October 2014

Boise featured strongly in my brother's plans, mainly because he thought it is the potato capital of the world and really wanted to see some potatonalia. Sadly, it was not even the potato capital of Idaho - that would be Blackfoot, near where we started the day's travels. Blackfoot has a very highly rated potato museum, which claims to "lead you through the revolution of the potato industry" and has the largest potato chip on display. Most interesting of all, they have chocolate covered potato chips which look pretty good.

Since leaving Boise, I have heard of Florenceville, New Brunswick being the big cheese of the potato world - it is where McCains started, claims the title of French Fry Capital of the World and boasts the Potato World museum. No sign of any chocolate chips, however. There is a Big Potato in the Idaho Historical Museumin Boise but the museum was closed for renovations.

So we wandered downtown Boise for a bit, didn't really see much to admire except for the State Capitol, which had a tableau of Chief Twisted Hair of the Nez Perce people talking with Lewis and Clark in 1804, and headed for the Whole Foods for breakfast (where I got a bit of stick for having chicken curry). Thinking ahead, we had them make some fabulous sandwiches which kept us going.

Idaho Capitol, Boise

Chief Twisted Hair, Lewis and Clark

The drive for the day didn't have anything spectacular like the Beartooth Pass but all in all it was a nicely varied drive, a combination of forested ravines, big sunburnt hills and prairie - about 300 miles in all. We followed the Payette River which fed into the Snake River as we headed north up ID-55 and then rejoined US-95. Not far out of Boise we caught up with the Thunder Mountain Line train, which does a 15 mile trip up the river. The river is a pretty major destination for white water rafting and, where it is calmer, paddle-boarding and kayaking.

Heading out of Boise ID

Thunder Mountain Line

Thunder Mountain Line

The paddle-boarder had a lot of trouble getting up on the board and came close to falling in several times although never actually did before the triumph seen in the last photo. The road took us into McCall which was so pretty we had to stop and wander around and try out the Fogg Lifter cafe - which was rather more like a living room than a cafe. Nice place, even of we got hopelessly lost leaving, because we had no idea we were actually on the road we wanted, so tried some others.

McCall ID

McCall ID

McCall ID

Fogg Lifter Cafe, McCall ID

Fogg Lifter Cafe, McCall ID

Fogg Lifter Cafe, McCall ID

The road took us up past the Nez Perce forest and then a place called Grangeville: as we drove, I started to realise that I had been before, certainly the Nez Perce territory was looking familiar and I remembered going into Grangeville and thinking it was a dump.

Riggins ID

White Bird ID

White Bird ID

Nez Perce territory, ID

Nez Perce Country

The land flattened out as we went through the Camas prairie, which was intersected by the Lapwai Canyon - which required some rather large wooden trestles to let the Camas Prairie Railroad through.

Camas Prairie

Camas Prairie Railroad Wooden Bridge

The big reason for coming this way was my brother's desire to see the locks and shipping at the major inland port of Lewiston. Poor bugger, because there were no locks and not much more shipping - this is how busy it was.

Lewiston was a funny sort of place - across the river from the main road, there were several small big-box shopping areas ascending the hill, with a defunct Walmart perched at the top. The small historic district was on a bend in the river and looked like it might have been worth a look, but we didn't really stop - got hassled by some young guys hooning around who apparently had driven up from California, and this was all they could find to do. The Motel 6 was cheap, so I would have been OK to stay but we decided to carry on. The drive out of town was spectacular.

Bridge @ Lewiston

Road above Lewiston

Road above Lewiston

Road above Lewiston

Leaving was probably the right thing to do, as it meant we could stay in the very pleasant town of Moscow, a place I really enjoyed on my last visit to this part of the world, and home base of the University of Idaho. Oddly, despite being Saturday night, town was very quiet - a combination I guess of most students being too young to drink and many of them leaving town for the long weekend. It isn't a very big place, but it has a wonderful modern Italian restaurant - Maialina - where the staff was very careful to point out that they didn't make doughy, cheese-soaked slabs of crap. The waiter may have been a bit full of himselfbut it really was good food.

Jackson meant nothing to me when I booked the hotel there, it was just a convenient stopping point for when we came out the south end of Yellowstone. It turned out to be delightful, essentially a resort town, so there were lots of shops and galleries selling art, t-shirt shops, some outdoorswear shops selling the kind of outdoorswear that you wear to the pub to show you love the outdoors but would be unsafe to wear outdoors (where the weather might actually get a bit extreme), a hat shop where I could have bought a handmade hat, had I been prepared to stump up a minimum of $650. But it was relaxed and had at least one great cafe (others looked good as we walked around but we didn't check them out) and very close to the mountains - a ski slope actually terminated on the edge of town. Although the official name is Jackson, it had at one point been called Jackson Hole, and despite the less than salubrious resonances, many proudly label their businesses and the like as being in Jackson Hole.

Broadway, Jackson

Arts Centre, Jackson, WY

Jackson Hole Coffee Roasters

Jackson Hole Coffee Roasters

Transport, Jackson style

At the bottom of the ski slope, we noticed a tunnel, which went straight into the mountain

We had to see where it went - it curved upwards

and when we got out of the tunnel (it was only a couple of hundred metres), we saw lots of these

The side of the mountain was a pretty exclusive housing development, there are several streets running along the side of hill which have similarly big houses, and yet, apart from the first one, they are invisible

Jackson Square was a nice place to hang out - there was some sort of umbrella thing happening in the square itself and, on one of its bordering streets, an exhibition of performing arts - I only noticed as one act was finishing and another didn't start before it was time to go. There was also a fair amount of street art

Early settlers

Enjoying the sun @ Jackson

Sitting about @ Jackson

The arch is made up of elk antlers - they have some sort of campaign to get people go out and collect them after they drop from natural causes, which somehow works to stop hunting. We left town but didn't get very far - a sign to Teton Village distracted us - I was thinking we'd be able to get a cold drink or the like, and really had no idea of what we would find

Lodge @ Teton Village

Jackson Hole Aerial Tram

Ski Lift @ Teton Village

Teton Village, WY

Teton Village

Arts Centre, Teton Village

Apparently it is one of the best ski resorts in the world - at least one of the guides to such things we consulted put it at # 1. Even I, a complete non-skier, was impressed - massive lodges, several ski lifts as well as a gondola and an aerial tram. We were there in summer, but there were still plenty of people about, some to mountain bike but most, I suspect, to linger.

Our nest stop was about two hours later, to investigate Idaho Falls, We'd been through a couple of places with falls in their name but no actual waterfalls to be seen (hello, Columbus Falls) so I was a bit suspicious, but ended up impressed. The Idaho Falls do not fall very far, but they are right in the centre of town and very wide, generating electricity for more than 100 years.

Idaho Falls, ID, USA

Idaho Falls

Idaho Falls

Three hundred miles of very boring driving then confronted us - we could have taken the Interstate which would have been a wee bit quicker but could find no reason at all to stop, so took US-20 - which offered us the chance of stopping at the Craters of the Moon National Monument - since it was a monument not a park, I thought there's be a wee visitor's centre or the like, but it is actually 620 square miles: a " vast ocean of lava flows with scattered islands of cinder cones and sagebrush ... [a] weird and scenic landscape" according to the National Park Service.

Harvesting in Swan Valley

Snake River

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon, ID

Craters of the Moon

There is, of course, also the National Laboratory - a nuclear reactor museum ("Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 (EBR-I) Atomic Museum") but we had left it a bit late in the day to visit. Eventually, we made it to Boise, where a very helpful chap at the Holiday Inn printed out a list of eating establishments, which led to us having a most excellent dinner at the Bittercreek Ale House.

Bittercreek Ale House

Yellowstone is iconic, probably the most famous of all the American National Parks. It was also the furthest point on our journey. This made it more than a little ridiculous that we didn't actually enter the park until 4:00 in the afternoon, and had less than five hours of daylight - although it was only a 50 mile drive from top to bottom, there was stuff to see and of course we had to make the occasional detour. We saw some good stuff, but it was a rush and I would have liked the chance to see the Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces (photos taken from the park website):

We were wondering of we would see any wildlife at all - the woman in the Visitor Centre at Cooke City had made us feel hopeful, but we had gone quite a way into the park before we saw this fellow

Our first bison

We screeched to a halt and ran across to get a better look - he was kind enough to get up and have a bit of a look at us, he may have even pawed the ground a bit, but he wasn't much of a threat, being lame and across a small river - another bloke who had seen us stop and followed us in seemed a bit apprehensive, and stayed a fair way away.

We went on a bit more, and saw a few more

and it was not a whole lot later and this started to happen

So, yeah, we ended up seeing hundreds, maybe even a thousand bison - they ended up being a bit of a nuisance as they'd clump in the middle of the road and take their own sweet time to leave - not the kind of animals you want to get all shouty with, I suspect.

Buncha bison

They were actually the only animals we saw. Driving through the park, it wasn't as dramatic as the Beartooth or the Glacier National Park, but it had its moments. For about 20 miles, the Yellowstone River gets all compressed by a large ravine - they call it the Yellowstone Grand Canyon. A lot of work has been done to put boardwalks and paths along the top to give people a good view, although we only made the one stop.

Yellowstone Grand Canyon

Yellowstone Grand Canyon

Yellowstone Grand Canyon

Yellowstone Grand Canyon

Yellowstone Grand Canyon

Down the road a bit was Sulfur Cauldron

Sulfur Cauldron @ Yellowstone

Sulfur Cauldron @ Yellowstone

The big event is probably Old Faithful, a geyser which goes off with some regularity even 50 minutes or so. We're pretty sure we saw him in action as we drove in towards him, but by the time we arrived, he'd quietened down a bit.

Old Faithful, between blows

Geothermals @ Yellowstone

I have to say that the facilities they have built for tourists are really spectacular, more than the park itself. We did dither a bit in the hope we'd see him, tried to get something to eat but everything shut at 8:30 except the Old Faithful Inn, and they wanted us to wait. So we bought some shirts and, because it was so dark, didn't wait for Old Faithful, as we still had a bit of a drive - 100 miles, to be precise. What I didn't know was that as the road went down through the Grand Teton National Park, it was speed restricted (45, maybe 50 miles an hour): after my tangle with the Police a few days ago, I didn't want another, and we did see them with people pulled over. So, after an 8:00 start, I was a wee bit tired when we finally pulled into our hotel in Jackson Wyoming at around 11:30. It is obviously not a town of night owls, as the only place open was a pizza place, Pinky G's. Luckily, the pizza was pretty good, the place had a bit of a buzz so we relaxed over a couple of beers. Its one way to spend my birthday.

One of the reasons I wanted to stay in Butte in the Finlen was that I liked the idea of waking up there on my birthday. I also liked the idea of a relaxed start and a slow-paced day. It didn't quite turn out that way - according to the map, we did more than 450 miles, some of the roads were slow, some had wildlife on them which hindered progress (next post) but mostly what we were seeing was so fantastic that we had to stop lots. We left really early and still didn't manage to get to the next hotel much before midnight.

So, the photos are going to tell most of the story. The first bit of the drive was a fast drive for nearly 200 miles down the Interstate to Columbus, MT (the easternmost point of our trip), where we hung a left onto US 212 and on to Red Lodge where we finally stopped for something to eat. I was expecting very little as it barely shows up on google maps, yet Red Lodge is a sizeable town of 2000+ people.

River near Columbus MT

Heading away from Columbus MT

Heading away from Columbus MT

Heading away from Columbus MT

Red Lodge main Street

Red Lodge was quite the place in the 1890's:

In 1896, Red Lodge had twenty saloons and, as the library records show, riotous and violent living was characteristic of the town...

Foolishly, it touts itself as the gateway to Yellowstone, and almost ignores what lies between it and the Park - the Beartooth Highway, which goes over the Beartooth Pass. Now, we had already gone over the Crowsnest Pass and were left completely underwhelmed, so I did not share my brother's enthusiasm. The road was built in the 1930's to provide access to Yellowstone but, dare I say it, easily outshone anything we saw in the park (and didn't require a $25 entry fee). To get up to the pass, the road climbs nearly 2 kilometres, and the going is not exactly easy.

Heading in to Beartooth Pass

Road ahead to Beartooth Pass

Road up to Beartooth Pass

Road up to Beartooth Pass

Road up to Beartooth Pass

Looking back from Beartooth Pass

Already you might have some idea why it has been called the most beautiful drive in America. The Pass is 3,337 m (10,947 ft) above sea level - the land flattens out to form a plateau, and then gets wildly beautiful.

Top of Beartooth Pass

The tops

Entering Wyoming

The Pass

Beartooth Pass

Beartooth Pass

Beartooth Pass

Beartooth Pass

Beartooth

Heading down the other side was a little bit anti-climactic, although the Crazy Creek Falls were worth a stop and wander around, and then the land flattened out.

Crazy Creek Falls

Crazy Creek Falls

Crazy Creek Falls

West end of Beartooth Highway

Cooke City is at the other end of the Beartooth Highway - the day was running out rapidly, so the sensible thing would have been to stay there for the night, and carry on though Yellowstone the next day. Again, Cooke City hadn't really shown up in my researches, so I had booked a hotel the other side of the park, so we pressed on.