Joan's Car

Finally, the decals are installed!  The car was relatively clean, the temperature relatively comfortable, so it was time to instal the decals that Nick made for Joan's car.  

Pretty neat!

Thanks Nick!  So simple even I could do it!

Fall Colours

Finally, Fall foliage for a few fastidious fanatics following my photography.  The first five were made at the Rockcliffe Gardens along the Eastern Parkway while the last four pictures were made in Westport during my annual Fall 'sleep-over' at my Brother's cottage.  Enjoy!

Mattawa Ontario

So close yet so far...

I'm in Mattawa, along the Ottawa river using the Internet access at the restaurant since it isn't available at the motel just in front of me. All that to say, I'll keep this very short.

It was cool all day but it did get sunny this afternoon. As usual, it's easier to keep driving than it is to stop and find pictures to make... The Fall colours are good and I'll have to make an effort to do something about it later in the week... For now, you'll have to take my word for it.

Just a few hundred miles to go so it's been a good trip so far. threat of rain tonight as far as the radio is concerned but it looks pretty good as far as I'm concerned.

Customs was a breeze but then I really do have less than $200 to declare and I never cheat; maybe they're starting to recognize me? Probably not. Supper's on its way so I'll close for now. The cell is on for those that would like to call. Should be home by noon or so. Bye for now. I'll post Fall colour pictures for your amazement later, honest!

Rachel Lake to Ishpeming Michigan

After a leisurely departure from a great visit with Jan, it was a long fairly slow drive across the tops of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and half of Michigan. The Fall colours have started and are quite dramatic in a few places. The maple forests are still ahead so I'll probably slow down long enough to make a few pictures in the next day or two. Lost another hour due to time zones so I'm back where I started.

Found a well hidden and convoluted way to avoid Duluth and its high bridges, but not before driving through a golf course and a few nice neighbourhoods. It's a good thing that Lake Superior is a reliable east and north east boundary...

I thought that 4 pm would be too early to quit for the day and marshaled onward, unaware of the time change, and completely forgetting the lack of acceptable motels along my proposed route. It ends up that I've stayed at this motel twice before, arriving in the dark each time because 'to stop earlier seemed to be too early'... I'll have to do better next time since it's quite an isolated route and I saw at least half a dozen dead deer beside the road; all fairly fresh kills. I saw dozens of deer in the fields and fortunately, none came to the road when I was driving by.

Hopefully, I'll have some new pictures tomorrow. Bye for now.

The Corn Palace in Mitchell SD

So what will they think of next?  Well, actually, this corn palace thing has been going on since 1892, so it's not exactly something new.  Every year, they decorate this building with coloured corn to make new scenes according to an annual theme.  It's quite a production and has resulted in a pretty big tourist draw.  Bear with me, it's a pretty neat process.

First of all, the palace is in Mitchell South Dakota, on Interstate 90 not far from the Minnesota state line.

The process starts by the artist drawing the scene on black tar paper and defining which colour corn will go where, it's basically an install corn by number process.  Each cob is sorted by colour, cut in half , adjusted to size, and nail-gunned into place. 

For those of you with chop saws, I'll bet you never had sawdust like this on your saw!

Here's a picture of some of the sorting bins.

This large mural has the artist drawing on the black tar paper and two installers up on a scissor-jack [about 20 feet off the ground].  Each installer has his own chop saw [light blue in picture] to custom trim each corn cob into place.

If you look at the yellow square in the previous picture, you'll notice the new brown corn cob [on the square's left] in the next picture.

 
The building has a basketball court inside and it's decorated with new murals every year.  As you can see, it's really a very big project!

And now, the finale!  TA DA!

Rapid City to Chamberlain SD

Good day at the office!  I drove scenic state highways for most of the day.  I started on #44 to Interior, one of the East entrances to the Badlands National Park.  I didn't know what to expect other than I knew I'd try to compare it to the park of the same name in Alberta.  Well, they re both made of bad lands, lands that are not much use other than to look at.  They seem made of the same type of dirt which becomes exceptionally slippery when wet.  And sticky too, I might add.

This Park has a paved road through the main part with many suitable turn-offs or parking areas to see the really neat stuff.  They also have quite a few boardwalks and many trails, plus campgrounds and all that.  The bench in the first picture is one of many through the Park that offer a great view of the badlands. The lack of fencing, guardrails and protection barriers was wonderful photo-wise.

The next photo is looking east, roughly where I was standing to make the first photo.  As you can tell, it's quite an impressive panorama.

These next two pictures are for the grandkids.  I wonder if they could tell me what these little guys are?  They seemed to live fairly bunched together in a very small area of the park, right alongside the highway.  There were lots of them and they spent their time foraging for food which they then ate while standing on their hind legs.  Cute or what? Who knows, maybe they're prairie dogs.

As you can see, this one is not exactly starving...

Further on in the Park, I saw these hills that showed different colours depending on how old each section was.  I guess it all depends what chemicals were around, and at what temperature the rock was subjected to.  Whatever the method, it was quite beautiful.

This last shot reminds me of some canyons in Utah where these colours are quite common.  There had to be a few hundred feet between that first layer of rock and the wall in the background.  Strange how things erode over time.  Eventually, a real long eventually, these hills, cliffs, mountains will erode to small chunks of dirt and make the base for a new plains.

I left the Park by mid afternoon and ended up in Wall, South Dakota.  I know you all remember why that's famous, but I'll tell you anyway: Wall Drug Store since 1931. I first heard of it when I worked in Environment Canada but I'm not sure why.  At any rate, much like the monument nearby, I had to go in.  It's been turned into a pretty profitable tourist trap full of the very worst ticky-tacky stuff that you'll ever see at a garage sale.  I resisted buying each of you a solar-powered keychain that is guaranteed to flash on and off for 5 years.  Of course it would have had your name on it, but I figure the sun don't shine where keys are usually kept...

I then took the Interstate 90 to exit 212 and drove the scenic route to the state capitol and returned by yet another scenic route that ended up here in Chamberlain.  I tried three motels before finding one with Internet...  Only to find that gmail seems to be having problems of its own so I can't do e-mails so far tonight.  I should be at Farwell Minnesota  later tomorrow.

Cody to Rapid City South Dakota

Leaving Cody at around 8 am, I was the only car left in the previously full motel parking lot...  I guess the others wanted to see the sunrise.

Cody is east of Yellowstone National Park, and is at a much lower altitude, my guess is around 4000 feet.  My first big surprise of the day was to spot these old aircraft sitting in a field that's part of an airport [but there were no aircraft capable of flying in sight].  It's all about some commerce initiative to create higher paying jobs locally, compliments of GW Bush.  There were many new hangars, and a lot of construction which I assumed was for a runway.  There seems to be a lot going on, but no one to speak to.  I managed to make this photo through a camera-friendly fence, and I like the old planes against the canyon-like background.

These planes were on what I would call a high mesa or a high plateau; it's not really flat but it's a lot flatter than the huge mountains that surround the area.  As I left this plateau, the hills got steeper and I thought you might enjoy the next picture. Please note the semi in the very middle of the photograph with its pup trailer.  Look hard, I'm sure it's still there!  This truck combination is nearing the end of a 6% hill that's been going on for about 6 miles!  I'm about to start going up...

As I get closer to the Powder River Pass [altitude of 9666 feet] I started seeing snow in the fields.  It was only 2C.

After joining the Interstate 90 and making good time, I ended up taking the picture below.  Anybody this close has to go and make a picture, no?

This historic site has been exploited as much as it can: $10 to park the car with no other spots where you can snap a good picture.  There's a Banff-like village nearby that had a 6'6" cowboy snapping a whip at passing cars as he was walking down the center of the street.  Get the picture?  I got the picture and got outta town...

I drove back to Rapid City and found a Ruby Tuesday's near a good [and quiet] motel; doesn't get much better!  Even got 'randomly selected' to complete an Internet survey which will give me $4 off my next restaurant bill.  I guess it just did get better!

Got to go do the survey.  Bye for now.

Yellowstone to Cody Wyoming

Finally!  Ask the proper question, and the computer will actually give you a reasonable answer; follow the directions, and voila, pictures!  TA DA!!!

After a very late start [due to talking trawlers with the owners of the One Horse Motel  obviously, that's another story] I managed to find the Yellowstone's legendary canyon.  I drove nearby both yesterday and the day before, each time choosing not to take the road to Artist's Point.  I already knew that the northern rim canyon road was closed so I assumed that access was denied. The answer was to take the road to Artist's Point, which I finally did today.  This first picture shows the devastation left behind by forest fires.  I don't know how long ago the fire passed by but you can see the new green vegetation with the yellow and orange provided by new shrubs in their Fall outfits.

Te next image is the same subject matter but on a much steeper and more exposed cliff so new growth will have a harder time growing.  The colours are really quite dramatic.

 

If you look at the lower right corner of the previous picture, you can just see a bit of the Yellowstone river that is fed by the falls in the next picture.  These falls drop 109 feet into the base of the canyon making a rush of noise heard for miles down the canyon; quite a show of sound and sight.

I was getting somewhat sleepy after the heavy going in these serious mountains in the Park and ended up stopping earl for the day in a wild west town of Cody, Wyoming.  This small town has a great collection of log cabins that have been moved here over the years.  Many have significant historical value and together with their extensive furnishings, they constitute a major tourist draw for the area.  I sort of liked this shot of three old skin coats hanging by a window.  Hope you like it too!

After supper, I'm planning to attempt to update the last two days blogs with images so you might want to check them out later if you wish.  What other magic this Internet stuff do?

Yellowstone National Park Day 2

All day rain was predicted for the area but I went into the Park anyway.  The problem with short visits is that you are at the mercy of the weather.  As it turned out, there was always the threat of rain, by not much real stuff.

The area of the Park that I drove around is at quite a high altitude; roughly 6000 to 10,000 feet, so the temperature was anything between 3 C and 8 C.  I'm not really well prepared for near freezing in gale force winds, but that's another story.

The park is very well interpreted; most features you can drive up to and there will be a pull-off, a side road, or a full-fledged parking lot with facilities and the ever-present tourist store [but only at the bigger sites].  There are boardwalks through the geyser fields and you can get close to things.  Very well done!

I can't seem to fix the order of these images so I'll describe them in the order in which they show up.  The first is quite dramatic IMHO and shows the various colours that geysers create as they ooze water from below.  A chemist or geologist could probable tell you how each colour was created, just accept that its a very natural process that occurs over time.  I thought it created a spectacular show.  This is a fairly new water spring and you can just make out the clear water on the top of that white diagonal running down the left border.  The point of source of the water changes with time and makes these delightful patterns on the new mounds being created.

This next shot is of a plateau created by a spring-fed pool.  The white stuff is not snow, it's probably calcium [but don't quote me until I read all the literature...]  This tree was happily growing there before the pool got created and now it's been killed by all the natural toxic stuff being coughed up by the earth.  You can just see the cloud of steam at the edge of the plateau on the left.  I does make for rather striking contrasts, doesn't it?  The mountains in the background is what the area is all about and the threatening clouds have been following me all day...

This last image is of some rather big boulders encountered today.  They are probably molten lava or something similar; the earth's crust is not very deep around here...  

I'm sure some clever grandkids could find strange faces and weird body parts somewhere in all this.  Fascinating isn't it?

Yellowstone National Park

Drove the hour from Belgrade and stopped at the edge of the Park to get accommodations for the night and decided to stay two nights at the One Horse Motel.  How could one not..

I left for the Park around noon and planned to be back for supper.  The weather outlook wasn't the greatest with rain predicted.  It's about 15 miles into the park, then 17 miles to Old Faithful. Everyone needs a photo of Old Faithful right?  Well it's the second photo, I'm having a little problem getting the images sorted so this will have to do for now.

The first photo is the edge of one of the many thermal spring-fed pools that seem to dot the landscape in this Park.  The white edges are just chemicals left behind as the water evaporates.  Talk about hard water!  If you look into the pool you can see bubbles of steam that rise to the surface.

And here's the picture of Old Faithful.  There had to be a few hundred people waiting the hour or so for the eruption to happen. i was luck, only ten minutes or so, and I still had an un-obstructed view.  They say it used to blow a lot higher, well over 100 feet; today was not a great blow.

This poor tree used to grow where the pool wanted to be so all the heavy salts and other toxic stuff from down below just did the tree in.  It's well pickled so it should last a long time.  Pretty against all the white salts, isn't it.

The next shot is of Steamboat Geyser.  The last time it really blew was over 50 years ago, but then, it shot a plume of super-heated water over 200 feet in the air for more than a full day!  That would be neat to see, but I can't wait that long...

The Park suffered from intense forest fires a few years back, mostly in the area I traveled.  It's quite strange to see thousands upon thousands of tree snags surrounded by young saplings.  Some of the new growth consists of larch and aspen, both turn yellow at this time of year.  

I ended up stopping for a severe thunderstorm since you couldn't see to drive.  Thunder and Lightening everywhere and suddenly, it hailed! Enough to cover the road for a short time!  That sure cleaned off the car!

I ended up at Old Faithful around 4 pm and arrived back at the hotel by 7 pm; you really can't be in a hurry around here.  I'm glad I'm here in September; the big crowds aren't, even though there were cars and people everywhere.  I was lucky and never had a problem parking which can be a horrendous problem during the summer.

On the way back out of the Park, I drove the same road I had come in on.  At one point, the road was bumpy with new sawdust and wood-chips; it seems the storm knocked over a very large tree that ended up blocking the highway, so they chopped it up!  Good thing I wasn't there when it fell!

Pullman WA to Belgrade Montana

Interesting drive from Pullman to here; Pullman is in the middle of the rolling hills on a fairly high mesa.  To get here, I had to go South to the Snake River, then follow highway #12 to cross Idaho up to Missoulla in Montana.  

Most of the way, the speed limit was 50 MPH with half the curves having a reduced speed of 40 and the other half at speeds lower than that, often 20 MPH.  It was a great motorcycle road, and there were lots of them.  While in Idaho, the road ran alongside this little river that kept changing names along the way.  This route was discovered by Lewis and Clark and reminders / memorials are everywhere.  There were little road enlargements every few hundred feet to pull off and let other cars pass.  Great place to take photos.  This little river had cascading rapids here and there and was quite pretty.

The river and road are in the trough of a two hundred mile range of mountains.  The whole thing twisted and turned in every direction and it was quite disconcerting to look at Ema and see we were going South when the eventual destination was North East!  I couldn't stop at the time, but there was a road sign that had the multiple twisty curves symbol with a separate sign below stating "For 26 Miles"   A half hour later, a similar sign for 13 miles!  Like I said, a great road for motorcycles!

All this twisting also meant that there were few places where the sun lit both sides of the river, but I found one...

Nearer to Belgrade, I saw these incredible rock formations; they looked like giants had been playing with playdough [Sp?] and then just tossed it everywhere.  Some stacks were 100 feet high and more, others were just incredibly big boulders.  Neat!

Belgrade is about an hour away from Yellowstone and weather permitting, I should be there tomorrow.  It seems that the super-hot days are gone to be replaced with frosty nights and more comfortable days.  With a possibility of rain of course: it's a weekend!

Enjoy yours!

Fields of Palousa

The crack of dawn has now been re-defined:  local sunrise happened at 6:35:39, see below:

Mind you, to get there I had to get up at 5:00 AM but that's not much of a story.  I was surprised at the traffic that early in the day!  There were more cars on the road than during mid-day!  The first three photographs were made from Steptoe Butte State Park, likely the highest spot nearby.  There's a windy road all the way to the top and it was difficult to exceed the 10 MPH speed limit.  No guardrails either...  I went up in the dark so it was actually scarier coming down, but that's definitely another story.

As you see, the view is spectacular; the farmed rolling hills are something else.

Local farmers don't waste any time: there are three at work in the next picture.  maybe a challenge for the grandchildren to find them and report? Look hard because they are probably well over a mile away.  Just follow the dust they kick up.

This last picture was made after lunch.  I'd been driving along dusty dirt roads for quite a while and came up on these fields where the farmer probably went up each series of hills and returned in the next row.  It makes for some pretty neat patterns.

One of the problems in the area is dust: what the farmers don't kick up working the fields, they kick up when they drive down the many dirt roads that criss-cross the main paved roads.  It's almost as if these dirt roads outlined the different farm properties.  Most of the dirt roads are in excellent shape, just very dusty.  On more than one occasion, I saw these dirt roads just turn into two tracks in the field!  Keep in mind that the farmers also drive their cars and trucks across the fields at this time of year!  ... and the fields are really dusty!  So with dust everywhere, I now have to clean the interior of my camera, some fun...

Tomorrow, I hope to hit the road again and start wending my way back East.  With luck, I should make a few more pictures along the way and end the day near Yellowstone National Park.  Isn't that where Yogi Bear works?

Palouse Area, Washington State

Finally in the Palouse area!  .. And with a decent place to stay in Pullman, Washington. 

After spending last night about an hour north of here, I drove down through Idaho and learned yet another lesson, or maybe I had forgotten the same lesson from before.  If a scene looks good, find a way to make it into a picture.  Right then and there!

I drove by some fields that the farmers had harvested, burned, then tilled. There were actually fields with all three stages evident.  I thought to myself, I'll just look for this when I'm closer to Palouse.  Not good: Palouse is in Washington where they no longer allow burning...  

The picture below was made near here [in the Palouse area] before lunch time.  It gives you a pretty good idea of the intensive farming that is done on these rolling hills.

The next picture is of a neat two-toned car...  Thanks again, Nick and Mark; it looks great!  By the way, do you think I made the tracks down the hill?

Not yet!  

The scene below is one of those weird crafty things that develop a beauty of its own: a welded fence made up of hundreds if not thousands of steel wheels.  The fence has to be nearly 400 feet long and stands about 4 feet tall.  Quite a feat!  I'm sure it's been photographed a thousand times.  It surrounds an artisan barn that was closed when I was there.  It's in Unionville, over an hour's drive south of here.

Past Unionville, I drove down this horrendous hill that probably dropped down a good 2000 feet to the Snake River which at that point is the Lower Granite Lake, a huge reservoir contained by granite mountains on all sides.  Unfortunately, that also means very high bridges, but that's another story.  I probably drove 30 miles along the south shore of this lake before crossing the high bridge that took me back North towards the head waters of the Snake River.  The picture is misty because it was stinking hot: 36 Celsius or about 97 F! 

About a half hour away from the Snake is the Palouse Falls State Park.  It's a good 20 miles away from everything!  ... but well worth the effort.  I arrived after 4 pm and the sun was lighting up the whole basin.  It's quite a sight!  The falls drop 198 feet into a huge basin that continues through the canyon as the Palouse River.  The only thing missing were puffy white clouds...

This last picture was made on the way back to Pullman at about 6 pm.   I'm expecting more of these rolling hills tomorrow.  The farmers are quite the artists the way they sculpt these hills!  I'm hoping to see some farmers working on these huge and sometimes very steep hills; they have humoungous tractors and bulldozers.  What fun!