Day 12 Monday 5 June 2017

Leaving Wyoming we pass through part of Idaho. We stopped at Soda Springs which has a lovely museum in a hotel and a captive geyser.  That means that can turn it on and off. Our lunch stop in Malad is on the border with Utah.  It sells the most lottery tickets in Idaho as they can’t be sold in Utah.

We arrived in Salt Lake City to visit the Mormon Temple complex as this is their religious centre.  Two young and enthusiastic ladies were our guides.  It was a slightly informative talk. Tonight we are staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel which was a nice hotel adjacent to the ski fields, though now the snow and we a lovely dinner but the breakfast we experienced was very poor.  Service with a sneer.

Day 10 Saturday 3 June 2017

On the way to what I am hoping will be one of the highlights of the trip to the Grand Tetons. We see them from the north with Jackson Lake in front of them. The pictures say it all.

According to popular understanding, The Grand Tetons are a translation from the French who called them “Les Trois Tetons” meaning “The Three Breasts”. Named by apparently very lonely and very imaginative French trappers who first came through the region.

Gary, one of fellows on the trip has his birthday today (4 June) the same as my special sister Debra and my friend Michael - Happy Birthday! Our tour guide gave him a lovely book of Yellowstone to celebrate which was lovely.

The Chapel of the Transfiguration looks like it straight out of Spencer’s Mountain (an old film with Henry Fonda), a Hollywood classic. This Episcopalian church was built in 1925 so people didn’t have as far to travel. The view from inclide the church is very special.

After arriving at our rustic hotel we went into downtown Jackson and saw a staged gun fight in the town square as entertainment and they were quite good.

Elizabeth with part of her posse.

We had dinner at a western themed show, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown”.  It was quite good but we left at interval because we had an early start the next day. Here was our singing waitress Sara.

Day 9 Friday 2 June 2017

A big day at Yellowstone we saw quite a lot. We picked up a guide Chris and when he said he was going to be with us for 8 hours we thought he was joking but it was true. 

We were very lucky there were Bison just ahead off the road to photograph. This results in a “Critter Jam” where the traffic slows down to photograph.  It probably took us 8 minutes to get to them.  We have been warned about getting too close 25 metres for most but bears 100 metres and to be honest that is still too close. The Bison calves are reddish and are called “Red Dogs”, here they are one month old.

We visited a lot of the iconic spots in the park, the Fountain Paint Pot, Old Faithful, the Mud Volcano and Artist Point.

Lots people, see if you can spot Elizabeth taking a photograph.

You can see why it's called Artist's Point. The photograph does not do it justice.

They were all amazing!

We saw a Ranger give a talk on why animals attack and he did it in an entertaining way that children would appreciate. 

For tea we went to the Timberline Café and Elizabeth had an open Turkey Sandwich which was deconstructed and floating in gravy as is the style. I had three sliders, one of bison, one of elk and another of indeterminate species with onion fries.

The place is slightly crowded but I would hate to do the park in summer with the heat and the crowds would be unbelievable.  Without doubt this is the best time of the year to come through with snow still on the ground. It was cool to have a nice warm sunny day and still have mounds of snow on the ground.  Also the mountains would look a bit dull without snow on top.  

Day 8 Thursday 1 June 2017

Off to Yellowstone today! We stopped at a service station come convenience store which was truly amazing. You’d be surprised at what you can’t buy. Not much - but Eliabeth discovered a Snickers bar the size of a loaf of bread, there was one per shelf.  We also saw the new flavour M & Ms Almond, Peanut Butter and Caramel. We visited Yellowstone and the first place we visited the Travertine Terraces at Mammoth Springs.  These were very good, not as spectacular as Pamukkale in Turkey but still worth seeing.  Although seeing the photographs it was very good. They are still growing quite quickly.  

Could this Elk kill?

There were lots of elk to be photographed at close range.  We found out that Bob in our tour group had a “Close Encounter of the ELK Kind”.  He was some distance away from him but he charged – a ranger yelled out a warning and he took off and hid behind a tree. A woman in a building called out to him to run onto her porch. He did but the elk charged him again.  We were lucky that he wasn’t injured.  The elks are about to give birth so are a little protective. From the bus we saw bison at a distance. It has been exciting.

Here is the Liberty Cap - a dormant hot spring cone.

When we arrived at our hotel is was a Milk and Cookie happy hour, free flavoured milk and cookies  - woohoo!

Day 7 Wednesday 31 May 2017

We had a delayed start today as it is a transit day to our next location of Helena which is the capital of Montana.  Along the way we stopped at a Walmart which was an experience in itself. Later we stopped at the Noble and Barnes bookstore and a frosty from Wendy’s for $1.29.  If only we had room for a “baconator”. The slogan is “show the bacon who is boss.” Before tea we walked to the neighbourhoods of the town where the 88 millionaires of the town lived.  These were millionaires in the 1880s from gold mines.  The town was already called Last Chance after the first successful gold strike. The rich people didn’t like that so had a competition for a new name.

We had an enormous meal at the Brewhouse which is a pub.  The starters of calamari and buffalo wings would be considered a main meal and then we had a salad and then the main and eventually dessert. Some people had onion rings for starters that were like doughnuts!  After tea we went to see the cathedral which was quite an impressive building with extensive stained glass panels. A local was walking his dog, strangely enough it was a blue-heeler cross. He was very friendly and gave us a lot of information about the town. To save time I have downloaded Google images as we could not get inside the cathedral.

The history is that the building was finished in 1921 and the Shriners are a chapter of Freemasons who dress up like arabians. Now it is  a civic centre. There are 200 chapters like this.

Day 6 Tuesday 30 May 2017

Our second day staying at Grouse Lodge and we went to visit Glacier National Park.  The way to see the park is to hop on to a red jammer.  In fact the jammer is the nickname for the vehicles as the transmissions were unsynchronised and so have to be double clutched, otherwise they jammed, not because you are jammed onto the bus.  These Ford buses were all made in 1936 (the same year Betty/Mum/Grandma was born) and they have all been refurbished; except for the one that ran off the cliff in 1971.  The buses can run on either propane or gasoline but not at the same time.

The park has 65 types of mammals, and from what we can see, that consists of one White Tailed Deer and 64 squirrels.

Here is our tour guide Tara wearing her USA shirt.  Tara is Canadian, has worked in Australia and is an excellent tour guide.  We are very lucky to have her.

The above scenes are from the MacDonald Lodge beside the lake. Earlier in the morning the reflections on the lake were perfect.

The Park’s philosophy must be that climate change is a natural process. Our tour guide kept mentioning that if there was a problem, then Mother Nature always balances it out. Luckily, according to “Jammer Tom”, American scientists haven’t found any evidence of human induced climate change. That was lucky. Forest fires are a big thing here and the lass serving behind the bar used to be a fire fighter who would jump out of planes.

After dinner we visited the cemetery and looked at the graves of veterans.  We did manage to see a real Grouse. One veteran was buried with his brother who died when he was only two years old and was buried with him rather than with the other veterans.  Spouses also tended to be buried with their husband veteran.   There was also a grave with only Japanese writing and one veteran had an obvious Japanese name.  There were several sad graves for children who died in infancy.

Day 5 Monday 29 May 2017

Departed the spectacular Waterton Lakes and we are heading off to the USA. We were on the side of the bus that allowed us to look back at the national park.  Increasing our altitude, farmland gave way to grazing country.  The area apparently attracted coal miners and there were several mines and they did become uneconomical about 100 years ago.

A major, but little known attraction is Frank Slide.  The township of Frank was a small coal mining community. In 1903 it was mostly destroyed with 80+ people killed when the mountain collapsed and slid down the slope covering half the town.  One baby was thrown out of danger and miraculously survived. This is view from the top (Google).  The interpretative centre is on the LHS of the photo at 9 o’clock.

Miners, a month after digging in to clear the tunnels, saw two white, shiny eyes looking at them.  At that sight the miners took off, believing it was a ghost.  Eventually they returned to find Charlie who had survived 31 days by sucking on his harness and eating timber.  The mine owner offered anyone $1000 to keep him alive. He was a horse. Unfortunately Charlie died the next day.

The Blackfeet called it Turtle Mountain and they knew not to camp near the base of the mountain. They knew about the danger. We visited the interpretive centre and it was excellent, lots of hand on activities for children and they even have sleepovers for them.

We had lunch at Fernie, a jumping off point for the skiing where we enjoyed a fresh bagel. An attractive little town that was destroyed by fire a couple of times. As a result they rebuilt the town with wide streets and the buildings had to be of stone or brick construction.  

     

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Our border crossing was at Roosville, Montana.  A quiet backroad. They do the whole biometric scan, electronic fingerprints and retinal scans - RETINAL SCAN – just so there is no confusion. It all went smoothly for us. Our tour guide said it was a record to get through in 35 minutes for the group but many of our tour group had entered the US in the last two years so that sped up the process. 

We arrived in Whitefish, where we were going to stay the night during their Memorial Day (like our ANZAC Day). A neat little town anywhere USA.

This was from a previous parade.