We left WY for CO to take care of some house related errands before closing on our new house in South Fork, CO this past Friday. It’s been a hectic week-end moving all our belongings from the RV into the house and cleaning, organizing, doing yard work and lots of laundry. The house came furnished so we can spend the weekend in the house, but we leave tomorrow (Monday) to head back east and grab furniture and things we’ve had in storage for the last five years. Leading up to this moment has been both exciting and bittersweet. It feels like our RV adventures are ending. But we hope once a Coronavirus vaccine is available to the masses, that we can take a few RV trips again, perhaps next summer. In the meantime, we love our new house and look forward to watching wildlife in the neighborhood- bears do come through as well as deer, elk, lots of rabbits, and chipmunks; also we were told by the previous owner we would see turkey in the back yard (sure enough, we saw four this morning). And we especially look forward to snow and the ski season. We are about 30 minutes from Wolf Creek Ski Area and plan to play in the snow a lot this winter, providing there’s a way for ski areas to stay open. I’m gonna wrap this up now because I have some windows to wash, some dishes to sort through (there are a lot of items one inherits with a furnished house that you have to find a new home for), and a shower to scrub. Stay safe, and have a great week!
Campers are out in force! We left CO after inspection on our new house because closing wasn’t for three weeks, so we went to Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone. We didn’t make reservations to camp in the parks, because we knew where to find dispersed camping near the parks. This would allow us to keep distant from other campers and to enjoy some areas not as populated as the national parks. But we planned excursions into both parks, by bicycle, foot and by car. What we discovered is that the number of people using dispersed campsites (sites that are free with limited services, usually in National forests or BLM land), has greatly increased this year. We talked to park rangers and learned that the park system and neighboring towns were seeing more tourists and first time campers than last year! This at a time when both parks didn’t hire back the number of staff as usual and didn’t expect things to be busy. But like us, many, many people eager to get out of their homes and to outrun Covid-19 are turning to the outdoors and camping. We were surprised how many people drove dozens of miles into the forests to perch their campers on bluffs, at the end of dirt roads in precarious places, or found shade along streams and rivers. We camped about six miles down the bumpy gravel part of Gros Ventre Rd outside Jackson - well known for wildlife sightings. From there for a week we kayaked in Atherton Lake, drove further into the forest in the car looking for wildlife, hiked and swam. Although there were a lot of campers fishing, ATVing, and driving the road, we still found hikes with no one else on the trails, or at most 1-2 other hiking parties; these trails were not in the parks, but in national forests. We biked in the Grand Teton Park and saw lots of bikers coming in as we were leaving...you had to start early to avoid crowded trails. In Yellowstone we drove in around 5:30-6am (the best time for wildlife spotting AND to beat the crowds), but got caught in late afternoon traffic leaving the park through the southern entrance. We wore our masks if we got out to watch wildlife and a crowd gathered, or in two cases we walked atop a hill 75 yards away from the crowd and sat down out-of-sight to watch wolves in the distance. This was delightful. The first day we watched a member of the Slough Creek pack on a ledge above a buffalo herd for about two hours. Friends from our bear viewing escapades in AK happened to be camping on the north side of the park and had been driving in each night, looking for wildlife. They had spotted bears and wolves on a buffalo carcass nearby and told us where to be on the look out. The day we got there, the carcass was picked clean but because Rodger and Sue Knox told us where to look, we enjoyed watching this black wolf and another dark wolf greet briefly, and mostly we watched the black wolf wander in and out of sage brush. Photographs were terrible from a detail perspective, but they show a black dot in the distance and remind me of the joy we felt that day. Another day we went to a well known area for wolves in Hayden Valley and walked up a hill. A man with his son were there and thought they saw a coyote or wolf in the distance. With our excellent star gazing binoculars, Terry spotted a different black wolf slowly moving away from where we stood. We sat there for over an hour watching the wolf meander towards the tree line. Twice, he trotted towards a flock of geese, making them take flight. As we sat on the hill watching his movements, Rocket stayed in the car. The sun got hot by late afternoon, but in the earlier hours of the day Rocket was fine with all the windows down. During or after lunch each day, we took him into a creek or river to play fetch and cool off. Twice on our Yellowstone visits, we connected with friends. The first day, our friends the Knox’s met us at Slough Creek in time to get a glimpse of the black wolf surveying the buffalo. We ate lunch at a social distance and then caravanned to other nearby parts of the park in search of bears and other wildlife. We saw pronghorn, courting buffalo, hawks and ravens, an Osprey family on the nest, and two black bears (separate spots) but they were distant and not photographable. It was great to see Rodger & Sue, and to retrieve a large golf umbrella we left leaning against a tree in British Columbia last summer bear viewing! Sue and Rodger live in GA but brought the umbrella with them on the off chance we’d find them looking for bears halfway across the country! The other friends we enjoyed Yellowstone with are Cindy and Russ Shaw. We became fast friends this trip at a dispersed campsite (one of our favorites) just outside the southern entrance of Yellowstone. I’ve written about Grassy Lake sites before because this is the third time over the last five years, we’ve stayed there. These unique sites are in seven areas with a varying number of free sites in each. They lie in the John D Rockefeller Parkway which connects the road from Grand Teton National Park with Yellowstone. Most of the seven dispersed site areas have room for only one camper, but the first site has room for four, and the second has room for two. Every time we’ve stayed at site #2 which has room for two campers. This year there were so many campers looking for sites that most of the areas had more than the sites allow (on several nights we had 3 in our area meant for only 2). These areas have vault toilets, bear proof food bins and trash cans, and they are maintained by park rangers. Campers are limited to a fourteen day stay. They are superb sites along the Snake River. The Shaw’s arrived the same day we did, and we loaned them our inter tubes to float down the river. Every day we each did that in late afternoon to cool off, and they were so grateful they invited us for snacks and a bonfire each night. (Snacks in the time of Covid-19 meant each couple had our own bowls of nuts and chips and dip, poured out without touching the food). Russ and Cindy we’re fortunate enough on one float down the river to spot a mother otter and her pups frolicking in the beach. We told them of our love for bear viewing and wildlife spotting and of our time watching wolves in Yellowstone so one day, they tagged along in their car and we hung out together in the park. We looked for hours in several places for wolves and arrived just after sunrise, but we didn’t see any wolves. We did see elk, marmots, an otter, buffalo, lots of hawks, and even enjoyed watching a deer cross the creek right towards where we were having our lunch in our lawn chairs - away from all the crowds of tourists at roadside picnic tables. Another thing we did with the Shaws was to hike to the hot springs not far from our campsite. There are two named springs - Blueberry and Polecat Creek - and they offer varying temperatures. There was another family when we arrived, but they soon left and we settled in 6’apart. The Blueberry spring has a pool down by the river and one about 50’ above which has a view of the Tetons. We’ve been in it when the Tetons were snow capped, but it’s also nice to bathe when the yellow wildflowers and green fields abound. The water was really, really hot - maybe 108° on this visit, but we had a lovely time chatting and soaking. The Shaws had seen a bull moose, and a cow and her moose calf all together nearby the spring one day we weren’t with them. We scanned the fields and didn’t see the moose, but it’s a lovely spot to see moose. Rodger and Sue also stayed here a few weeks before us, and they too spotted moose. We were fortunate to see several in the Tetons, none in Yellowstone. We left WY for CO to take care of some house related errands before closing on our new house in South Fork, CO this past Friday. It’s been a hectic week-end moving all our belongings from the RV into the house and cleaning, organizing, doing yard work and lots of laundry. The house came furnished so we can spend the weekend in the house, but we leave tomorrow (Monday) to head back east and grab furniture and things we’ve had in storage for the last five years. Leading up to this moment has been both exciting and bittersweet. It feels like our RV adventures are ending. But we hope once a Coronavirus vaccine is available to the masses, that we can take a few RV trips again, perhaps next summer. In the meantime, we love our new house and look forward to watching wildlife in the neighborhood- bears do come through as well as deer, elk, lots of rabbits, and chipmunks; also we were told by the previous owner we would see turkey in the back yard (sure enough, we saw four this morning). And we especially look forward to snow and the ski season. We are about 30 minutes from Wolf Creek Ski Area and plan to play in the snow a lot this winter, providing there’s a way for ski areas to stay open. I’m gonna wrap this up now because I have some windows to wash, some dishes to sort through (there are a lot of items one inherits with a furnished house that you have to find a new home for), and a shower to scrub. Stay safe, and have a great week!
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AuthorFormer documentary film producer, wife and mother of one...I'm taking time off to see the US with my husband Terry. Here's where I'll write about our adventures RVing until the money runs out! Archives
August 2021
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