Coda

September 22 - October 6, 2009

I pulled into Bozeman with the idea of staying one night in a motel before heading slowly back to Seattle. Instead I had ANOTHER ACCIDENT! This one was a lot worse than the first one. Some behemoth pickup just crushed my poor little Yaris. No one was hurt, no damage to me except my psyche, which was wounded; technically it was my fault (if true justice reigned I would have been maybe 70% to blame) but my car took a beating. I had it towed to the body shop where it would sit for nearly two weeks.

My insurance covered a rental car, so now I was driving an unlikely red sporty thing. But the run of truly great weather suddenly ended and a couple of days of cold rain and snow left me stranded in a Bozeman  motel. Bozeman wasn't bad. An old style downtown that's hanging in there: hardware store, shoemaker, camera store. Not many towns have any of these anymore. I spent a good amount of time in Lindley Park where the snow was very pretty. But September?

Eventually I set off for Headwaters State Park, where the Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin Rivers converge. It was a disappointment. For such a significant site, the state hasn't done much with it.

So I drove down Gallatin Canyon, a lovely strip hard to enjoy at the 60 MPH speed limit traffic forced me to maintain. The highway cuts into Yellowstone for a while, dropping the speed limit a bit and providing wonderful river meadows but no facilities before reentering national forest. I detoured up the Hebgen Lake/Earthquake road only to find the visitor center closed. Interesting scene though. Scarp viewpoint along the way. You hear the word and probably pass loads of them so this is cool to look at. It is just a natural wall-seeming hill that before the earthquake was no hill at all. One side fell, the other rose.

Gallatin River

earthquake scarp

Down in West Yellowstone I bumped into Bob Anderson again. He rebutted the report I had heard, that a 20,000 northern elk herd had been reduced to 4,000 since the reintroduction of the wolves. The highest elk count he’d ever heard was 13,000 while the 2008 count was 9,000. He also noted that wolves take the oldest and the youngest of the herd while hunters take those in their prime, asking rhetorically which is doing the most damage.

Island Park seemed dreadful despite its good moose habitat. I noted a sign for the “Asbestos Mine Trailhead” before proceeding down the Mesa Falls Scenic Byway, little more than the two Mesa Falls though they are terrific. Upper Mesa Falls is 114’ high, “the largest undisturbed waterfall in the entire Columbia River system“ according to the sign on duty. Wide and powerful. A heavy-duty staircase takes visitors down alongside the falls, but a straight shot is impossible. The trail does provide a real view of the river just before it makes its plunge though. Lower Mesa Falls requires a little adventure to see up close, and I negotiated some tricky footing without incurring more stigmata. The lower falls is 65’ high, more narrow than the upper falls and much wilder.

Snake River

Upper Mesa Falls

Snake River

Lower Mesa Falls

Lower Mesa Falls

The river was running strong even this late in the season thanks to Big Springs, “one of the largest freshwater springs in North America. Approximately 120,000,000 gallons of water at 52 degrees Fahrenheit flow from the spring daily”, thus quoth an interpretive sign at Upper Mesa Falls.

This was the Henry’s Fork of the Snake River. Andrew Henry, says a trail sign, was a trapper here in 1810-12. I thought that seemed awfully early to be way out here, hot on the heels of Lewis and Clark, and I wondered why I’d never heard of him. I felt somewhat exonerated when I later read Robert Utley call Henry “one of the most successful yet least recognized explorers of the northern Rockies.“

Henry in fact worked for Manuel Lisa, who launched the first organized trapping expedition from St. Louis in the wake of Lewis and Clark’s return. Henry had set out to trap near Three Forks on the Missouri but the Blackfeet wouldn’t have it and drove Henry and his men right out of the watershed, up the Madison and over the Continental Divide on a low pass later known as Raynolds Pass and down into the upper Snake. They built the very first settlement west of the Rockies (well, Astoria…?) and endured one very rough winter there before retreating back east. This was the same trip in which John Coulter wandered through the region’s now renowned thermal features, his reports basically dismissed as fantasy for quite some time.

Snake River

Back at the Grand View Campground it was just me and one other car on a warm Saturday night  under a half moon. The other car left early Sunday morning and I was alone, singing "Racing in the Street", a reflection of my dolorous spirit. I almost decided to drive down the road to the Bechler River entrance, a corner of the park I'd yet to visit, but I wimped out. I drove instead through some of the Idaho towns that had sounded interesting in the guide book but weren't so good on the ground. I passed through St Anthony, which I later learn is the approximate location of Henrys Fort.

I ended up back on the Snake, at the Palisades Campground. Sunny, breezy, and mild, shade when I needed it, sun on the banks when the sun got low enough. This visit I secured a riverfront site. Looking into the middle distance, at golden aspen glowing in the hazy afternoon sun. I will surely miss gazing into the middle distance, won't I? I spent much time reading the handouts on the Teton River and fishing, but will spare you my findings this late in the journey.

Grand Teton - Mount Moran

Back at Grand Teton, the trees were on fire, whether wild or prescribed I wasn’t sure. In either case the forecast called for snow. On to Bozeman and an empty motel, promising quiet and assuring an easy walk to the fine Bozeman Library. The next morning I found some itchy welts on my arms and legs. Too cold for mosquitoes I thought. The next night I turned on the light in the middle of the night and saw a large bug scurrying across the sheet. I thwopped it and it oozed blood, presumably mine. This perhaps explained why the motel was empty. I relocated to a nicer one with free wi-fi, rented a laptop, and spent the early fall snow storm uploading pictures and streaming NPR.

Finally my car was ready, with repair costs over $4500 on a $13,000 car. I though I might stay in town another night but the body shop owner dissuaded me. A bigger storm was coming in and I might not have made it out of Bozeman if I waited. So I left early afternoon and made it to Missoula. The roads were all ice the next morning so I had to wait for things to warm up before heading out. Next stop Spokane. Stop after that, Seattle. It was all over. I’m feeling sad just thinking about it.

That, in a nutshell, is my story. Yours?