Current Location: Denver Airport

On friday morning, I left Idaho Falls headed west on US 20, which met up with US 93 in the town of Arco, ID. From there I drove west and south into Craters of the Moon National Monument. It was a very hot day, well over ninety degrees, almost too hot to be wandering around lava flows and formations. Craters of the Moon is the remains of a relatively recent (2000 year old) volcano eruption, with hundreds of acres of lava flow and cinder hills. It is actually a very interesting place, the rock is all dark black, with fragile little plants growing on top with little soil.



Craters of the moon is a very interesting place, unlike anything I have seen. In the middle of the park, there is a huge cinder hill, with a hiking trail. Which I climbed.



Because of the heat, lack of shade, the elevation and not being in any shape whatsoever, it was a pretty tough climb to the top, and I was definitely winded. However, it was worth it, as the views from the top were very cool. Close to the cinder mountain, there were a few large craters. Inside a few of the craters, there was still snow! The snow was able to exist in the desert, because the craters were so deep, the sun barely reaches the bottom of the crater, and the lava rock provides very good insulation.



A crater with snow

All in all, the park does make you feel like you're on the moon. There were only about 5 other people in the park with me, and there was hardly a sound. I was mostly surrounded by my thoughts as I wandered through the park and climbed the craters. Nifty. You can see the rest of the photos here.

From the craters, I continued west and south on US 20 / US 93, until it met up with US 26 again. I took 26 south to I-84, which I then took east and south into Utah, where it met up with I-15. I drove south on I-15 until I got to Salt Lake City (N 40 46.215', W 112 00.190', elev. 4239 ft.), where I stopped for the night. My first impression of Utah was that it is a weird state. Their alcohol laws are a bit different from most other states, partly because of the fact that 73% of the population are Latter Day Saints (Mormons). I stopped at a restaurant, and usually if I dine by myself, I like to sit at the bar. Well, that is hard to do in Utah. The "bar" I sat at was actually very thin, since there were no alcohol bottles, kegs, refrigerators, glasses or sinks behind the bar walls. There were 8 beer tap handles, but they were only for show, letting you know which beers were available. The beer taps were actually in the kitchen, and from what I understand, the maximum alcohol level for beer is 3%. Along the highways, there were many advertisements for things you'd probably only find in Utah; LDS magazines, billboards very much against divorce, and advertisements for ministries overseas. (I'm not sure what the requirements are, but I think most LDS young adults do missionary work outside of Utah). Utah is a weird state in that it is mostly desert and mountains, with a huge salt lake, with 10 times the salinity of the ocean. Seems like a very difficult place to live and farm.

I found myself thinking that Utah is almost like another country, its citizens, with different customs and different religions may as well be foreign. But I started to think about it some more, and I realized that the story of the Mormons is uniquely American. Not only do the Mormons have a place in American history and the founding of the west, but America was probably the only place in the world in the 1800s where you could found a new religion, survive many years of harsh religious persecution, go west seeking a promised paradise, and then actually build a paradise out of nothing, in the harsh desert and dead soil of the salt lake, just by the sheer will and determination of the followers. I just can't picture this happening in other countries. (It can't be denied that polygamy helped). I might get a little ridicule for this statement, but I find myself wanting to read the Book of Mormon, not so I can become a follower, but so I can get a better idea of the beliefs of these interesting, persevering people.

I woke up saturday morning, and drove south on I-15 until I reached US 6 in the town of Spanish Forks. I never did see the great Salt Lake. Whoops. I drove south and east on US 6 for about 2 hours until it met up with US 191, which I took south and east some more until I got to I-70. My good friend and former roommate and co-worker Keith was flying into Gunnison, Colorado for a week's vacation with his sister who lives near Gunnison, and his dad, who was also flying in, and I was going to meet up with them on saturday night. About 10 minutes before I would get to the town of Grand Junction, CO, where I would turn south to head to Gunnison, I got a call from Keith, telling me there were problems with his flight from New Jersey, and because of the delay, he would miss his connection flight to Gunnison and wouldn't get there until sunday. I suggested I could pick him up in Denver and he could skip his connecting flight and we could drive to Gunnison and have a traditional Jon and Keith adventure. He thought for a minute and decided this was definitely what he wanted to do, so I diverted my course, and continued east on I-70 until I got to Denver. When I got to Denver, about 8PM, it was very dark. I found that the airport is a good 15 miles from the city. The only way to reach it is from a single road off the interstate, where you travel 10 miles through empty fields of nothing, and very few exits off this one road. I heard somewhere that the Denver airport has more land than all of the city of Boston, and driving out to the airport, I could see why. All I could see were empty fields and airport lights. I'm not sure why the place is so big or even how they acquired all that land in the first place, since it looked like it maybe could be farm land. I parked at short term parking and entered the terminal building. The airport design seems pretty awful to me, especially for a modern airport. The security looked awful in the sense thatr it would be nightmarish for travellers to pass through, and everything seemed so disorganized. I also remember watching a television show on the history channel once that was discussing modern engineering disasters, and the Denver airport was one of them. From what I remember it was a full 6 years after construction that the airport actually opened full time; it took that long to work out all the bugs in the systems. Anyway, that is where I now sit, waiting for Keith to arrive.

Post script: I think we may have a guest columnist / photographer for the next entry. That is, if you can behave yourself, and if I can work out the contract details with the guest.

Current Location: Idaho Falls, ID, N 43 29.862', W 112 03.373', elev. 4753 ft.

On Wednesday, after my oil change, I left Bozeman and drove west on I-90 until I reached Livingston, MT, where I then headed south on US 89. Before I leave Montana, I just wanted to point out that virtually every little town and big city in Montana has its own casino, an odd site. This was also true in Washington. Usually the casinos were extremely small little shack buildings with probably a few slot machines inside, maybe horse racing. I never went in to investigate though.

Driving south, I soon reached the town of Gardiner, MT, and the gateway to Yellowstone National Park. It was quite literally a gateway, there was a huge arch commemorating the original park entrance, something that I have not seen at any other park.



Yellowstone was the first national park, not just in the United States, but the world. It was founded in 1872, before the surrounding territories (Montana, Wyoming and Idaho) even became states. The park, about the size of three Rhode Islands, is one of the largest, and lies almost entirely in Wyoming, but has small portions in Montana and Idaho.

Once inside the park, I quickly came upon a sign marking the 45th parallel, the 6th time I have crossed on this trip.



I do want to say though, not to stereotype, but I am finding European tourists to be very rude. One woman was in my way for the photo of the 45th parallel sign, and she actually just stood in the way, staring at me, while talking to a family member (they had already taken their photo of it about 3 minutes prior). She had no sense to get out of the way, after her family took their photos. I finally had to ask her to move, and she got all indignant. The rest of the road in was very cool and afforded many sights, so I took a few photos.



The first attraction in the park when traveling south is Mammoth Hot Springs, but I skipped this area for the time being and headed to the eastern end of the park, to the Tower Falls area. I got a few photos of the falls before the rain rolled in.



Shortly thereafter, the rain began to come down. Hard. I was actually pretty glad to see the rain, I hadn't seen any since Louisiana! At this point, I was heading back west to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and caught two rainbows in an area where the rain clouds had cleared up a bit. In the first photo below, one rainbow is difficult to see, but it is there, to the left of the main rainbow.



I got back to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and waited out the rain a bit before getting a campsite and setting up camp. It rained most of the night so I didn't sleep well, and when I packed up my tent in the morning, it was very wet and muddy. Ick. On the plus side, I did get up very early, probably the earliest so far on the trip, which gave me plenty of time to explore the rest of the park on thursday. I was up early enough to see some huge deer (or maybe elk?) just wandering around the parking lot, a whole herd of them. And these animals were huge, at their shoulder, they were taller than me.



The first area I explored was the Mammoth Hot Springs area, an area where hot spring water is just bubbling up out of the ground and creating lots and lots of salt and mineral deposits. It is pretty, and according to the park rangers, the formations have noticeable changes from day to day. One problem though, Yellowstone is a very active geological area (the whole plateau), and many of the spots have hydrogen sulfide gas pouring out of the ground. The smell is awful.

From there, it was south on US 89 down to a place in the park called Norris Geyser, and at Norris, they have a museum dedicated to the history of the park ranger, which was pretty interesting. I drove further south, and came across some wildlife (no bears though; I had my pic-a-nic basket all ready for Yogi). I came to an area and there were about 20 cars pulled over to the side of the road. Before even seeing what it was, I hopped out of the car with the camera, hoping it wasn't just some lousy deer. (I have seen enough deer on this trip, I probably won't be stopping for them anymore). Luckily for me, the people were gawking at a huge elk. Huge, a 12 pointer, it must have been over 8 feet tall.



While taking my photos, I was very lucky to see to my right a bison! In my opinion, even better than the elk, since bison only exist in the wild in western Wyoming.



Then, to everyone's surprise, the elk walked behind the bison, and I was able to get a shot of them both together.



Very cool. As I was walking away from the bison to head back to my car, I heard a shout and turned around to see a bunch of people running from the bison. Some asshole had gotten way to close, and the bison looked up and took a little charge at the guy, and almost gored him. I sort of wish the guy had been caught by the bison, since the very first thing you learn when entering the park (all parks actually) is to keep the wildlife wild. In Yellowstone, it is illegal to be more than 25 yards (75 feet!) from the animals, and 100 yards for a bear. This guy got way too close. Don't go near the animals jerkface!

From there, I headed south to Old Faithful. I had always assumed that Old Faithful (N 44 25.659', W 110 38.448', elev. 8351 ft) goes off at regular intervals, and you could simply find a schedule and be there at that time, but actually, Old Faithful's eruption can only be predicted after the previous eruption, because the height and volume of the geyser plume dictates when the next eruption will occur. The park rangers only "predict" the eruptions, they don't schedule them. I got there about an hour and a half prior to the next eruption, so I had some lunch and walked around a bit. I believe I read some where that there are about 17,000 geysers in the world, and over half, about 10,000 are in Yellowstone. About 20 minutes before the predicted time, I found my way over to the viewpoint. A boardwalk encircles the geyser, and crowds of people were gathered around, there must have been 8 to 10 thousand people, it felt like a sporting event. I was astounded. We waited and waited, watching the geyser. When not erupting, it is actually letting off a steady flow of steam and hydrogen sulfide gas. At precisely 3:44, the time the park rangers had predicted, the geyser went off, shooting steam and liquid water hundreds of feet into the air. The crowd cheered and clapped, and of course took photos and videos. It was a great time.



You can see the rest of my Yellowstone photos here. I continued on south from Old Faithful on US 89, exiting the park close to 5 PM, and very quickly entering Grand Teton National Park, about 10 miles south of Yellowstone. Grand Teton was very beautiful in its own right, and to me, was very reminiscent of Glacier National Park. There were huge mountains and huge lakes, all pristine and incredible. Unfortunately, it was still over cast, so I didn't get many clear photos, but I still took lots. You can view the photos of Grand Teton here.

I drove south from Grand Teton, through Jackson Hole, into Jackson, Wyoming, where I finally had some cell phone service, where I called a few people since I was out of contact for a few days. I got in touch with my friend Keith, who I will be meeting up with on saturday in Colorado. Form Jackson, I drove south and west on US 89 / US 26, until I reached Idaho, where it became just US 26. I took that road west into the town of Idaho Falls, where I stopped for the night. I just want to say, Montana and Wyoming are some of the most beautiful country I have yet seen (though still a little behind Oregon and Northern California).

Current Location: Bozeman, MT, N 45 40.633', W 111 00.699', elev. 4874 ft.

On monday morning, I woke up and drove north on US 93 into Missoula, MT, a distance of about 50 miles. In Missoula, I drove around and did a little shopping, and set out for Glacier National Park at about 12 noon. I was told that Glacier was about 3 hours from Missoula. And it probably would have been had I not run into road construction and then a horrific truck accident on the mountainous road. To make matters worse, I was behind a caravan of carnival vehicles, with rare opportunities to pass, so most of my drive was spent observing the different traveling carnival rides, and wondering if they had any freak / geek exhibits tucked into the crevices of their trucks.



Four days worth of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana insects

US 93 eventually met up with US 2, which I took east until I reached the park road, which is called Going to the Sun Road, because from many viewpoints you get spectacular views of the rising or setting sun. Upon entering the park at about 5 PM, I was presented once again with the map and guide, my favorite collectible, but I noticed it read Waterton-Glacier. Apparently, there is a Canadian national park, just north of Glacier (which reaches to the border), called Waterton Lakes, and together they form Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. As soon as I entered the park, I knew I was in for a good time, and the depression from the Seattle experience and the speeding ticket in the previous two days was melted away. Depression has been a rare occurrence in this trip, mostly because I am having a spectacular time in general, but I was a little depressed and missed home and people I know when I was in Washington and Idaho. Certainly on this trip, the cities are a bit more depressing, probably because they are more expensive and more difficult to get around, while the national parks are definitely a refuge, a place where I can get away and clear my head and do some good thinking. It would be impossible to be depressed even a little in a beautiful place such as Glacier.

Glacier is one of the larger parks, just over a million acres, which I believe works out to 1 Delaware. There are several glaciers in the park, as well as hundreds of lakes, and if you are traveling into the park from the west, the first lake you see, Lake McDonald, is the largest.



Driving along the Going to the Sun road was spectacular, and the mountain views were absolutely incredible. There were very frequent stops along the road where you could get out and admire the views, take some photos and just take in the pristine air and sky.





The road takes you up into the mountains, along several switchbacks and you really get some elevation within a short time. Up in the air, it is a little harder to breathe, further magnifying the "breathtaking" aspect of the park. Get it? I made a joke, hahaha. Near the top of one of the larger ridges along the incredible road, I came to a waterfall area with a few people stopped. It was there I noticed the people weren't looking at the waterfall, but at some mountain goats, which were very cool. When I first walked up to get some photos, I noticed some asshole was throwing rocks at the goats. I walked over to the guy and told him what an absolute asshole he was and he got all embarrassed in front of his friends and left with his tail between his legs. Fucking asshole. Who throws rocks at mountain goats? Anyway, I stopped and admired the goats for a good 25 minutes, getting lots of good pics.



Eventually the goats walked out of site, and I continued on the road to the very top of the continental divide, where the western part of the continent is being bumped by the eastern part of the continent, forming the Rocky Mountains. Here, at the highest point in the road, is the Logan Pass Visitor Center (N 48 41.731', W 113 43.028', elev. 8683 ft.). At Logan Pass, there are several trails you can hike. It was getting near dark, so I did venture off on one trail, planning to get a few good photos at the top of the world and then coming back to my car. The trail elevation was steep though, so I only went about half a mile (and an elevation of about 400 feet more than the visitor center) before deciding I couldn't go any higher. It was very cool though, and I got a lot of great photos up there.






Last photo is from the trail, half a mile and 400 feet in elevation from the visitor center

From there, I was on my way down the eastern side of the continental divide. It was getting dark, so I didn't really have too many more photo opportunities, though I did get a couple of the moon over the mountains.




You can view the rest of the photos here. It occurred to me on the way out of the park that I do envy smokers a little bit. The reason is, 20, 30 times a day, they get a 5 minute break, where they can relax and reflect and mellow out. Rarely have I taken much reflection time in my life, but I do get to have it in the national parks, even if its only for a few minutes while I enjoy a view and take a few photos. The rest of my life is spent racing around, and even on this trip, racing form one destination to the next, often driving late at night, early in the morning, just to get to that next destination. Regrettably, I rarely take the time to relax, except in the national parks.

On the eastern end of the park, I met up with US 89, which I took south to US 2 again, and US 2 took me east until I reached I-15 in Shelby, MT, where I crashed for the night. The first place I looked was a bit expensive and only had a smoking room, so I asked the pretty girl working at the desk if there was anything less expensive in town. She directed me to two other motels, both of which I found to be booked up. I went back to the original place, and the girl gave me a decent room for a lower price than she had originally quoted me. I stayed and flirted with her a little because she was pretty and had a tattoo which intrigued me, before I headed to bed.

Tuesday, I got up and headed South on I-15, until I reached Helena, MT, where I caught up with US 12 / US 287, which I took south until it intersected with I-90 which I took east to Bozeman, MT. Montana is a big state, and this drive took most of the day, so I stopped a little earlier than usual in Bozeman. I got a motel, and watched a bit of TV before getting dinner. On my way out the door, I got a fantastic idea about something I might like to pursue after my trip, as far as a job or an opportunity. I'm not going to reveal what it is, but lets just say I happened to be watching the Travel channel at the time. Since California, I have spent a lot of my driving time thinking about what I should do after the trip, and this is the first idea that really struck me as something that would be cool to do for a while, even if nothing comes of it.

Anyway, on wednesday (today), I got up early and took my car to Firestone in Bozeman, where my car is currently getting a tire rotation and oil change. Today I am headed to Yellowstone.

Current Location: Hamilton, MT, N 46 15.829', W 114 09.456', elev. 3560 ft.

On saturday, I woke up and drove to Seattle Center, the area containing the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project.

My first stop was the Experience Music Project, a not for profit music museum founded by Paul Allen of Microsoft. The first thing you notice about the building is it is very very ugly. It is supposed to be some kind of awesome architecture job, praised by snobby architecture jerks, but to me, it just looks like a giant ate a lot of scrap metal and left a blobby metallic dump on Seattle Center.




I paid $20 for the admission (though I could have opted to pay $27 for a joint admission to Allen's Science Fiction Museum next door - too nerdy even for me). I'm pretty sure these two museums are a way for Allen to show off his riches and his interests at the same time, though you'd think one of the richest people in the world would have better looking teeth. The Experience Music Project was a bit disappointing. There were some outstanding exhibits, particularly on Bob Dylan and Seattle son Jimi Hendrix.

I was a bit disappointed, however in the Northwest Passage exhibit, which supposedly chronicled the history of popular music in the Pacific Northwest. Walking through the exhibit, you get a nice history lesson of the region, dating back to the Blues and R&B days of the 40s and 50's. As you walk through the exhibit, you see large exhibit panels discussing larger area acts such as the Kingsmen from the 60's and their hit Louie Louie, Hendrix in the 60's and early 70's and Heart in the late 70's and early 80's. As I got closer to the 90's I expected to see several display cases discussing some of my favorite bands, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains, all who helped put Seattle back on the map musically in the early 90's. I figured since Heart had a huge display, then Nirvana and Pearl Jam would each have their own huge display, but this was not the case at all. The early 90's "grunge" scene was almost completely glossed over, and the history and music of all those great bands (not to mention contemporaries Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney, Screaming Trees, Candlebox etc.) was all scrunched into one single small display case. In fact, looking in the display case, you'd think a band like Mudhoney whom most people have never heard of was as important as Nirvana. Outrageous. This exhibit is the reason I came to this museum, to see some memorabilia, relive the memories of some of the happier moments of my adolescent years, and they completely dropped the ball. When people think Music and Seattle, what comes to mind? Not Heart. Even more disappointing was the next two display cases, devoted entirely to the bands that came after "grunge", or were considered the backlash to "grunge" like Presidents of the United States of America and Sleater-Kinney. Left completely out of the display cases was Seattle rap star Sir Mix-A-Lot. All in all, the Northwest Passage exhibit couldn't have been more disappointing, and up until that point, I had been fixing to give the EMP a favorable review. But NO NO NO NO, it is not worth the money or time. I would set the price at $8. Some good things were the interactive exhibits where you could even record an album the way musicians really do, one track and one instrument at a time. Near the end of the museum I came to an exhibit called the Guitar Gallery, which contained hundreds of historical guitars, acoustic, electric, bass, you name it. This cool exhibit almost salvaged the museum. Almost. Paul Allen sucks. One neat thing I noticed was a glimpse into the recording studio had several computers for tracking and mixing. It was neat to see that although the EMP is mostly a Microsoft venture, not all the computers were running Windows. Two had Unix and two had Macintosh.

My Seattle photos can be seen here. I didn't take many, because I was really bummed out by the EMP. In a city famous for its rain, there was none the whole time I was in Seattle. I don't know whether that was the season, or just good luck. From the EMP, I walked outside and decided to go to the Space Needle, it was about 3 PM. However, being a saturday in the summer, the line to go up was very long. I probably would have been waiting around until 5 PM to get to the top. At this point, I was a little depressed and just wanted to get the hell out of the state of Washington. I decided to leave before I even got to see the prices to go up in the needle. I took a picture and left. I went back to my car and drove to the bay, pretty much to say my goodbyes to the Pacific Ocean.

I was headed back east.

Having lived all my life on the east coast, I associate inland with west. Its very weird, but that applies on the west coast too, so I often find I need to correct myself, because sometimes I'll think to myself or say to someone on the phone that I'm headed west from Seattle or Los Angeles, and really mean, inland, east. I know of one other person who has run into this problem, but would love to hear if others have as well.

Anyway, I left Seattle heading east on I-90. I started to notice for the first time, trucks, caravans, and SUVS, loaded up with a year's worth of living equipment; the comforts of home. I was seeing kids going back to college. Mid-state I turned south onto I-82, which eventually took me through a lot of desert land into Oregon. I was unaware that Washington or Oregon had desert. In Oregon, I-82 met up with I-84, which I took west to the town of Baker City, OR (N 44 46.887', W 117 48.745', elev. 3448 ft.), near the Idaho border, where I stopped for the night. Later in the week, I would be meeting up with my friend Keith in Colorado, so my plan was to head south from Idaho into Utah and do the stuff in Utah, then Arizona, then Colorado, before heading back north and doing stuff in Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. However, I made these plans without really looking at my atlas, and when I finally did, I realized there were no effective paths back into western Wyoming, Idaho and Western Montana without going severely out of my way from Colorado. So I changed my plan a bit. Now I would travel through southern Idaho and into Montana, and then come south into Wyoming before heading to Colorado, and then do Utah and Arizona and eastern Wyoming afterwards. I pretty much lost a day because of this lack of foresight, because it would have been a lot faster to get to Montana had I continued heading east on I-90.

So I got up Sunday morning and headed east into Idaho, and lost an hour going into Mountain Time. Bummer. One of the first things I noticed in Idaho was that signs read Game Crossing, as opposed to Wildlife Crossing, which I had seen in other states. I headed south and west into Idaho, through Boise, with nothing much to report. Idaho is a huge state, and its size is deceptive, especially since it takes up only one page in my atlas because of its sparse population and relative density of roads. Most states, including a small one like Massachusetts, take up two pages. Wyoming, Utah and Alaska are the other huge are, one atlas page states. Idaho took a long time to cross. A long time. Just after Boise, I veered northwest onto Idaho 21. Don't bother looking, its not on the map. Because of its relative size on the atlas page, this looked like a promising road, as it would eventually take me into Missoula, Montana. I soon found out though, it was a mountain road, and had many twists and turns and a speed limit of 45 most of the way. Part way through this part of the trip, I was running low on gas, and since Idaho is so sparsely populated, I was concentrated on just finding gas quickly. I came across the town of Idaho City, and since I was so concentrated on finding the one backwater gas pump in town, I completely forgot to watch the speed limit. In town the speed limit dropped to 25, at least, that's what the officer told me. I was so concentrated on finding a gas station, I didn't even see him flashing behind me until I went to pull into the gas station. He told me he followed me all through town. He asked me if I knew why he pulled me over and I told him I had a pretty good idea it was for speeding. He said I was right, 49 in a 25. Ouch. I apparently glided right past him in my fog, so, I got hit with my second ticket on the trip, and first that I deserved.

I pumped my gas and headed the rest of the excruciating trip on Idaho 21. After Idaho City, the area did get quite scenic, as I was driving through the Sawtooth National Forest, and near sunset, I stopped to take a few photos, one of which I particularly like, since it contains all the colors of the rainbow.



Eventually, Idaho 21 ended and I took Idaho 75 north until it met with US 93 near the Montana border. I was getting really tired at this point, and came upon some motels, all of which had no vacancy, so I just kept driving north until I finally did find a motel with a vacancy, and with a very reasonable price, too, in Hamilton, MT. It was about midnight, and I went up to the room and just crashed for the night. Idaho had taken a lot out of me, but I finally beat it.