Snake River Trip
July 15, 2012
Dan and I are in Moscow, Idaho (pronounced moscoe). Don't ask me why I agreed to come on this trip.I am more than delirious at the moment because we went on a jet boat adventure today and the "full day trip" is in fact a full 10 hours which Dan failed to impress upon me. I guess it makes sense since the trip goes through Idaho, Washington, and Oregon and covers 200 miles of river. However, getting up at 5:45am and returning to the dock at 6pm was rough.
In that vein, check out these rocks! They are completely natural and really form these perfect squares.
We stopped for lunch (in Oregon) at a place with about 16 cabins you can rent out and stay in for your fun Oregon vacation.
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| Copper Creek Lodge, Oregon |
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| Lunch on the deck overlooking the Snake |
Our next stop was one of those museums that has old beds, old stoves, that sort of thing, that are all wildly small and you might think they were made for babies, but were in fact made for grown ups. Most importantly- they had a MUCH needed bathroom!
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| Plows |
Now that we're done with the details of the trip, I'll tell you the funny things that happen when you're on a boat for 10 hours with strangers.
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| Boat, rocks, water, you get the idea... |
Ok, first, let me introduce you to Smelly Old Guy. As you can imagine from being on a boat all day, no one smelled like roses. But Smelly Old Guy really stank. I mean really. Every time he would stand up (because apparently if you're old and smelly and the boat slows down, you HAVE to stand up to see if something interesting is going on in front of the boat), Dan and I would gag behind him and want to die. Early on in the trip when he was less smelly, he decided that laying his raincoat out on the back of his seat to dry it out would be a good idea. Which I suppose it was except that he was basically tucking Dan into bed with it and it proceeded to blow around in the wind in our faces for the rest of the day. At one point I got sick of it and rigged up a system to keep all the pieces in one place by pulling the sleeve and zipper part through the bungee part that cinches the bottom and cinching it up. Of course, he noticed my passive aggressive behavior later on and removed his raincoat but placed half of it in our seat and the other half in his. I guess half is somewhat of an improvement?
Next, let me introduce Captain Pat. Captain Pat is very nice and put up with A LOT on this trip. Lots of people running around, being late to leave, etc. However, when we needed him most, he really wouldn't come through. For example, we were stopped at a very hot location and everyone was playing in the water until way past the time we were supposed to leave. He also had to keep scolding people (student group people, keep reading...) to not drink the water or they would probably die. It seemed like WE were probably going to die from the heat and Captain Pat was in no hurry to get going. Dan started calling him Cowboy Jim because he couldn't remember his name. I didn't get a good picture of Captain Pat, but you can see his mustache in this picture of the rear view mirror and get an idea of his general physique.
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| Captain Pat and his mustache |
One of the best parts of the trip was the "student group" on the boat. You wouldn't know they were a student group per se, mostly because they seemed to be of ages 15-35 (not including the two 50 year old lady chaperones) and didn't speak one word of English. One of them had to be walking around the boat at all times. I'm sure you can't see their ridiculous hair (I'm sure they were from either Brazil or Spain) but you can get an idea of the boat and how there was NO need for them to be wandering around constantly. They also couldn't resist fighting, putting things in each others ears, and dumping orange juice on each other. Needless to say, the chaperones were not impressed and continued to treat them like children, even though, as I said, some appeared to be 35 (really- he was graying), by giving them baby wipes and mini cinnamon rolls and speaking loud English to them every time we were doing something remotely interesting, or not.
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| Jet boat with crazy "student group" |
I'm not sure exactly what happened, but at one point, the 35 year old seemed to be holding on to quite a few 20 dollar bills for no apparent reason. I wasn't even paying attention to them until all this money came flying back through the boat and all around. He was obviously frantic and people were trying to pick up all these $20s and give them back to him. He was SURE he had more $20s than that and started going to each and every one of the people in his student group demanding that they empty their pockets for him. Naturally, he discovered more $20s. Long story short, I have no idea who these people were, what on earth they were doing in Idaho, or why they were so fake, but fake they were.
Another personal favorite, I think of everyone on the trip, was on the way home. Captain Pat was really interested in making sure all of us could see this huge rock in the middle of the river that people had pulled their boats up to and were then jumping off. Naturally, when you're jumping off big rocks, you want an audience. The first few jumpers ranged from back flips to near belly flops and were all quite proud of themselves and making a big scene about their tricks. The best guy barely made it to the top and was wearing a life vest. He takes his big dive and only when he starts heading into the water do we realize he's pulled his pants down to moon everyone in sight. Very clever if you ask me.
The return trip, besides the mooning episode, was a straight 3-hour shot back to Clarkston (right next to Lewiston, I know, very creative). Since we were going downstream (I still don't understand how rivers flow North, but that's besides the point), Captain Pat told us that it would be a bumpier ride. He also explained that when it's bumpy, the boat hits waves and makes a belly-flopping smacking noise that also sounds like the metal boat has smashed straight into a rock. But, he didn't want us to be alarmed because if we DID smash straight into a rock, we would barely hear it and the boat would immediately proceed to sink. I for one, felt MUCH better after this description.
We made it back to Clarkston with relatively little excitement except for stopping to pick up another captain and his dog (understandably named Stimpy, like from Ren & Stimpy), who, we were informed, does not enjoy boats. He whimpered the entire way back to the dock.
After what felt like days, we were back in Clarkston and FAMISHED. We had a nice little Italian dinner at Tomato Brothers and headed back to Moscow with the help of our new friend, Garmin. :)
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| Hard to see, but this is a sculpture made entirely of canoes! |
Bear Spray
July 17, 2012
Bear Spray purchased. To quote Steven Colbert: "I believe all God's creatures have a soul... except bears, bears are Godless killing machines!"
University of Idaho
July 18, 2012
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| Just about exactly what I thought campus would looks like |
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| Sunset! |
Dan and I have been to the Sangria Grill twice now. Not for their sangria, which is mediocre, and not because there is no where else to go in this town, but because they have some of the best food ever. It's a mix of Peruvian cuisine and Northwest ingredients. The first night we both got some of the best salmon ever (brown sugar glaze with ginger and stone ground mustard, and the herb encrusted salmon mushroom bechamel). We decided to go back again tonight and got the "Asado Borracho", or drunk steak, and the . I also had to try the Peruvian Purple Lemonade with cinnamon, cloves, purple corn, pineapple and lime juice.
On the Road Again
July 19, 2012
Apparently, we're rather worried about starving on this trip.
It's just my luck that Dan would stumble upon "Pearl Jam Radio" within the first 5 minutes of us getting in the car. And not just regular old Eddie Vedder refusing to ever sing on key, but a whole station of seemingly only live concert versions with regular old Eddie Vedder refusing to ever sing on key AND the band deciding to have a "jam session" for hours on end. Great, only 7.5 hours to go!
I forgot to take a picture of Lake Coeur d'Alene where we stopped for lunch. Conveniently, I have stolen this from the internet. Apparently people who live there call it CDA because Coeur d'Alene is too long to say or something. It's a beautiful place. Mom, you would have LOVED the town- very quaint, but we had little time to spend there and had to get on the road again.
I know it's dark but we're in Livingston, MT, about an hour out of Yellowstone National Park. I think Montana may be our new favorite state. It's mountainous but you don't feel like you're driving through the mountains because you're going through all sorts of valleys and sprawling meadows. We agreed that both Missoula and Bozeman would be great places for a summer house. :)
We're off to the park bright and early tomorrow morning. The concierge said if we want to see bears and wolves to go in around dawn which is 5:30am here. So we'd need to leave around 4:30am, which means getting up before that. So we won't be getting up THAT bright and early.
Yellowstone National Park
July 20, 2012
Dan's still sleeping so I'm writing this out of the hotel bathroom. Loudest hotel EVER, but really I can't sleep because I'm so excited to go to Yellowstone!So, while I wait, I will be your Yellowstone tour guide!
Lewis and Clark didn't venture into the park because a Native American being interview by Clark said "There is frequently heard a loud noise like thunder, which makes the earth tremble, [Indians] state that they seldom go there because [their] children cannot sleep- and conceive it possessed of spirits, who were adverse that they should be near them." The guidebook says that, in fact, American Indians laugh at this and were not afraid, but that Lewis and Clark didn't even take a peek in the park because of it.
There were all sorts of tall tales from later explorers (some on the Lewis and Clark expedition who didn't have their share of the wilderness!) that society called "mad hallucinations" about the geysers and magical landscape of Yellowstone. One of the friends of the early explorers (Nathaniel P. Langford) rallied a distinguished group of local leaders and set off into the park to "sort fable from fact". Since they had a landscape artist and a photographer with them, their visual evidence was enough to convince Congress to set aside 2.1 million acres for Yellowstone National Park on March 1, 1872, making it the first national park in the world.
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| Nathaniel P. Langford (also stolen from Google ;) ), the park's first superintendent |
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| Landscape Artist, Thomas Moran |
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| Photographer, William Henry Jackson |
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| Photographer, William Henry Jackson |
Hayden valley (where bison, wolves, deer, elk, and bears are most likely to be roaming) is an old lake bed created when glaciers created a dam that flooded the valley.
Welcome to the entrance of the park. We're finally here!
After about 5 minutes in the park I was SURE I saw two buffalo roaming around. I insisted that Dan stop the car and we got out to hike around and look for them. Who knows what I saw, but they must have evaporated into thin air- a feat I think would be near impossible for a whole buffalo.
I was getting very discouraged after a while when we hadn't seen anything but deer. Then we rounded a corner and spotted a lone buffalo grazing in a wide open field. Yellowstone asks you to stay 100 yards away from all big wildlife, so we couldn't get any great pictures. I tried to take this one through our binoculars. :)
It didn't really work... Here's a better one.
Next we came up to a beautiful river and took a little walk on the bridge.
We continued on our quest to find buffalo and other animals. In one of the big valleys we found a HUGE herd of buffalo grazing. How cool is that?!
And here is the gorgeous Tower Falls we had to hike around a mountain to be able to see.
Here's a picture of me and Dan with Tower Falls in the background.
After a short stop at Tower Falls and refilling our water, we headed up to Mount Washburn. It looks like there was a fire years ago. A tree graveyard :(
And then back down the mountain to one of the coolest parts of the trip: the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone!
There are two falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Here's a picture of us next to the upper falls.
The lower falls are much more impressive. You can barely see the bottom of the falls from the hike out to Artist's Point.
Isn't he the cutest hiker? ;)
After a long drive, we finally made our way down to Old Faithful. Right on the dot, it erupted out of nowhere!
We walked around the sulfur pits and went to the Beehive Geyser which has a four foot base so the water spouting out of it is faster, louder, and shoots higher than Old Faithful.
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| A beautiful river that all the hot springs flow into. |
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| Mineral Pools |
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| Mineral Pools |
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| Mineral Pools |
Grand Teton National Park
July 21, 2012
Since we decided to head home a little early, we stopped on the way to take pictures of the Tetons. Here is a picture of them from the north looking over Jackson Lake.
Now for a 10.5 hour drive back to Boulder!
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