My Trails

There is one thing that everyone goes to see when they visit Yellowstone and I faithfully went to see it. Even with the kids back in school, cooler fall temperatures, and summer vacations over, this park is mobbed by throngs of tourists. Every campground is full, roads are packed with cars, boardwalks are lined with sightseers, and the attraction areas are a zoo of humanity. The area around Old Faithfull is sure different than what I remember when we visited years ago; four-story hotels, cabins, gift shops, restaurants, grocery stores, and a gas station, form a gigantic circle around the Geyser, all raking in the tourist dollar.

Yellowstone is so big – over a million acres – and so spread out, that I elected to stay inside the park so as to make day trips on my motorcycle manageable. It is easy to drive 100 miles or more just to see a quarter of the park.

When you drive through the areas of wildlife you may see a couple cars in pullouts looking for animals. When you see a half-dozen cars it means there are bison, elk, or pronghorns in the meadow. If the road is lined with cars for a mile, sometimes parked in the road, blocking traffic in both directions, it means someone has seen a bear.

I have seen three bear, countless elk, bison, and deer, geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and steamy holes. I have taken a couple of short hikes, listened to ranger talks, and read numerous information boards. You could spend weeks here and not see everything, but tomorrow I will move down
into the Grand Tetons National Park and then into Idaho. I know I should not be surprised at the weather here, but I want to get to the west coast before it gets much colder. I keep seeing signs that say you must have snow tires or chains to drive some of the passes when it snows, and they are predicting snow tomorrow.

It looks like an RV rally at the Cody, WY Walmart this weekend. There must be at least twenty rigs in the side parking lot, all staging for the assault on Yellowstone National Park. I’m sure it works out well for the store. Most travelers stock up on basic supplies and do a little impulse buying as well.

I enjoyed the SD Black Hills area. One of my favorite things to do is tour a cave and there are two of them, Wind Cave and Jewel Cave, situated only a few miles apart in the picturesque rolling countryside. The caves are many miles long, but only a few short sections have been developed for tours. I’m not sure why I have such a fascination with underground caves but it probably stems from my youth when we made tunnels through snow banks or explored passageways through the hay bales in the barn.

The weather has turned cold. I spent a couple of nights in the Bighorn NF at almost 10000 feet and woke to freezing temperatures. It is the first time in a long time that I have had to scrape ice from the windshield before driving out. Even here near Yellowstone the highs are only predicted to be in the 40’s and 50’s during the day and 20’s at night. I was hoping to see a lot of the Park on my motorcycle but may rethink that.

No description necessary.

Badland Bison.

While riding through the Badlands a couple of days ago, I happened upon a campground that was nestled in a remote area. Upon investigation I discovered it was a free camping area. The map describes it as a primitive campground because there is no water available and no flush toilets. It meets all my needs, however: picnic tables with sun shades over them, oder-free toilets, and trash containers. The only drawback is that it is on a washboardy, dirt road, eight miles from any cell reception. I will probably spend a couple of days here and try one of the hikes the information board lists.

Yesterday, I rode five miles outside the park to the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. The site consists of two locations – the underground launch control center and the Minuteman II missile (unarmed) in the silo. This site was part of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991 that deactivated over half the ICBM’s in the northern plains. I was disappointed that the elevator was broken and tours down into the command center were canceled. I watched a film and looked over some of the displays and then rode to the actual missile site 16 miles from the command center.

At the missile silo there was a park service volunteer answering questions. The giant 4-feet thick concrete cover is rolled back half-way across the opening and a glass cover was built over the tube to give tourists a view down into the silo where the missile sits.

There is quite a lot to do here in SD. Ellsworth A.F.B. has a air and space museum with a training launch facility, where you can tour an underground missile silo. And, of course, there is Mt. Rushmore, Wind Cave NP, Jewel Cave NM, and the Black Hills to see, so it may be a while before I get into Wyoming.

I pass several herds of cattle, sometimes standing in the road or very close, and I can’t help but lean out the window and holler “Moooo!”. This is the high plains of Colorado, a sweeping, treeless expanse of rolling hills and prairie grass, broken only by scars of dry river beds. To the north the landscape is painted with tall towers of white windmills, rotating silently and reminding me of the century I live in. If it weren’t for the blur of windmill blades and bob of an occasional oil pump, one could almost imagine a tribe of Pawnee Indian braves, riding across the plains with bows drawn, chasing a herd of buffalo.

There are no Indians roaming the prairie anymore (or herds of buffalo, for that matter), but a section of this land is set aside for future generations to see. The Pawnee National Grasslands is packed with early American history and a diverse multitude of wildlife. Spring or Fall is the best time to visit. It is not the mountains or forests, certainly not lakes or meadows or canyons, but it has a beauty of its own.

I am camped high on a hill, near the trailhead and picnic area for the Pawnee Bluffs. It has been hot in the afternoon, but a steady breeze and a little spritzing keeps the camp bearable. It is always windy here – even throughout the night – and is undoubtedly the reason for the wind farm to the north. I’m not sure how many wind turbines there are, but one person I talked with said they stretch all the way to Nebraska.

I receive several TV stations and get partial internet, so at least my nights are semi-filled with entertainment. As the sun goes down and night settled over the prairie, the windmill tower lights all twinkle like a Christmas display. Off in the distance to the south, several oil wells have pipes that spew out flames twenty-four hours a day. Combine the lights and the flames with a dark, star-filled sky, and I get quite a show each night.

My plan is to stay put through the holiday and then move on north. There are a couple of hikes out to the bluffs, and a little motorcycle exploring to keep me busy, or as busy as I want to be.