition of ALIVE one could possibly come up with. Being alive is so much more than simply being "not dead". Look up synonyms for the word though and you start to get the real sense of what being alive means: 

synonyms of alive...

I look at those around me - friends, families, acquaintances - and its these synonyms that start to flesh out the character of those I have come to know and love in all my years on this tiny blue dot. And it is these characteristics that I find myself still seeking out in those I interact with. Yes, sometimes I'm disappointed but perhaps what I remain most thankful for is that more often than not I find people that are "not dead", but truly "alive" in every sense of the word. As you gather with those most dear this holiday season I hope that is also true for you. 

...On a far less serious topic, my better half gets a bee in her bonnet this time of year to partake in the time-honored tradition of craft making and I find myself pulled into the endeavor. This year she/I/we along with my mother-in-law made plaques representing the changing of the seasons and here's a quick snapshot of our efforts:

Oh, and those words from Mr. Dickens? They're from his novel A Tale of Two Cities. I'm not sure if its still a must read in High School/College English classes but if you're looking for a great classic to curl up with by the fire when the snow (eventually) flies I'd give this one a big thumbs up. 

From me and mine to you and yours, have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

I’m a Maxanista!

I’m good at a few things, average at most, and downright lousy at some. Shopping prowess would definitely be included in the ‘lousy’ category and I’ve been quite happy with that utter lack of skill for the last, oh, sixty-four years. Recently however I’ve been receiving one on one instruction on the finer points of spending money on things I absolutely don’t need and didn’t even know I wanted by a young lady in her late seventies. I’d challenge anyone to match the consummate skill of this lady when it comes to cruising through stores and snatching up bargains. Santa needs to hire this shopping phenomenon especially this year when most of his deliveries seem to be sitting idly in the middle of the ocean waiting for ports to clear up enough of a backlog to get them unloaded. 

Watch out TJ Maxx... here they come!

This lady happens to be my mother in law which means she is the mother of my dear wife who is no slouch when it comes to shopping herself. I guess she learned from the best. Sunday morning I got another Master class from the two of them (heaven help the retailer when this tandem duo steps through the door) as we attended the Grand Opening of the new TJ Maxx in Silverthorne. Perhaps you too were there - it did seem that not only all of Summit County was there but much of the front range as well. The parking lot was stuffed beyond capacity which in my book is the perfect reason to head in completely the opposite direction but if I contributed anything at all to this outing it was being lucky enough to score a parking space where we didn’t have to hike in from, like, Utah. 

We knew about the Grand Opening  after seeing signs announcing the coming event when we stopped into the  shopping center a couple of weeks ago to have lunch at one of our favorite mountain eateries - the Sunshine Cafe - and noticed a lot of work going on at what had been an empty store front after the Office Max shut down months ago. Hopefully the extra ‘X’ in the newest Maxx will bring better luck than the prior purveyor of office supplies had. And if the crowds on Sunday are any indication they’re off to a good start. Just getting into the store was no mean feat but we surfed the wave of humanity and made it through safely. Once inside there was no hesitation as my wife and mother in law were off like greased lightning. I had no hope of keeping up but gave it my best shot until I saw my nemesis out of the corner of my eye. 

Shopping Nirvana (at least in my book)

Like I said at the beginning of this blog I’m good at some things and one of the things I’m best at is spotting a cozy bench or chair in a store. And this one, miracle of miracles, was unoccupied! Heck, I thought, what better vantage point to watch two Masters  and thousands of their fellow aficionados do their thing than perched on a comfy nice new red bench that looked like it was placed there just for me. Well, tell you what, it wasn’t unoccupied for long and before you could say “I’m a  Maxanista” I had made myself at home as the hordes around me surged back and forth, to and fro, all around me. I was an island in a storm of shopping craziness and I could only watch with eyes wide open  at least until my eyelids grew heavy, my eyes glazed over, and I was caught, I admit it, napping. Now napping and shopping don’t go together in my mother in law’s vocabulary and I’m sure she would have given me the evil eye of all evil eyes if she had seen me but she was nowhere to be seen having disappeared into the shoe section ("Aren't those white boots topped with the white fur just adorable?"). 

Hard at work, bags only half full

Now I have to admit, the new TJ Maxx in Silverthorne really does have a comfy bench and I thoroughly enjoyed my shopping-inspired siesta but way too soon ("Really? We've been here for two hours?") I was being rudely awakened and told to get with the program. Kudos to my wife and mother in law though - they made good use of their time while I was busy catching ZZZ's. By the time I awoke they had filled their TJ Maxx shopping bags to the brim and were ready to get in line to check out. The lines for the registers stretched all the way to the back of the store at times, which kinda upset me. What with a 30 minute wait to give TJ Maxx all of our money was there any good reason to wake me up so soon? OK, I do tend to be a little grumpy right after nap time. So I made the same Executive Decision any four year old would make and stayed planted right where I was but eventually the line did actually move and it was time to bid our Grand Opening TJ Maxx Adventure adieu. But wait, right next store the Sierra (formerly Sierra Trading Post) store was also having their Grand Opening so guess where I was headed? Yup, to look for a new bench... 

Just in time...

Even though the calendar says November I'm not quite sure I'm ready for the cool (cold?) and cloudy weather that has descended upon us in the last couple of days. How about you? It did give me the perfect excuse to huddle with my laptop and put together the last of my Fall trip videos to round out those on Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks as well as Earthquake Lake. The video below captures some of the Fall colors and gorgeous views we were able to see during our mid October travels through Grand Teton National Park.  Thankfully we had wonderful weather, a far cry from the gloomy skies outside my window as I write this. I've seen this part of the country in the middle of summer a couple of times but always count myself lucky to be able to visit later in the year when the days still get warm but the nights are cold and make you glad to have a warm sleeping bag or lots of blankets. Oh, and the summer crowds are just a distant memory which makes spending time with the local moose population a more intimate treat. 

We had seen a mother moose and calf back in July and think we saw them again this trip as they were contentedly munching away on the trees behind a cabin in the little town of Kelly. And one morning as I was exiting the campground men's room I stumbled into another moose rubbing its massive antlers up and down on a tree not more than ten feet away. Fortunately he was preoccupied and I was able to back up to a safe distance from which to just stand and watch. Just me and a moose sharing the quiet of a Wyoming morning. We could both see our breath in the cold air but with the sun on the rise it was the start of another perfect Fall day in Northwest Wyoming.

Our next trip was set for January when we would head below the equator to hop a cruise to Antarctica from Argentina. Unfortunately the good folks in Argentina where the cruise would start don't have any more of a handle on COVID than we do here in Colorado right now so travel to Buenos Aires is off limits and alas we've canceled that trip until some future non-COVID date. Who knows when that will be, if ever, but one hopes for the best while planning for the worst. 

Instead of visiting penguins we're now planning on heading to Florida and the Keys for a bicycle trip with the fun folks at Senior Cycling who go by the moniker of "Fun Folks On Spokes". Its not exactly Ride the Rockies or the Triple ByPass, or my favorite Leadville 100, but who's to argue with cycling flat terrain at sea level while being coddled in a swanky hotel every night as you slowly (very slowly) meander across 44 islands and over 42 bridges between Key Largo and Key West in shirt sleeves and shorts (Key West averages daytime January temps of about 75 degrees - yup, no penguins). Instead of moose we'll have our sights on Manatees and dolphins.  

Well that's enough for now. It's Election Day and I hear tell some folks in Denver still haven't voted. I'm casting my ballot in favor of Flipper, Bullwinkle, and Gentle Ben this year. Anyway, grab a mug of hot chocolate, grab a blanket and curl up on the couch and spend a couple of moments visiting one of the prettiest places on the planet on a day that was warm and the sun was still shining...

A swing through Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park is one of those places I admit to being somewhat ambivalent about. It offers stunning beauty and natural wonders but also tremendous crowds and the sensation of being in a drive-thru wildlife attraction. On our way home from Glacier we stopped in the little town of West Yellowstone and had a couple of days to experience the best and worst that YNP has to offer. The weather was definitely showing the change of seasons with morning temps in the low 20's and made for some gorgeous morning views of the steam-shrouded geysers set against the backdrop of crystal clear Montana and Wyoming skies. Our first day in the park we cycled from West Yellowstone to Madison Junction and back and for most of the ride we were passing cars slowly creeping along the roadway. Not the most fun bike ride but still better than those stuck in their vehicles staring at a never ending stream of brake lights ahead of them. Still it was fun to pull into some of the turnouts along the Madison River and watch the early morning fly fishermen and women doing their thing. And on this day the fish were biting as we saw several trout  snap at the flies being cast their way.

Next day we got up even earlier and headed for the Old Faithful area. Most of the northern loop of the park was closed to traffic so we anticipated lots of crowds  but were pleasantly surprised to find easy parking and not-overwhelming numbers of folks flocking to see the park's most famous geyser erupt every 90 minutes or so. A lot of the geysers in the park seemed more active than I remember from our last visit and despite my ambivalence its hard not to be wowed when Nature puts on its geothermal show. 

Its also nice to stop in and visit the Old Faithful Inn though this trip we were not fortunate enough to stay there overnight. COVID precautions have toned down the experience inside the grand lobby considerably but gazing up at the magnificent wood ceiling so high above is still something to behold.  Gone is the ambiance of sitting in front of the roaring fireplace or listening to the live piano music lofting from the second floor but one can still mosey out to the upper outside deck and watch the geysers do their thing. The main dining room has switched to a buffet setup rather than the full service dining of years past but the food was very good and as always its fun to sit inside and look through the windows at the incredible scenery. 

Here's a short video of our Yellowstone stop. If you've been to YNP you'll likely recognize some of the locations and if you haven't been, hopefully it will whet your appetite to make a visit. From here we had one more stop to make before arriving home. We had spent a couple of weeks in the Tetons in July and were looking forward to a couple of more days there seeing what Fall was like.....

A glimpse of Fall in Glacier

 Our trip to Glacier this year was unique for us in one aspect: it was our first trip as a couple taken in the Fall. My wife is a teacher and is semi-retired but still teaching a couple of classes online. For her entire teaching career taking a trip in September or October was unthinkable as she had to be in the classroom. Now able to teach virtually freed her up to give a Fall trip a try.

Of course as a teacher she was blessed with summers off when school was not in session. Taking a summer trip isn't ideal because that's when the rest of the world is taking their summer vacations so we were really looking forward to our three weeks in Glacier National Park. I mentioned in my last blog how busy we found the Park to be and that was our biggest surprise. And it wasn't just other retirees either; there were lots of families with young children throughout the Park. One young lad we met talked about how he was up at 4:30 in the morning to sign in to his online classes back home in North Carolina. By noon he and his family were free to get out and enjoy the beauty and majesty that is Glacier. 

WIFI is still problematic in most areas of the Park. Even at the KOA campground where we were staying you could tell when everyone else was logging on because the KOA service basically shut down. To be safe we drove into Kalispell, the closest major town, and my wife paid to use a shared-office service that was able to guarantee high-speed internet capable of handling ZOOM calls. The folks there told us they had a busy summer with lots of teachers from around the country scrambling to be able to teach ZOOM school.

It was also colder than we anticipated and even in early September the high mountains were starting to see snow and it was getting close to freezing in the mornings when we ventured out. Not that big of a deal but holding a wet kayak paddle at 37 degrees isn't all that comfortable and we didn't want to break out the winter neoprene gloves quite yet. Daytime highs were in the 60's and low 70's which was very pleasant but it was definitely sweatshirt kind of weather most of the time. The KOA in West Glacier features two pools, one for families and the other for adults only but I don't think they were heated. We jumped in a couple of times  but then promptly headed for the definitely heated hot tubs. This particular KOA is the number one-rated KOA in the country and it is an amazing Resort for the RV set. Pools, a couple of on-site restaurants, the aforementioned pools and hot tubs, weekend entertainment, are just a couple of the amenities the campground offers. We were actually staying at this KOA years ago when it went up for sale and my wife and I had pipe dreams of becoming campground owners. The price was around a $million and was considerably out of our range way back then. The Resort just sold again in the last year or so and from what we were told the price was in the tens of millions. If you get the chance to stay at the West Glacier KOA we'd highly recommend it and like many campgrounds also offers camping cabins and even more upscale houses capable of hosting large families or groups. 

The other major surprise other than the crowds was how much of the Park was already closed - most of the eastern side (Many Glacier, East Glacier, Swiftcurrent) were already shut down for the season by the time we got there in early September. We did, after more than 30 years of coming to Glacier, finally ride one of the famous Red Buses that have been taking tourists over the Going To The Sun Road since the 1930's. You'll see what that was like in the video below. We lucked out in having a beautiful clear (though cold) day for our trip and our driver, Rich, has been driving Red Buses for thirty-plus years and was a wealth of information into the Park's early days.

You'll see in the video that we were able to get out on the water a couple of times and the perspective from a kayak or paddleboard is completely different from the land-bound. And of course, for those who know me, any trip like this would be lacking without putting two wheels to some backcountry roads.

When our time was up in Glacier we headed down to West Yellowstone where we spent a couple of days and watched the temps dip down into the low 20's as we took our morning strolls. From Yellowstone we dropped back down to the Tetons where we stayed once more at the Gros Ventre campground which is where we stayed in July. I'll be putting up short videos about Yellowstone and the Tetons and the Teton one will be an interesting contrast to the video I shared in the summer. The Gros Ventre campground is perhaps our favorite campground in the U.S. and is a great place to see wildlife (moose and bear) casually wandering through the campsites. 

We've been back in Denver for about a week now and its good to be home. But make no mistake, the road that beckons is already whispering in my ear. Not sure where that road will take us, but I'm looking forward to wherever it leads. See you out there!

Of Earthquakes and Lakes

Our trip home from Glacier National Park intentionally took a meandering route through Big Sky Montana to West Yellowstone. It's a pretty drive as Montana, at least in the bright sun, is a beautiful State. Part of the route is along Highway 287 that takes you along the Madison River that starts in Yellowstone National Park and eventually flows into the Missouri. If you're a fisherperson, specifically a fly-fisherperson, this stretch of the Madison must come close to fishing heaven. 

We've driven this route before and were aware that we'd be going past a place called Earthquake Lake. Not having had time to really explore the area in the past we made a conscious decision this time to stop and see what this part of southeast Montana was all about. 

Late at night on August 17, 1959 the Yellowstone region experienced an earthquake. Not that unusual for the ground to move in this part of the country as Yellowstone is one of the more seismically active areas in the U.S. experiencing as many as 3,000 earthquakes a year. Most of those go unfelt but the one on August 17th definitely woke people up. It registered 7.5 on the Richter scale and occurred just before midnight and caused a massive landslide of more than 80 million tons that moved at more than 100 mph in the area just northwest of Hebgen Lake. The slide roared across the Madison River blocking it and forming a new lake that started to fill at the rate of 9 feet per day. Within a couple of weeks the new lake was five miles long and 190 feet deep. Cabins and cars were swept away. Twenty-eight men, women, and children lost their lives. A camping lodge near the river quickly evacuated their guests to higher ground (now called Refuge Point) in the middle of the night where they experienced aftershocks and as daylight broke were able to see the massive scar left by the slide in the near distance. Rocks and debris were still rolling down the hillside.

Flying by at 60 mph most of today's travelers have little awareness of the horror of that night. The earthquake also destroyed the highway cutting the survivors off and necessitating helicopters to rescue the injured the next day. Looking at the lake now one might think it looks a little strange with lots of dead trees poking out of the water but the surrounding area doesn't easily paint a picture of what happened 62 years ago. This trip we took the better part of a day exploring Earthquake Lake first by kayak and then on foot hiking the trail from Refuge Point as well as walking the Ghost Village road to the head of the lake. As my wife was walking the road she stopped to take a picture when a car stopped by and a gentleman rolled down the window. Turned out he was a survivor of the earthquake and had been sleeping in the cabin my wife was taking a picture of. Joe was kind enough to spend a couple of moments sharing insights into what happened that night so long ago. He was 15 at the time. Now living in Fort Collins, Colorado he indicated he still makes a trip back almost every year. 

There is an unmistakably eerie feeling to being out on the lake but at the same time the scenic beauty of this area takes your breath away. Here's a short video of our exploration. 

 

Glacier Then and Now

September in Glacier is special. Cold mornings, cool nights and somewhat warmer days let you know change is in the air. We've been coming to Glacier National Park for nearly 30 years and the Park is certainly far more crowded than we remember from the "good old days", whatever that means. There's an ad running for I think some brand of ice cream who's tag line is "The good old days are being made right now" set to a catchy jingle. I cringe when I hear it because I can't imagine anyone looking back on the Covid pandemic as "the good old days" but I give kudos for a clever advertising campaign.

When we first came to Glacier it seemed there were more bears than people. We'd head up to Logan Pass at the top of the Going to the Sun road as evening set in to watch for bears in the open landscape above timberline. More often than not we'd catch sight of a grizzly meandering through the nearly empty parking lot itself before crossing over to the Highline Trail. Now I don't think a bear of any size could squeeze between the cars sardined into the parking lot even as the sun goes down and the stars begin to shine. On our first couple of trips to the park hardly a day would go by without a bear sighting, sometimes multiple in one day. This trip we've seen one lone bruin high up on a rocky slope as we were descending from the Pass. I guess the rule of inverse proportionality is in effect - this trip everyone is carrying bear spray, and it seems no one is seeing a bear, where back in the day bear spray was still new and largely unproven and you really had to keep a sharp eye out for big furry critters coming down the trail.

On our first trip to Glacier we took a shuttle up to Logan Pass at the crack of dawn where they dropped us off with hardly another soul around. Our plan was to hike the Highline Trail to the Granite Park Chalet, spend the night, then continue down to Swift Current where we had left our car. I remember it was cold and dreary as we started out and we couldn't have seen a bear if it bit us through the fog but as the day warmed up the clouds lifted and the trail was bathed in bright sunshine. We were carrying backpacks as the Granite Park Chalet was fairly rustic and you needed to bring your own sleeping bag and food (nowadays I understand they provide food service and linens for a fee for those preferring to hike unencumbered by a pack). It wasn't too long before faster day hikers caught up to us and let us know that they had closed the trail behind us due to bear activity near Logan Pass. We couldn't have returned to the Pass if we had wanted to. As we kept hiking (its a several hour hike to Granite Park Chalet) we noticed a group of folks who had passed us earlier all standing together nervously eying the trail ahead of them. Someone in their party had seen a grizzly off the side of the trail so there we were stuck between bears behind us and now bears in front of us. Back then I don't think any of us were carrying that newfangled stuff called bear spray so the only recourse we had was to continue hiking to the Chalet as a larger group and make as much noise as we could to let the grizzly ahead of us know where we were hoping he or she would stay clear.

Suffice it to say we all made it safely to Granite Park and settled in for a beautiful evening watching the sun set to the west. The Chalet had a nice second floor deck from which tourists used to throw food scraps to bears who had become acclimatized to handouts. That ended pretty quickly when a couple of campers at the adjacent Granite Park campground were attacked by a bear on August 12, 1967. Two young women were killed and a man mauled (if you're curious, Google Night of the Grizzlies or read the book of the same name by Jack Olsen). I came across the book at the Chalet the evening we stayed there and read the harrowing account of what happened which is why to this day I'll never camp at the Granite Park campground even though the events chronicled in the book are more than fifty years in the past. 

One interesting thing did occur during our stay. Darkness had settled over the Chalet when we saw several miles back on the Highline Trail a little pinprick of light bobbing in the gloom. We asked a ranger who was stationed at the Chalet what the light was and he said, in a not-too-pleased voice, that he was going to have to go see for himself. He dutifully set off in the pitch black with a flashlight and a crowd of us watched his light slowly make its way back along the trail toward the other light still bobbing in the distance. Eventually the two lights met a mile or two away from the Chalet and then both lights made their way back towards us. Eventually the ranger arrived with a solitary hiker in tow. The hiker had apparently ignored the bear closure signs at the top of the Pass and thought he could hike to the Chalet then back down to the Going to the Sun road before darkness caught him. When the ranger intercepted him he was using a little penlight to follow the trail and to make noise he was holding his car keys and jangling them ahead of him as he walked! The ranger was livid but had no choice but to put the errant day hiker up for the night (he slept on the cold hard stone floor) before rousing him at the first sign of daylight and sending him down the trail to the road with a stern warning not to repeat his prank again. This year the smart grizzly would likely have distanced themselves as far away from the crowds on the Highline as possible. 

Your Red Bus awaits!

One thing we did this trip that we had not done before was take one of the Red Bus tours that has been shuttling tourists through the Park since the 1930's. Our driver, Rich, was a treasure trove of information and we lucked out by having beautiful weather during our tour. It was in the 30's when we set out but seemed to get warmer as we and the sun got higher and it wasn't too long before Rich stopped and rolled back the fabric roof allowing for an even more stunning perspective of the park. I was just happy to leave the driving to someone else as taking your own vehicle to the top demands you pay close attention to a steep, narrow, and winding road (for those familiar with Colorado, think the west side of Independence Pass).

Just outside the northwest boundary of Glacier National Park lies the little town of Polebridge, Montana. We had visited Polebridge more than twenty years ago so were curious to see the changes that the intervening decades had wrought. In the early '90's Polebridge was a forgotten backwater hamlet that few tourists ventured to see. The road back then was dirt (it still is) and rough (now well maintained, as far as dirt roads go) so it took some effort to visit. Polebridge today has, like so many places, been 'discovered' and we were surprised (though we shouldn't have been - after all we are from Colorado!) by the number of new homes all along the road. The town itself still has a funky vibe that almost feels Alaskan with fancy new homes sitting side by side Yurts, old cabins and all sorts of off-the-grid accommodations. 

The Polebridge Mercantile was doing a booming business and we treated ourselves to some of the delights from the bakery (huckleberry bread, huckleberry brownies, etc. - Yum!) and sat on the adjacent picnic tables watching loose horses graze within petting distance. We asked the locals what was generating all the new growth since our last visit and were told that Canadians from Alberta and British Columbia had snatched up  lot of the property pre-Covid at rock-bottom prices before Montanans realized the value of what was in their own back yard. I'd love to see Polebridge in the winter as the view from the town is as good as any you'll get within the Park. And yes, on several mornings the high peaks were featuring a fresh new blanket of snow and freeze warnings at lower elevations were becoming the norm. 

Well, this turned out to be a somewhat long-winded post so I'll sign off for now. Until next time, safe travels!