Darlene and I enjoyed an extended road trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks this summer. While in Yellowstone, we spent most of our time in safari mode, scouting the prime bear and wolf habitats (Lamar and Hayden Valleys) in the mornings and evenings. Our perseverance paid off with many sightings: black bears, grizzly bears, wolves, coyotes, fox, elk, moose, bighorn sheep, beavers, marmots, rabbits, geese, cranes, storks and various other birds and rodents.
We did some day hiking but only on busy, populated trails (like the Canyon trail) since there was only the two of us (a minimum of three are recommended for backcountry trails to avoid bear encounters) and we rode our mountain bikes up the north side of Mount Washburn. After enjoying many days in the north half of the park (Canyon, Hayden Valley, Tower-Roosevelt, Lamar Valley, Norris and Mammoth), I was pretty shocked when we approached the Old Faithful area. It’s so busy and built-up with parking lots and lodges that it felt like going to a theme park, not a national park. The geysers and geothermal pools were wonderful and beautiful to see but we were both anxious to escape back to the quieter areas. If you’re not going to be camping or backpacking, I strongly recommend staying in the Canyon lodge area instead!
A video montage of our time in Yellowstone and Grand Teton.
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On our return trip from Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, Darlene and I camped overnight on Antelope Island in Utah… and waded out during sunset into the Great Salt Lake.
This is a fantastic place to visit! The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center is in West Yellowstone, Montana, near the border of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. It’s a non-profit, wildlife rehabilitation and education center specializing in grizzly bears and gray wolves. All the animals at the center were rescued: nuisance bears that would have been killed or wolves born in captivity at other facilities that could not care for them.
The animals are rotated through large enclosures where they can be seen by the public and are given frequent stimulation by hiding food or bones, rearranging habitat features, planting unusual scents for them to discover, stocking trout in the ponds and streams, etc.
Short video of some of the animals at the Discovery Center.
Highlights from the Idaho portion of our summer road trip to Yellowstone:
We stayed several days in Boise: biking through town and up on some of the trails above the city, floated the Boise River through town, successfully solved (and escaped) the house in Boise Escape and made a side trip to historic Idaho City. After Boise, we visited the World Center for Birds of Prey, stopped off at Three Island Crossing (Oregon Trail crossing of the Snake River) and camped overnight at Craters of the Moon National Monument. After exploring the lava formations we continued on to Idaho Falls, stopping off for a tour of the world’s first nuclear power plant, Experimental Breeder Reactor #1. Our final leg included the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway and camping near West Yellowstone.
Darlene and I visited the fantastic National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada (“The Harrah Collection”) recently. This is a cool place and definitely worth a trip to visit, even for non-car aficionados. It’s super-easy to get caught up and lose several hours in this place checking out the hundreds of vintage vehicles. It’s fun to see and learn how things evolved so haphazardly from the original notions of the “horseless carriage”. It’s quite an amazing collection and full of surprises.
I recently discovered this online, collaborative catalog of “wondrous and curious places”, The Atlas Obscura. It’s a great source to find odd things to see and explore both near home and afar. Browsing the listings, I found plenty of little local surprises in addition to the places I had already seen or been. Check it out in your own area or the next time you’re traveling somewhere!
The first one Darlene and I ended up checking out was The Statues of Ken Fox in Auburn. I’d seen the giant sculpture of a gold-panning prospector along Interstate 80 in Auburn, but I wasn’t aware of the artist/dentist’s other, similarly massive creations in town. Here’s a more complete backstory on Ken Fox and his creations.
We also went hiking around the intersection of several historic routes (wagon, train and automobile) in the Sierra Nevada, at Donner Summit: the first wagon trail to California, first transcontinental railroad, first transcontinental highway.
While visiting with Darlene’s family in Wisconsin/Minnesota, we went for a Segway ride and tour in La Crosse this past Sunday with Shel, Dan, Kathy and Shelly. It was my first time trying one and it was a lot of fun. The handling is very intuitive and responsive – to the point of being a little addictive! If you have yet to try one, look for a tour or rental in your area (like La Crosse Segway Tours) – it’s definitely worth it!
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A short, 75-second video montage from our Segway ride in La Crosse, WI.
For Darlene’s birthday last week (mid-April), I took her on a ski trip to a surprise destination: Banff, in the Canadian Rockies! We stayed for five nights and skied at Sunshine Village and Lake Louise. We also spent a little time exploring the national park: hiking in Johnston Canyon to see the ice falls, up to Lake Louise to walk out on the mostly frozen lake and out to Lake Minnewanka. We were super lucky to decide to go revisit Lake Minnewanka after dinner on our first night because not only were the skies clear but the aurora borealis made a pretty good showing that night. It also happened to be the first time either of us had ever seen an aurora in person!
Aurora Borealis over Lake Minnewanka, near Banff, Canada.
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I was worried about the snow conditions when we arrived because there was no hint of snow in the valley around Banff (and the previous times I was there in the winter there was tons of snow everywhere). There wasn’t even any snow on the drive up to Sunshine on our first day. However, Sunshine is actually up pretty high and you take a gondola to get to the runs from the parking area. And, even before the weekend snow, it was great conditions and good coverage.
We went to the lower elevation resort at Lake Louise after the storm came through and I’m glad we waited because there were plenty of clues of how nasty and frozen the snow was on some parts of the mountain underneath the new snow. It definitely gets warmer there than in Sunshine. This was mid-April of course.
Compared to Whistler/Blackcomb, Sunshine (Banff) and Lake Louise certainly have a better chance of snow and cold weather, but they’re not as convenient. Sunshine is like 15 minutes from Banff and Lake Louise like 40 minutes or so. You don’t have to drive as there are free shuttles (with resort passes) to/from Banff and the drives are very pleasant. And there are other things to see and do if people want to take a day or two off from skiing.
Short video montage of our trip.
Sunshine and Lake Louise are both fairly large resorts, with plenty of terrain to explore. Their trail ranking is pretty strange at both resorts: lots of green runs and black diamond runs which would be rated blues in Tahoe. At times it seemed pretty arbitrary how the runs were ranked. You had to just go and check it out. You couldn’t trust the ranking at all. (Didn’t try any of the double-blacks: just assumed they were super steep chutes.)
One negative is that Sunshine has a few large portions (maybe a third) of completely open terrain above the tree line. Not only are these areas open to a storm but they also don’t let you feel like you have anything to explore in those areas. It’s just one big open expanse that feels the same all over, rather than many runs to check out. This certainly isn’t true all over the park, it’s just a couple chunks of it. Also a couple of sections of their acreage are special, restricted areas where you have to partner up and carry avalanche gear.
Similarly, as big as Lake Louise is, most of the backside terrain is double-black diamond: presumably chutes which Darlene and I didn’t try. But there are lots of other fun blue and black runs. Unfortunately, we found our favorite run after lifts closed on our last day!! D’oh!
I think it would be easy to enjoy five days skiing between the two resorts. There’s also little Mt. Norquay but we didn’t bother. It looks much smaller than Sugar Bowl (here in California) and I like Sugar Bowl.
