On July 10, we had a picnic and spent an hour or so at Ayers Natural Bridge.

Ayres Natural Bridge Park is a county park in Converse County, Wyoming. Occuppying 150 acres (0.6 km²) southeast of the town of Glenrock.

Over the course of millions of years, a bend in LaPrele Creek (originally known as Bridge Creek) wore away at a wall of solid rock, creating a natural opening. The creek eventually shifted course through the opening, forming a 30-foot (10 m) high and 50-foot (15 m) wide arch, today known as Ayres Natural Bridge.

Located about a mile (2 km) south of the Oregon Trail, the Natural Bridge was often visited by emigrants traveling west. It is considered one of Wyoming’s first tourist attractions. In 1843, a pioneer described it as "a natural bridge of solid rock, over a rapid torrent, the arch being regular as tho’ shaped by art."

The park is free to visit. There is a small campground in the park, as well as open picnic areas and covered tables. It is opened from April through September from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with registered campers allowed to stay overnight. No pets are allowed in the park.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Our national parks are places where nature is preserved – and nature can be dangerous.

We have been away from news  internet service for about 4 or 5 days.

A while back, I subscribed to press releases from the National park Service.  While going through those that had accumulated, I noticed that there were several fatalities .  Then, while I was putting this post together, I was told about bear maulings in the Yellowstone area.

Nature can be dangerous. 

Some people get hurt or killed because they don’t follow the rules.

Sometimes, though, natural events are the cause.  The bear maulings near Yellowstone appear to be very unusual, where no one did anything wrong.  It appears to be a rogue bear.

Links on each of the picture go to the applicable news piece.

photo from July 9, 2010

We are currently off the grid and off the internet somewhere in the Idaho mountains.  We will be preparing blog posts to publish when we have the opportunity to go on line.

The last three nights, we’ve been camped in the mountains west of Stanley, Idaho, at Bull Trout Campground.  Our camp site is close to a small lake, Martin Lake.  It’s a natural mountain lake, with very clear water.

The weather overall has been good since we got here.  I think it might have got up to 80°F the first afternoon after we got here.  Highs the next couple of days were in the mid to lower 70s, with lows at night in the low 40s.  This morning the low was 41.1°F at 7:06 a.m.

The road coming in is a 2 mile dirt road. It was very dry and the surface was like powder.  Even driving very slow, it billowed up around us.  When we got into the campground, the car, which we tow behind the motorhome, was covered in dust.  I used our broom to sweep the worst of it off.

Fortunately, though, it rained that night so the road was just fine the next day.  Yesterday, it was already dry and starting to kick up a little dust when we drove over it.  This is a popular recreational area.  On the weekends, there are probably a lot of people in here with various types of motorcycles and all terrain vehicles, which is largely why the road was worked up into such a fine powder on the surface.

We’re moving on today into southwest Montana.  We’re going without a reservation as we’ve seen a lot of forest service campgrounds in this area that are not on the reservation system, which right now I’m not very happy with.

We visited Fort Laramie late in the day after stopping at several other places.  As a result, we were tired and didn’t spend as much time looking through it as we would have liked to – and we still were an hour away from where we planned to stop.

From Wikipedia:

Fort Laramie was a significant 19th century trading post and diplomatic site located in the U.S. state of Wyoming. During the middle 19th century, it was a primary stopping point on the Oregon Trail and the Mormon Trail and was, along with Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas River, the most significant economic hub of commerce in the region. In the 1840s it was taken over by the United States Army to protect travelers on the Oregon, California and Mormon trails.

Today, the remaining structures are preserved as the Fort Laramie National Historic Site by the National Park Service.

National Park Service – Fort Laramie

Another prominent feature along the emigrant trails is Scott’s Bluff.

This was our third visit to Scott’s Bluff.  The last time we were here was a little trying.

“At Scottsbluff National Monument, where the interior of the van had gotten extremely hot while we we going through the museum, I started the engine to cool things off before everyone else made it back.  Then, not realizing that my wife’s purse was in the van, I locked the doors.  This was in the days before On-Star, so we waited for over an hour for a locksmith to arrive from town.”

Our kids refer to that vacation as the "trip from hell."

This time, the only problem we had was that one of our cameras got left on the shuttle bus that goes to the top of the bluff and back…, but we didn’t discover it until the driver had headed to town to refuel the bus, so, another wait.

“Fur traders, missionaries, and military expeditions began regular trips past Scotts Bluff during the 1830s. Beginning in 1841, multitudes of settlers passed by Scotts Bluff on their way west on the Emigrant Trail to Oregon, and later California and Utah. Wagon trains used the bluff as a major landmark for navigation. The trail itself passed through Mitchell Pass, a gap in the bluffs flanked by two large cliffs. Although the route through Mitchell Pass was tortuous and hazardous, many emigrants preferred this route to following the North Platte river bottom on the north side of the bluff. Passage through Mitchell Pass became a significant milestone for many wagon trains on their way westward. In one of its first engineering deployments, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a smoother road through Mitchell Pass in the early 1850s. Use of the Emigrant Trail tapered off in 1869 when the trail was made obsolete by the completion of the transcontinental railroad.” ….wikipedia

On July 9th, we were headed to Wyoming from our last stop in Nebraska, following  the path of the emigrant trails of the mid 1800s.

We saw a lot of these flowers along the way.

Courthouse and Jail Rocks are two of the most famous landmarks of westward migration.  Nearby passed the Oregon – California Trail, the Mormon Trail, the Pony Express Trail, and the Sidney – Deadwood Trail.  The rocks were the first of scenic markers travelers would encounter on their westward travel.  Hundreds of emigrants mentioned Courthouse Rock in their diaries.  The formations were first noted by explorer Robert Stuart in 1812, the name Courthouse was first used in 1837.

Chimney Rock is another notable feature along the trails to the west.  The first recorded mention of ‘Chimney Rock’ was in 1827 by Joshua Pilcher. Pilcher had journeyed up the Platte River valley to the Salt Lake rendezvous of the Rocky Mountain fur trappers. The first non-natives to see the pillar were probably the Astorians of Robert Stuart in their eastern journey from the Pacific Ocean in 1812. This marker of the plains was recorded in many travelers’ journals.

We are traveling about 150 miles today.  We have reservations at a National Forest campground in the mountains between Stanley and Boise, Idaho.

There are a lot of people camping this summer.  Many of the campgrounds have been very full and, in a couple of cases, we were lucky to get a spot.

About an hour or so we got to Dubois, Wyoming, we got to an area with cell phone service and called ahead to the KOA there.  They had one spot left, next to the horse coral.  We said we take it.

“Are you sure? It is next to the horse corral.”

We had left Pathfinder Reservoir late in the day because of the wind and really didn’t want to go searching for a camp site.  “Yes, we’ll take it.”

We have reservations at a campground in Yellowstone a little later in the trip.

In 1973, I was a student at the Naval Reactor Facilities in the Idaho Desert on the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory – now Idaho National laboratory, an 890 square miles (2,300 km²) complex located in the high desert land of eastern Idaho.

As a student at one of the three Naval training reactors, I worked rotating shift work, 7 days in a row on each shift, with varying number of days off in between as we rotated to the different shifts.  I think there was a 2 off, 3 off, and 5 off.  On weekdays, I worked 12 hour days as a non-qualified student; weekends were 8 hour days.  Students were required to ride buses to the site because of the long hours and the 2 to 3 hour daily round-trip commute, depending on where you lived on the bus routes.

Three buttes – all of volcanic origin.

The site and the mountains beyond.  You can see some of the facilities off in the distance.

The little yellow Department of Energy sign warns that this is a restricted area and that unauthorized people are to stay out.

No trees in this high country desert.  It’s a sagebrush steppe – a treeless plain, a temperate, semi-arid landscape of shrubs (sagebrush) and widely spaced bunchgrass.  Total precipitation is about 8 inches per year.

Our motorhome and car on the highway between Idaho Falls and Arco.

Needless to say, the humidity is very low here, and the fire danger can be very high.

  This display is from a monitoring station at a rest area on the Big Lost River, just a few miles west of where the rest to the photos were taken.

In 1977, after 3 years of submarine duty, I was assigned instructor duty back at the Naval Reactors Facility.  We lived for about 6 months in Idaho Falls.  As an instructor, I didn’t have to take the bus, but still did a good share of the time. 

In the fall, we were able to assume the loan on a house in Arco, which is west of the Idaho National Laboratory.  My commute time was cut to about an hour a day.  There were other guys from my crew living there also, so for the next three years, most of the time I carpooled to work.

The animals in our National Parks truly are wild and even those that seem mild may attack if provoked.

Recently, a woman was attacked by a buffalo that appears to have become enraged when someone in another group threw something at it and hit it.  Following a friend who also got too close, they became the buffalo’s target after angered by being hit in the side.

The CNN report includes the woman’s video, in which you can see the object hitting the buffalo, followed by the buffalo bucking and charging the first humans it sees.

"I thought it was the end," Cathy Hayes told CNN by phone late Wednesday.

Hayes said she was vacationing in Yellowstone on Monday with her husband and a friend. The group was driving through the park when they spotted a bison.

"My friend is from California, and had never seen a bison before," she said. "So we pulled over and went to get a closer look."

Minutes later, the bison attacked. And it was all caught on tape.

Read the whole story and see the video on CNN.

One of the nice things about traveling without intense planning and scheduling is that we can change our minds – and, then, change them back again.

Our original thoughts for the trip included going into Idaho, where we lived for 6 months in 1973, when I was a student at the Naval Reactors Facility, and then, again, from April 1977 through August 1980, when I was an instructor.  However, we changed our minds with the idea of exploring more of Wyoming.

Well, here we are in Idaho Falls, Idaho, which we first saw in March, 1973. The house we rented for the 6 months we were here sure looks small now.

While I was a trainee, I worked shift work, 12 hour days on week days, 8 hour days on weekends, and we were seeing and doing stuff on my days off.  Karen remembers the house much better than I do.

When we came back in 1977, we wanted to get this house again, because we liked the landlord and the house, but he already had renters in it, so we ended up renting and apartment for 6 months before we found a house to buy in Arco – sixty eight miles from here, but closer to where I was working.

It’s funny, but neither of us remembered exactly where we lived for 2 six month periods over thirty years ago, yet by a little bit of driving, we were able to find them fairly easily.

The town has changed a lot since we lived here.  It has grown from 25,000 to over 50,000, if I remember right.  It has a representative selection of the popular big box stores.  Today, we stopped at the mall, bought books at Barnes and Noble, picked up some yarn and a work light/magnifying glass, and stopped at Lowes for some plumbing materials to fix a siphoning problem on the fresh water tank in our camper – (I actually made a second trip to get something I forgot).

None of these stores or the mall were here when we left the area in 1980.

Day after tomorrow, we’ll be heading out to Arco for a couple of days.

10, 450 feet or so above sea level, temperature in the low 50s (°F), wind 15 to 20 mph, gusting to 40.

It was an easy ride up and down – $20 per person round trip.

The capacity limit on the tram is 100 people. I would not want to be riding when it’s that packed.

Views from the top:

After wandering around on top of the mountain for a while, we were ready for something warm to drink in Corbett’s Cabin.

One of our favorite hikes starts with a boat ride across Jenny Lake in Grand Teton National Park.

We got a start in the morning, as did a number of others. Our boat, below, is returning  empty to pick up more hikers.  Later in the day, the boats will be full both ways and, in the late afternoon, will be packed with returning passengers while empty in the opposite direction.

Hidden Falls is one of the most popular destinations in the park.  When we visited back in the 70s and 80s, there were lots of places all around and right up to the falls where people could sit, rest, and have picnics.  Unfortunately, all of the “lovin’” of nature, was causing the area to erode unnaturally.  So the park service undertook measures to restrict access to specific areas. 

Today, access to the area of the falls and along the trails  is restricted and has returned to a much more natural setting.

Beyond the falls is the trail to Inspiration Point.  Part of it is a bit unnerving to those nervous with heights.

A ways beyond Inspiration Point, the trail opens up into Cascade Canyon.  We went about a mile past Inspiration Point.

In an earlier post, I asked, “What caused this ravine?”

Very simply, it was caused by traffic of people traveling to the western part of the United States with wagons.  Specifically,  the ravine started as a set of wagon ruts cut through the grass and sod by heavy iron-shod wheels.

The hill where the ravine is located is called Windlass Hill where, according to legend more than factual history, wagons were eased down the incline using a windlass.  It is located at a point  where emigrants on the Oregon Trail (also the California Trail) left the dropped into and valley along the North Platte River that is called Ash Hollow.

In the photo below, you can see where the trail curved to the left at this point.  The bridge in the lower picture is where the top photo was taken from.

We have been gone from home for about 16 days now and, so far, we have camped four nights in campgrounds with wireless internet. 

The other 12 nights have been in places where no internet was available except for what we brought with us.  On eight of those, we have been able to get online from our camper.

Our internet access is through our smart phones that we got when we signed up with Verizon at the end of April.

The primary feature that we were looking for at the time was something that would allow is to go online while we were traveling.  In addition being a phone, camera, and all the smart phone applications, the Palm Pre Plus can serve as a mobile wifi hot spot.

When we saw that the Palms were being offered with free mobile internet, we decided to go with it, even though we did have to pay for the data package. 

It ended up costing about $50 more a month than we had been paying for our old phones.

However, the service is good enough at home that we dropped our DSL and the old home phone service that we had had for 29 years. 

There is a 5 gb monthly usage limit on the mobile internet.  However, since the service is free, we got it on both phones, so, in effect, we have a 10 gb monthly limit.

On the road, mobile wifi has varied in quality.  Right now, we are sitting in a campground in Grand Teton National Park, several miles from the nearest cell phone tower.  Sometimes the wifi is good on one side of the camper, sometimes on the other.

We have found that the mobile wifi drains the phones battery quite quickly, so we always try to have it connected to a charger when the hotspot is turned on.

In the photo above, I’m sitting in the driver’s seat of our Navion IQ motorhome, at my computer.  My work surface is a little table that slides out of a little built in dresser.  Karen’s is a table that stores on end and, when deployed, is supported on the side by a frame.

We’ve been busy – sightseeing, hiking, shopping, running to the grocery store, taking care of laundry, refilling the fresh water tank of our motor home, etc., etc.

Today we had the opportunity to take in some art at an art show in Jackson and at a museum north of town – more on the museum at some later time.

There was a lot of really neat art – and it was an art show, not an “arts and crafts show.”  There were a couple of exhibits that really caught my fancy. 

One of them was the steel sculptures of Craig Michael Palm, who lives with his wife and sons in Rogers, Minnesota.

Close up of the “hair” on the buffalo’s head:

A metal moose:

Another work that caught the attention of both Karen and I was a heavy wooden bed frame by R. C. Hink of Ketchum, Idaho.

There was a lot of other nice art of many different kinds, with artists from all over the country.

Petit Jean State Park, Arkansas, January 6, 2007 

Gallery – Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain

(click on image for larger version)

Petit Jean State Park and Petit Jean Mountain information:

Cedar Falls Trail (2 miles, 2 hours to the falls and back) is the most popular trail in the park.  The trail begins through the Mather Lodge breezeway and returns to the same point.  Rated as moderate to strenuous, in its first half mile, this hiking trail descends over 200 feet into Cedar Creek Canyon over switchbacks and steps cut from rock by the CCC over 65 years ago.  Those considering taking this trail should take into consideration that the trail returns back up the same steps and switchbacks.  The park staff recommends shoes and boots that provide good ankle support and a firm grip and only those in good shape should take this hike.  The last half mile follows Cedar Creek to one of the state’s most impressive sights, Cedar Falls, which cascades more that 90 into the canyon.  During the wet times of the year, the flow over the falls can be very spectacular, often dwindling to a trickle in the hottest and driest part of the year.  Cedar Creek was added to the register of Arkansas Natural Areas in 1977.

See more of our Image Galleries at Haw Creek.

While this ravine looks natural and much like others in the area, it’s origin was not from natural causes.

Here’s a view from higher up on the hill:

The first picture was taken from the bridge, looking up hill.

What caused this ravine?

This is the route we’ve traveled to this point.