Just Another Day In Paradise...Or Several - Summer 2012 in Review

With the computer out of commission and my patience entirely too small to blog via iPhone, I hadn't realized how long it has been since I've written anything!

It was another interesting summer, as usual, with crazy things happening in the Park, in town and in general. But thankfully the priority to make sure there is time for fun has still been given it's proper space, in part due to the fact that I seem to have forgotten that I had not used a good majority of my vacation time, which resets for the year on the anniversary date of when I started working full time, which is the end of August. Thus, I ended up with many long weekends in July and August. In fact, I'm pretty sure I didn't work a full week from mid-July until Labor Day weekend, darn it!. I suggested that this had worked out very well and that I might just plan on using my vacation days this way next summer, but that idea was quickly shot down by everyone else in the office who have been answering my phone during my seemingly endless string of long weekends. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted!

Here's a quick photo summary so far, with a little commentary thrown in for good measure.......

It was ENTIRELY too hot last summer! While it definitely can get a little toasty in Gardiner and Mammoth during the summer, this picture can explain the difference this year as it was taken on June 23. On that same date last year, we were cheering because summer had finally shown up at all and the high was about 80......

 Sunset over central Yellowstone, near Gibbon Falls

 

Gibbon Falls sunset looking the other direction 

Bannack ghost town in SW Montana - it was the first territorial capitol of MT and has been preserved 

and restored as a State Park.

 

Ibex cabin in somewhat south central Montana - a great weekend with 4 people, 2 hyper dogs and a whole lot of board and lawn games, aka the "Ibex Olympics"

 

 

View towards Yankee Jim Canyon from Old Yellowstone Trail north of Gardiner, MT

 

Music in the Mountains

One thing that I always miss by living in such a small and out of the way place is live music. Sure, Bozeman has some and Billings has some, Missoula has a good bit etc etc, but those are 90 minutes on the short side and 5 hours on the long...each way.

However, what we lack in quantity we can definitely make up for at least a bit in quality of venues. Enter, Grand Targhee.

Grand Targhee is a small ski resort on the western slope of the Grand Tetons - little know but with ridiculous snow and scenery(over 800 inches this year, if I'm not mistaken....). In the summer they host concerts and music festivals such as Targhee Fest and the Targhee Bluegrass Festival. This year they also upped the line-up to a 3-day Widespread Panic show over July 4th weekend, which of course was a must-wander for me and a small group of 10-12 friends and the tent-mahal(hold your hat, I promise I'll explain...)

Any music weekend at Targhee is not complete without the camping, located anywhere from 100-500 yards from the music venue. In the past I have only midly experienced this, as I hadn't ever been able to do a full weekend down there before. Well, I learned this year, and learned big! The camping areas are basically large meadows and tree filled areas where you cruise in, get your little plastic bracelet that no one will ever check again and then make the mad, bumpy dash towards the best dry spot near shade you can find, all while the dazed and confused Targhee parking staff wave their arms around and try to at least keep lanes visible through the meadows(no offense to them, they did a great job....I just think it was a much bigger job than they expected and knew what to do with when it hit!). Once landed, you secure your area as best you can by circling the vehicles, staking out tents and picking the most tactical location for the all-wonderful shade tent. This was an especially important detail this year, as remember that earlier mention of 800 inches of snow this winter? Well, a good deal of it is still there, and where there is shade, there will be snow and mud because that great shade that keeps the sun off us also keeps it off the ground.....Behold, the tent-mahal(see? you didn't need to worry after all).

The tent-mahal(thank you Rebecca for the pic and amazing name, by the way), also referred to as the tunnel of love, was the great collaboration that came about with the realization that between the 10 of us camping together we had 4 shade tents that could all match up to each others sides relatively well. After 3.5 days of 80+ degrees in a meadow, I may never go festival camping without at least 4 of these wonderful creations ever again.

While camping is of course an integral part of the Targhee weekend, the music is still phenomenal and in an exceptional place. Most festivals are a collection of bands throughout the day, with folks wandering back and forth between camp and venue, seeing who they want to see and then hitting nap etc. With a show like this though, it's every night at 6pm like a normal concert, which lends to the fun mass exodus from camp, line to get in the gate, and then a huge, crazy and enthusiastic crowd to dance around with for the next 4 hours. This was no exception, and so exhilerating. In fine fashion, the entire weekend opened with thousands of people dancing and singing as they fittingling opened with "Aint Life Grand" and the fun continued all the way up to the 3rd to last song of Sunday night where we may have all gone a little insane singing about the "Surprise Valley". Yeah, they played another song and a good encore that night as well, but my rousing finish was with that one.

Now, one more day of this terrible three-day work week before it's the weekend again....now to rouse some energy to do anything.

More Weekend Wanderings!




Jefferson River Valley from the trail to the cavern entrance

I'm being bad and throwing out more wanderings instead of being more creative, but it was such a fun wandering this weekend that I can't resist!



The adventures this weekend took me and my friends Laney, Lisa and Chase to Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, near Three Forks, MT. In the many years, off and on, that I have lived in this area, it is one of those places that I say "Oh, I really want to go there sometime" every time I drive by the exit sign for it on I-90, but then promptly forget it exists until the next time I drive by the sign. Well, not anymore!

While located near an area passed through by Lewis and Clark, they did not actually discover the caverns, or have any idea they were there...Montana just really loves naming things after them. They were actually discovered by two hunters in the late 1800s who noticed a bare area on the hillside during a February hunt. Upon further exploration(aka, dropping rocks in the hole and not hearing them hit bottom) they decided to come back later when it might be a little safer than mid-February in Montana. It took 6 years, but one of them did return and begin to explore in 1898. Sometime later, a successful prospector took over and began offering tours, utilizing a man-made entrance since the original discovery hole was more overhead to the cavern and descended into a rather large pit within the cavern. To give his tours, he created a walkway throughout with 2000 wooden steps and a 90 foot spiral staircase that often swayed as much as 2 feet from side to side.  

Lisa, me and Laney at the cavern entrance

Eventually the railroad discovered that they actually owned the rights to the land and claimed it, only to turn it over to the federal government in 1908. It was designated a National Monument and then locked up so people could not get in. The prospector, Dan Morrison, deciding that he didn't want to play by those rules, cut the lock, replaced it with his own, and continued his tours. Morrison and the federal government play this back and forth game until Morrison's death in 1932.

Around that point, the newly formed(1929) Montana State Parks system came into play, as they were then 3 years old but still did not have any park sites. With the help of the Civilian Conservation Corp, the rickety spiral staircase and wooden steps(wood in a moist cave does not exactly equal a good pairing) were removed and replaced by asphalt, some areas widened for better access, such as the entrance, and a new section of the cavern was discovered and opened to the public. After the discovery of this new section, an exit tunnel was also created so that visitors no longer had to retrace their steps back to the top of the cavern to get out.





Stalactites on the cavern wall


There are several areas to the cave, both large and small, and you actually spiral down throughout the cavern as you decend with each of the large rooms 100-200 feet below each other. They have intriguing names such as the Cathedral room(named for it's shape), the Sample room(named because of the large quantities of "samples" that Dan Morrison encouraged his guests to break off and take home with them to show their friends) and the Poison room(named for the eerie, venomous colors).

Crystal Pool(it's back there, I promise!)



One mile above sea level



Another neat concept we learned about was the way the cave can change your perception. In the Poison room, our guide pointed out a tall, narrow feature that appeared to be about 20-25 feet away and maybe 2 feet tall, which was actually 62 feet away from us and 6 feet tall....I am still baffled that the little white "stick" she pointed out was actually almost a full foot taller than me! The other was the idea, so kindly labeled for us on the stairs, of being at the one mile above sea level point while underground. That's a fun way to mess with one's mind a little bit!



One of the great illusionary examples

  

Poison Room - 6 foot tall feature is the small white line in the upper left



Weekend Wanderings

A few weeks ago I discovered an iPhone app called Trover that kind of reminds me a "photo" Twitter. You sign in, post photos of your "discoveries"(anything cool or interesting that you'd like to share) and it posts in a running feed. You map and name the location, as well as provide a brief description of why the discovery is "cool", for each photo, which allows other users to see where you took the photo and what it is. This also allows you to seach Discoveries by what is nearby - either nearby to you, or to another discovery you found interesting. This little app has led me to a new goal of the summer(since I have failed miserably at many of my 2011 goals and challenges so far, lol!). Enter, the Weekend Wanderings of Summer 2011.

I have lived in this area off and on since 2002, and thought that I knew it pretty well and had done a good many things. Definitely not the case, as Trover has taught me in the past few weeks! So far, I have discovered enough new places to see and things to do that, combined with my other already set plans this summer, may definitely be enough to leave not a free weekend to be found!

These first photos are the beginnng of the Weekend Wanderings, though not to new places....



Grand Tetons behind (still frozen) Jackson Lake - Grand Teton National Park May 2011

The bottom of Colter Pass as a storm rolls in - Chief Joseph Highway, Wyoming - May 2011



Buffalo Bill's Historic Irma Hotel - Cody, Wyoming - May 2011



Pioneer School near the Wyoming-Montana border on Hwy 120 - This was a new discovery that I just saw a small sign for on the side of the highway! May 2011

The first of the new explorations, less than 2 hours from my house along a very scenic drive!
Natural Bridge Falls - Gallatin National Forest, Montana - June 2011

The weekend wandering to Natural Bridge falls also included the fun of a borrowed pup(a friend was out of town so pupsitting was also involved!) as wel as a fabulous dinner at the Grand Hotel in Big Timber, MT - was expecting to grab so bar grub on the way home and ended up with an AMAZING meal!!

Next weekend, Lewis and Clark Caverns :)