the great (sometimes white) north

we have now been in south dakota/wyoming/montana for almost two weeks, and i feel acquainted enough with this part of the country to make some sweeping generalizations about it.

people native to this area speak a dialect of english which is similar to, but softer than, the minnesota twang. it's very american sounding.

people here do not eat vegetables, unless you count cole slaw or the lettuce and tomato on your burger. don't come here if you are a vegetarian. on the other hand, the beef, bison, elk, other game, and potatoes are all excellent. i don't think a day has gone by since we've been here that i did not have a huge slab of meat on my plate.

most of the native beers are named after wild animals, plants, or the wild in general. for example, some of the beers i have tried were called 'moose drool,' 'trout slayer,' and 'wilderness wheat.'

everyone, and i mean everyone (or almost), hunts. if 4% of florida has a hunting license, about 75% of montana does. our host in livingston was quite happy because he had shot himself a bear this year, in addition to the elk, deer, and other game he has shot. he was one of the first in the state to get a wolf license last year.

that being said, the hunters eat their kills as well as simply enjoying it for sport. in addition, they also have a great respect for the animals they kill (or try to kill). i heard just as many random wild animal stories as i did hunting stories.

this is wild america--especially montana and wyoming. i mean grizzly bears, moose, baby coyotes, unpaved roads wild. and every picturesque snowmelt stream you can think of is here. i promise.

people in montana are much like texans, but without the money, oil, and romanticized cowboy image. these people are the real deal. cowboy boots and hats, all the men have facial hair, wear camo and plaid button-down shirts, and can tell you exactly what day the next hunting season starts. things are just as far apart, but with trees and more grass in between, although much of montana is considered high desert or is mountains.

standards of living up here are a little more like canada--people have smaller houses, fewer possessions, and cars are really just a means of transportation instead of a status symbol. (they have guns and bows for that). of course, that is because there are fewer high-paying jobs up here, unlike in canada where this is caused by taxes.

montana is mountainous. i don't know what image you have of montana, but i thought it was flat. it's not--and neither is wyoming or western south dakota. eastern south dakota, minnesota, wisconsin are all hilly, but it's downright flat compared to most of montana, although there is a flatter part between the ranges. there is a mountain range just north of livingston called the crazies. just saying.

buffalo in front, buffalo behind

i decided that yellowstone deserved two posts for one reason: wildlife. we had great luck in the amount and variety of animals we saw. very first, not long after mammoth, we saw two elk, one of them quite large, and they weren't that far away either. their horns are still soft and growing, which is why they look like they are covered in fur--they are. not too far after that we saw my favorite animal of the day--a baby coyote. just sitting on a rock, all by himself. at one point he tried to get down, but apparently didn't know where to go, because he just got right back up.
on the way to the falls we found ourselves stopped in a long line of cars on the park road, which is of course only two lanes wide. we figured that we had stopped because people in front of us were looking at something, and on getting out of the car we discovered what--there was a black bear just grazing along the side of the road. we all scrambled for a closer look, with mark saying from further back, 'jeanette, you're too close!' and patrick telling me that if the bear attacked he was going to jump on the roof of the nearest car. eventually a ranger came to get traffic flowing again, and we went on our way.

only to find ourselves stopped again--this time because there was a grizzly bear and cub in the woods next to the road. this was the good thing about going to yellowstone in the early summer--all of the baby animals we saw. traffic was still moving here, so we didn't stop since there wasn't a turnout, but we got a picture anyway. the cub is laying down with his ears perked up in the top left corner.
the next animals we came across were a small herd of buffalo, complete with several little calves. they were right next to the road, and i mean right next to it, so we pulled over like good citizens to get some pictures. there was also a clear creek nearby in which we spotted some fish. of course, once we got back in our armadas two buffalo came up to us--one in front of will's car in front of us, and one behind our car. we were bookended by buffalo. we sat there for a good five minutes before we realized that they weren't' going to go anywhere, so we drove around the buffalo in front.

on our way to the lake we saw a couple of trumpeter swans flying in the air, but we didn't get a picture. these are the beautiful, endangered white swans with black-tipped wings you see pictures of all the time. and from about this time on we saw quite a lot of individual and herds of buffalo, mule deer, and elk, but i won't bother you with any more pictures of them. except for this one--an idyllic herd of buffalo in an idyllic field by a perfect little river.the very last animal we saw in the park was on the extreme western edge--a bald eagle, probably a baby, sitting in a nest. they have an eagle preserve on the park, and apparently there are quite a lot of them around. it was still cool to see the nest--you can barely see the top of its white head sticking out the top.

we did not see any big horned sheep, moose (which i was disappointed about), wolves, and quite a number of other herd animals and birds. but all in all we saw quite a lot--the grizzly and cub was especially lucky.

yellowstone

yellowstone was the very first national park. created by president grant in 1872, it is a giant rectangle in the northwest corner of wyoming, extending into montana and idano. it was known for a long time as the wonderland of america. when the isolated mountain men who lived there in the early 19th century reported about a place where mud boils and there are cerulean blue pools, where grizzlies, black bears, and numbers game, birds and fish all lived in the middle of the beautiful northern rockies--people didn't believe them. it is now the most famous national park, old faithful is the most famous geyser in the world, and just the name yellowstone has become synonymous with america at large.

i used to think that the park was over-rated: i mean, it can't really be that fantastic--it's just a park like so many other amazing american parks i have been to before. i've been to the grand canyon, big bend, badlands, great smoky np--which are al iconic in their own right. i was wrong. yellowstone deserves all the credit it gets--for preserving this one mostly pristine place, and for allowing all americans, and even non-americans to enjoy it.

we left livingston, about 50 miles north of the park, at 7 on friday morning. driving in two matching nissan armadas, all ten of us (we had lost jackie, sadly) headed south. approaching the park from the north, you drive through this beautiful place called paradise valley, passing in between countless mountains--it really deserves its name, and we hadn't even gotten to the park. we approached through the historic brick archway built in 1872, which declares the goal of the parks: 'for the benefit and enjoyment of the people.' and that was even before there was a park service or system at all.

we entered at mammoth hot springs, above, this beautiful and strange-looking cascading, scalding hot water, which just slowly drips from level to level. in the old days, before people had to walk only on the boardwalks, they would scrawl their names in the bottom of the pools using sticks. from there we headed to the upper falls, which pushes through a massive amount of water in this torrential rapid falls, and is on the right. definitely not something you want to fall in. (t's the yellowstone river, by the way). and then it was on to the upper falls, which are the ones on all of the postcards. we hiked for about a mile, maybe a little more, which was really great--the one downside of yellowstone is that there are a lot of people, and this hike allowed us to get away from most of them. we ended up in a place called artist point--aptly named, considering that it produced the picture at the top of this post. the picture at left is one me pretending to push patrick over the edge during our hike--that's the river gorge in the background.

after gazing awestruck at this massive river and its beautiful falls for a while, we headed south to west thumb and the beautiful yellowstone lake (they aren't very creative with their names, apparently). i don't think i have ever seen a lake like this one--an amazingly clear blue, with white-capped mountains on the other side. especially considering that i am a river person myself, i found this lake, and its vastness quite impressive.

from the lake we went to the most famous part--old faithful. luckily we got there not too long before its next eruption--they can guess the time down to plus or minus ten minutes. honestly, it was impressive--it was shooting water almost a hundred feet into the air for about 30 seconds. but is is real any cooler than the rest of the part? no. i thought all the people sitting around it in a big circle more interesting. but we saw it, and here's a picture. the area around the geyser has quite a few hotels, restaurants and gift shops, so we ate a very late lunch--it was already three--and bought stuff. i got some postcards, and mum bought me a really cute teddy bear--wearing the pince nez glasses, safari hat and all.

as we headed north and west out of the park, we stopped by the fountain paint pot. this was a fascinating stop--it had a wide array of thermal features. everything from bright turquoise pools to something they called a bacteria bed: things actually live in this scalding water! but apparently the thermophiles are what turned this area orange. there was also mud that was literally boiling, as well as another geyser that was just happily going off for about the whole half hour were in the area. some of the mud pots only appeared after an earthquake in the 50s, and its clear based on the stark landscape around the features still there that there used to be more. funny idea--apparently the buffalo will not only sit on the warm ground around the thermal features in winter, but will sometimes actually get in the boiling, sulfuric acid laden pools.after leaving through the west entrance to the park, we drove a few miles further west because will wanted to go to idaho. so we did, and we all took pictures with the idaho state sign. it was getting pretty late by this point, so we stopped in big sky at a place called the half moon for dinner. since it was still off-season, they had both a limited menu and staff, but the food was excellent--i got a baseball cut steak, as did a couple others--patrick and stacy, of course, go the full rack of ribs, even without jackie to keep up with. we ate out on the porch, which was beautiful as the sun went down, though we all had to go get fleeces and jackets after it was behind the mountains. from big sky it was back to bozeman, then livingston.

all in all, it was a great day. for the first time in a week in a half, we had fantastic weather. i was in a car with stacy, patrick, mum, and mary kathryn, and we had a blast driving around, counting the number of park rules that patrick broke along the way. thanks stacy for giving us a break from driving, and to will for planning our day. we got back about 10:30--i had a 16 hour day. needless to say, i slept pretty well that night.

where the west was lost

yesterday we had our earliest morning yet--we were leaving deadwood by 6:45 in the morning. ugh. but that meant that we made really good time heading toward devils tower national monument, the first national monument ever created, in fact. that's it up above--the rainy weather continued to follow us into wyoming, where the tower is located. devils tower was sacred to several indian tribes, which is why teddy roosevelt gave it its special designation. it was formed by hardened magma which stuck out of the ground. over time, the softer ground around it eroded, leaving it sticking really far up out of a relatively flat landscape. in this picture it looks like it is just disappearing into the clouds. up close it looks kind of like the picture at left, but its more colorful than it appears in the picture. people climb up this, some of them without gear. can you imagine? my favorite, though, was a guy who skydived to the top, and then was stranded up there for six days until some climbers came up to rescue him.

from devils tower in wyoming we headed north to montana, where our first stop was at the little big horn battlefield national monument, which some of you might know by its white people name: custer's last stand. this was the last of the big plains indian battles, and took place in 1876. the battle took place because the indians--mainly sioux, cheyenne, and lakota--refused to relocate in the middle of winter (and it does get quite cold up here). it pitted sitting bull and crazy horse, with their 2000 warriors against custer's force of about 400. custer woefully misunderstood the situation as well as the indians's numbers and their desire to fight for their homeland. custer divided his force, leading to the massacre of many of them, including himself. the battlefield itself is in the middle of the crow indian reservation, a tribe which was actually working with custer because they were at odds with the other tribes. the scene at right is where some of custer's men fought the indians, who would have been encamped down by the river. we spent quite a while here--neither mum nor i knew much about the battle or the circumstances surrounding it, so we went on a ranger walk and attended a ranger talk as well. interestingly, both of the rangers we met were indian themselves--one was lakota sioux, the other crow. both of them were raised on the reservation and follow traditional practices, and one of them was not a native english speaker. we though that it was nice that the park service employed them, since they give a completely different angle to the whole thing. after leaving the park, much of eastern montana looked like this, but prettier:

lots of hills, varying from gently rolling to sharply rolling. it really is impossible to capture on camera. one of the most interesting things about the day was the amount of wildlife we saw. at devils tower we saw prairie dogs and wild turkeys, and then at little big horn we saw wild ponies of different varieties (the patched ones are paints, the grey one an appaloosa), and a weirdly blended-in bird called a grouse. we had seen prairie dogs, buffalo, and mountain goats before, but most of these were new to us. my mom is pretty into the whole wildlife thing, so she was quite giddy. it was either that or the massive amounts of coffee she drank.

anyway, as our drive through the aptly named big sky state continued, the terrain became increasingly rocky and mountainous. by the time we got to livingston, our home for the next week, there were very tall mountains to the south, still covered with snow--it was supposed to snow three to six feet in the wyoming mountains yesterday, and that was immediately south of us. by the time the sun was setting, the picture to the south literally looked like the picture below. no lie. i think i'm going to like it here, despite the fact that it won't get above 60 tomorrow.