Road Trip! Part 2/?

After Custer State Park, our next stop was Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Called Bear's Lodge or Bear's Tipi by local indigenous people groups this was I think the most interesting and one-of-a-kind geological feature of our trip. The rain stopped and the lowest clouds departed right as we arrived at Devil's Tower, so we were able to see it clearly,which we appreciated.


Next came Yellowstone, perhaps the best stop on our whole trip. Just outside the park's east entrance we saw a picture-perfect moose feeding in a pond, and for a brief moment that I managed to capture on camera, it was joined by its calf. The next few days in the park brought us up close to more bison and elk than we could count. The elk--which were still riled up for the fall rut--were especially neat, bugling often and in general being more active than the bison. We did get to drive in the midst of a couple different bison herds as they ran along the road, so it's not like they were boring or anything, but we just enjoyed the elk more, for whatever reason.

The geysers, mud pots, and hot springs are cool too of course. We were more interested in wildlife so we only did a couple short hikes at the various geyser basins, though we did get to visit all the main highlights. I enjoyed seeing all the geothermal features in much colder weather, with far more steam than you get in the summertime. Grand Prismatic Springs was all but invisible, shrouded in its own steam. At times it washed over us in pleasant, warm waves, a stark contrast to the rest of our time there, which scarcely creeped above freezing temperatures. The forest of Fellwood in Rythka is set in a caldera, and while we were in Yellowstone I figured out a couple scenes that will take place later in the Legacy of Rythka series that will incorporate geothermal features.

Two main highlights stand out from Yellowstone--eagles and wolves. Our first evening in the park I spotted two eagles swooping low over the Yellowstone River, and then noticed they were harassing a duck in the middle of the water. After several unsuccessful attempts to catch the duck, which dove under the surface with every low pass from the eagles, the pair of predators eventually caught the duck and carried it off to eat elsewhere. Having never personally seen a bald eagle catch anything before, and given that they largely eat fish, this was a pretty spectacular sequence of events, especially for a raptor enthusiast like myself.

The wolves were a little less impressive, being perhaps a mile off on a snowbank of blinding white with a heat shimmer distorting the view through the binoculars, but two different people confirmed that the specs in the distance were in fact wolves. Like, real live wild wolves.

More later...

Road Trip! An Update, Part 1/?

We've had much less consistent internet access than anticipated, and I've greatly enjoyed being disconnected from the rest of the world, but I apologize nonetheless for the lack of posts here lately. On the whole this has been a wonderful trip and a great time for Christina and I to be away from hospitals and all that cancer involves. We're in the Denver area now and won't be home for about a week or so yet but we also won't be in any remote areas from here on out so this seems like a good time to catch people up in where we've been and what we've done.

The first couple days were pretty straightforward, driving through the Midwest to get to our first destination. We made the requisite stops at Culver's of course, and we went for a brief hike in a state park in the Wisconsin Dells, but there's not a lot else to report, other than we discovered our dog has grown considerably since we last stayed in a tent with him, and we realized we needed to upgrade to a bigger one. Oh, and we forgot several items of clothing we had been counting on, as well as our folding camp chairs. It was a bit of a comedy of errors at first. But at least it was a comedy!

Soon we reached our first national park, Badlands in South Dakota. I'd been there several years ago and the place helped inspire the Ramshead Plains region of Rythka, so it was especially great to experience the unique area again and imagine new ways to discribe it in my writing. More than one prominent character will spend time in the Ramshead Plains in the Legacy of Rythka series, and multiple Verten hideouts exist in the narrow ravines there, but I'll say no more so I don't spoil anything. One change I did notice was the explosion in the prairie dog population. Over a mile of the scenic drive we did there bordered a single prairie dog colony, and it seemed they'd become somewhat of a nuisance within the park..

After a stop at Wall Drug for free ice water, we headed on to the Black Hills. Mount Rushmore was busy and not as pretty as the rest of the region, so we didn't spend long there. We really enjoyed Custer State Park though, camping for a night before the snow moved into the area. On the Needles Highway we saw some mountain goats in the distance perched somehow on a cliff face, along with our first bison in a meadow.

I'm writing this on my phone so I'll edit this later to catch typos and add pictures when I have a chance to get out the laptop, but I wanted to get a start on recounting our trip here. A huge thank you to everyone who donated to us so we were able to enjoy his much-needed time on the road together.

More updates later....

Road Trip!

I seem to be staying free of side-effects from the clinical trial I started last week, so we’re going to make the most of this break from chemo and take a road trip! We’ll be spending time in Yellowstone and Arches national parks for sure, and we’ll see what else time, energy, and weather permits—the “plan” is to also see Badlands National Park and Mt Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and Rocky Mountain National Park. Maybe more, maybe less. I’ll post here every so often with updates of what we’re doing. We leave Wednesday!