Tired

Spend time with me.

Merry christmas

Patient dog.

This a real working cement truck. Every year they do this.

The flume In NH

David Sedaris

Pre show. Burlington memorial auditorium.

Soup?! Midway geyser

This is a very large pool of water - maybe the size of a small pond (a hundred yards across). What is cool is that the whole thing is simply boiling non-stop. On the far side is a large stream and water fall from the run off which is pouring boiling water into the river. You can't see it in this low-res scanned image, but the water is churning just like when you boil water in a pot on the stove. It does appear on the negative (maybe when I get my good Nikon scanner hooked up again I'll scan this frame again).

Devils Tower

The folklore is that some boys were out for a walk when a giant bear chased them. They ran up on top of a large rock and the bear clawed at them. Hence the huge "claw" marks all around the sides - and that is a pretty good description of what the feature looks like. I saw a painting of this story in the visitors area but couldn't find an explaination of the story - so I had to use my friend wikipedia. (read the folklore section).

Crazy Horse Bus tour

I think it was worth the extra money. This is how close you can get (I was using a 300mm lens)

Crazy Horse

Crazy Horse was never photographed - so nobody really knows what he looks like. This was a really neat memorial carving and definetly worth the stop. They have a nice visitors center with a small movie theater that plays a mini-documentary detailing the history of this monument. We paid extra to take the bus tour up the side of the mountain. It doesn't go all the way to the top - but it does get you close enough to take better pictures. They only allow visitors at the top once a year (see their web site for more info).

The one statistic that I found amazing is that all four of the heads on Mt Rushmore fit into the single head of Crazy Horse. This thing is huge. They had their largest ever blast the day that I was there. I knew about it before hand but we couldn't make it fit into our schedule.

This was the day we drove to Devils Tower in Wyoming and then came back around to Crazy Horse in the afternoon (with a second and longer stop at Mt Rushmore in between). We ate dinner at the Crazy Horse Memorial center.

I'll also recommend the Holiday Inn Express in Custer, SD (a short distance from Crazy Horse Memorial). It rivals many of the Hilton's and Marriot's I've stay at.

Grand Tetons

The Grand Teton National Park is not part of Yellowstone, rather it is its own park. The road between the two is called the "John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway." Mr. Rockefeller didn't want all of us paying twice to get into these two parks, so be bought the land between the two and gave it over to us. I learned a bit more about our national park system and the visionaries who created it (Rockefeller being one of them).

Of course the next day was clear and sunny. What is amazing is that the road is at an elevation of about 7000 ft above sea level... and those darn peaks just keep going up. I'm on a flat road that is higher than the top of Mt Washington!

Not so faithful

I didn't realize this before I arrived, but old faithful stopped being faithful back in the 1950's. Apparently it is still "almost every 90 minutes" plus or minus 10. It depends upon the length of the previous eruption. Eruptions less than 2 minutes will cause the next one to be 65 minutes away, and eruptions more than 2 minutes will cause the next to occur within 90 minutes (makes sense, takes longer to recover).

Anyhow - all of these geysers are really cool to watch. There is an extensive boardwalk setup that allows you can get up close and personal with some of them. It's neat to watch the water recede and the hole to become empty, then it slowly rises again and begins to peculate violently until finally it shoots up into the air. Some of them don't shoot into the air, they just keep sloshing water up over the sides like an ocean wave pounding a rocky shore.

Badlands South Dakota

They get their name from the french for "it sucks to hike across this area." (les mauvaises terres a traversers). Okay - it really translates to "bad lands to travel across." It was a really cool stop. There is so much to see - we only had time to drive through the ring road and make several stops along the road. However there is so much more to see.
In some areas the colors of each layer are very different (yellows, reds, gray). In one area the hills looks like little piles of salt that were poured from above. The green in the photos are plants that are attempting to grow.

Hunter

I caught this guy hunting in the river just beside me. He was almost directly overhead.

Mad dog

Prairie dog at Devils Tower. As you drive into the Devils Tower park there is a prairie dog colony along the road. You can actually see their mounds in the satellite photos from Google Maps.

Follow the red road

I took this photo from Rt-14 in Wyoming at this turn-out. (looking west). As you can see the pavement is red. I saw this throughout Wyoming - even parts of I-90 used this material. I found it interesting how the local rock changes the color of the asphalt - I think I've only ever seen black asphalt.

Post trip notes

Cool mountain passage.

We drove south from Thermopolis WY on Rt 20. The road was downhill to the south... however the river was flowing North!!!

Go figure. Another really cool feature of nature.

Home again

Almost home - still in NY

Cooperstown NY

Entrance to the baseball hall of fame.

Cooperstown founding info

Home stretch

In jamestown ny home of Lucille ball. Ate at Fenton's - Great place. Headed to cooperstown tomorrow.

closing the loop - Pennsylvania

I was in the other lane going the other way exactly 2 weeks ago.

Rock and roll

Back in cleveland.

Pictures

2gb digital and a dozen rolls of film. Hoping for a bulk discount.

My dad remembers when these were in burlington.

Airforce museum Dayton

Just went through the presidential and exp section.

Ohio

Indiana

Now we can do multiple states in one day. Todays destination is dayton and the airforce museum.

Iowa

Council Bluffs IA

We're staying in Council Bluffs IA (across the river from Omaha). This is a large city area.

Union Pacific Golden Spike Tower was cool and worth the stop over. We spoke with a guy who is a model train hobbyist. He told us that the local club had acquired a working N-scale model of the North Platte "East Hump." (25 ft by 5 ft) It was originally created in the 1980's as a working scale model used to train people on how the hump yard worked. They are working to reassemble it and get it back into working order. It was housed in a box car and then removed sometime in the mid-80's and given to the university. Union Pacific was able to find the box car sitting on a side rail somewhere in Mexico. The hope is to get the car back to North Platte and put the whole thing onto a rail beside the museum by 2010.

Golden spike tower

The largest classification rail yard in the world. Operated by union pacific. 2850 acres. www.Goldenspiketower.Com Computer run with remote control engines. We decided to stop because we probably wont be back this way for a long time.

Welcome to colorado

Well. Since we were driving by we made a short detour to colorado.

Nebraska

Better photo

Nebraska

Goodbye Cheyenne

testing

Just text. okay - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. no idea why. Anyhow I've lost many great master pieces of prose.

dang - text not working

Okay - I just realized that many (most) of my TXT posts aren't exactly readable. dang. This is the first time I've used the laptop in a week - maybe now I will get a smart phone.

We're in Cheyenne WY. There is an amazing thunder storm rolling through right now. Oh and a huge Union Pacific rail yard too. It would be cool to stay here just to watch them move trains.

A few days ago we drove south of Yellowstone into the Tetons. While talking to a Park Ranger about road conditions to Cheyenne he told us that our planned route was pretty dug up. 30 miles of "by escort pilot car only" - plan on "many hour" delays - so long that they come by and give you a newspaper and tell you turn off your car. So we rerouted for today and went back through the park to Cody and then down south through Casper. 65-75 mph most of the way.

We are now officially East bound on I-80, be back in a week.

passing Casper WY

Just passing through Casper WY.

Last day

Figured i'd get a picture of the sign before we leave.

Animal crossing

Bison Induced traffic jam. I don't know if you can see it in this low res photo - but the traffic goes all the way up the hill to the right. There was a large herd of Bison crossing the road, and they don't exactly "cross" like cows do to get to the other side. They kind of take their sweet old time (and they can - each one is as big as a honda civic)... plus all us tourists stop in the middle of the road to take pictures rather than pull off.

Eastern side grand loop

We watched Osprey fly below us.

West yellowstone

Downtown west yellowstone MT. Nice little spot. Turns out the road between madison and noris is closed. This means a 112 Mile detour to get to the north end of the park. At 40 mph it will take about three hours. Today was spent at old faithful. Maybe mammoth tomorow and everything else north.