Grand Teton National Park - 1

After the irritation of yesterday, we arose relatively early and headed over Teton Pass, into Wyoming. You may have heard of Jackson Hole which is a fairly famous ski area near the town of Jackson. No? Never mind. Neither had I.

Teton Pass is kinda steep, with a series of 10% grades on both sides of the pass. There are big yellow warning signs that attest to this.... We are experienced mountain drivers now however, and a few miles of 10% poses no threat to us (and the Jeep didn't blow up either, so all good).

We stopped, bought some lunch, and headed a little further north to the Grand Teton National Park.

I hadn't been sure of what to expect, but ... we were greeted with lush green forests and meadows, peaks still capped with snow, and the sound of birds singing, and Americans hiking. Ahh. Nature on the weekend.

All jokes aside, it's really nice here.


We headed up to the Taggart Lake trail-head, and went for a gentle 5 mile stroll. It was very pleasant, although there are thousands of mosquitoes here, all lusting after my blood.

I'd been doing some reading last night about the little fuckers, and found out that only the females suck your blood. Verrrry interesting. Verrrry interesting indeed.

Moving along. Kat ripped out this awesome shot of a bumblebee on a flower.


...and this one of a strange looking elongated ladybug.


I had to be content with landscapes. The mountain meadows were alive with colour.
These yellow flowers were everywhere, and were super bright.


This is a not very interesting view back to the mountain range with Taggart Lake in the foreground.


There is a Leigh Lake here in the park, so we will be sure to visit that soon.

We had a spot of lunch and headed up to String Lake and wandered around (another casual 4-5 miles I think). It was here that we spotted our first Marmots. These guys are pretty cool. This one was running across the path to safety.


This one was just emerging from its burrow. You can see a couple of little sticks to the left side of the frame - when it was inside, it was moving the sticks like a little robot arm....


This is not an interesting picture. But if you read the Wikipedia article you will see that it says...

"Most marmots are highly social, and use loud whistles to communicate with one another, especially when alarmed."

Let me tell you that they're not kidding. This one obviously got alarmed, and let out this freaking noise which nearly blew out my ear drum and literally made me step back. I felt a little woozy for a second too. Sorry about that old chap.


At this point it was nearly 6pm, time to go home. Man are we both stuffed, and going to bed.

Tomorrow I think we're going to do something a little closer to home (and I might get a second to replace the pressure hose on the power steering for the Jeep).

Whew.

Salt Lake City, Lava Hot Springs, Arrival @ Tetonia

It just never fuckin’ ends. Today David offered us $1500 for the Turd. We told him that in the interest of good faith we would accept it ONLY if he would come and pick it up. We shall see what happens.

To top it all off, when I got the ribs out the other day they smelt a bit funny, and then when I got em’ out of the fridge to cook, they were smellin’ real stinky like they were off. So I chucked them out as well.

ARGH!!!!

Anyway. Just a quick wrap up (or rap up as I have seen it spelt before) of the last few days.

Mormonia
Ahh Salt Lake City. What can I say. The KOA was pretty nice, albeit expensive. We cruised into the famous Temple Square, home to all kinds of god-fearing activity.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints must have plenty of money, as they can afford to build some ripping buildings.

I must also admit that we departed quite quickly – I wasn’t comfortable with the evangelistic gleam that seemed present in the eyes of those Mormons who were hanging around, and there were plenty of ‘em.

It was oppressively hot in SLC. You’d have thought that someone could have asked God to turn the heat down a bit, but I guess not.

We went and saw the new Indiana Jones movie, which was rather good – ridiculous in parts, but I supposed that’s the point. George Lucas really needs to get over his love of animated cute creatures though. If you see the movie, you will understand what I mean.

More importantly was the fact that it was the first time we had been in an ALL DIGITAL theatre. I was blown away by the quality of the picture and sound. Apparently it was a DLP projector, and I can honestly say I’ve never seen a picture so clear and crisp.

Stinking Jeep
The next day the Jeep was making a (new) weird squeaking noise. I replaced the Idler Pulley (which had been squeaking before) but to no avail. I thought it might be the water pump. We decided to take it down to the mechanic. A few hours later they rang back, said it could be the pump or the alternator, but not to worry about it, and just come and pick the Jeep up for no charge.

To say I was surprised is an understatement. We bought them some beer. I dare you to find a mechanic in Melbourne who would do that for you.

Another day down the toilet. So at Wix’s behest we went to Carls Jr.

I had the famous guacamole burger – and it was ok. Perhaps it was just my mood, but I don’t think I’d go out of my way to have it again. If I was presented with the choice of BK/McD/Carls Jr. I would choose Carls I guess. Oh well. Fatty Fat Fat!

Hill AFB
The next day we woke up and decided not to drive. So we took a little trip out to the Hill AFB Museum.

As you may or may not know, as a kid I was rather into building models of planes, and in true nerd fashion I know quite a lot about them. There was lots of personal items from old pilots on display as well, aside from the vast collection of planes which made it quite interesting.

I’m rather hoping that GE are a little better at making ECM devices than they are at Consumer Finance….

It was fascinating to see household names like Texas Instruments(I thought they made calculators?!) on … well instruments of Death.

It was fascinating to see how old school the technology was. Forget computers kiddies, we got WIRES and GUAGES and WEIRD THINGS THAT I DON’T RECOGNISE.

I was most excited about seeing the famous SR-71 “Blackbird” up close and personal.

OK this isn’t a very good picture, but Kat blames her camera. Pthht. Only a poor workwoman blames her tools I say!

This is a much cooler picture.

If you’re not in the know (read: a nerd) here’s a few facts about the SR-71…..

• From 24km up it could survey nearly 260,000 km^2 per hour.
• From this altitude it could take a (readable) picture of a car's license plate.
• It STILL holds both the sustained altitude (nearly 26km) and speed (just over 3600km/h) records.
• To put it in perspective, in 1976 (when I was born) it flew from NY to London in 1 hour 54 minutes and 56.4 seconds.

Truly a feat of engineering. Just think, it first flew in 1964..... makes a bit teary eyed really.

Moving along.

Lava Hot Springs
In between SLC and Tetonia we decided to stop at the Lava Hot Springs for a bit of relaxation. I can assure you the springs were hot, and relaxing, and I was glad we paused.

On the way though something was on fire. Dunno what it was, but I'm sure it was 'spensive.

Today we had a short drive to Tetonia. It was uneventful, which is good. The campground here is pretty nice, and we have a great view of the mountains, which are bloody huge.

Tomorrow we'll go to the Grant Teton National Park and check it out. Got 6 nights here, then onto Yellowstone, then.... well... dunno!

PHARQ!!!!

Well I was going to write some crap about something, but I'm in a seriously bad mood now.

Basically the c*** who we bought the Turd off (who thought he was getting it back for free) has decided that he can't afford to buy it off us.

Making getting it in the first place completely pointless.

To top it all off the Jeep has decided to go all screwy again, and maybe has a busted water pump.

Awesome.

To be honest we're both seriously over this. I can't help but feel that we've been shafted (or at least people have been trying to shaft us).

You live and learn I suppose, but this is panning out to be an expensive lesson.

Hills, Page Wrap-up, Escalante, Bryce Canyon, Red Canyon, Kodachrome Basin

Man are we both still pissed off today. To top it all off the “easy” drive from Escalante to Salina turned out to be a saga of many, many hills.

137 miles took us 4.5 hours – crazy stuff. Anyway we’re here now at “Butch Cassidy Campground” which is pretty nice actually. There are cool old arcade machines in the laundry, including Joust!

Page Day 2
As you may or may not remember I’d had several Mojitos (Smirnoff this time) the night before, so was feeling quite seedy. We’d decided to try and do some stuff that was close to the campground, due to the Jeep’s flaky power steering.

First up, we cruised down to the Glen Canyon Dam. It’s only 16 feet shorter than the Hoover dam, and I suppose is quite interesting.

Unfortunately you can’t go ON the dam without signing up for a tour, and we’d just missed one – time to head over the road to a little trailhead and head off to the Hanging Gardens, whatever they were.

Let me assure you, it was freaking hot. I’d decided to leave my 20kg of camera equipment at home, so was bounding through the rocky vista with ease (all right, I was sweating and puffing and cursing Senor Mojito if you must know).

Here I am looking very majestic.

It was quite a short walk to the hanging gardens. Oddly, they were plants hanging on the wall of a rocky outcrop. It was super cool and moist in there, and a refreshing change from the moisture sapping landscape.

You could see the river from the hanging gardens, and in a bold move we decided to hike off trail to the river to have lunch!

It didn’t take us too long to hike through the rocky landscape. You can see very distinctly all the layers in the rock…

…and the erosion leaves weird shapes to behold.

It was great to arrive, and take a seat by the cool river.

Kat freaked out when a wave from the wake of a boat washed over her legs, and made me move to higher ground. We had some lunch, and took in the sights.

Did I mention the heat already? The walk back was... hot, so we headed back to the dam visitor centre and signed up for a tour (and hung around in the air conditioning).

Typically, the elevators were being serviced, so we didn't get to go into the bowels of the dam and see the electricity generation, but we did get to walk on the top of the dam (accompanied by guide and eagle-eyed security dude).

To get there you had to go through this corridor with the WICKEDEST acoustics ever.

The dam itself was ok. One interesting thing of note is that there is a patch of grass at the bottom, instead of just dirt - allegedly because the first lady of the time suggested they plant flowers, and the dam operators settled for grass.

Random Image: Dinosaur Tracks. How cool is that.

That night we made jambalaya. Not as good as my first effort, I blame the American Bacon.

Page Day 3
We got up quite early and headed out to shoot Horseshoe Bend.

We waited around for AGES for the sun to climb higher. Should have waited more, but I was hungry for breakfast. A nature photographer I am not yet.

By the way, yes the above image is a composite, and yes it is a little orange. I haven't got it quite right yet. Go away.

The power steering pump was making ominous noises on the way back home, so I thought it was a good opportunity to change it out.

Let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, if you don't have the right tools (even though I thought I did) the job will take you longer than you imagine. To cut the long (and sweaty) story short, I had to jump on the bike (again) with my power steering pumps in hand to get a mechanic to remove the pulley from the old one - because the tool we bought BENT under the strain. Grr.

Thankfully it only cost $20, less than the tool I returned. Win.

I was pooped after all this, so we didn't go anywhere, cep't the supermarchet for another $15 bottle of Mojito. Oooh.

We spent the evening shooting the breeze with our neighbours Booker and Claire.

Hilariously, Kat got spastic, and on our return to the RV she had several very chunky spews. This is how she looked the next day.....

Man did I laugh. A lot. I'm still laughing to be honest. ROFL.

Page to Escalante
Aside from being bumpy as all hell, it was an uneventful journey. We arrived, checked out the visitor centre, and I queued the last remaining two Battlestar Galactica episodes. Yessss!!

Escalante – Dry Flat
There’s a whole bunch of shit around Escalante – within 100 miles there is Bryce Canyon, the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Capitol Reef, Red Canyon, Kodachome Basin, Zion National Park, and the list goes on. Sadly there is no way known to see all of this in three days.

Given we’d been too tight to pay $50 to go see Antelope Canyon [insert link] we decided to check out the slot canyons that are near Escalante.

About 50 miles down the most rutted dirt road you can imagine, we arrived. I thought the Jeep was going to shake apart, but…. it did not.

At Dry Flats there are several canyons, I have no idea which ones we went inside, but hey, have some pictures of them.

As you can see, they are quite narrow, with amazing shapes and colours. I don’t know whether this shape was made by man or nature.

The light and colours are great.

There are surprisingly heaps of lizards and spiders and such living on the canyon walls.

While not as cool as Antelope Canyon we still had fun.

We had to do a bit of rock climbing to get into the last canyon. But I think it was worth it.

It was stinking hot again, so we headed back to the Turd. On the way back I managed to misplace the cap from the power steering pump so fluid went everywhere. Waah. I couldn’t find the stinking thing, so we rang NAPA in a nearby town (60 miles away) and ordered some parts.

Given we were heading out there, we thought we’d stay closer to Bryce/Red Canyons and Kodachrome Basin, so we booked a night in a cheap motel….

Bryce Canyon
We arose early, and headed out in the Jeep. All went well, and we arrived at the parts store within the hour, and were at Bryce Canyon by 1030.

Bryce Canyon was full of fat people.

We hiked down what must be the most boring trail in the whole park, so returned to the top a bit disillusioned.

We checked into our hotel, watched some teev, and headed out for dinner. All together a bit of a bleh day.

Bryce Canyon Take 2
Despite having grand plans to get up at 0530 and shoot Bryce Canyon Amphitheatre in the dawn light, we slept in until 0700. Oooh late morning. We checked out, headed down, and I banged out a couple of panoramas.

I'd love to upload them, but... I can't.

I was a bit over it, so we headed out to Red Canyon…..

Red Canyon
Red Canyon was really cool. We walked around for a couple of hours admiring the weird shapes that reminded us things.

For instance…. two people standing back to back, and another facing away from them.

A weird formation that kind of looks like some kind of skull baby.

The head of a Viking. Or Zeus.

A dragon.

A dog sitting on a cliff.

Finally, a bird sitting on a hippo who is sitting on a whale.

The landscape is cool.

Kodachrome Basin
Moving along, we started back towards the Turd. On the way was the worlds busiest Subway, and the Kodachrome Basin. So named by the 1949 National Geographic expedition that photographed it.

Continuing the strange rock formations, we saw what looked like an elephant….

…and quite an effective anti-fatty device.

This rock formation strongly reminds me of the Buddha in contemplation.

Gosh darn the infernal sun.

Apparently this kind of formation occurs nowhere else in the world. Kat can explain what they are in the comments, I am too stupid.

I have a 360 degree panorama of Chimney Rock, but..... again can't upload it. ARGH!!

That is all, I am finally caught up. Tomorrow we head further north to Salt Lake City.

P.S. Last two episodes of BSG R0XX0RED!!