Into the Sunset

Leaving the South, we stopped for one last Southern meal of pulled pork, collard greens, sweet potatoes and fried okra at the Loveless Café outside Nashville, a soul food destination that attracts all the expected country music stars, along with less likely diners like Beverly Sills, Sharon Stone and Martha Stewart.
Arkansas and Oklahoma seemed to go on forever, but we finally crossed into New Mexico and pulled into the campground outside Santa Fe in early evening, celebrating by making a couple of big, icy martinis. The cobalt sky turned to star-studded indigo and we heard the distant yip of a coyote.
Santa Fe has always been a special place for us, possessing an aura both simple and sophisticated. It's a land of religion and ritual, barren landscape and wildly colorful décor. We love its searing chiles, art-filled lifestyle and crisp evenings scented with pinon smoke. It feels like another country, with its artists and curanderas, penitentes and poseurs. We always seem to meet the most interesting people and have fascinating conversations.
The region’s spirituality runs deep in the tiny village of Chimayo, where pilgrims have trekked for nearly two centuries to visit the santuario, reported site of Lourdes-like miracles. I made my way into the tiny church under the watchful gaze of the elderly caretaker, careful to keep my camera zipped inside my bag. Ducking through the low opening to the sanctuary, I slowly walked the perimeter, once again finding the experience extraordinarily moving. A wall of crutches bore testimony to owners now presumably walking. Hundreds of color photos formed a mosaic of faces young and old, but without text, it was impossible to know whether they still lived. The opposite wall was dedicated to police officers and military personnel who’d lost their lives in the line of duty. Over time, the large number of visitors and confined space had apparently limited miracle-seekers to one small photo.
But when we first visited 20 years ago, scraps of paper bearing heartbreaking stories in several languages covered the adobe walls. Handwritten notes seeking divine intervention kept me mesmerized for over an hour until, faint from the heat of so many candles in the small space, I ducked under an even lower opening into a tiny room. There, a circular hole in the floor exposed the sacred dirt of reputed curative powers. We’ve had some in our house for years. I figure, it can’t hurt.
* * *
It was yet another country when we pulled into Chinle, Arizona, a Navajo reservation bordering the spectacular Canyon de Chelly. The gritty treeless town with deeply rutted roads had the usual array of fast-food joints, small businesses and gas stations, with the addition of free-range animals. Dozens of look-alike dogs, none of them recognizable breeds, prowled the streets. Two cows ambled down the road past the Best Western motel and a pack of horses browsed in the weeds near the Shell station.
We camped under golden cottonwood trees in a free campground maintained by the Park Service, among the only other palefaces we encountered. We hired a Navajo guide and, along with a visitor from Georgia, spent half a day in the canyon, bouncing through deep sand, splashing through washes and driving under red sandstone overhangs that rose hundreds of feet above us.
Cottonwoods glowed in the November sun that turned the face of the rock turquoise from one angle, jet- black from another. Horses wandered freely, replaced as farm workers by machinery and left to wander, browsing the leaves of willow and Russian olive at the edge of the wash. A coyote bounded across the trail as we approached.
Much like the Anasazi before them, Navajo still return to the canyon in the summer to grow corn, beans, squash and fruit trees on ancestral lands. A few remain year-round, tending crops and sheep through spring floods and biting winter freezes.
We saw the ruins of Anasazi cliff dwellings and petroglyphs dating back nearly 2,000 years, along with more recent rock drawings created by the Navajo of the mid-nineteenth century.
One such set of drawings depicted the arrival of the Spanish on horseback in the 1700s, drawn to the canyon in search of gold. Two circles representing suns indicate the amount of time it took to kill all of the canyon dwellers the explorers encountered. Centuries of bloodshed and slavery ensued, and the remaining Navajo were driven from the valley by Kit Carson in the mid-1800s. The population of the sacred place would never be the same.
That afternoon we explored Canyon de Chelly from its south rim, marveling at formations like Spider Rock, legendary home to Spider Woman, who taught the Navajo to weave. Later we met a code-talker, still proud of the role his fellow Navajo played in “saving Americans from the Japs” in WWII.
Mist obscured the road and frost had turned the high grass to silver when we left that world early the next morning to return to ours. Next, a stop in Sedona, and in a few days we’ll be home, the journey over.
For the final photo album: Click on first photo to view one at a time.
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast10SW?authkey=Gv1sRgCJy1692Nl56J2wE&feat=directlink

We, the People

Locals could not recall the D.C. Metro ever being so crowded on a Saturday. Riders overwhelmed the ticket gates and employees finally opened them to anyone waving a ticket. The crowd surged forward, carrying us in its wake. Spirits were high and nobody pushed as we shoehorned our way onto the train. There was a woman with turquoise hair and another sporting red devil’s horns. A guy in a gorilla suit shared a car with another in boxing gloves, mask and cape, all of them ready for Halloween.
But most were like us, dressed normally and chatting with strangers, most decades younger, but many with gray hair. The escalator at the L’Enfant Plaza station was turned off due to the crush of passengers, so we climbed to the top and a sea of humanity on the sunny Capitol Mall.
It was the Rally to Restore Sanity, a tongue-in-cheek gathering of citizens weary of political fear-mongering and hyperbole, media sensationalism and political invective -- the creation of satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. And we were lucky enough to be there!
Of all the wonderful moments on our trip – and there have been many – this was the most unexpected and exciting. We made our way to the center of the street and found a spot behind media trucks where Terry and I could get occasional glimpses of the Jumbotron screen not much bigger than a postage stamp in the distance. Sometimes it’s nice to be tall; our friend Karen never caught a glimpse of the celebrities. Truth be known, it was all about being there among so many people from across the U.S., signs in hand, kids in strollers, dogs on leash, oldsters sitting in chairs where they only saw knees and derrieres. Surely no one really believed the gathering would change things; perhaps some held out hope.
We heard Stewart’s arrival, heard and saw Colbert stepping from his capsule onto the stage. We heard someone with a wonderful voice sing the national anthem. We heard Yusuf Islam, the former Cat Stevens, sing. But the speaker cut in and out and was woefully inadequate for the size of the crowd. For us, the best part was the camaraderie and the crazy signs and, hoping to avoid the crush of departure, we left before Sheryl Crowe and Ozzy Osbourne. We’d been part of what some estimated to be a quarter-million kindred spirits.
* * *
We toured the Capitol several days later, a visit arranged by our local Congressmen Mike Thompson. Joining a half-dozen other Californians, we walked the long underground tunnels linking the House building and the Capitol, climbing up marble stairs worn uneven by the tread of two centuries of public servants. There were throngs touring the buildings and other than a visiting delegation from China, we seemed to be the only tourists in business dress. When we went into an amphitheater to watch a film, a young blonde from Davis in frayed jeans who’d complained earlier at having to leave her backpack in the Congressman’s office, put her sneaker-clad feet on the back of the seat in front of her.
The rotunda was awe-inspiring, the dome inducing the same crick in the neck as the Sistine Chapel. We’d heard much about the rivalry between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson while touring Monticello, so chuckled when our guide pointed out a detail of an enormous painting of the Declaration of Independence signers, which depicted Jefferson’s right boot planted firmly on the foot of a scowling Adams.
We saw the life-size statues depicting people chosen by each state to represent its history; California’s were Junipero Serra and … Ronald Reagan. We sat in the somewhat cramped seats in the gallery of the House chambers, empty as congressmen were off on a pre-election visit to constituents.
Then we replenished our energy before going to gawk at the White House with Obama burgers (bacon, onion marmalade, Roquefort and horseradish mayo) at Good Stuff Eatery, a nearby burger joint both the president and first lady have visited.
We’d been staying with Karen in her Alexandria condo with its tangerine and saffron-colored walls, mementos of travel from Paris to Marrakech and Shih Tzu tag-team Gromit and Wallace. Our few days there were, of course, not enough.
* * *
Now we’re returning to Victoria, where our Virginia stay began, on the farm of our California friends Brenda and Ed. Happy’s been put out to pasture for nearly a week between the big hickory tree and the charming 1800s-era farmhouse. We’ve had a lovely stay here as well, touring Jefferson’s beautiful home at Monticello, which reflected both his intellectual curiosity (a 16,000 volume library he later sold to the government) and exquisite taste (first-growth Bordeaux purchased only in bottle so the wine couldn’t be adulterated). We explored Monticello’s expansive garden that included such oddities as yard-long Guinea beans, and even tasted some local wine at nearby wineries.
But we’re into November and it’s time to head west.
Pictures, some of them funny signs, at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEastVADC?authkey=Gv1sRgCOfl_YisxqrpiwE&feat=directlink

Another Time, Another Place

Leaving Maine, we hit the turnpike and quickly passed through a patchwork quilt of states – New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania – steeped in history. Each little town in Pennsylvania seemed to have at least one historical marker commemorating a visit by George Washington, a battle or other momentous event. We couldn’t help but be struck by just how young the West is, when towns in this part of the country date back to the early 1700s.
In Massachusetts, we spent a morning at Old Sturbridge Village, a living re-enactment of life in the 1830s, when the industrialized age had begun and New Englanders no longer had to fabricate necessities, instead purchasing factory-made items like cookware and tools.
Wood smoke wafted through the village, and the morning stillness was broken only by the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves and the clucking of chickens as we entered old houses and outbuildings to watch demonstrations of spinning, baking and forging. A young man used a pole to reach apples at the top of the 100-year-old trees in a sun-dappled orchard, where they were collected by an ox-drawn cart and hauled to the cider press.
We even received some impromptu lessons in livestock. Chatting with the affable driver of a horse-drawn coach, I noticed the team looked nearly identical to the horses pulling visitors in wagons through Acadia Park. "Are they Belgians?” I asked. “Yes,” he beamed, “the best horses for this kind of work.” Everyone knows Clydesdales from the commercials, he went on to say, adding that they’re not the brightest steeds in the barn.“They’re only good for plowing and pulling beer wagons. They don’t have the intelligence, heart and stamina of Belgians.”
It was he, it turned out, who had sold the horses to the Maine operator. As he launched into a story of pulling a circus wagon in Milwaukee, putting Vicks Vapor Rub in the horses’ nostrils so they wouldn’t bolt at the scent of lions and tigers, it was clear he could talk horses all day, so we wished him well and moved on.
Later, watching an ox walk round and round the cider press grinding apples, we learned that it was bovines who’d been the real “workhorses” of the time. Horses were a luxury, costing the farmer more in feed and care. Cows were kept for breeding and milk, but male calves usually ended up on the dinner table, the volunteer told us. But if the farmer needed a new team, the steers were neutered and trained virtually from birth until they could work and respond to voice commands.
“This guy knows about 20 words,” bragged his young handler, pulling back on the beast’s fearsome-looking horns to capture his best camera angle.
Lancaster, PA is the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and it was there we headed next. Arriving on a late Sunday afternoon, we saw families dressed in Sunday best, walking or riding in buggies from church service. We learned that the gray wagons belonged to Amish and the black to Mennonites, although we couldn’t tell the adherents of each sect by their dress. Many children and several women used adult-size scooters for transport, pushing along with one foot. The Amish don’t ride bicycles, apparently considering them among the modern conveniences they eschew.
The next day we toured the countryside, passing through towns like Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse, both settled in the early 1700s. Residents spoke German among themselves, and English with an incongruous Irish-sounding lilt to visitors, all of whom are considered “English.” With sunny smiles and sweet dispositions, the Amish strike visitors as supremely content with their lives, despite the hoards of curious tourists who constantly sneak photos.
It was wash day, and laundry fluttered from lines like Tibetan prayer flags, the Amish ingeniously using utility poles for laundry lines, although not for electricity. We bought shoo-fly pie and homemade root beer and stopped at another farm for beautiful organic brown eggs, $1.25 a dozen on the honor system. We felt slightly uncomfortable following the sign’s directions and opening the door to the house, where we found the eggs in a cooler, but a calico cat seemed to be the only one home. We put our money in the box and headed out, finding the simple exchange oddly gratifying.
Writing this tonight without electricity atop Loft Mountain in Shenandoah National Park, where swirling fog obscures all but the nearest trees, the sense of being in a different time as well as place persists.
Next, a meet-up with friends and visit to the nation’s Capitol.
For photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast8NewEngland?authkey=Gv1sRgCIquvvG9sriv1AE&feat=directlink

The Maine Course

I suppose I could grow tired of lobster. It’s possible I could grow blasé over the brilliant display of fall color, the picture postcard towns with charming clapboard houses and downtowns both vibrant and historic, the gorgeous organic produce that outshines anything I’ve managed to grow in California. Maybe after a while I’d take for granted the sense of community in the small towns, the outdoor activities like free sailing and rowing for locals and the cultural opportunities that seem so plentiful. But I don’t think so.
Maine is wonderful. The people we’ve encountered are extraordinarily friendly. The air is clean, the scenery is beautiful and every town qualifies for “Tree City USA.” The coast goes on forever and real estate is affordable.
At this point the invariable response is: “but, the WINTERS!” Well, if you’re lucky enough to be retired you can always leave. Or you can stock up on winter apparel at the L.L. Bean outlet, make sure the house is well winterized and watch the ponds turn into ice rinks. Just muddle through it. Our friend Lisa, who lived in Hawaii and California much of her life, does.
We spent a weekend at her late-1800s house in Belfast, actually two houses joined together with a hip-roofed shed incorporating rough-hewn beams. It’s a buttercup yellow work in progress, a do-it-yourself project that’s turning out beautifully. She played local tour guide, driving us on scenic backroads, taking us to a rocky beach where we watched dogs Fritz and Moose frolic while we hunted sea glass and picked wild apples. And of course we went to the local lobster pound, where her friend Biff joined us for an alfresco feast on Penobscot Bay. It was a great weekend and renewal of a friendship going back nearly 35 years.
We began our Maine sojourn in a campground near Bar Harbor, where two visiting cruise ships brought over 5,000 passengers to town. Grand water-view homes give a sense of the beauty that drew the original vacationers to the area a century ago, while large inns dominate much of the waterfront view today.
But the rest of Mount Desert Island is lovely. We walked the carriage roads and the path rimming Jordan Pond in Acadia Park, enjoying a lunch of seafood chowder, popovers and a glass of local pear wine. We bought and cooked lobsters from a pound we’d visited five years ago, using our camp stove outdoors and a pot loaned by the proprietor, no deposit required.
One night we bought the $29.95 cooked dinner for two from the lobster man across the road from our campground: two lobsters, two peekytoe crabs, two ears of corn and a stick of butter – and free delivery – for the price of two St. Helena burgers. Another night it was sweet dayboat scallops right from the bay. It’s easy to be locavores in Maine.
We took the mail boat from Northeast Harbor to Cranberry Island, sharing the ride with locals like Carl Brooks, whose family has owned land on the island for 250 years. A chatty Ted Kennedy lookalike, Carl told us what it was like to live on the 39-resident island, showing us the little shed on the dock where UPS deliveries are made, along with the post office, a former fish cooler. “We never had a zip code and it drove Homeland Security crazy after 9/11,” he said. “We had to put names on the roads.”
We walked the island’s main road and followed a path through a boggy forest to a beach, where we added stray lobster floats and other flotsam to a driftwood totem. The land was donated for public use and the path built by volunteers, said Phil, a volunteer who opened the island’s history museum for us.
Heading back to the dock, we passed Carl’s Victorian house and he waved. “I should have offered you a ride to the far end of the island,’ he said, pointing to his golf cart. We hopped on, and he gave us the royal tour, including a bumpy ride up a dirt road to an exclusive club frequented by Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, where a gun-toting local once chased away a snooping journalist from the Wall Street Journal.
A little café/general store, subsidized by a wealthy summer resident, supplies basic needs for residents at remarkably fair prices, even in the summer when the population swells by tenfold. But everything else, from furniture to firewood, arrives by boat. We shared the ride back with a group of construction workers who drank beer on the stern deck, while the boat’s captain passed out dog biscuits to traveling canines up front. When we stopped at the next island, the boat picked up a young woman with two couches on the dock, the construction workers cheerfully helping to load the furniture onboard.
The rest of our stay was a visual feast of foggy lighthouses and salty harbors, crimson-flecked forests and pumpkin-head scarecrows celebrating fall’s bounty. We ate more lobster and haddock than I could ever imagine and discovered whoopie pies. We went through our first Nor’easter and saw a rare blue lobster. We kept extending our stay by “just one more day.” Finally, it was time to move on.
For photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast7Maine?authkey=Gv1sRgCN-ymcer9o-BkQE&feat=directlink.

Northern Exposure

Then, we were in France. The autumn foliage and abundance of water didn’t change, but the stop signs all said ARRET and the shopkeepers “bonjour.” We spent a drizzly day in Quebec, stretching out a three-course lunch of confit du canard and a bottle of Beaujolais to enjoy the mirrored Parisian ambiance of the tony restaurant and avoid going back out into the chill rain. The next day we took the ferry from Levis to the city, sharing the ride with some of the 60,000 Quebecois – couples, kids and dogs – all outfitted in blue “Nordiques” T-shirts off to a Sunday afternoon rally. The hockey-crazed Quebecois lost their team to Colorado in 1995 and think it’s time they had a team of their own again.
We walked the cobbled streets of la Ville Basse, ogled enormous cruise ships in town for fall foliage tours, had lunch in an outdoor café and bought local foie gras, cheese and maple syrup at the public market on the water. And we discovered the guilty Quebec pleasure of poutine: crisp French fries topped with cheese curds and brown gravy, better than it sounds.
We even checked out RVs at a dealership near the campground. “Ah, you speak French,” smiled the salesman, who was also an innkeeper. “Most of the Americans visiting here speak French – or try to. They’re travelers. Not the Canadians from Toronto and Ontario. Not a word, not even ‘bonjour.’”
New Brunswick was all about the Bay of Fundy, whose remarkable tides left fishing boats and beaches high and dry in the afternoon and awash the next morning. We hiked bluffside trails with tumbling streams and frequent waterfalls and walked beaches where the tides had receded 300 feet, exposing rock-anchored strands of kelp six feet long which would be underwater the next day.
Rocky spits reached like bony fingers into inlets strewn with islands, some large enough for a house and dock. The bay was never far from sight, serving as a backdrop to white clapboard houses with mountains of firewood in the front yard and lines of drying laundry in the back. Apple trees heavy with fruit grew along the roads, some planted by wildlife, others by humans. We picked fruit from 150-year-old trees at abandoned homesteads, making cinnamon-scented applesauce for the road. Travel in the north during October is truly an apple fest.
Five time zones and worlds away from California, Nova Scotia evokes the Scotland for which it’s named, all craggy bluffs and weather-worn villages and winds off the sea that knock the feet out from under you. Fishing boats bob at anchor in rocky harbors both picturesque and treacherous.
On a windswept bluff outside Peggy’s Cove, we stopped at the memorial to Swissair flight 111, which plunged into the frigid waters offshore in 1998, killing 229 onboard. The simple granite boulder remembering all those lives lost somewhere out there in that indigo sea was incredibly moving.
The weather grew colder and blustery on Cape Breton island, with moments of bright sunshine punctuating pelting rain to form rainbows that disappeared into deep offshore waters. Here was the full power of the north Atlantic, with biting winds and roiling whitecaps, especially at the end of the dirt road on the northern tip of the island, where chowder houses were already shuttered for the winter and we truly felt at the end of the earth. Thickly wooded inland valleys untouched by humans are home to bears and moose, and we walked a trail in Cape Breton Highlands park through an enchanted forest of towering sugar maples, some of them 350 years old.
The island has a distinctly split personality between Scots and French. Some settlements celebrate their heritage with Celtic song and dance and consonant-heavy names like Whycocomagh, while other French-speaking towns mark the homeland of the Acadians, the French settlers originally deported during British rule in the 1700s. Some of the outcasts made their way back to settle these inhospitable shores and make a living from sea and land, while others left for Louisiana, to become the forebears of today’s Cajuns.
Back at iconic Peggy’s Cove, we talked with Roger, a gentle soul with snow-white hair who’d been born in the tiny village and lived his life among its 50 inhabitants. “I fished for herring and mackerel for 40 years,” he said, “but the catch is down to a fraction of what it used to be.” He glanced out the window of his nautical artifacts shop as a huge tour bus roared by. “I used to go up on that hill as a boy and it was covered in wildflowers. A photographer from New York once took pictures of my sister and I picking wildflowers.” He indicated a granite hill topped with a large inn and parking lot filled with cars and busses, even on a rainy October day. The architecture was tasteful enough, but it had forever changed the view toward the lighthouse.
We talked like three old codgers of a changing world, changing climate and changing populations – down for fish and way up for humans -- while waves lapped against the pilings of the old fishing shack. Finally, we made our way to leave before the next downpour. “Give me a hug,” said Roger. And we did.
. . . . .
For pictures, follow this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast6Canada?authkey=Gv1sRgCLH2uqfc5dP9-gE&feat=directlink

More than Manhattan

The property had been in the family for 96 years, the farmer told us as he opened the door to the chicken coop. Lured up the driveway by a sign promising fresh eggs, we inhaled the fresh country air and quietude. Across the road, dairy cattle grazed in a rolling meadow bracketed by a forest in autumn-dappled hues of gold and orange. Awakened from their midday slumber, the hens muttered softly and skittered to the far side of the coop as he filled a carton with eggs in shades of toffee and the blue-green of Aracaunas.
“I lived in Wyoming for a while, ” he said. “Everyone knew I was from New York and when I told them Cheyenne was too much of a city for me, they looked at me like I was nuts.”
Say “New York” to most of us, and we think Big Apple. But sitting here in a maple forest in the Adirondacks, with rain pattering on the roof and fat-cheeked chipmunks scampering on the ground, we’ve learned there’s much more to the Empire State than Manhattan.
We spent two days in Allegany State Park, getting lost on the backroads of the rolling Amish country. Spotting road apples in both lanes, we knew we were in the right place, but it took a while before the first horse-drawn buggy came down the road at a lively clip. Visitors are told repeatedly not to photograph the Amish, which made for a day of furtive shutter-clicking from behind the bug-splattered windshield of the moving truck.
We passed picturesque farms with chickens in the yard, pigs and cows in the field and laundry snapping in the breeze on a clothesline – always white bedding and blue or black clothing. Men, particularly young bachelors, drove open wagons, while long-skirted women and children rode in covered buggies. We’d stop at vegetable stands or farms selling products and young women would flee indoors at our approach. I later deduced it was probably because we’d caught them outdoors with uncovered heads, as they always returned to greet us with smiles and bonnets on their heads.
We bought fresh-baked bread, cucumbers for a dime and more eggs, so large we couldn’t shut the carton, for 75 cents a dozen. The Amish we met were smiling and friendly and had the most gorgeous rosy-cheek complexions I’d ever seen – even the men, whose beards covered only the perimeter of their faces. Their lives appeared to be what much of the contemporary world seeks – healthy and peaceful and centered on family and community. I thought I wouldn’t mind trying the Amish life for a while. I could give up technology and tend the garden instead, but I’m not sure about the bonnet and long skirts.
The Finger Lakes were equally beautiful. We stayed in Watkins Glen State Park near a tumbling stream and hiked the dramatic gorge carved by eons of water. We visited charming towns, tasted local wine and bought cherry tomatoes for 25 cents a pint from the roadside stands nearly every home gardener sets up on the road.
We picked Concord grapes for snacks, and visited a U-Pick orchard on opening day of harvest, walking the rows with families pulling wagons heaped with kids and apples. We left with modest-sized bags of crisp-tart Northern Spies and juicy Jonagolds for 55 cents a pound, ignoring the old-timers' adage of “Spies for pies,” and eating them fresh off the tree instead.
Here was a place one could eat organic for little money indeed. Gardens were lush, trees bent heavy with fruit and fields colorful with purple autumn asters and goldenrod. Streams cut through hardwood forests at every turn, making us think ruefully of our water restrictions back home.
As we reached the higher elevations of the Adirondacks, conifers replaced some of the colorful deciduous trees and lakes dotted the landscape – there are 2,500 lakes in the protected Adirondacks forest and each little town has at least one. Here are the state’s highest peaks, rounded by glaciers and covered with balsam-scented forests in a wilderness area three times the size of Yellowstone.
Next time I meet someone from New York, I'll ask "which part?"
Photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast5NY?authkey=Gv1sRgCMT_-f3a6f7yEg&feat=directlink

Beer, Brats and the Street Where I Lived

Big-shouldered Chicago was a charmer, with drop-dead architecture, great food and people who walked up to you every time you stopped to look at a street sign to ask if you needed help. We fantasized living in one of the stunning condos on the Chicago River – maybe a converted warehouse loft – as we drifted along on an architectural history cruise.
We stayed with friend and former St. Helenan Gabby, enjoying catching up, some birthday bubbly and a dinner that showed she learned a thing or two during the years she spent with Julia Child Lincoln (fluffy, white) and Lily (short-hair, black) provided feline yin and yang. We walked the Loop, delighting in blue skies and balmy temperatures, rode the El and took pictures in Millennium Park to the lively mariachi strains of a free Latin music festival underway. The El into the city was itself a delight, not underground and claustrophobic like the Paris Metro, but running on elevated tracks, offering glimpses of weathered brick buildings, tree-lined streets and the occasional voyeuristic view into someone’s window.
And we ate: standing in line at 10:30 a.m. for Hot Doug’s, the “Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium.” After 45 minutes in line we were well-versed in the menu of specialty brats and eagerly ordered duck fat fries and the Sauternes duck and foie gras dog topped with chunks of foie gras, truffle aioli, foie gras mousse and fleur de sel. Be still my heart! Was ever a breakfast better? No wonder Doug’s a cult favorite, with Tony Bourdain among its fans. We ate outside where the throngs of eager customers couldn’t hear our moans of delight.
Hot tropical colors and shaken-at-the-table margaritas set the stage for brunch at the Rick Bayless paean to Mexico, Frontera Grill, where I had a tasty torta de elote, combining sweet yellow corn and the exotic black corn fungus. We hadn’t begun to see the Windy City, but it was time to move on and we left to retrace our path back to Milwaukee under gray skies and light rain.
With Happy ensconced at the Wisconsin state fairground not far from downtown, we headed into the city. Steep church spires pierced the moisture-heavy skies between modern high-rises and buildings seemingly plucked from the banks of the Rhine. So this was my hometown? The half-timbered architecture evoked der Vaterland, but I missed the hoppy smell of brewing beer, gone along with many of Milwaukee’s breweries.
But the residents still drink beer the way Napa Valley drinks wine. “Cheers”style neighborhood taverns offer two-for-one specials during Packers’ games, free beer on ladies’ night and Friday fish fries. We even spotted a rolling pedal-powered tavern in the historic Third Ward, its occupants hoisting steins of suds as they negotiated the streets, The darkened, beery interior of Klinger’s East triggered childhood memories of family visits to similar spots like the Elbow Room, where my Uncle Ralph served up cocktails to my parents and Cokes with cherries to my sister and me.
Living in the suburbs as a child, I remembered little of the city, so a drive along the lakefront and its solid European style mansions was a revelation. Nowhere else had we seen such a concentration of breathtaking houses mile after mile after mile, their backs to the vast Great Lake, their fronts often buffered from view by a forest of maples and beech.
Away from the lakefront we visited the Pabst mansion, the last of Milwaukee’s grand 19th-century mansions, the rest leveled over the years to build student housing for nearby Marquette University.
We hit the foodie high spots of town, wriggling into the tight wooden ‘50s era booths at Jake’s for the best corned beef since Katz’s in New York. Kopp’s Kustard (two flavors daily, served from the machine’s it’s made in) was silky and rich beyond Italy’s best gelato. Karl Ratzch’s sauerbraten, Black Forest veal and spaetzle did not disappoint, especially when accompanied by the Teutonic décor and a bottle of crisp Mosel. And we made a pilgrimage to Usinger’s, the mecca for encased meat-eaters, to stock up on their smoked pork chops, brats and other legendary products.
But the thrill of our stay was a drive to Wauwatosa, to visit 2471 N. 91st Street, the house where I lived from kindergarten through junior year in high school. I braced myself for the inevitable changes – a run-down neighborhood of barren sidewalks, the big street trees we knew having been planted long before Dutch elm disease came to town.
The streets were still tree-lined, although now mostly with maples, and the houses well-kept. I recognized our old house without seeing the address and we parked across the street. It looked better than ever! A huge addition in back was hidden from the street, making the house and the entire neighborhood, appear little changed. There, at the top left, was the window to the bedroom where, captive in my bunk bed with a miserable case of chicken pox, I read my horse books and sketched rearing stallions. There was the driveway where, one balmy summer evening, my friend Bobbie waited on her bike while I struggled to finish the awful stuffed bell pepper my mother had made for dinner.
It was here I collected marbles and trading cards, learned to ride a bike and roller skate, dodged snowballs from that mean kid from down the street as I walked home from school and smoked cigarettes with girlfriends in the upstairs bathroom.
I rang the bell and a pretty young blond woman appeared at the door. “I grew up in this house,” I began. “We lived here from 1951 to 1960 ands this is the first time I’ve been back.” Knowing it was very nervy, I asked if there was any chance we could look inside. She hesitated, muttering something about people who do this to “come inside and rob you.”
“I know it’s a huge imposition…” I continued. “We were the first family to live here.” She opened the door. The front hallway, staircase and living room with fireplace were the same, the carpeting we’d had replaced with hardwood floors. The dining room led not to a screened porch, but to an expansive new addition which included a large modern kitchen. But the milk chute was still there by the back door, now nailed shut. And the knotty pine paneled basement rec room was little changed, now as then a place for kids to play, with a grownup bar for adults.
Her young sons would be going to the same school down the street my sister and I attended, said Katie. The street had block parties and was full of young families. In fact, she continued, 91st was considered the best street in town. They loved the house and wanted to stay there forever.
Sometimes you can go home again.
Here are photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast4ChicagoMilwaukee?authkey=Gv1sRgCLXM-uDdup2oZA&feat=directlink

Midwest Memories

“Have you ate yet?” The voice called out from a small group gathered at a nearby campfire as I made my way toward the river in the gathering dusk. Before long we had joined Bruce, the source of the inquiry and a cook at the local Mexican restaurant, and the camping couple from South Carolina he was visiting for drinks and bacon-topped pork loin with carrots and potatoes, all wrapped in foil packets and roasted in the campfire. Visiting daughter, son-in-law and three kids drove up, and soon it was a party at the city campground on the St. Louis River in Cloquet, MN.
It was the beginning of our stay in the Midwest, whose residents proved to be consistently chipper, chatty and cheery. Where else would the gas station guy run ahead so he could open the door for you? Everyone seemed so genuinely nice.
North Dakota’s rain carried through to Minnesota, but we liked what we saw of Bemidji’s pretty residential neighborhoods. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was deep forest and gorgeous beaches that could double for the California coast, delicious Cornish pasties and signs that advertised “Bear Bait” down the road. (OK, it’s not Yellowstone, but still…)
We moved into Wisconsin and bought succulent smoked whitefish from the Halvorsen dock in Cornucopia, “Wisconsin’s northernmost village,” on the shores of Lake Michigan. The country was quintessential Wisconsin rural, with picturesque Scandinavian red barns, rolling fields of corn and grazing Holstein dairy cattle.
I eagerly awaited our entry into Door County, the thumb of Wisconsin’s mitten, and a place I remembered lovingly from family vacations a half-century ago. I braced myself for changes that weren’t shocking as I had anticipated. The road still passed through miles of orchards, the limestone soils of the peninsula producing notable cherries and apples. The little towns had condos now and modern inns, but the rustic cabins still remained, along with the skinny white church steeples and bobbing boats in the harbors. Ephraim’s drive-in and 100-year –old Wilson’s ice cream counter were still in operation. And every mailbox and business bore a Scandinavian name. My peeps! Perhaps my love of this place as a child had been genetic. I loved it even more now.
We camped in a sunny spot near the water surrounded by birches and maples in the very campground we’d camped in when I was a child. Little of the park looked familiar, but I remembered singular places, like the Eagle Tower built in the 1930s, which I again climbed to get a bird’s eye view of the islands in the bay and the town of Ephraim in the distance.
We took our bikes on the ferry across Death’s Door to Washington Island and peddled the length of the island, stopping for a local wheat beer at the oldest continually operating tavern in Wisconsin. We passed sun-dappled forests of maple and beech and sweetly pungent dairy farms under cobalt skies, visiting the beach of smooth limestone pebbles that sits on the same Niagara escarpment as the famed New York falls.
But the greatest shock of recognition was a stop at Gills Rock at the tip of the peninsula, where the waters of Green Bay meet Lake Michigan. I remembered coming here with my mother and buying smoked fish wrapped in butcher paper, eating the oily sardine-size chubs while sitting on the rocks and tossing the skins to the hovering gulls.
We stopped at the docks and talked to two men processing fish in a large building. I told them of my memory, of the little outhouse-size shack I remembered. “It’s still there, although it hasn’t been used in years,” they told me. I found the little shack of my memories, but the fish we bought at their store up the road was whitefish. The chubs of my childhood have become so rare they’re no longer fished.
Later in the day, we purchased fresh-off-the-tree Honeycrisp apples from grower Seaquist, who mixed comical tales of tourists in the orchard and histories of apple varieties in a delightful singsong Swedish accent.
Wisconsinites tend toward plump. Traditional fish boils are big in this neck of the woods, cheese curds are popular snacks and restaurants advertise specials like “old-fashioned pot roast.” But an ironic trend has appeared in the restaurants of America’s Dairyland – margarine. Virtually illegal when I was a kid, it was popping up everywhere in restaurants. And when we had Swedish pancakes with lingonberries at Al Johnson’s sod-topped restaurant with goats on the roof, the butter dish held not only margarine, but foil-wrapped pats of butter from Minnesota. Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast3MNMIWI?authkey=Gv1sRgCOSojOKV1aXjCg&feat=directlink

Across the Northern Plains

We lost the mountains near Great Falls, entering the rolling hills of prairie land, passing through tiny towns like Big Sandy and Box Elder. Harvested wheat fields sported blond stubble and drying bundles of hay looked like giant cake jelly rolls in the fields.
This was land rich in western history whose glory days had passed. Markers recalled Indian battles, settler expeditions and ambitious river settlements. Now we passed abandoned barns and white frame houses, once rather grand. White metal crosses marked all-too-frequent sites of highway fatalities. We shuddered as we passed several groupings – four in a row, then a pyramid of seven. Tiny towns advertised businesses like Bear Paw Savings & Loan and Montana Lil’s Saloon, but the biggest urban enterprises were the grain elevators and hoppers, the skyscrapers of the prairie.
We paused for a soak in Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs, a timeworn complex just off the highway. A fat cat held court on the counter of the adjoining gift shop, which sold minnows, snacks and T-shirts proclaiming the area the “Mosquito Capital of Montana.” The enclosed hot springs were like most we’ve seen, steamy and smelling of sulfur, with a general air of decrepitude. The indoor Olympic-sized pool was spooky and dark, but we enjoyed a soak in the extra-hot soaking pool, under the baleful gaze of a bison painted on the wall.
The horizon stretches forever on Montana’s northern plains, where once-prosperous towns parallel the old Great Northern Railway tracks and bear European names like Malta, Glasgow and Havre, none of them resembling their distant namesakes.
Living time capsules, these towns combined ‘50s era neon signs and ornate 19th century stonework. We checked out the old drug store soda fountain in the railroad town of Stanley, and although it was way too early, enjoyed a “whirl-a-whip” custom-blended ice cream for breakfast.
We hit Highway 2 the first evening, the next morning setting out under leaden skies on one of America’s least-traveled highways. Steady winds blew down from nearby Canada; a gentle reminder that winter temperatures in these parts can hit 80 degrees below.
The mineral-rich grasses on these treeless plains once fed a vast sea of buffalo; now a token wild herd is fenced on the Nez Perce reservation. Outlaws like Butch Cassidy knew these plains and Chief Joseph surrendered to the duplicitous U.S. army here, effectively marking the end of the Great Plains Indian wars (and the Indians’ way of life).
The biggest crop in western North Dakota seems to be oil, and we camped for the night on a lake, the rosy glow of oil rig burnoff flames lighting the horizon of the nighttime sky. Heading east the next morning, we shared the road with a steady stream of trucks and equipment bearing names like Halliburton. A few gentle hills and clumps of forest appeared mid-state, along with fields of corn and sunflowers, their seed-heavy heads bending toward the earth.
Suddenly blinding rain and flashes of lightening drove us inside to a late lunch at a roadside café, where we sat in a vinyl booth at a Formica-topped table next to a trio of old-timers playing a friendly game of dice while they enjoyed cookies with mugs of coffee. Most customers, men and women, wore baseball caps. Terry had the walleye special for $8.95 and I had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans for $6.50. The food was delicious. A stone marker outside indicated the geographic center of the U.S. We’re a long way from California.
Tonight we’re in a gorgeous state campground on the Turtle River near the Minnesota border, the only visitors in a forest of towering hardwood trees.
Photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast2MTND?authkey=Gv1sRgCILphp6xtcXQHw&feat=directlink

Happy Heads East - Stop 1: Jackson Hole

We moved into Gros Ventre campsite #2 just after lunch, covering the 1046 miles from St. Helena in a day and a half. Scattered groups of pronghorn along the way were the only wildlife we saw; our much-loved bison were AWOL. We hoped they’d show up the next day or so in time to treat our St. Helena friends to a welcoming bison jam.
The owl fledglings had left the nest cavity in the cottonwood tree, spring budding wild rose bushes now bore the ripening red hips of fall and the campground was filled with large rigs running noisy generators. No wonder wildlife was scarce. We wouldn’t visit again over Labor Day weekend.
But the mountains remain immutable and awe-inspiring, the air clear as spring water and the clouds spectacular. We began our first two mornings with long bike rides, breathing hard as we made our way up the long hill from Moose to Windy Point and eventually Jenny Lake. An elk bull with a nervous harem threatened to charge us along this route last year, but we were too early for the rut this time and the meadows were empty except for late-blooming wildflowers of purple and saffron.
Friends Daphne and Chuck arrived with a shaker of icy martinis and excellent Napa Valley wines. We made campfire chicken and dumplings in Terry’s Dutch oven with tomato salad and farmers market corn on the cob, ending the evening at a ranger talk on wolves, where we compared the feel of coyote fur with that of a wolf.
Morning dawned with a pair of moose in the meadow. One of the bulls seemed to spot a small willow just off Happy’s stern and made his way steadily through the sage toward his intended breakfast until suddenly he was just feet away, looming above us. We spooked, he spooked, and while we ran for the door, he bounded across the road just as Daphne and Chuck drove up.
We didn’t get our bison jam, but had a close encounter with a herd enroute to a cookout breakfast on the Snake River where we whiled away the morning watching mergansers and kayakers make their way swiftly downriver as the sun ducked in and out of the clouds.
More campsite martinis, an excellent Penang curry in town and lots of laughs ended our brief rendezvous before we went home to head our separate ways the next morning; our friends off to Idaho and Terry and I north through Yellowstone.
After a morning walk to discover a beaver lodge near the campground, we headed north through Yellowstone, where wildlife did not disappoint. There were elk in the woods and elk lounging on the grounds at Mammoth Hot Springs; there were bison galore, including a meandering herd in the Hayden Valley which held up traffic for the better part of a mile, just because they could. We’re spending the night in Mammoth, one of our favorite spots in the park. After hot showers at the hotel and Wilcoxson’s graham cracker ice cream, we drifted off to sleep while a family of coyotes held a spirited discussion on a nearby hill.
Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/HappyHeadsEast1?authkey=Gv1sRgCJzWjNz0roOJ-QE&feat=directlink

Summer on the horizon

Our last day in America's oldest park began with a hike to Trout Lake, where the resident otters put in a brief appearance, and ended with a couple of black bears – one in the sage and one in a meadow. Yellowstone was generous with bear sightings this year.
We returned to Grand Teton and checked into one of our favorite view campsites at Gros Ventre, visiting the resident baby great horned owls, now huge fledglings out of the nest and flexing their wings. A new moose calf has been born in the campground and an elderly bison has moved in to spend his last days.
We’ve had two long bike rides on Jackson Hole’s wonderful series of paved bike paths, riding past herds of elk and nesting osprey. The nightly ranger programs have resumed at the campground’s amphitheater. Last night’s talk was on ungulates – animals with hooves – illustrated not with Powerpoint slides, but with hides, antlers and skulls.
Even though I earned my junior ranger badge a couple years ago (no upward age limit, thank you) I always gather some new factoids from these presentations. Who knew that moose can dive 20 feet to find underwater vegetation or that elks pass along their particular antler configuration to their offspring?
The sun has been intense, the meadows are beginning to bloom with larkspur and balsam root and it’s hard to believe we woke up to snow a few weeks ago. Returning from a ranger walk this afternoon, Terry picked a bunch of dandelion greens for dinner out on Antelope Flats while I took wildflower pictures. The short Teton summer is nearly here and it’s time to head for home. Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TetonFinaleSpring2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCJXa05Dg3MDZZg&feat=directlink

Creatures great and small

The mood lightened and the sun came out during the week as we witnessed the birth side of nature’s equation rather than the death. Puffy cumulus clouds floated in a cerulean sky, reflected in temporary ponds that were gone the next day. We remained in our scenic campsite at Mammoth Hot Springs, rather than move into Pebble Creek, the campground that served as last year’s wolf watching base. We visited to find it was half-gone, flooded and filled with deadfall trees. We visited with Ray, the camp host, who still planned to open on June 11 – and did -- although some of the sites have disappeared.
Also gone are the Druid wolves, the pack that introduced so many Yellowstone visitors to wolf-watching. Disease, death by rival wolves and shooting ended the legendary reign of the pack that inspired both film and book. Their survivors are scattered and unaccounted for and watching wolves in Yellowstone is not as easy as it once was. At their peak some seven years ago Yellowstone wolves were estimated at 170 in number. There are fewer than 100 today.
We were fortunate to witness a wolf pair – one black, one gray – chase a grizzly that had evidently strayed too close to their den. As the bear wandered off, the wolves rubbed noses in greeting, viewable even at our distance of well over a mile away. Leaving the valley we spotted a coyote just off the road, so intent on hunting she ignored us. Another day brought the sighting of an entire coyote family with four playful pups.
In a Lamar Valley meadow we saw an hour-old pronghorn calf tear through the sage after its mother, already able to run faster than most humans. The warm afternoon prompted a play date for a herd of young bison mothers, who butted heads, galloped in circles and chased each other back and forth across the highway a half-dozen times in a game of buffalo tag, their calves galloping close behind.
We saw a badger den with three youngsters raising comically-striped faces to the sun and wrestling briefly before disappearing back down their den. Another day brought a close view of an adult badger, a strange-looking creature that reminded us of an armadillo with lots of fur. He trotted back and forth between two excavations, throwing earth in the air as he dug energetically.
Watching for wolves, we saw another badger trot by with one its young in its mouth, moving to a new den. Once the coast was clear of their predator, four young Uinta ground squirrels emerged from a hole and surrounded their mother, standing erect as meerkats.
Driving into Mammoth village, we were stopped by rangers who held up traffic to allow an elk and new calf, born two hours earlier outside their office, to cross the road. Unlike the new pronghorn, the elk calf struggled mightily to follow its mother, testing wobbly legs gingerly.
“Regarde!” said a French woman to her husband. “Peut-etre deux mois?”
“Non,” I told her, “Deux heures. Il ne peut pas marcher bien.” “Not two months -- two hours. He can barely walk.”
But the prize sighting of the week was the one we’d heard about all the way down in Grand Teton park: a grizzly sow with four cubs, a number rarely seen. The sow browsed for food far below us with cubs in tow, the fourth cub noticeably smaller than the others. The small cub bounded along, always bringing up the rear as the group moved through the brush. An hour and a half after we first began watching the bears, we moved to another viewing spot up the hill in time to see the mother appear at the edge of a lake, rolling on her back to allow the little ones to feed. The scene of domestic bliss was a lovely contrast to all the predation we’d been seeing, although the grizzly mother was undoubtedly killing other animals’ offspring to feed her own. The sow stood up and allowed the runt to climb on her back for a ride, a maternal gesture we’re told she often employs to allow the littlest griz to keep up with the rest of the family.
One evening we visited the spot where we’d seen a black bear last spring followed by a hefty cinnamon male looking for romance. Apparently he found it. We looked up the wooded hill and saw a black sow with two frolicking cubs: one was black and the other cinnamon brown.

Bears in the woods

In just two days, the landscape changed. Warming days and near-constant rain dissolved thick snowbanks like cotton candy. Dramatic ice flows on Yellowstone Lake broke up, moved down river and disappeared. Rivers and creeks swelled to overflow banks, charged by muddy rapids, forming lakes where once there were meadows. Rare bursts of brilliant sunshine prompted the bison to take a break from their constant wandering and browsing and lie down in a meadow to soak up the sun, the calves’ legs stretched out as far as they could go. The weather didn’t keep us from looking for wildlife.
Bears are the top prize for most visitors from around the world, many of whom expect to see bears each day. But sightings of predators – wolves, bears and even coyotes – involve luck and being in the right place at the right time. We often arrive on the scene just seconds too late, and consider each sighting a wondrous miracle, given the size of the park and the fact that we’re “hunting” from the road. Mostly, they're far beyond the range of my point-and-shoot camera.
Passing the meadow where we’d seen the grizzly sow and cub, we noticed three cars parked in the pullout, one of them a ranger’s. There will always be vehicles in the road’s wide spots, but when you see a ranger’s car, you stop, knowing it’s something important. We did. In the light rain that grew heavier by the moment, we scanned the empty meadow and edge of the forest but saw nothing. Then we noted an elk at the far edge of the clearing. Its behavior was atypical.
Not once did the elk lower its head to browse and meander through the spring grass. Instead, it appeared rooted to the spot, looking toward the forest, sensing danger. We spotted the grizzly and cub sheltered from the rain behind a fallen tree, napping in the forest. The sow bear had killed the elk’s calf and was sleeping off the meal.
Returning from grazing, the elk was unaware of her calf’s fate, but smelled the grizzly and dared not approach the calf where she’d left it camouflaged in the grass. She took several steps toward the forest, then retreated.
“The bear will eat everything,” said the ranger. “Crack the bones, eat the marrow…”
The elk paced nervously, swiveling her ears to catch any sound.
Cold and wet, we left after an hour, but the elk maintained her vigil, looking toward the forest in the pelting rain.
. . .

“Chicken of the woods is what I call elk,” said a naturalist at the lake the following day. “They supply food for so many other animals.” We learned that fewer than half of the new spring calves will survive, and many adult males, weakened from the autumn rut, either die in the winter or are killed by predators in the spring. Grizzlies are the most successful predators of elk calves.
Two days later, the grizzly sow and cub were again in the meadow, where the adult bear jumped on the ground to determine the presence of tunnels, then dug to capture voles and ground squirrels, chewing them slowly and with apparent relish.
“Ooooh,” squealed the children among the roadside spectators. “Isn’t she the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?”
We picked up camp and moved to Mammoth at the north entrance of the park. Our first drive to Lamar Valley brought us the sighting of a black bear some distance from the road, then a later sighting of our ranger friend John, managing the biggest bear jam we've ever seen at the bridge. After greetings and a hug, we joined the crowd on the span to see a cinnamon black bear, sleeping off the capture and ingestion of yet another hapless elk calf. This time we could see the remains.
Spring may be the cruelest season in Yellowstone.
Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/2Yellowstonespring2010blog?authkey=Gv1sRgCPG1q67Fo-a3mwE&feat=directlink

Back to Yellowstone

The jam of vehicles and battery of long lenses told us that this was a wildlife sighting of significance – not one of the frequent bison crossings that stop traffic on the park’s roads. We were enroute to a campground with Happy in tow our first day in Yellowstone and managed to double park in an overlook midway through the Hayden Valley.
Silhouetted atop a sage-covered hill above us was a large black wolf – the pack’s alpha male, a ranger guessed, because he was collared. As we watched through binoculars and other spectators’ scopes, he began digging vigorously, stopping only in apparent exhaustion to lie down in the sage. A gray wolf appeared and took over the task, digging strongly. The wolves were destroying a coyote den.
Off at a safe distance, a tan coyote was lying on a grassy slope in a posture of defeat. Earlier, spectators told us, there had been constant agitated communication between the coyote pair. Now, only one parent remained, lifting her head occasionally to look up the hill. We watched for some time but left before the denouement. With a plaintive howl, the coyote called to her doomed pups.
. . .

A few hours later, we passed through the same area, now blanketed in several inches of new snow. A few cars were parked at the pullout, their passengers studying maps or gazing through binoculars at the valley below. The sage-covered hill on the other side of the road gave no evidence of what had transpired earlier.
. . .

It had really been extraordinary, a ranger told us the next day, that we had been able to witness such true life drama. Disturbing as it had been, it was a rare glimpse into the countless scenarios that play out in the natural world, where predators kill other predators in turf wars, and some animals’ offspring serve as food for others. Yellowstone’s coyote population plummeted with the introduction of wolves, who view the smaller canines as competition and easily kill them.
Our sadness was lifted later that day when we came upon a bear jam and were able to watch a grizzly sow and her young cub in an open meadow for over a half-hour. The mother dug in the soft earth with her three-inch claws, sending huge clods flying as she hunted for voles or the nutritious roots of heartleaf arnica and balsam. The sandy-colored cub watched, delighting the growing crowd of onlookers by standing on his hind legs and peering at the humans. Rangers directed traffic and kept spectators on the opposite side of the road, since few things are more dangerous than a grizzly sow with a young cub. But the griz appeared oblivious, concentrating on replenishing calories lost during a long winter fast and rearing a new cub.
To top off the day, a black bear broke from the forest and crossed the road just in front of us on our way back to camp, where resident bison "Bob" and a buddy browsed the grass between tents and RV’s.
Photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/1Yellowstonespring2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCOeGtJCAz__l0wE&feat=directlink

Heading North

Our last day in the Grand Tetons dawned sunny and warm and we took a morning hike to the top of Blacktail Butte for a wonderful view of the valley. The herds of elk and bison on this visit have been the biggest we’ve ever seen, although many locals believe the elk have been decimated by wolves, newly arrived in the Teton Valley. Wolves are a hot-button topic in Wyoming, where they can be shot on sight. We chatted with the state speaker of the house and gubernatorial candidate, a tall handsome Marlboro man look-alike, at the beer fest immediately following the Memorial Day weekend parade, and “wolf management” came up almost immediately.
The local papers carry impassioned letters from wildlife-loving locals and visiting Californians who point out that living wolves equal money for the local economy. “We have our own mountains,” wrote one couple from Lake Tahoe. “We come here to see the wildlife.” Local outfitters, who make their living taking visitors from around the world into the wilds to shoot a trophy elk, disagree.
Of the Druid pack we watched daily last year in Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley, none still exist. All of the new pups died, presumably of mange, the pack’s alpha female was killed by another wolf last October and the local paper reported that the pack’s last collared female was recently shot by a rancher 150 miles from the pack’s home. I don’t know what we’ll see in Yellowstone this year.
We’ve struck out on bear this year, although many sightings have been reported. We finally spotted our first predator today, watching a coyoe pounce on a ground squirrel in the elk refuge. Even without bears, the dramatic weather, blessed peacefulness of the nearly-empty campground, and daily sightings of wildlife and birds have made this a special visit. The weather even permitted an outdoor dinner at our campfire and a morning breakfast cookout on the Snake River, where a small herd of elk splashed across the shallows while Terry scrambled eggs.
We ended our last afternoon with a gondola ride up to 10,000’ Rendezvous Peak, where a panoramic view of the valley soon succumbed to pelting snow.
Tomorrow, it’s off to Yellowstone. Two last batches of pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/3Tetonsspring2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCIeYnPCE1uPCiAE&feat=directlink
And:
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/2Tetonblogspring2010?authkey=Gv1sRgCNm8hLb_iq2JkAE&feat=directlink

Springtime in the Tetons

A noise in the night awakened me: a soft scratching outside Happy not far from my head. An animal? I hoped so, and that we’d find some sign in the morning. I drifted back to sleep. We had Gros Ventre campground virtually to ourselves and left the blinds open to the magnificent mountain view. First light revealed a world of white. Snow had blanketed the world outside, falling steadily and silently, except for the drifts that slid off the roof and down the front slope of the trailer with a soft scratching sound.
The temperature inside read 36 degrees.
Our propane heater quickly dissipated the chill and I returned to bed with a mug of hot coffee and the newspaper, gazing out on a magical scene more suited to December than late May. Dark boulder shapes in the distance announced the arrival of bison, probably the same herd we’d watched fording the river the day before. We jumped in the truck and drove to the camp entrance a short distance away to watch the behemoths move steadily into the campground, snorting and moving aside the snow with massive heads to reach the spring grass underneath. We returned to the campsite and Terry did some snow moving himself, clearing the solar panels atop Happy so they could soak up the meager rays the day offered.
We’re two weeks ahead of our early June arrival last year and the weather has been striking: bitter cold and snow during the Jackson elk antler auction on Saturday, flip-flops and sundresses at the chili cook-off at the same location on Sunday. We were lucky enough to witness part of the spring migration of elk off the winter refuge, watching hundreds of the animals crest a hill and move into the Gros Ventre valley. The great horned owl has returned to her nesting hole in the tree nearby and we’ve watched her, looking like a fat gray cat, sheltering her two fluffy nestlings from the cold. We've spotted several moose -0- one who crossed the road in front of us -- underweight after the winter and losing their thick coats. A coyote has denned in the nearby meadow and her haunting evening cry, along with the daytime songs of robins and meadowlarks, are all that break the peaceful silence. It’s been our best visit here. We love living off the grid in comfort, pleased that everything works so well, right down to the solar panel that powers the radio that lets us listen to NPR each day. The recent purchase of an air card evens allows me to check email from our traveling home, rather than driving to a wifi source. Life is good.
We’ve met up with friends from Florida, a college friend of mine and her husband, who are journeying cross-country in their new motor home and staying in a campground in town. We’ve had some wonderful daytime wildlife viewing expeditions, ending the day with martinis in Jackson. My kind of camping.
Pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/1Tetonspring2010blog?authkey=Gv1sRgCOOxg5H26uKeowE&feat=directlink