North to Alaska

Sage Creek, Badlands, South Dakota

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Judy

We hadn’t known about Badlands National Park until we chatted with a family from South Carolina when we were all camping at Exit Glacier, Alaska. They encouraged us to spend some time there, and as Badlands is just a bit further east of the Black Hills, we thought it would be a good place to see. Lots of history, lots of geology and erosion, and lots of wildlife. The area got its name from both the native Americans who lived around the area - mako sica = land bad, and from the French fur trappers who called it a ‘bad land to cross’. You can read more about the area here.

On the way to Badlands, we stopped at Wall, a little town on the I90 which is most famous for its huge drugstore, which now sells almost everything and has become a big tourist destination. A couple of guys from Mississippi told Greg about it when we were camping west of Yellowstone, and we had started seeing billboards advertising Wall Drug hundreds of kms away. Apparently they spend $400,000 on advertising per year. Huge, touristy, entertaining.

We camped at the Sage Creek campground, a ‘primitive’ campground with a lovely mown grassy area, vault toilets but no water. It was free to camp there and as you can see from the photo, there were plenty of people camping there.

The sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles, and spires of Badlands look like something from another planet. We drove through part of the park early in the morning and colours of the rocks were beautiful. The park has a herd of 800+ buffalo, and we drove through a couple of hundred of them – the ‘wildlife jammers’ in Yellowstone would have gone crazy over seeing so many! We also saw prairie dogs, a white-tailed deer and a pack of pronghorn.

In addition to visiting the Minuteman Missile Command Centre, we went to see a sod prairie homestead and Wounded Knee, south of the national park. So much history. so much heartbreak

The Bison/Buffalo heard we drove through in Badlands National Park

Bison up close (taken from safely inside the car!)

Pronghorn sheep in the Badlands

Badlands

Posted in South Dakota | 9 Comments

The Black Hills, South Dakota

Posted on July 21, 2014 by Judy

We have spent the last few days camping in State Forest and National Park campgrounds. All are very well-resourced (by Australian camping standards), and it seems to be a standard thing at this time of the year that the state forest campgrounds have a host who takes the camping fees, keeps the toilets clean and mows the grass on and around the sites. The night after our electrifying experience near Sundance, we camped in a little campground near Nemo in the Black Hills. Lovely, apart from the serenity-shattering generator that seemed to be almost constantly running in the large RV parked at the site next to us. And while I’m having a whinge, although this is really just an observation of a cultural difference – Americans love having open fires when they camp. They rarely use them for cooking or to keep warm (they have RVs with loud generators for that!), although they might toast marshmallows to make s’mores (sweet biscuit, Hershey’s chocolate & marshmallow sandwiched together, way too sweet for me), It is totally against our nature to have a campfire in summer.

So, to touristy stuff, sort of … we visited Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse monument-in-progress yesterday. Actually, ‘visited’ might be a bit misleading. We parked a few hundred metres either side of the carpark entrance to Rushmore and looked at it from face-on, and then at the profile of George Washington. As it was a Sunday, the queue to get into the carpark was long, and we didn’t want to pay $11 . It’s ‘free’ to get into Rushmore, but they get you by charging you to park, and there’s no parking anywhere outside near the monument. I really liked the profile, and it was much closer than the face-on view would have been, even from inside the monument’s grounds. The Crazy Horse monument was started in the late 1940s, and is expected to take many, many years to complete. So far only his face, the upper edge of his outstretched arm and part of the horse’s head and mane have been done.

And here’s the song you’ve all been waiting for – the lyrics are there so if you don’t know all the words, you can sing still along

Camped near Nemo in the Black Hills ( we got lost but someone told us how to find Nemo)

Mount Rushmore with George Washington in profile

The free view of Mount Rushmore

Crazy Horse memorial , a few hundred years from completion.

Posted in South Dakota | 4 Comments

A Close Encounter

Posted on July 20, 2014 by greg

For those of you old enough to remember “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” by Steven Speilberg (1977) you may remember that the aliens were going to arrive at a prominent landmark, Devils Tower in Wyoming. This is what we went to visit. The 1970s were the days when Aliens were friendly, with Close Encounters and “ET”. Alas by the late 1970s and 1980s the Aliens had got dangerous with “Alien” and its sequels and in the 1990s “Independence Day”

The (friendly) Aliens arriving at Devils Tower

The real Devils Tower.

Prairie Dogs on the way out of Devils Tower

Posted in Wyoming | 6 Comments

Sundance, Wyoming

Posted on July 19, 2014 by Judy

…. ‘where the kid came from!’

I didn’t think we had much to say about yesterday – we just spent it driving further east through Wyoming. Quite varied landscape – a high mountain pass that reminded me of ‘Brokeback Mountain’ country, then dry, flat plains. We camped at a nice little campground in a state forest, and just after midnight the fun really began.

A huge, bright, loud thunderstorm that woke us up and had us scuttling to take shelter in the car .. twice! The first storm went for about 90 minutes, with lightning flashes that lit up the whole sky. We kept listening to, and counting for the thunder to work out how far away the storm was, and when it got close we got in the car, figuring it was safer in a large tin box than out in the open near tall trees that could get struck by lightning. It rained a bit, but that didn’t last anywhere near as long as the lightning. We headed back to bed at around 1.30am, then it all started again at 3am!

So we’re feeling pretty wiped out this morning. We visited the Devil’s Tower National Monument, which Greg will write about soon. An amazing rock formation. Heading to the Black Hills to see some things and have an afternoon sleep! The locals are delighted with the weather – high 20s, fine. We just overheard someone comment that they wait 8 months for this weather.

Powder River Pass at 9666 feet, with snow still on some of the mountains in the background

A small RV (caravan) at a roadside stop on the I-90 in Wyoming

Posted in Wyoming | 4 Comments

Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks

Posted on July 18, 2014 by Judy

We spent the best part of 2 days driving south-east from Glacier National Park to the western entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Our rental car needed an oil change, according to the car’s dashboard, and unlike other rental companies who just get the driver to get an oil change done when needed and they re-imburse costs, Avis will only swap cars because ‘they want to cause as little disruption as possible’. Huh! We went to 3 Avis offices in 3 different towns in Montana and none could provide us with a replacement vehicle and we waited around in West Yellowstone for several hours and in fact it all ended up being pretty disruptive. Finally the manager at West Yellowstone airport reassured us that it would be okay to drive it to LA without getting the oil changed, and Avis could sort it out then.

We did get to see West Yellowstone at the height of the season – last time we were there it was mid-April, there was still snow everywhere, the Park had only just opened and very little in the town was open apart from the hotel we stayed at and a pizza place where we had dinner – this time we had bison burgers for lunch, but we didn’t get to the Yellowstone entrance until 4pm, by which time all the available campsites in the park were taken.

So we went to a campground in a nearby national forest and headed to Yellowstone early the next morning. As we’d seen Old Faithful last time, we gave it a miss this time and visited other geysers, sulphur pool, hot springs and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. There were a few ‘wildlife jams’ on roads because people kept slowing down to look at bison grazing in meadows, but then we saw a whole herd a bit further south. We drove south beside Yellowstone Lake to Lewis Lake campground and were lucky enough to get one of the last sites. Not so lucky this morning at Jenny Lake campground in Grand Teton National Park – we missed out by a minute, unfortunately. All the campsites were taken by 9.30am!

The Teton Range is magnificent – tall, jagged peaks still dusted with snow here and there at the top, with a dozen glaciers spread across the 5 peaks.

And now we’re heading further east, to the Black Hills in South Dakota. Motelling it tonight in Worland, Wyoming and will spend the next few days camping.

Lower falls in Grand Canyon Yellowstone. It was a 200 metre descent which is a bit harder when you are already at 2,500 metres altitude

A fumarole in Yellowstone

Boiling sulphur pool in Yellowstone National Park

Camped at Lewis Lake in Yellowstone. We got there at 1pm just in time to get a campsite at one of the most remote campsites in Yellowstone

The Grand Tetons 12,000 ft high mountain range. In the foreground is the dry sagebrush that grows in the dry rainshadow of the Tetons.

Posted in Montana, Wyoming | 6 Comments

Glacier National Park

Posted on July 15, 2014 by Judy

After escaping the tourist hell of Jasper/Banff, we were a bit hesitant about visiting another national park that was sure to be full of people, especially during a summer weekend, but Greg did some reading and decided that the awe and beauty of the park’s natural features would outweigh the crowds. It certainly was beautiful and the crowd factor was lessened somewhat by vehicle length restrictions on the main road through the park – The Going to the Sun Road. Nothing over 24 feet, so no big buses or RVs.

2 weekends ago, on the 4th July long weekend, parts of the road were still closed because of snow, but it’s all clear now, although it still feels like spring there from the wildflowers in bloom, even though it’s mid-July.

We bought an annual National Parks pass as we’re planning on visiting Yellowstone, the Grand Tetons and a few more in South Dakota and Utah. As we drove through the park’s entrance gates, we noted that quite a few campgrounds were already full, but hoped we’d get a site at the Avalanche Creek campground, at the southern end of the park. And we did – the very last one! We’ve got a system for reserving a site in a popular campground, to make sure we don’t lose it. Once we have found a site, one of us ‘minds’ it while the other goes to register and pay for it ASAP. Nice campground near a cedar forest, and beside a fast-flowing creek. As we were driving to it, I noticed a tract of newly-fallen trees on either side of the road – a recent avalanche, perhaps.

The border post between Canada and USA. It was an hour wait in the car queue to cross the border, with only one staff member manning the border post. The USA is the slowest most difficult country to enter that we have ever experienced.

Tunnel on the Going to the Sun road near Logans Pass

The Going to the Sun road cut into the steep mountain descending from Logans Pass

Posted in Montana | 6 Comments

McMansions on Wheels

Posted on July 15, 2014 by greg

We are travelling around the USA in what in Australia would be a medium sized car. We have a tent and cooking equipment and most things we need. We are surrounded however by these monstrous RV’s . We keep mistaking these RV’s for buses, and that is because that is how big they are. We have only recently noticed an even larger version of RV. It has twin rear axles, which makes it by my calculations heavier that 16 tonnes. They usually tow a car as well. And how many people you might ask are in these monster RV’s? Usually two. These RVs cannot fit into lots of RV parks, and thankfully they cannot fit into most of the parks we camp at. Here is a picture of one next to our car.

Monster RV versus our car (ours is the grey one). The white car is their tow car.

Posted in Montana | 6 Comments

Jasper, Lake Louise and Banff

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Judy

Oh dear, I think we’ve been in the wilderness too long. Hitting Touristville on a Friday afternoon in summer was probably unwise.

We drove from Mt Robson to Jasper on Friday afternoon, intending to stop at the Visitor Information Centre to find out about campgrounds, but there was so much traffic and so many people that we bought fuel and headed south on the Icefields Parkway. We had been given an information booklet when we paid our park entrance fee, and were able to work out where our preferred campgrounds were from the maps in the booklet. At the park entrance there was a board advising which grounds near Jasper were full … and by 3pm that was all but one! The Columbia Icefield ground about halfway between Jasper and Banff sounded appealing – close to the Athabascar Glacier and ‘tent only’, meaning that RVs weren’t allowed because of the narrow access road and small sites.

We got the last ‘walk-in’ tent site, so we had to park the car and carry our stuff for a couple of hundred metres, but it was a secluded area and not too noisy. Wonderful view from the carpark of the icefield and a couple of glaciers just across the road. We walked to the Athabascar Glacier the next morning and as with all the glaciers we have seen, we saw and learnt new things. This one has left very tall lateral moraines as it has receded, and as we walked where the glacier had previously been, I commented that it looked like a lunar landscape. At the far end of the glacial site, vegetation has started to grow – grasses, groundcovers, small shrubs. Trees will eventually grow there too, and change the former icy landscape further.

Driving down the Icefields Parkway, we were amazed at the huge volume of traffic heading north – loads of tour buses, cars, RVs but not many trucks as no through traffic is allowed, ie: if the trucks aren’t delivering within the Jasper/Banff National Park area they have to find an alternate route outside the parks. We drove through the village of Lake Louise and got to the lake at around 10.30am. The carparks were already filling, and there were lots of people around, but by the time we got back to the car 20 minutes later, all the carparks were full. We had 2 people fighting over our car space as we were leaving, traffic waiting to get into the carparks was backed up for a couple of kms and I predicted that there would be several nasty incidents of severe carpark rage by noon. As for Lake Louise itself – well, my mother taught me that if I couldn’t say something nice, I shouldn’t say anything.

We headed west to Yoho National Park to visit Emerald Lake and the Burgess Shale, which is one of the world’s most celebrated fossil fields. The actual field is only accessible via a guided tour and looks difficult to get to, so we just had a look at the lake, which is much prettier than Lake Louise and without the seething hordes of people or the huge ugly lakeside hotel, and read the information boards at the lake’s edge.

Further south to Banff, which we drove around and left fairly quickly (‘cos of all those cars and people – we obviously lack the herding instinct) and planned to spend the night in Calgary until we found out the prices of accommodation. It’s the final weekend of the Calgary Stampede, so it’s a very busy city at the moment. We kept on driving south to Fort MacLeod, a little town on Highway 2 which is historically significant because it was established by the North West Mounted Police (The Mounties) to tame the whiskey traders that came up from the western States.

We’ll be back in the US of A today, in the Lower 48 as they say in Alaska.

A small sample of the crowd and Lake Louise. Can’t take a picture of the lake too many people and canoes.

Athabascar Glacier

Natural Bridge in Yoho Park

For the geologically minded this is the hill that is the site of the world famous Burgess Shale fossils

Parked next to a little truck at McDonalds using their free wifi again (thanks McDonalds!)

Reflections in Glacier lakes

Posted in Alberta, British Columbia | 7 Comments

Mount Robson

Posted on July 13, 2014 by Judy

Once we had settled into our accommodation in Prince George (which all turned out to be fine after our initial problems), we went out exploring – shopping at Real Canadian Superstore, which seems to be Canada’s favourite supermarket, then visiting the tourist information centre to get info on BC & Alberta provincial campgrounds and the Ancient Forest, which is 113kms east of PG and the world’s only known rainforest found so far inland (800kms from the ocean). Trip Adviser rates it as the number 1 thing to see in PG.
The following day we had lunch at Shiraz, a Persian restaurant/cafe that serves delicious food. I had Zereshk Polo ba Morgh, a chicken dish made with chicken breast that was tender and moist, which can be difficult to do with breast as it tends to dry out. Greg had Koobideh Kebob, beef kebabs, with saffron rice pudding for dessert, and I had a milk pudding with walnuts and barberries. The semi-final of the World Cup was on TV, Holland vs Argentina, but we left before the end of the match.

Heading east towards Jasper the next day, we stopped at the Ancient Forest to do the 60-90 minute loop walk. The tallest trees in the forest are Western Red Cedars, with the oldest estimated to be 1000+ years old. The forest was only discovered in 2006, and signage on Hwy 16 is …. minimal. Small sign stating that the forest is 1km ahead, and a very plain sign at the actual turn-off to the forest. However the infrastructure at the actual forest is excellent -500m long boardwalk what is wheelchair-accessible, with additional boardwalks and timber steps in sections of the Loop Walk.

There was a bear’s den in the hollow trunk of an old cedar tree. We didn’t see the bear, but his home looked very comfortable and a nice place to hibernate in winter.

Then on to Mount Robson, highest peak in the Canadian Rockies standing at just under 4000 metres, and the second highest peak in BC. Sheer magnificence. We camped at the smallest of the 3 campsites near the Visitor Centre, a bit pricey at CAD$ 25, but there was a shower block in the campground with lukewarm water, flushing toilets and a Dyson hand dryer, plus the usual vault (drop) toilets around the campsites.

I’ve just learnt that even though Mt Robson is the highest peak in the Canadian Rockies, it’s actually the 69th highest peak in all of the Rocky Mountains, and the only Canadian peak in the highest 100. Most of the really high ones are in Colorado, with Mt Elbert the highest at 4400 metres. We’re planning on driving down through Colorado, so we might get a chance to see some of those high peaks.

When we arrived at the Mt Robson Visitor Centre, the top of the peak was covered in cloud, but the next morning it was fine and we decided to do an 8.5km walk to and from Kinney Lake to get closer to the peak, and it was a nice walk beside the aquamarine Robson River to a beautiful blue kettle lake which had been created by build-up of glacial silt . Glad we started early though – by the time we got back to the car park there were a few large groups and a couple of families on bikes getting ready to set off. A tough ride for little kids.

The big tree at Ancient Forest. A 2000 year old Western Red Cedar

One of the old trees at Ancient Forest that had fallen down with a rotten trunk

Camped at Mount Robson. One of only 3 tent campers amongst 19 sites, the rest were in RVs or sleeping in their cars.

Reflections in the beautiful Kinney Lake that we walked 5km to

Posted in British Columbia | Comments Off

Prince George, BC

Posted on July 11, 2014 by Judy

Canadians seem to like naming places after royalty. Prince of Wales Island, Prince Rupert, Queen Charlotte Island and the place where we have just spent a couple of nights, Prince George – PG for short. Nice town on Highway 16, the Trans-Canada Highway and on the huge, fast-flowing Fraser River which starts in the Rocky Mountains near Jasper and flows (fast!) to the sea near Vancouver. We noticed a sign on a bridge near Tête Jaune Cache that stated it is ‘the best salmon river in Canada’.

We had spent 7 nights camping so decided to stay in a motel in PG for 2 nights, to do the usual stuff that we do when we hit civilization- wash our clothes, do some shopping, eat out and see what there is to see. Earlier in the day, we visited a Totem Pole museum just west of Smithers. Interesting place, but what was even more interesting was meeting an Australian woman who knows family friends who live in Gatton, QLD. Yep, it’s a small world.

I think I’ll write a whole post about our good and bad experiences booking accommodation, but checking into the Carmel Motel in PG was a very trying time for us, the receptionist and probably the motel’s manager as well. We used Booking.com to reserved a room with a ‘kitchenette’, only to discover that the room we were allocated had no kitchen. Back to reception – ‘oh, yes sorry about that, we don’t have any of those rooms left’. We asked for our reservation to be cancelled, only to be informed that we couldn’t get a refund on the first night’s accommodation as (by now) it was after 6pm. Huh? They can’t supply what we were expecting, but they won’t give us a refund?! Seems like fairly appalling and flawed logic in these days of social media. Anyway, Greg phoned Booking.com and while he was on the phone to them, someone rang the motel and cancelled their booking (either that or the manager had second thoughts and realised that they would come out of this looking bad) … so we got our room. With kitchenette.

Posted in British Columbia | Comments Off

Sage Creek, Badlands, South Dakota

The Black Hills, South Dakota

A Close Encounter

Sundance, Wyoming

Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks

Glacier National Park

McMansions on Wheels

Jasper, Lake Louise and Banff

Mount Robson

Prince George, BC

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