Month: August 2020

I can’t say I love wearing a mask, but it beats staying at home. Yellowstone is a magical place, even in the midst of a pandemic.  Not all the campgrounds are open, and you certainly have less dining options within the park, but judging by the lines to get in, Yellowstone is still drawing a crowd. It is such a big park, with so many attractions that it is possible to find solitude. Even at the most famous sites, people are doing a pretty good job following the Corona virus safety measures. The park has responded well with signs and oneway direction paths on the walking trails, where you used to be allowed to go in either direction. Hand sanitizer is readily available at gathering points and it appears the rangers and other personnel have been well trained. The wildlife still is doing what wildlife does, and that still causes traffic jams; whether they be bear jams, wolf jams, bison jams, coyote jams, or elk jams. There are a few road closures, but that is due to road construction and forest fires. It is said that the National Parks are America’s best idea. It seems, for many, it is still providing hope and happiness. For a few shots from day two in the park click here. We started in Gardiner, Montana just outside the park and ended the day in the Canyon Campground.

Since Scott and Kiara had more work to complete before they headed back east, they went back to Pinedale and we headed north.

I tell people the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (which includes Grand Teton N.P.) is my favorite place in the world. Granted it may not be the prettiest (I consider Yosemite and Glacier to be prettier, and that’s just in the U.S.) and I have not been when the temperature has dropped below freezing for very long. I hope someday soon to make it to the area when snow covers the ground. I have seen it snow in July and seen puddles freeze over in June, but I have not yet braved the frigid days of January or February. I can’t honestly say I have been true to the mission of trying to see it all, if I don’t see things through the lens of different seasons. One thing is for sure, I won’t get my wife to come with me when the thermometer will likely fail to get above 70 for an entire week. She hates being cold. 

This trip I have been calling my wife Miss Daisy (from the 1989 Morgan Freeman, Jessica Tandy movie). I am extremely happy to have her with me, but she has taken to sitting in the back of the car, even when I just had a shower. She told me before the trip started that she was not going to drive and she would not commit to more than three weeks. (I am not sure what she will do when we pass the three-week mark.) Simply put, camping is not really her thing. Truth be told, I would rather be staying in luxury hotels, but we are newly retired and I would like to see it all on a limited budget. Besides, beautiful places are not always near luxury hotels. I have to admit, there is something amazing about waking up with a wonderful view that comes without any expense other than navigating a bumpy unpaved road to get there in an old van. I don’t think I am the only guy in the U.S. that thinks that way.  We met a guy our first day in Yellowstone who was also newly retired who had a much better rig. He was a VP of the second largest paint manufacturing company in the world. He had a carbon fiber mountain bike and a kayak on the back and a nice dirt motorbike on the front on top of the winch that (he said) could get him out of trouble, if the custom-lifted, four-wheel drive of his highly modified Mercedes Sprinter let him down. Admittedly, it was pretty cool and he did a lot of the work himself to get it that way. I am not saying I would not enjoy traveling in a better vehicle, but I’m truly happy with what I have. Miss Daisy may not agree, but she seems pretty happy with some of the sights we have seen, so far. I think she is especially pleased with what we have seen the last few days and though this in no way proves the case that Yellowstone is the best place on the planet, I still will tell people it is for me. Hopefully the photographs will help show why I am so fond of it.

For a few photos of our first day in Yellowstone, click here. 

Whether we want to acknowledge it or not meeting people and making connections is an important part of life. To quote the seventeenth-century English writer John Donne, “No man is an Island.” One of the things I wanted to do on this adventure was introduce my nephew to some friends I have known for a long time. 

John and Mary Kay Turner are two of the most generous and giving people I have ever met. I had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time. John was appointed head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 1989. That brought his family to the east and their youngest son, Mark, was on the freshman football team which I coached. That was only the beginning of the connections that I remember and cherish. There are too many connections to talk about here, but I would like to pay tribute to John and Mary Kay because I looked up to them as people who knew what they were doing, especially when it came to parenting. That is saying a lot, John’s story is one to be admired for many reasons and when he finishes his memoirs, I will read the book. I think Mark put it simply when he said to me recently that he believes his father, as a consequence of his public service, is responsible for conserving more land than anyone alive today. John is both a good storyteller and a good listener. Mary Kay chose a different career path, but in my estimation her talents have inspired as many people, and I was blessed to get to know her well. She became a teacher at the same school and was teaching one classroom down from mine for many years. I enjoyed her company and appreciated her advice at many faculty room lunches over the years. Her life has been one of trying to bring the best out of the people she comes in contact with; whether they be students, colleagues, friends, or just a person in need. She was not and still is not one to shy away from difficult issues. 

So to the title of this post…near the end of breakfast in a small world moment, Scott realized his advisor, Bill Lauenroth and his wife Indy Burke, the first female Dean at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, the program that Scott is enrolled in, were good friends of the Turner’s. Mary Kay said, “tell them you had breakfast with us at Dornans.” You can’t see it in the photo above, but Dornans is located between the main road from Jackson to Yellowstone in the shadow of Grand Teton. It is a fitting location, both a monument to many conservationists that chose the area as home, and a metaphor for how far we have to climb to meet the current environmental challenges.  Both Scott and his friend Kiara very much appreciated the time they had with the Turner’s. 

After we parted, we drove up Shadow mountain, where we had spent the night, and waited for a different socially distanced gathering; this a birthday celebration of Trevor’s mom. I spoke about him in the last post. What I did not mention, because I did not know it at the time was that she, in the midst of treatment for another illness, became patient number 6 in Teton County with covid-19. Thank you Trevor for including us. Your mother is an inspiration and as you put it, a very sweet lady. 

It was an eventful day. For a few photos click here. As you can see some of the photos are still showing the impact of the wildfires in California.

Grand Teton National Park has some of the most impressive mountains in the lower forty-eight. It also has some pretty good wildlife viewing opportunities. I had made arrangements to take a private guided tour with another person I met in Kenya in 2019, again through connections with my nephew. His name is Trevor Bloom and during the day he works for The Nature Conservancy. He resides in Jackson near the park. In his spare time he runs a guide company called Guides of Jackson Hole. Scott and I have kept in touch with Trevor and since the national park is just a scenic 87 mile trip up the road from Scott’s apartment, it seemed the perfect thing to do. Kiara and Scott drove up in his vehicle and my wife and I drove up in my van. We met Trevor at the agreed upon spot and hopped in his vehicle for the evening event. Kiara, who is from South Africa, was eager to meet some of North America’s native ungulates. This is the group of hoofed grazing animals that in the Tetons includes Bison, Elk, Pronghorn Antelope, Mule Deer, and Moose. Kiara is considering doing her work on the ecology of this important group of mammals. She, like Scott, hopes to eventually wind up with a PhD. She currently is working at Princeton with plans to apply to programs in the fall. I was hoping to see all of the above animals, but I have gotten good photos of them in the past. High on my list are the predators of the Tetons, including Grizzly and Black Bears, Wolves, and Mountain Lions. For this trip, Trevor was targeting a particularly famous Grizzly, a bear known as 399. This year the 24-year-old sow has four cubs, an extreme rarity for any bear. She is considered an outstanding mother and is believed to have successfully reared more offspring than any other sow on record.  After seeing some of the ungulates, we went to the Oxbow lakes area of the park where Trevor’s network of guides said she was likely to be found. It turned out that the information was correct. The only problem was that he was not the only person to have the information. We saw the mother and cubs, but they were deep in the serviceberry bushes. Kiara got a short video, but the rangers were too good at keeping the traffic moving and I was not able to get anything but blurry images of the bushes. I did however get a good photo of the “bear jam.” For some photos of what we saw, click here.. We had a great time catching up with Trevor and he made arrangements to get us set up to camp in another Forest Service dispersed camping site. I hope to post photos from there soon.

Even though we got an early start from central Nebraska, when we finally met Scott, the sun was setting. My nephew is currently living in the outskirts of the small town of Pinedale in western Wyoming. He had just finished a long, hot, hard day of field work in the sagebrush of the high plains. He was lucky to have a friend from Princeton, named Kiara (whom I had met at Mpala Research Station in Kenya in 2019), to help him with his data collection for his early work on his PhD project. When we arrived, everyone was hungry, so we headed into town where we had dinner. Scott talked about what he needed to get done and we made plans for the next few days. He invited me to accompany him and Kiara as they continued data collection the next day.  

After some morning errands, we reached the first field site where I took some photos as they did their work. Through the afternoon we went from field site to field site; they collected data and Scott flew a drone over the sites to get another perspective. Unfortunately, we had to end things a little early as a thunderstorm was bearing down on us. Scott told me, “You really don’t want to be the tallest thing standing in sagebrush country under those conditions.” We got into the car just as the rain began to fall and headed back to Scott’s apartment.

We met up with my wife and finished the day with dinner at a dispersed camping site on Boulder Lake west of the mighty Wind River range. The lake is on U.S. Forest Service range-land. We shared the view with quite a few cows that were grazing the area around the lake. It doesn’t sound like much, but it was just the right spot for dinner at sunset. After dinner Kiara and Scott headed back home and we made camp on a hill overlooking the lake. The price for camping was right…free. 

For some pictures from the field work and other highlights, click here.  The sunset was unusually red because of smoke from wildfires in California.

I have mentioned that I have traveled across the country many times. My most recent trips were with a colleague named Greg who taught government. He and I were passing through West Virginia and I mentioned as I saw the golden dome of the Capitol from the interstate, that we ought to be stopping for a visit. Though we did not stop then (Greg is a planner and this was not on the plan) we did walk into the Capitol in New Mexico when we had some time to kill later on that same trip, and because of that he and I have been on a quest to see all the U.S. Capitol buildings. He is now married and has new travel companions and the challenge is on to see who will get the task done first. With that in mind, when possible, I add them to my road trips when they are not much out of the way. Between the start of the journey and our Wyoming destination there were three en-route that I had not seen. So with my patient wife’s consent, and with an effort to break up the monotony of the cornfields she was getting tired of seeing; we stopped in Indianapolis, Springfield and Lincoln. Maybe we will see a few more on the way back home.  To see what we saw (not all were open inside because of covid restrictions) and a few more road pictures click here.

If you have followed the posts since the beginning, you know I have a nephew named Scott that went to Madagascar with me and a group of people led by a young man named Devin Edmonds. Devin is now working on his doctorate at the University of Illinois. My nephew is also working on his Doctorate at Yale and is doing his early field work in the sagebrush of western Wyoming.  From the last post you know I have a VW van that has gone on its first long test drive after it has had work done. I like to roam, and the Covid situation has had me cancel two planned trips and postpone a second trip (led again by Devin) to Madagascar that was supposed to occur in November of 2020. Well, you might see where I am going with this. I asked my wife to accompany me on a roadtrip to visit some folks. It is possible to keep a social distance with dispersed camping and that is what we are trying to do. The biggest question is…will the 1993 van be up for a 5,000+ mile round-trip journey. We decided to give it a chance. 

The first stop was to be after an eleven-hour drive to a state recreation area called Kickapoo, in eastern Illinois. After seeing a lot of cornfields, soybeans, and quite a few huge wind turbines, we made it. We confirmed our reservation to meet Devin for breakfast at a place that converted its parking lot to socially distanced tables under a big tent outside. The food was good and the conversation better. We talked about his masters research on the ornate box turtle. He outlined his thoughts on what he wants to do with his research on a rare Mantella frog from Madagascar (pictured above) that not much is known about and may be threatened with extinction. We talked about how he came to have a passion for herpetology and how being blessed with outstanding parents: his dad a librarian (now retired) at the University of Wisconsin, and his mom an educator specializing in teaching writing, gave him freedom and motivation. It is no wonder he published books when he was very young.  It was so good to catch up with him and meet his adorable daughter. My wife is not much into turtles, frogs, or snakes, but she does love interacting with little children.  

So with the first leg of the journey complete, it was time to head further west. For a few photos along the way click here. I will post about my nephew after we get to Wyoming .

Ever since his older brother took his six-year-old adventure, our second grandson has been dreaming about his adventure. I posted photos from his cousin’s adventure in Michigan and he started to think about what he might like to do for his adventure. He had fishing in mind, something he had not had the opportunity to try.  His adventure  could not be all it was hoped for because we are still dealing with the travel restrictions surrounding the Pandemic. But since his family was scheduled to move to France for three years starting in the beginning of August, we had to do something.

Kids seem to like camping in my old VW Poptop van. It was used for many family trips, so I put some money into it to try and rejuvenate it, so we could use it for its intended purpose. We started his adventure with a few nights’ camping in the back yard and a walk to a local stream where he caught his first fish. He caught 6 little ones that day.  Then we drove part of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park.  The next stop was a beautiful property owned by a friend in southwestern Virginia where we got to spend a whole day in a gorgeous pool on a hot day. In the evening, he was able to catch his first Large-mouth Bass in the large pond next to the pool.  The next day after lounging around the pool again, we headed to a pond stocked with Rainbow Trout at another friend’s place.  Within minutes both he and his older brother caught some beauties. We cooked them almost immediately. Though neither of my grandchildren (that were with us that night) are fans of trying new things, my wife thought they were delicious.

Though the trip was short it was still greatly appreciated and a promise was kept. If you would like to see a few photos click here. If you are family, you may sign in and click here.