Fires and smoke

Way back in spring I discovered that Shakespeare in the Parks  would be in Chico Hot Springs, Montana on September 6, 2012.  I called Cynthia and asked her to get Mike to babysit so we could go!  We have had so much fun seeing these plays over the years!  Yesterday we pulled into their special area of Mammoth and visited with Cynthia, made peach cobbler, and saw the kids.

 We woke up this morning to the elk everywhere in the neighborhood

Then saw Megan and Alex off to school.

And Mike off to work.

And hugged goodbye to Cynthia after checking the weather one more time.  Nope, the smoke was moving in and we needed to move out.  Here is the smoke near the turnoff for Chico's.

So we traveled past Butte and got out of most of the smoke for tonight.  Nuts to fires and smoke that make it hard to breathe....tomorrow is another day.


Jan

Baker's Hole Campground Review

Baker's Hole Campground Review

Recommend: Yes--Highly for a National Forest Campground
Cost:   14 dollars for an electric site with a Senior Pass.
Recreation:fishing on the Madison
Location:  3 miles north of West Yellowstone, Montana
Bathroom and Shower:  very well kept vault toilets, showers can be taken in West Yellowstone for 25 cents for 30 seconds.
Hookups:  73 sites, 33 electric.
Noise: Daytime road noise.
Internet: Roaming Verizon 3 G area (slow connection).  Sprint is roaming. ATT did not connect.

Lot Size:  Good for any size RV and slides on most sites.

Geyser Gazer Kids

Yesterday (Monday) we spent the day with David Schwarz and Dana Ivy.  We watched Grand together (yes another Grand for us).

Then today...well it started with a call from Mary Beth to tell us how smoky the Geyser Basin was....but we biked to Fan and Mortar anyway...we quickly decided to have an early lunch in the Bear Pit in the Old Faithful Inn.

We called it quits and went back to Baker's Hole to start the process of packing up.  It was a lovely 10 days full of geysers and friends.

Jan

RV's and Pocket Basin

Lew and I are always reading and thinking about becoming "fulltimers" in the RV world.  That means not owning a house and just living always in your RV.  One of the blogs we read is called, RV dreams.  I saw they were around Yellowstone and emailed them that we would be willing to take them back-country and share our geyser gazer information!  So we did.

Lew fussed that Pocket Basin would be dry and boring.  But it rained all night and the mud pots where lovely.  This is Howard and Linda and I looking at the mud pots.  Even better were the volcanoes!  They actually erupted repeatedly for us.  It was very cool.

After our hike we met at Riverside Geyser!  It was a very nice day once the fog lifted.
And Riverside did its thing!  Then we walked around Geyser Hill until Grand time!  It sure is fun to show others your very interesting Park!

Jan

It was a Great and Grand Day!

We started the day waiting for Great Fountain..it was in overflow when we pulled up.  Great Fountain has so many memories for me.  Bob Hoffman introduced us to the predictive patterns of overflow, meter boil and pause on our first visit in 1985.  It quickly became my "favorite" geyser.  I loved the sounds of its overflow trickling down the terraces.  We started watching it the next summer when Bob wasn't around.  The kids played in the dirt (no passing the garage can!) with the other gazer kids who I won't name in case I forget someone!

Then you turn around and the kids are old enough and nagging  to be left off at Geyser Hill.... so we would start the day with breakfast at Great Fountain.  I would stay with a book and lawn chair while Lew played the part of chauffeur taking the kids to Geyser Hill.  Eventually back to GF where we would wait for the first overflow and mark the prediction board.  Then it was decision time.  Pick up the kids, leave or wait.  It depended on many factors, Grand  did it go?  What about lunch?  Etc.  But many times I would stay and Lew would leave to let the VC know it would erupt in an hour and a half window.  I'd move the lawn chair to the no parking area and continue reading or answering the ten thousand questions about when it will erupt.

Then......it would....we have far better pictures but this was today with the sun on the screen so not well centered....

Then you turn around again...and Adam is watching Grand at night while we are watching Great Fountain with Tim Thompson.  We had a pickup truck with a camper one of those years and we mounted a green screen for a computer so we could enter the data from the huge Ryan Tempmentor as we worked with Tim and Rick ("NOW THIS IS REAL SCIENCE"--Rick to us and Tomas as we all squeeze in the truck camper to see the data on the screen) to come up with a better prediction formula for the Visitor's Center.  What fun!  How exciting to do real science!

Now we are without kids or grandkids as we sit and watch while others change the prediction board and tell the visitors all about the series of bursts used to predict Great Fountain and I think...yes that is real science.

After Great Fountain we bike out to Lone Star for our lunch.  We watch it erupt (yes, again). Next will be a trip to Grand Geyser.  Its due sometime in the early afternoon hours.

Grand Geyser is the largest predictable geyser in the world.  Mary Beth knows this geyser.  She amazes me with the comment that even more than the waves, it sounds right for an eruption.  A lovely two burst Grand on a sunny, smokeless day.  Hey David your picture was soooo much better I am using it instead!

 Then it was time to get back to a Katz, who is feeling quite ignored and abused!  It was a Grand and Great retirement day!
Jan

First day of "real" retirement

Today is the day students start school.  I never slept well the day before but now that I'm REALLY retired...I slept fine.  I did still awaken at 6 AM.  And we went off to "work".

At 7:35 I was at the gate:

8:06 saw us biking toward Lone Star Geyser

9:06 we saw this:

9:23-10:20 We are biking back to the car.  The trail goes along the Firehole river.  Up and down the bits of hill.  Lets take this ride together.  We leave the Lone Star Basin by walking a very short bit to the beginning of the bike trail.

After a straight stretch, a curve appears.

Then we bike downhill (keep the speed down) or you miss the very pretty meadow on your right.

This is where the Firehole River first appears.  Its at the tree edge.

We continue along the path, sometimes with almost a cliff edge and other times the river runs right beside you.  Its beautiful and yes, full of fish.

We cross the firehole and the final straight stretch to the trail end where the bikes get loaded and  travel  toward another path.

10:20-10:30  We meet old friends in the parking in front of the Lower Store (formerly the Hamiton store thus the name Ham's store).  Some of the friends are "August" folk that I've never met face-to-face until today!  Exciting.

10:30-11:30  Geysers call and its time to see them.  We get on the bikes and travel down the path.

We are headed to Grotto geyser which we watched years ago when we volunteered for Rick Hutchison, the park geologist at the time.  First we bike up toward Castle Geyser which we saw our first night back home.

Lew speeds ahead to see Grotto, but I putsy around taking photos for my teacher friends and thinking about dreams and how sometimes you can do what you dream. Now we are past Castle on the straight stretch that goes quite a while before we get to Daisy Geyser.

I'm going rather slow after taking a few more pictures when I see a few tourists go off trail to the trees.  Now trees are not usually where tourists go off trial...Crap there is a bison and it is headed right toward me!  Time to ditch the bike and go to a tree also!

It was that close..No trick camera and that is through the pine needles.
It passed by without hitting my bike on the path.

 I noticed a small crowd up the hill near Daisy geyser.  I decided to wait a few minutes and see what happened.  Well Daisy is what happened!

I could see the steam from Grotto and biked on down to it.

I'm getting hungry.  Time change is hard to manage sometimes.  Lets head back to the Ham Store and get some lunch!
12:00-12:30  Lunch time in front of the store so we can watch geyser hill.

12:30-2:00  Lets go to geyser hill.  We bike up to the Lodge.  Then we start up geyser hill.

When the fire went through in 1988, I did not think the hill behind the geyser basin would ever look green in my lifetime.  If you enlarge (click on it to enlarge it) the picture you can see the dead trees, new trees and old trees that are behind geyser hill.  Next we cross the Firehole River.

At the "top" of geyser hill  is Giantess.  That's the gas station next to the ham store in the distance.

We hang out waiting for Lion or Beehive.  Friends hang out around Beehive with us.

But eventually we have to call it quits.  Katz has been alone quite a while and she gets cabin fever if we are gone too long...So
3:05 End of the day.

We get back to Baker's Hole and end "my first day of real retirement".  Hope my teacher friends had a good  first day, I did.

For me no where on Earth, (so far) has given me a feeling of peace and restful happiness except my Yellowstone Mountains, rivers and lakes.  I love it here.  If I'm here a day or a month, I am always aware of a deep sense of peace when I look at the rivers or mountains. Thus I welcome myself Home to my favorite place.

Of all the places I love in Yellowstone (and there are many), I do so love the little piece of land we bought...so after setting up at Baker's Hole Campground outside of West Yellowstone,

we took off to see our land and mountains.  The driveway has grown up but the mountain has not!

This is a picture from 2006.  I love the look of those mountans and the lake!
Next was a trip to the stores in West.   Mary Beth came out to visit and we had ham sandwiches for supper!  All ready for more adventures tomorrow!

Jan

It was a Hoppe Day!

Karl Hoppe  spent his last night at Geyser Hill watching Beehive Geyser.  He posted it on facebook as erupting at 5 something.  Son is only a tad like his Father.  I saw the post and immediately suggested a lunch meeting since we were going over the Bighorns as he was headed toward the Bighorns later that day.  Here we are starting up the Bighorns.  Not much smoke. 

But later...do you see the mountains in the smoke?  Not so good for asthma girl.

As we are traveling along and watching the smoke....I'm checking facebook to see if Karl responds.  We stopped and had sandwiches but still not answer.  Out of Cody starting up the Canyon....Carl calls and says he is close to the Wapiti Post Office, I yell (I know that isn't the best way to talk in a cell phone) "So are we, pull over!"  And we both did!

It was so exciting to see Karl, Lori and their three kids.  But after a bit of talk and sharing some watermelon, they needed to head east and we wanted to get to Yellowstone.  We managed to make it past an old burn along Yellowstone Lake.

We set up camp at Grant Village...and went over to West Thumb to poke around.

I enticed Lew to drive to Old Faithful by suggesting Hamster burgers and fries.  Off we went.
Now what makes this a Hoppe Post, is that I'm waiting for our order at the store, while watching geyser hill.  Off goes Lion, which is where we met Karl when he was maybe 8?  I think....Then immediately after eatting we end up seeing Castle, which is where we met Karl again and he introduced us to his folks thus starting a lifelong friendship!  It was a Hoppe DAY!

More Old Friends

Then we started to meet the people...Schwarz's, Udo without Jan.







Udo, John (a friend of the Dunns), Tom, Dan Miller, Genean, Trish, and Me. A bunch of us decided to bike to Lone Star.



Yes, that is bug juice Lew is holding.We needed it for an old enemy. Another old favorite is Pizza at the Wild West.David and Dana joined us for the meal.



Something new this trip was our campground. We spent three nights at Baker's Hole. The road to our land was under construction this year. We would like to get campsite 42 next year.