August 30, 2010 – Day 8 – Vacation 2010

Today we decided to sleep in some.  We got up at 9am and got to packing.  We ate up that humongous cinnamon roll for breakfast.  We loaded up and headed toward downtown to finish our shopping.  We bought tons of souvenirs during this trip. Also, it was pouring rain.  Shocking!

We headed out of town at about 11:30pm.  It was 2-lane road most of the trip today.  We stopped in Dubois, WY for lunch.  Dubois WY, population 892.  The first place we went to eat wasn’t serving lunch.  We went to a gas station and they recommended another place downtown (the 1 block of it).  While we were walking to that place, we saw a place called the Rustic Pine Tavern (or something like that). We walked in and there were a bunch of people at the bar.  We asked if they served food and they said no, but they do behind the two double doors.   We went thru the double doors and the place was vacant.  We finally located someone that worked there.  We asked if they were open and she said yes.  The place was very dark and we were the only ones in there.  The menu was on a dry erase board.  Justin and I both had hamburgers.  We also had their loaded potato soup.  It was delish.

We left there and felt it necessary to go ride the Jackolope.  There was a life sized Jackolope in a gas station just inside town.  They had a whole Jackolope exhibit.  It cost us $1 to ride the Jackolope and we even got a card that said we rode it.  I also picked up a Dubois WY t-shirt and another magnet.  After all that excitement, we hit the road.  We weren’t sure exactly how far we would get, but we ended up in Wellington CO.  Its just 15 miles north of Ft. Collins.  We are headed home in the morning.  I guess we eventually have to get back to real life.

August 29 – Day 7 – Vacation 2010

We started the morning with a 6am wake up call.  We wanted to get an early start on what we knew would be a long day.  We had breakfast at the Virginian.  Rose said it had the best pancakes in town. She was right, again.  I also got a cinnamon roll to take home and it was the size of my face.   The weatherman called for rain all day so we stopped by Sports Authority to get some rain gear.  We got out of town around 8:30. It took about 1 1/2 hrs just to get to the Yellowstone entrance. Then we had another 2 hrs of narrow, crowded, wildlife infested road ahead of us to get to Mammoth Springs.

We had just turned to go toward Yellowstone Lake when we saw our first wildlife of the day. There was a herd of Elk and a very large bull Elk with a huge rack. Hee Hee Hee.  We jumped out with all the other crazy tourists to take some photos.  The bull was scraping at the ground then eventually laid down.  When he did he let out this extremely loud bugle that was so obnoxious I thought I was having feedback in my hearing aide.  His females were crossing the road dodging traffic and gawking tourists with cameras. They were also in a geyser field.

Then we headed out and saw a heard of bison.  After nearly missing the idiot tourist that decided just to stop in the middle of a busy road on a curve, we used a pullout and walked back to see them.  They were laying in a grassy area. Not too exciting.

As we continued on that road, we came to a bit of a traffic jam.  The park was not extremely busy so we figured it was just some idiot that didn’t know how to drive on these roads.  As we got closer, we realized that there was a buffalo on the road.  Just meandering along like he owned the road and we were interfering with his day. He would be in the northbound lanes blocking us and the southbound traffic would slow to take photos.  Then he’d get over to the southbound lanes and northbound traffic would slow to take photos.  It is pretty amazing when you are driving up along a huge buffalo.  So we did the touristy thing and slowed for our photo op.  The buffalo could have cared less that we were there.

Next we turned to go west on North Geyser road.  As we were cruising along we came across another meandering buffalo.  This one was smart enough to be walking in the ditch.  It was on my side so we got to take this lovely photo as we zoomed by.

 

We finally came across the area that we wanted to hike.  It was called Bunsen Peak.  The first part was suppose to be 3 miles.  Then a short 1.4 mile hike down to Osprey Falls.  Then back up the Osprey Falls trail another 1.4 miles.  Then a 3.6 mile hike to the peak of Bunsen. So, basically a short 9.4 mile hike. The National Geographic map said the hike was strenuous.  So, off we went, bypassing a sign that I will mention later in the blog.

The first 3 miles were very easy.  Justin said he could have gotten that hike at the St. John’s live Christmas tree farm. The first half ended with 100ft of steep road. We found the trailhead to Osprey Falls.  We noticed the big sign at the trailhead stating it was steep and narrow and we thought “how bad could it be”? The hike was 1.4 miles and we went from 7300ft to 6600ft elevation in that distance.  There were numerous switchbacks that took us right down a mountain…all downhill. If you had a misstep, you’d fall 600ft.  It was a bit scary at times.  We passed an odd fellow hiking up as we were hiking down.  He said there was no one else down there.  What Justin heard was “there’s no one around to hear your screams”.  I was reminded of a bumper sticker I saw in town that said “hike faster, I hear banjos”.  But, he went on his merry way.  When we finally got to the bottom, we realized the hike down was worth it.  It was a beautiful, high waterfall.  We hung out in the river for a while.  I was trying to  nurse some blisters.  After some more photo ops, we started our ascent.  Up sucked.  We’d get about 100ft and have to stop for air.  We would look up and think it was going to level out, but it just turned and went up in another direction.  I thought we were never going to get to the trailhead.  We finally did and it took us about 1 hr to hike down and 1 hr to hike back up.

There were two routes that would take us back to our car, the long flat way we came in or the way over Bunsen Peak.  I was tired from climbing Osprey Falls, but we decided that we may never be there again, so I put my big girl panties on and we were gonna summit Bunsen Peak. We drank some water and tightened up our pack and set out.  After about 1 1/2 miles of not making any progress toward Bunsen Peak, we decided to check the map.  We realized once again, that we were the victim of poor signage and navigational errors.  So, we backtracked the 1 1/2 miles back to the trailhead for Osprey Falls. However, had we not taken the wrong trail, we would not have seen Osprey Falls from the area that we started that hike.  We also would have missed seeing the Grouse (its a small bird).  By that point we had hiked about 8 miles and it was 4pm and we still have plans to eat in Gardiner MT and see Mammoth Springs.

We decided not to take the 3.6 hike over Bunsen Peak and that we would just hike back on the flat 3 mile hike we came up.  As we were walking back we passed two geeky looking dudes.  One seemed to be carrying some sort of directional antenna and a holster of bear spray.  We said hi and passed by thinking, what are these nerds up to up here?  But we pressed on and got back to our car at about 6:30 pm.  We had hiked 11.5 miles for 4 hrs and 15 min.  We were sore, tired, and hungry.   When we got back to the trailhead for Bunsen Peak, Justin noticed a sign posted.  It stated that this area was frequented by bears and to beware.  It also stated that just 2 days earlier, a bear had been spotted with 4 cubs.  So, that’s what those geeks were up to.  Tracking bear.  That might have been good information for us to have seen and read before our hike.

So, we loaded up and headed to Gardiner, bypassing Mammoth Springs.  The first restaurant we found was busy, but they did offer us to sit at the end of a big table with another very nice couple.  We decided we would try something else.  So we went down the street to the Two Bit Saloon.  They were not serving dinner on Sunday night.  The bartender was nice enough to direct us to the Yellowstone Lodge/Restaurant/Casino/Souvenir shop. The restaurant ended up being the best food of our vacation, but the absolute worst service. By the time we finally got out of there it was dark. My camera is useless in the dark.  We headed back to Yellowstone.  We did stop and take a quick shot of the sign that said we were at the 45th parallel.  We did decide to stop at Mammoth Springs.  It was about 9:30 and it was dark with a little bit of light.  At this point, it finally started raining.  All that time we spent shopping for rain gear and packing all the rain gear with us on the mountain, and it didn’t rain till now. I snapped some pictures of Mammoth, but my camera is a POS and doesn’t take good pictures at night.

So, we saw what we could see then headed out on the long 3hr trip back to Jackson.  Note to future travelers of Yellowstone, get out of the park before dark.  The roads are very narrow, hilly, and curvy. And at any moment you could round a corner and find a buffalo in the road.  So, no shit, there we were, traveling eastbound on North Geyser Road, when we rounded a corner and standing there in the middle of the steamy dark road was a buffalo. We hit the breaks and it jumped into our lane and started meandering.  So, we pulled up beside it and took another photo.  Of course my camera is a POS, so the picture sucked.  We were still laughing about that one, when again we came across another buffalo standing in the middle of the road.  We stopped and it began to walk toward us.  So we backed up and it continued to walk toward us.  We were thinking at some point this thing was gonna ram the G6.  We eventually drove around him and continued on our way.  We didn’t have any more trouble with wildlife on the roads in Yellowstone.

About the time we were getting comfortable thinking we were free and clear, when we were in Grand Teton National Park, an Elk decided to run out in the road.  Luckily, we saw him and were able to stop in time.  Then, not even 1 mile down the road, another one decides to cross the road.  When we saw it, it stopped and looked at us like “what am I suppose to do”.  After some indecisive moves, she decided to get out of the roadway. We finally got back to the cabin around midnight.

August 28 – Day 6 – Vacation 2010

We can sum up this day with rain, rain and more rain.  We started with breakfast at Bubba’s BBQ.  They had a really good breakfast with homemade biscuits the size of your hand.

At that point it was just misting.  So, we headed out to Jenny Lake again to hike one of the trails our mountain bike guide, Rose, had recommended.  We got to the parking area for Jenny Lake Marina and it started raining pretty hard. We had to take a ferry over to the trail that was on the mountain side of Jenny Lake.  When we got over there we began hiking toward hidden falls.  It was .5 miles up the mountain.  Initially we thought we might be the only stupid people on this hike in the rain, but we ran into an entire tour group.  Everyone was wearing ponchos….or trash bags. When we started taking pictures I noticed that my camera battery was going dead.  We only got a few pictures on my digital.  The rest I had to take with my blackberry.  Our next stop on this hike was Inspiration Point.  It was another .5 miles up the mountain.   It was a beautiful overlook of Jenny lake and the weather had cleared up by then. We had started our hike at 6800 ft and Inspiration point was at 7200 ft. As we were hiking down, we saw lots of evidence that some sort of animal was in the are…there was poop everywhere, but we never saw any wildlife. We hiked down the mountain and caught the next ferry back.

By now, the weather was clearing up and it was mostly blue skies and sunny. We began our drive to Yellowstone.  It was about noon by this time so we planned to see Old Faithful and do a couple short hikes.  We stopped in Coulter Bay for lunch. Justin had a Moose Drool brown ale with lunch.  He said it tastes exactly what you would think something called moose drool would taste, however it did not seem to stop him from eating it.  Then there was the baked potato incident.  I was munching on my burger and next thing I knew I saw potato and a fork go flying.  Not sure what happened, but it was pretty funny.

We got into Yellowstone and it began misting again.  The drive thru Yellowstone was very pretty.  When we got to Old Faithful, it began pouring.  We put our rain gear on and headed toward the geyser.  We were only out there for a minute before we were soaking wet.  We ran to the nearest gift shop/cafe/ice cream store.  We roamed around there for a while trying to dry off.  We did a little shopping and got some ice cream.  We got some 900 degree hot chocolate that we couldn’t even hold with the little cardboard cup things. Then we checked out the schedule for Old Faithful.  It was about 10 min away from going off so we headed that direction.  By then the rain had let up again.  We stood around and waited for Old Faithful.  It was almost right on time.  It was pretty neat.  The sound was the best.  I’ve seen it on TV before, but hearing it is the best.

After that we headed toward the trail that goes around a bunch more geysers.  We got to see a few before it started raining again.  We toughed it out and finished the 1.5 mile hike.

We left Old Faithful and headed toward another hike.  I think we missed our turn because we ended up at a bunch more geysers.  This included Excelsior Geyser.  As we approached this one all we saw was steam.  It was hard to even see 5ft in front of you. People were walking out with wet hair.  Old blue hairs had their shower caps on.  It was good for the lungs after 6 days of dry air.  We really didn’t get to see much of this geyser due to the stream. The little part we did see was beautiful.  Then we walked around the “boardwalk” to another geyser.  I can’t remember its name but it is the really pretty one that is on all the Yellowstone books.  It wasn’t so pretty from ground level.  It must only be pretty from the air.  All we saw was a hole, with steam coming out of it.  It was also very windy and it appeared that the bacterial mat had sucked up a bunch of hats. However, it is unlawful to mar the bacterial mats or step off the boardwalk.

We didn’t seem to see the trail we were trying to go on, due to poor signage and minor navigational errors.  We decided we had had a long day and figured we’d head home.  During our time in Yellowstone today, we saw a little chipmunk.  That was it.  I did see a lot of bison patties, but no bison.  We are headed back up tomorrow and hopefully Yellowstone will live up to its reputation for hordes of wildlife.

We got back to Jackson and headed to a Mexican restaurant that was recommended by Rose.  It was pretty good, nothing too special.  They did have a yummy Twisted Cowgirl dip.

Due to the battery issue with the camera, I only got a few pictures I can put on the blog.  Once I get the right connector for my phone I will download more photos and a video from Old Faithful.

August 27 – Day 5 – 2010 Vacation

Today we had to get up early for our mountain bike ride. We hit The Bunnery for breakfast.  They had awesome croissant fluffy cinnamon rolls.  Then we met up with our guide, Rose.  She drove us into Grand Teton Park.  As we were entering the park, we noticed a bunch of cars pulled over to the side of the road and a bunch of people in a group with their cameras out.  We figured….wild life.  So, we did a drive by and saw a huge moose.  Rose turned us around and dropped us off so we could check it out.  It was hiding at first, but then it stepped out from behind the trees.  Then you just start hearing cameras snap.  It was funny.

We got back in the van and headed to our trailhead.  We hit the bike path and headed to Jenny Lake. The path took us thru a flat prairie covered with sage brush.  The Tetons were on the left.  It was weird how you had this ugly land with a beautiful background.

We rode 4 miles to Jenny lake.  The path was pretty flat with a 200ft elevation gain to the lake.  We took a back path to an area that wasn’t highly traveled. Our guide gave us the story of Jenny Lake.  We hung out on the beach for a little while, then we headed to the Jenny lake ranger station.  They had a 3d topographical map and we were able to see all the little lakes and crevasses.  Then we headed back to our starting point.  We were excited because it was going to be all downhill back, however some head winds moved in and it was blowing like 25mph in our face. We  got back into town and went back to our cabin and took a nap.  As I was laying there, the sun was very bright coming in the window.  Then it began to pour and hail and it was still sunny.

We got up from our nap and headed to Jackson Hole White Water for our afternoon white water rafting trip.  It was on the same part of the river that we did our duckie ride on.  It was a lot different in a large raft.  The big rapids were still fun, but the smaller rapids didn’t feel like nothing when we cruised thru them in a large raft.  We finished up the 8mile rafting trip and headed back to the JHWW boathouse.  They offered a steak cookout after the ride.  It was very good.  It was raining most of the time after we got off the water.  We got a real good double rainbow.

Tomorrow we are gonna hit Grand Teton park and take a short hike before we head to Yellowstone.  We will try to see Old Faithful tomorrow and stay at the south end of Yellowstone.  We will hit the north side on Sunday.

On a funny note, we were sitting in our car in the parking lot of JHWW when a news bulletin broke into the music…breaking news out of Wilson WY, a 20 month old dog named Wilson was missing.  It had jumped out of the back of a trunk.  This is breaking news in WY.  People here love their dogs.  At JHWW they had a very large Mastiff at the office. 

August 26 – Day 4 – 2010 Vacation

Today started out with a trip to the fitness center.  Then we got around and went shopping.  We hit a few sporting goods stores and caught some good deals.  I bought these awesome pants that I might wear everyday.  I love them. We had some Mexican for lunch.

Today we did our 2-man duckie kayak trip. After a 35 min drive to the put in spot, we got dressed up in our wet suits and loaded up the duckies.  We had a group of 6 duckies.  Justin and I had a pretty rough start. Both of us wanted to drive, but only one person can be the driver. That’s what happens when you get two control freaks in one duckie. They said the first 4 miles were gonna be pretty easy.  It actually had quite a few good rapids.  The duckie sits lower in the water than a regular raft so we got splashed a lot.  Good thing we had the wet suits on.  The best part was the “Big Kahuna”  It was a big rapid.  I figured if we were gonna get booted outta the duckie, that would have been the time. We made it through them and they were awesome.  There are some great pictures.  I’ll put the links and info at the bottom of the page.

After our duckie trip, we headed out for dinner.  We ate at the Gun Barrel.  It has beef, buffalo, elk and bambi. I had a regular steak.  Justin had a game sampler.  It had buffalo prime rib, elk chops, and venison sausage.   We both ate till we were stuffed.  That’s kind of a vacation thing.  We’re eating everything we can till we can’t walk.  To work off dinner, we took a walk into town for some Haagen-Das.  Everything on vacation tastes much better than when we’re back home.  We did some more shopping.  We stopped by the photo shop and ordered some of the photos from our duckie trip.  While we were eating our ice-cream by an Antler Arch a couple came up and asked us to take their picture for them.  They were a nice Southern couple who recognized Justin as the “Sheriff” from the wagon train last night.  Justin said he recognized her as Paula Dean from her cooking show!  Then we came home and hit the hot tub for a little while.

Tomorrow we have to get up early and meet up for our mountain bike tour.  I accidentally overlapped some activities tomorrow and had to change our scenic raft trip/white water raft trip/cookout to just the white water rapids and cook out.

For the photos from our rafting trip:

www.floatographs.com – Our rafting company is Snake River Kayaks – the date is today and our time is 1:30.  Our photos are the last 5.  Those are the ones that we ordered. Those photos were all taken on the Big Kahuna.

The other photo company is www.snakeriverphotos.net.  Snake River Kayaks, today’s date, 1:30, we are duckie #6, but the pics aren’t very good.  Justin and I might be the only ones who know it is us in the pictures.

Photos in this blog: top left: me and the moose at the Mangy Moose store; top right: Justin at the Mangy Moose; bottom left: Justin and I in front of one of the antler arches after we ate our ice cream.

August 25-Day 3 – 2010 Vacation

Today we mostly stuck around town.  We walked into town this morning for breakfast. Then we walked around the Town Square and did some shopping.  We came back to the cabin and relaxed for a while before heading out to get lunch. We found the Snake River Bar and Grill.  The restaurant is connected to a liquor store.  We walked into the liquor store and saw that the doors to the restaurant were open.  We walked in and it appeared to be under construction, but there was another group in there.  They said they opened for them, so we might as well stay too.  We did get served...eventually!!  Our waiter was also our cook, the bartender and most likely the dishwasher.  After we got our food I asked him what time they actually opened and he said 4pm.  We got there at about 2:30.  It was real nice of them to serve us while they were closed.  Then we went grocery shopping. At one time, in the busy grocery store, Justin thought it was appropriate to pick me up, put me over his shoulder and spank my butt.

Tonight we went to a chuck wagon dinner at the Bar T 5 Ranch. We met up at the ranch.  We got the story of the history of the ranch.  Then  we loaded up in a covered wagon with all the blue hairs and headed up the mountain.  We were pulled by two female Draft horses named Dixie and Ginger. While en route, we were accosted by a trapper named “Buckskin”.  Then we were attacked by two Indians.  They rode by us so fast I couldn’t even get a picture. When we arrived at the dinner site, we were fed roast beef, chicken, and corn on the cob from a Dutch oven.  I was dumb enough to forget to take my jacket up, so I was freezing my ass off by dinner time.

After dinner, and some awesome Blondie brownies, we were entertained with a cowboy music/comedy show.  It actually was funny and the singers were great.  Justin was even chosen as one of the volunteers.  He got to get up with a group of kids to help with “She’ll be coming around the mountain”.  They put a very small red cowboy hat on his head.  It had a Sheriff badge on it and they told him he was the Sheriff. When it came to his part he had to say “hello ladies”. It was hilarious.  It was nice to go somewhere where there was wholesome family fun.  Made me forget for a minute that there were gang bangers with guns and husbands beating their wives.  It was refreshing.

Tomorrow morning, Justin and I are going back up the the Cache Creek area (the area that we had the chuck wagon dinner) and doing some trail running.  Then at 1pm we have our 2-man duckie trip.  I have been uploading all the photos daily on my photo website.  If you go to my blog and click the Photos link under my favorites, you can see all the photos.

August 24-Day 2 - 2010 Vacation

Today we traveled from Cheyenne WY to Jackson WY. We left Cheyenne around 10:00.  The first 4 hrs was pretty uneventful.  We did have a tractor trailer blow a tire when he was right next to us.  It was pretty scary for a second.  The scenery was worse than western KS.  It was mostly prairie and some hills.  You could go 30 miles before you’d see a house.  There would be mailboxes and driveways, but I’d never see a house.  I saw lots of antelope.  We had lunch in Lander.

The last half of the trip was a little more scenic.  Lots of cool rock formations.  You could see all the different layers of soil in the rock formations (I wouldn’t call them mountains).  They just looked like the ground got pushed up.  We had a little fox run across the road at one point.  It was small, about the size of a cat.  Then we started seeing signs that said the road was closed between 10pm-1am and 1:30am-4:30am.  We thought that was really interesting.  Then we got to the point of the road that they were closing.  It was a mess.  We had to follow a pilot car thru about 15 miles of tore up rock road.  It was rough.

We finally made it to Jackson around 7:30 pm.  We have a really cute cabin in town.  It is a pretty quiet property.  It is walking distance from downtown.  We unpacked, then headed for the fitness center that is in the basement of the office building.  After our workout, we headed into town.  We ended up at Mountain High Pizza.  It was pretty good.  We decided to call it a night and head back to the cabin to get settled in.

Tomorrow we are just gonna stick around town.  We are hoping to do some sightseeing around town and possibly some rock climbing.  We also have our chuck wagon  dinner planned tomorrow night.

August 23-Day 1 - 2010 Vacation

We left this morning around 8:30am.  Went to the Bread Basket in Newton for breakfast. It was super yummy.   Then we stopped in Limon to have lunch at the same Mexican place we ate at on our last day of vacation last year, Jenny’s.  It was still as good as it was a year ago.

We decided we’d continue on to Cheyenne WY.  It only took us two tries to fine a hotel.  We are at the Candlewood Suites.  It is very nice with a full kitchen and my favorite, free WiFi.  We started to head into town to find somewhere to eat and we ended up at Sanfords Grub & Pub.   It was a huge place full of a hodge-podge of collectables and memorabilia.  It also had the hugest menu I’ve ever seen. Along with the large menu was the large plates of lots of very good food.  Good thing we worked out in the hotel fitness center before dinner. 

We’re gonna head out in the morning for Jackson.  It should only be a 6-7 hr trip from here.

One week Away

Justin and I will be leaving for our vacation to Jackson, WY/Grand Teton/Yellowstone in one week. I think both of us really need some time away. We are looking forward to all the fun outdoorsy stuff we are planning. This trip we are doing a mountain bike ride, chuck wagon dinner, scenic raft trip/whitewater trip, duckie ride (2-person raft), and plan on lots of sight seeing and hiking. I will update my blog each night as I did last year. This year, we are staying in Jackson Hole and should have easy access to wireless. There should be lots of photos and hopefully some good stories.

Stay tuned!!