We visited Yellowstone this year, choosing the stay to the east of the park and enter from the East Entrance. So we stayed at an RV Park in Wapiti, WY. It’s a real nice park along a river (but it’s down a steep ravine so we couldn’t access the river!). The little town of Wapiti has rock formations all over the place that are real interesting! Here are several that we could see right from the RV Park:
As we worked our way slowly from Yellowstone down to New Mexico and onwards towards Livingston TX (our home base) we spent a week in Colorado Springs CO.
We’d been there before and were hoping to see Garden of the Gods again and possible take some drives through the beautiful country.
Alas, within a day we both felt sick. We had Covid! I was a lot worse, spending several days in bed or on the couch too weak to do much of anything. Jeff had a bad cough and a headache. We went to an urgent care and got Paxlovid and I also had to get cough medicing and nausea medicine. UGH!
So, we didn’t do anything while there. I was still sick when we had to travel into New Mexico and much of our time there was a blur for me as well.
When we left Cascade ID heading towards Yellowstone, we stopped at a rest area for lunch. Jeff noticed that a leaf spring on the Cougar had broken! Oh NO!! That’s definitely not good, and it’s a good thing that every time we stop Jeff walks around the whole rig checking that everything is good.
So, we made a few calls into Boise, which was the nearest city to the rest area, and found a place that specialized in alignment repairs on big rigs etc. They agreed to work on it that same afternoon so we headed to them, slowly!
They had it repaired in just a couple of hours and we were back on the road. Here’s a pic:
While in Cascade, Jeff decided it was time to get a newer truck. Our 2016 GMC Sierra 2500HD diesel had almost 100,000 miles on it and while it still worked really well, we had started having little problems. One big problem happened in 2022 when we were planning to drive through the desert (in the summer of course!) and the catalytic converter started failing. See blog entry about our stay in Victorville.
So, we took a long drive into Boise ID to the GMC dealer. We got a good deal to trade in our 2016 and get a 2024 GMC Sierra 2500HD diesel and bought it! WoW – is this new truck fancy! All sorts of technology options such as 6 camera angles. We can even see a view as if the camera was a drone up above the truck as it used all angles to provide a picture of the truck from above. We can see exactly how close we are to other cars, curbs etc. When we are in tow mode anytime Jeff puts on a turn signal the central monitor shows the side view of the truck and trailer. The seats and steering wheel heat up automatically when the temp is below a certain level, and when hot the seats have a ‘ventilation’ mode that automatically comes on.
It’s also a 4×4, which we don’t really need, but as it didn’t add to the cost or reduce the towing capacity we are good with it. There have been a few times in the past when 4×4 would have been handy (once while visiting my daughter we got stuck in the mud and it took several hours and various attempts to get the truck moving while towing the rig), and we’ve taken dirt roads a few times where 4×4 vehicles were strongly recommended.
It’s also silver instead of white. I would have preferred red or black, but Jeff likes the lighter colors and they don’t show the dirt as much. My thought on that is a trick WANTS to be dirty!
We visited Yellowstone again this year, having been there for a month but back in 2012. We chose this time to stay east of the park in Wapiti and enter through the east.
We only went into the park a couple of times and didn’t walk any boardwalks other than at the Old Faithful area, due to my hip bothering me.
But we really enjoying our visits into the park. We did see Old Faithful, plus a few other bubbling pools. We saw lots of bison, some quite close to the vehicle. With our new 4×4 truck we wanted to drive a 6-mile stretch of road on the northern section of the park called the Blacktail Plateau Road. It is listed as being a one-lane dirt road with stunning views and lots of wildlife. Unfortunately when we got to the start of it it was closed!
Here are pics we took on this trip:
A steaming pool
A steaming sulfur pool – boy did it smell
Bison crossing the road
Bison in Lamar Valley
Bison near a parking area 2
Bison near a parking area
Bison sauntering along the road
Coyote on a hillside 1
Coyote on a hillside 2
Guy is lucky the bison were just hanging out 2
Guy is lucky the bison were just hanging out 3
Guy is lucky the bison were just hanging out
Lone Bison hanging out by himself
Old Faithful – blows so high
Old Faithful – everyone with their phones
Old Faithful – right on schedule 1
Old Faithful with another geyser in the background
Old Faithful
The road into Yellowstone – still snow on the high passes
After visiting central Oregon and encountering smoke from the many fires (see blog entry about John Day) we spent a few weeks just hanging out in central Idaho.
We didn’t expect to see more fires! But, we did! There were fires in all directions, and the smoke was so bad that most days we didn’t really venture out except for necessary errands. There were several new fires while we were there and one day the air quality was the worst that can be measured!
Most days we couldn’t see the fires, just the smoke turning the sky brown and orange. Then a fire started closer to us and we could see the flames for a couple of days. Yipes!
Luckily we were right on the Payette River next to the highway and within the town borders so we knew if the fires got much closer the firefighters would battle the fire! Several of the fires were nowhere near towns or even many houses and they were allowed to burn while the firefighters, including some planes and helicopters, focused on the fires that threatened nearby towns and structures.
Here are some pictures:
One day air quality was the worst – 500
Most days air quality was around this level – unhealthy
While staying in the John Day area of eastern Oregon we visited the fossil beds that made this region unique. The fossils are from a time range of 55 to 5 million years ago! This means there are no dinosaurs – these are the ages of early mammals and plants.
The area where fossils have been found is huge, thousands of acres of land. The portion contained in the “John Day Fossil Beds National Park” contains three units along with the visitor center. The rest is private land and state parks.
The units are not right next to each other, there is a distance between them so we planned to do each section separately. Unfortunately we were here in late July and the whole area was suffering from dozens of fires! The worst of it was the smoke! The day we visited the visitor center it was so smoky we could not see the nearby hilltops and the air quality was bad. So, we stayed at the visitor center and didn’t do any of the hikes in the nearby Sheep Rock unit.
The Thomas Condon Paleontology and Visitor Center told the story of this area, including eras of wetlands and swamps interspersed with drier times of forests. And interspersing them all were times of volcanic eruptions of both lava and ash flows. Fossils include nuts and seeds, insects, small and large mammals as well as plants and leaves from each time.
Mammals include small animals similar to beavers with horns protruding from their lower jaw, and large mammals similar to rhinos, mammoths and horses.
There were fossilized bones as well as tree and nut fossils in the visitor center. Because it’s all behind glass pictures didn’t come out very well.
We monitored the air quality and smoke closely for the next few days. We noticed that each day started out fairly clear but as the day went on the smoke and air quality worsened. The Clarno and Painted Hills units, which were both over an hour west of where we were staying, had pretty good air quality predicted for a few days so we got up real early and headed out, planning to visit at least the Clarno unit before lunchtime.
We took a couple of short hikes in the Clarno area and there were no other visitors so Chloe was able to run around during the hikes (dog were allowed but were supposed to be on leash). One hike went to where there were great views of some rock formations where erosion made the various layers very visible. Another hike went around some of the rocks that had fallen from the rock formations and where several leaf and branch fossils were visible. The pics we took include several showing sycamore leaf and branch fossils. Very interesting!
Because the air quality was still very good we headed to the Painted Hills area the same day. The sloping hillsides with distinct colored layers were very interesting. We took one short hike around a hillside where several fossils had been found, but the hill was surrounded by a fence to dissuade people from collecting their own fossils so we couldn’t see any.
The rest of our visit to the John Day area was spent sitting inside the rig using the A/C when needed to stay out of the poor air quality. I’ve included a picture showing the various fires that surrounded us – we were staying at the blue dot.
When we stayed in the Redmond area we visited a unique rock formation area called Smith Rock. It’s an area along the Crooked River gorge where there are some sheer cliffs that are very popular with rock climbers. We walked a short way to a viewpoint, but due to the steepness of the trail down to the river and up the other side we didn’t hike down into the canyon.
We got pictures of a couple of groups of rock climbers heading toward the cliffs for the day, and also some hikers across the river who were hiking on a trail. The picture of the hikers shows the how immense the cliffs are with an insert showing where the hikers are at.
More rock climbers at Smith Rock
Part of Smith Rock showing hikers walking the trail
While staying in the Redmond area we took a day to drive past the Three Sisters mountains, Mt Washington and Mt Jefferson and through the Belknap Lava Flow area.
It’s a beautiful area but was ravaged by a huge wildfire in 2021. Some of our pictures show the devastation of the area that burned.
The lava flow was HUGE and I was surprised by it. There were a couple of places to stop and view the lava flows and in several areas the lava flow was cut away to make the road.
One viewing area was a short hike up a hill to an ‘observatory’ which was really a rock house with windows pointing at the various mountains and then you could climb to the top and see an unobstructed view all around. The observatory was built in the 30s and there is a compass that shows where each of the mountains area that can be seen from the roof.
