The Christmas Snow Storm of 2009

This is one for the record books, though I do recall a blizzard around the Christmas of 1996, but it appearently wasn't ON Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I call it a "storm" rather than a "blizzard", even though the National Weather Service had issued a blizzard warning for Fargo and both interstates were closed. The winds barely met blizzard definition and the temps in the +20s F don't qualify as a North Dakota classic: snow, winds which howl through leafless trees as one lies in bed at night, and temps and windchills which quickly freeze flesh and cause ones eyes to slush up.

The nearly 16 inches of snow over 3.5 days don't match the 24 inch record for a single day during the winter of 1988-89. That snow also had a romantic element as I walked the mile from my apartment to that of my girlfriend, now wife, and then back after an evening of movie watching with friends.

The modern weather forecasting gave several days of warning. We had planned to be in Fargo, anyways, so had plenty of food and things to do. We did conduct some final shopping on Wednesday the 23rd as the snow began to fall about 2:00 PM. By the next morning, we had about 5 inches on the ground which was plowed and shoveled in time for attending the 5:00 PM Christmas Eve service at church. We came home for a supper featuring Swedish meatballs followed by the movie "It's a Wonderful Life" and the opening of gifts.

On Christmas Day, we got another 8+ inches of snow, some blow, and we stayed inside all day. We worked on things like Christmas letters, cleaning the Digital Den, and cleaning the family room in the basement.

This morning, the 26th, there was more snow, but it seemed like a good time to shovel out at least one vehicle. The city snow plows came by and shortly thereafter a man in a pick-up truck with a blade came by and pushed out the plowed/piled snow at the end of the driveway. After about an hour of work, the driveway was cleared for two of our three vehicles.

While I was in for lunch, the snow picked up and an inch or so fo new snow had fallen in that hour. It was a depressing observation as I headed out to run some errands in downtown and near north Fargo. The streets were plowed, but had a few inches of loose snow in most places. I was glad I had our Villager minivan which is our best snow vehicle. When I got home, the mailman delivered our mail. Another anonymous soul, perhaps our neighbor two doors down, had blown out our boulevard sidewalk and the last snow in the driveway while I was gone.

The band of snow which picked up at noon and is still active three hours later should be pretty much the end of the new snow. We'll let it fall and blow the rest of tonight and then go out in the morning to make one final clearing of snow before clear skies and subzero temps usher out 2009. The low pressure system which first drew Gulf of Mexico moisture, and then in a rare event (first time since 1966?), Atlantic moisture to our area is slowly leaving. Good-bye and thanks for the memories...

More evidence that cats think they are God's special gift to humankind...

Our picturesque garden shed...

Drift by our front door, but more notable, the up-drift on our mailbox to the left of the door and the drift on the roof overhanging the sidewalk :-O .

Just hanging out on Christmas Day...

Hunkering Down for Christmas

We aren't going anywhere for a while. The snow started about 2:00 this afternoon and when it ends Saturday, we might have 15-20" more snow. Throw in winds up to 30 mph on Friday and Santa might have a hard time finding and landing on those rooftops. I think the last time we had a Christmas storm was 1996, part of that famous winter of blizzards and ten feet of snow.

The coming storm added a bit more excitement to the air of Christmas. Hunkering down is typically preceeded by getting groceries and other things to make the time pass as comfortably as follow. Tomorrow's last minute Christmas shopping got pulled forward a day. Some people left town early to beat the storm. We started the actual hunkering tonight with wild rice soup and lefse with lingonberries.

Winter arrived here right after Thanksgiving. October had been cool and wet leading to a record fall flood the first week of November. That's the third flood and fourth crest of 2009, if you are counting. Overall the fall hasn't been as wet as last year, so no major flood concerns for spring yet.

November was glorious...what Octobers normally are and this year's wasn't: warm (11.3 degrees above normal) and sunny. Every day it was above freezing. The month was second only to November of 2001 in warmth: a year memorable for the nice hay ride weather for my daughter's birthday party. I think there was also a day in the 70s that year.

We went from 11 degrees above normal to about 15 degrees below normal in the course of a week. December's first two weeks were subzero with some dustings of snow...a nice way to break into the season of snow shoveling. I shovelled a bit tonight and hope to take coming foot and a half of snow in 3" increments. When the wind comes up, we'll see how practical that plan is.

My Name on Mars

Those who follow my life know a couple of things:

(1) In the 1970s when teen boys often had a poster of Farrah Fawcett in their rooms, I had a National Geographic map of Mars over my bed. A map of Mars was considered useful since I was planning to go there. Even this decade I purchased a copy of The Traveller's Guide to Mars by Cadogan.

(2) On our 2009 family western expedition, we stopped at a number of venues where 19th century explorers and pioneers had left carved their names in stone for later travellers like us to see...the oldest being none other than that of William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame at Pompey's Pillar in Montana.

NASA is allowing me to combine (1) and (2) with a program to send digitally recorded names to Mars on the next rover, the Mars Science Laboratory Rover. Since I am highly unlikely to make it personally to Mars in my lifetime and since I'm unlikely to be working at JPL as a Mars roboticist, this may be as close as I get. Perhaps some desendent will make it to the Mars Historic Site where the rover comes to a halt and will have knowledge of his ancestor's dream to feel the sands of Mars between his toes. The Mars rover Spirit may have reached its final location. Two bad wheels out of six in a sand trap is not a good situation...

-- Noel

Noel's New Laptop : HP dv4-1551dx

I'm a PC and will not discuss why I didn't look at a Mac. I like my iPod Touch and await with interest its bigger sibling. Kindle meets iPhone would be sweet.

Going back about 5.5 years, I got a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop as I was wanting computing mobility as well as desktop power. In those days you couldn't have both and even 4 years ago when I got my current desktop, it was still either/or.

My 1100 was never very speedy, though an upgrade from 256 MB to 640 MB of RAM helped some. Its 30 GB hard drive was pretty full and the 30 minute typical boot time was painful. However, as one who grew up with vacuum tubes, the idea of turning something on and letting it "warm up" was ingrained from an early age. A little planning mitigated the inconvenience. One of my favorite attributes of my iPod Touch is the ability to check email without a 30 minute boot time!

The plan had been to replace my desktop and the laptop at the same time with a single system. My recent computer woes at home strengthened the thought that now might be the time and I had been eyeing the Dell Studio 15. My daughter recently got a Dell Inspiron 15 which gave me a chance to check out Dell's current offerings prior to buying. It is nice and should serve her well for the next four years.

My desktop recovered and has been working well in the several weeks since it had its boot trouble, but my motivation to restore and soldier on with my laptop was gone. So what to get?

I started investigating HP because of its recent market move, good experiences with HP at work, and the possibility of a local purchase at a lower price than with the Dell Studio 15. I spent some time at Best Buy on 11/20 and again on 11/22 after spotting the system I actually bought in the paper. It had not been on display and the Blue Shirt said they didn't have it. Fortunately I had checked their inventory before heading out and quickly identifed some in dv4-1551dx boxes.

I paid ~$600 with the specs listed below. My desktop with its 250 MB hard disk, TV tuner, firewire port, and media software including Windows XP Media Center, (old) Photoshop Elements, (old) Premier Elements, Rhapsody, and iTunes will continue to be my media system. I may also keep my financial files on it since it is at the desk in the Digital Den where I do my finances. I got MS Office Home & Student for my new laptop and it will be my surf-in-bed and church operations system.

Here's the specs on the system and why I chose them.

Processor: Intel Dual Core 2 T6600 . A good, but not pay-through-the-nose processor. Quad core i7 looks interesting, but has a big price premium and the added parallelism likely won't enhance my surfing and word processing.

RAM: 4 GB DDR3. Wow, a million times more RAM than my TRS-80 model 1 of 30 years ago. Windows 7 has and should do fine with that over the next 3 years. One objective was to spend less on a laptop now so that when my desktop dies, I will have money towards a better laptop at lower price at that time. I figure a savings rate of $0.75 - $1.00/day for computer replacement acrual.

Hard Disk: 320 GB, 7200 RPM. I had originally wanted 500 GB at 7200 RPM, but that was when my desktop was in ill health. Between desktop and new laptop I have 570 GB. I also have some 400 GB USB drives around. The 160 GB of netbooks seemed low...a belief which got some support this afternoon as I was restoring my daughter's desktop and couldn't copy the family photo folders to it because the disk was full. I did want 7200 RPM vs 5400 RPM to get better performance.

CD/DVD drive. I'm not ready to move to Blue Ray and don't watch DVDs on my laptop very frequently. However, by the time one buys a USB drive for a netbook, one starts to get into the low end "real laptop" price range. The MS-Office Home and Student has a nice feature that if you don't have a CD-ROM drive, you can use the software key to download and install the software.

Display: 14" 1280 x 800. A major thing I don't like about 16:9 displays is the loss of vertical resolution. The 17" and 19" 4:3 displays with 1280 x 1024 resolution I have in the Digtial Den are nice. The 16:9 displays with 1920 x 1080 resolution are pricey. However, over the last year I have gotton spoiled by dual screens and toy with getting a 22" or 24" LCD TV/monitor for the Digital Den, but we have a couple LCD TVs elsewhere at home. Sooo, pondering these things at Best Buy, I went with a smaller display with higher resolution (others were 720ish vertical), but I didn't get the attractive LED backlighting which was a price premium. Since I seem to be wearing my bifocals more frequently, smaller type is less of an issue :-/ .

Graphics: built-in Intel chip set. For surfing and word processing, I wouldn't benefit from the graphics card. I do lose the Firewire port, but my desktop has one. We have home videos that need to get transfered....

Other hardware: The Dell only has 2 or 3 USB ports. It also doesn't have a HD use light. The HP has more USB ports, an ESATA port (for hard disk?). Both have VGA out. I'm thinking about getting a 16 GB or 32 GB SD card for my laptop as a built-in back-up media. Our recent computer woes have highlighted the importance of regular backups. I'm seldom far from a power outlet at home (work is different), so went with the standard, smallish battery.

Set up and service: none. Best Buy offers set up options including REMOVING software from the system. I can remove software and tune performance myself. I also passed on the extended warranty. Using the bathtub model of failure rates, most failures should occur under the one year warranty. Also, the pricing wasn't attractive based on laptop problem rates reported by Consumer Reports. Major brands are pretty close to each other in the major trouble department.

Preparing for the Gales of November

There was a buzz in the air this afternoon and not just about the Vikings/Packers game. It was the buzz of small engines from riding mowers, leaf blowers, walk behind mowers, and other lawn equipment as people worked to get yards ready for the arrival of winter in the coming weeks. The rule of thumb is that lawn work needs to be completed by Oct 31 and any nice days after that are a gift.

It was a relatively nice afternoon, especially compared to the record wet, cool, and gloom of October. Certainly the most notable in those three categories during my 21 years in Fargo. I haven't seen the official stats, but recent newspaper reports had phrases like "since 1925" in them. We never had a stretch of nice Indian summer weather. I think 62 was the highest temp, the average was 10 degrees below normal, and we had more than twice the usual amount of precip.

So today, with mostly cloudy skies, no precip, and a temp in the mid 40s, it was a relatively nice day. Trees were late in dropping their leaves this year and they dropped more green than I can ever remember. Our one remaining tall tree had dropped its leaves, so it seemed like a good time to do fall roof gutter cleaning. It only took me about an hour given the reduced height of trees in our yard: the mature sugar maple in our back yard replaced a few years ago with an autumn blaze maple and the three stately elms on the boulevard between our driveway and that of our neighbor replaced with small oak and linden trees.

With my extra time, I jumped down into the egress windows to remove leaves that had blown in and then did some spot raking around the yard to top off my load of yard waste to community composting. On return, I wrapped things up outside and then came in where I've changed a light bulb and will eventually end up in nthe Digital Den.

The rest of this week looks benign with temps in the 20-45 range and maybe a few showers. November is my least favorite month as the weather deteriorates rapidly. While it was nice to wake up to sunshine this morning, tomorrow night I will come home in the dark and by the end of the month will again be going to work in the dark.

We have a bit more work to do to be ready for the arrival of winter. The shovels need to come down from the attic, the heated birdbath needs to be set up once the final mower run to bag leaves is completed, the Man cave needs to be converted into a winter parking stall. That should be done next weekend and then the gales of November can blow.

Dakota Noel and the Windy City

Last week I did a one night, one day trip to Chicago for a meeting. I must say that I strongly prefer the vast openess of the northern plains traversed during our western expedition to the crowded, noisy, frenetic urbanscape which is Chicago.

I flew direct from Fargo, taking only a mostly empty backpack and no laptop with me. It was very freeing to be so light. My usual two carry on bags total about 30 pounds and then there is the hassle of dealing with the pair on a region jet. I had no worries about overhead bin space or delays waiting for plane-side checked bags to be unloaded and delivered. My internet access was via my iPod Touch. Personal email could be read on my cell phone as well.

The flight to O'Hare was on time and I stopped at the McDonalds in Terminal Two for a burger and fries before heading down to baggage claim to get a van to my hotel near Wrigley Field and the corner of Clark and Belmont. I waited at the nearly deserted lower level of Terminal Two for half an hour for the Airport Express van and then it was another hour before I was dropped off at my hotel. One way cost was $28 plus tip.

My hotel room was on the second floor, adjacent to an el train line and a stop. Every few minutes a train would come by and deposit some noisy passengers. There was also traffic noise from the street. I feared for a night with a small amount of disrupted sleep, but things settled down about 10:30 and I slept quite well.

I was up about 6:00 to shower and have breakfast before joining others from work who were staying at the City Suites Hotel for a brief car drive to the meeting site. When the meeting was done for the day, I was advised to contact Flash Cab for a ride to the airport. I was impressed with their use of texting to confirm my request and notify me when the cab was pulling up to the door.

It was $31 one way and I got to enjoy watching the ethnic shops and reastaurants roll by: hispanic, Korean, and places I hadn't heard of. I also didn't have to contend with navigating rush hour traffic or construction detours. The sidewalks seemed narrow and the buildings were only a few feet from the busy four lane arterial. It was blocks between patches of grass.

At O'Hare, I checked in and went through security in Terminal One. With three hours before emy flight, I wandered the food areas of terminals one, two, and three. The walking was nice, but I settled for a burger from McDoanlds at Terminal Two for supper. I found a quiet spot on the E concourse to eat and then do some reading. Northwest/Delta has really reduced its evening flights to O'Hare, so it was pretty quiet. The lack of flights was also one reason why I was flying United Express in spite of its lacklustre on-time reputation between Chicago and Fargo.

I was not disappointed in that last regard as we took off an hour and a half late, arriving Fargo about midnight. First we needed the crew to arrive, then for a plane to be found. Once we were loaded and pulled back from the terminal, we waited about half an hour for some ballast to be added to the full plane(!?). Fortunately there were a couple people from NDSU Tech Park neighbor Appareo Systems who helped pass the time in conversation. There were also half a dozen people who looked more at home with Ozzie Osborne than in Fargo. Turns out one of them was Joan Jett who was headed to Dakota Magic Casino, south of Fargo, for a gig the next night. I figured that out the following morning when her picture took up half a page in the Fargo Forum.

You can tell how far a rock star has fallen when ... they have gigs in Fargo and have to fly a commercial regional jet to get there. As one local pundit suggested, it goes from filling stadiums and arenas to performing at casinos in the middle of now where to singing in nursing homes.

The Shuttle and The Space Station

It was a nearly perfect September evening. It was cool with a cloudless sky. The sun had set and the first stars were starting to appear. Jupiter shone brightly in the southeast.

I walked north from my house, noting the trees with leaves which would have blocked my view. I came to the parking lot at the El Zagel golf course, three blocks from home, and looked up to see the space shuttle keeping true to its trajectory. The international space station followed about a minute behind and was as bright as Jupiter.

I looked at them through my binoculars, hoping to make out details. Their small size, distance, and my jittery hands made that impossible. I settled for watching them continue across the sky, across the river, and into the earth's shadow, fading like small embers in the sky.

The shuttles will soon be grounded. I count my attendance at a shuttle launch in 1994 as one of a select few special geek days in my life. Seeing both the shuttle and space station glide by is also a unique and special experience. Ad astra per aspera.

West-X Day 13 (8/13/2009) : Trail Ride and The Long, Hot Drive Home

We had an early start to the day since we needed to have the minivan loaded, check out of the hotel, and make the 45 minute drive from Sylvan Lake Lodge to Blue Bell Lodge so the girls could check in and be ready for their trail ride. The ride had been cancelled the day before due to rain. This day, however, the sky was clear, the bison which passed through the area were cleared out, and the trail ride was a go. While the girls were on their ride, Ilene and I went to Blue Bell Lodge for breakfast and a nice time of conversation. I had buffalo tips and scrambled eggs, continuing my practice of having a daily serving of bison while in the Black Hills. Bison was very available and not priced at a premium on the menus.



After the girls returned from their two hour ride, we headed east and then north, exiting the Black Hills. Lunch time was approaching as was Rapid City. People were in the mood for a Wendy’s, so we consulted Mavis, our navigation system, noted one eight miles ahead, and told Mavis to get us there. Unfortunately it was a fair distance off the freeway, something we wish Mavis had told us about. We got there, ate, and eventually were heading east on I-90 about noon.

It is over a nine hour drive from Rapid City to Fargo with an hour time change against our favor. The previous night I had checked the weather along our Google maps route of I-90 to Sioux Falls and then north on I-29 to Fargo. Across I-90, temps were to be near 100 F. Due to the time spent with the trail ride and lunch and the heat, we opted to not drive through the Badlands. Wall Drug was never firmly on our itinerary (too touristy); the Minuteman missile site historic site only got one vote as a stop; the 1890 town didn’t make the list. The plan was to just get home with maybe a stop at Chamberlin, SD where I-90 crossed the Missouri River and the first McDonalds in 205 miles from Rapid City was located (a billboard in Rapid City noted the “last chance” there and we confirmed the distance).

While the I-90/I-29 route from Rapid City to Fargo didn’t require Mavis’ navigation services, we did use her as an MP3 player with navigation active. A ways out of Rapid City, she advised us to turn off of I-90 onto US-14, taking us on a route through Pierre, SD which on a 100 F day would likely be 105 F. It is a hot spot in the Dakotas and in the summer can reach 115 F. Ilene checked the map, we discussed the recommendation in light of some Mavis’ other recent recommendations, and opted to stay on I-90.

Several hours passed and we reached Chamberlin were we stopped at McDonalds for our afternoon snack. We also stopped at a state wayside there which had a Lewis and Clark exhibit including a keelboat replica. We arrived a few minutes before the museum’s 4:30 closing, so had to rush through. We then resumed our drive east, but after a while ran into construction and our speed dropped to 60 mph. Mavis had been urging us to head north at every major interchange. With the speed limit on South Dakota two-lane roads at 65 mph and I-29 doing some backtracking from Sioux Falls to Watertown, we opted to head north to Huron and then to Watertown where we would join I-29.

Our cross country route worked out OK with a gas and potty stop in the metropolis of Woonsocket and supper at Arby’s in Watertown. We enjoyed the sunset to our west as we crossed into North Dakota and then arrived home from our epic western expedition. Our cat warmly greeted us and it was nice to be in our own beds after nearly two weeks on the road.

Day’s driving mileage : 642 miles Total driving mileage : 3493 miles

West-X Day 12 (8/12/2009) : Ascending Harney Peak and Visiting Mt Rushmore

After breakfast in our room, our first activity of the day was to ascend Harney Peak, the highest peak between the Rocky Mountains and the Pyrenees at 7244 feet. We did a short drive to the trail head at Sylvan Lake, elevation 6175 feet, and were walking by 8:30 AM. The two hour walk up went from Custer State Park into the Black Elk Wilderness Area with most of the climb in the last third. The trail material had large amounts of the glass-like mineral mica which made it shimmer and even appear wet from its glimmering in the morning sun. Some of the mica flecks were up to several square centimeters in size.


We stopped to rest as we desired and spent half an hour at the top before our descent. The view from the 1930s era CCC fire tower was great, but a little diminished by the humidity in the air. We had wondered how they had transported the building materials the 3.25 miles we had come, but later learned there was a road that came very close to the tower. Another thought morsel was the fact that Ilene’s parents had honeymooned at Sylvan Lodge, where we were staying, and had hiked to the peak some 63 years earlier.

We had lunch in our room and rested a bit before heading down to Blue Bell Lodge where the girls were scheduled to go on a horseback trail ride at 3:30. About 3:15, rain and a little hail began. The ride was cancelled shortly thereafter and we rescheduled the girls for 8:30 the next day. The rain ended and it was clear by 4:00.

After the ride was cancelled, the only time weather caused a cancellation on our entire trip, we continued on with our itinerary by taking the Iron Mountain Highway with its tunnels and pigtail turns to Mount Rushmore. Ilene and I were shocked at the renovation of the site which had occurred since we were there in 1994 and since I had visited in the mid-1960s. The narrow winding road was replaced with a new three lane highway (2 up, 1 down) coming to the monument from two directions, there was now a parking ramp instead of a lot, there was a palatial entrance, etc. It felt less intimate and more sterile. Ilene and I preferred Mt Rushmore as it had been.


We got our pictures taken and walked around, getting much closer to the faces than was easily done in the old days. We considered supper there, but ended up just getting ice cream.

Our route then took us to Keystone which was another tourist town. We stopped at a rock shop where Ilene got some rocks for the garden, but didn’t find a restaurant to our liking and convenience there or at Hill City. We ended up eating under the stars on the patio back at Sylvan Lake Lodge, very satisfied with our choice.

Day’s driving mileage : 79 miles Total driving mileage : 2851 miles
Day’s estimated hiking : 7.5 miles

West-X Day 11 (8/11/2009) : Needles, Wildlife, Windy Cave, and Mammoths

Our room at historic Sylvan Lake Lodge had a balcony where we ate breakfast before heading out at 8:30 AM MDT for sightseeing on the needles highway and wildlife loops in Custer State Park. We stopped at the eye of the needle for pictures and climbing as well as for wild donkeys on the loop. During our whole Black Hills stay, the wildlife was more abundant and closer to the highways than at other places on our trip. Besides the donkeys, we saw bison, mountain goats, deer, and pronghorns (antelope).

We toured the cave at Wind Cave National Park which features 95% of the world’s cave “boxwork” intricate mineral formations resembling post office boxes. From the cave, we went to the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs where mammoth bones were discovered in the 1970s and have been excavated ever since. The theory is that about 26,000 years ago, a sink hole with a hot spring was there. The hot spring enabled green vegetation year round which seems to have lured teenage male mammoths to their deaths and bone preservation.



We picked up groceries in Hot Springs and then headed back to the lodge for supper on our balcony.

Day’s mileage : 115 Total driving mileage : 2772

Day’s estimated hiking : 0.5 miles (underground)

West-X Day 10 (8/10/2009) : Oregon Trail from Ft Caspar to Ft Laramie and into the Black Hills

It was another sunny morning which started with me getting gas for the minivan and milk for our family’s breakfast at the hotel. Once we had eaten and the minivan was loaded, we headed east on I-25 along the Platte River to the town of Guernsey which has a couple of Oregon trail historic sites. One is some rock which has ruts left by the ox and hand garts which had traversed the trail 160 years ago. The second is Register Cliff where travelers left names and dates dating back to the Oregon trail days.

Our next stop was Fort Laramie National Historic Site, but first we wanted to have lunch. Mavis had few options in the area, but a stop at the Ft Laramie (town) information center provided a lead. We got some turkey, noodle, and turkey dinners to go and had them at a park by an army bridge constructed in 1875 across the Platte River. The bridge was critical for troops to reliably head north to conflicts with the the northern plains Indians which ran until about 1890.


Ft Laramie was restored to the 1880s-1890s period, well after our 1840-1870 Oregon Trail period of interest. The buildings we saw were the third incarnation of the fort. The first was a wooden palisade style up till the 1840s and the second, concurrent with the peak of the Oregon Trail, was an adobe structure. Both of these earlier structures were more focused on trade than military.

Upon leaving Yellowstone, we had started listening to a Librivox audio version of Francis Parkman Jr’s book The Oregon Trail which he had written after adventuring on the trail in 1846. We got about half way through the book including the portion about his visit to the cosmopolitan fort. At that time it was a crossroads for Mexicans, Indians of various tribes, Oregon Trail settlers, and military people. We stopped listening because the girls didn’t like it. Parkman is a bit difficult to follow, but he has a rich vocabulary he uses to paint the people, land, and events he witnessed. I would like to finish it. The other audio books we ended up listening to the second half of our trip were by Jeanne DuPrau: City of Ember, The People of Sparks (only half, we found the characters frustrating), and The Prophet of Yonwood.

After the historic site, we picked up some malts at the place we had gotten lunch and then headed north-northeast to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Supper was at Subway in Hot Springs, SD. Our drive from supper to our room at Sylvan Lodge in Custer State Park featured lots of deer along the road at dusk. Fortunately none had a death wish, but we did wonder if a wildlife encounter totaled our minivan, but left it drivable, could we combine the insurance money and the government “Cash for Clunkers” program to have about $8500 towards a new vehicle.


Day’s mileage : 344 Total mileage : 2657 Day’s estimated hiking : 1.5 miles

West-X Day 9 (8/9/2009) : Oregon Trail from Ft Bridger to Ft Caspar

The sun was up and I drove down to the corner to fill the minivan with gas and get some milk for breakfast. While our nominal starting point was Ft Bridger, we didn’t take time to visit the state historic site. Instead, we headed east on I-80 to Wyoming 372, then north until we turned northeast on Wyoming 28 which paralleled the Big Sandy River and Oregon Trail. I-80 was fairly busy, as expected. Wyoming highways 372 and 28 were pretty desolate. Occasionally we would see the odd cow or pronghorn some distance from the road. The lonely crossroads town of Farson was a handful of houses, a gas station, and a couple convenience stores. We stopped to use a bathroom and get midmorning snacks.

Continuing northeast out of Farson, we came to the South Pass monument, marking South Pass: an easy way to get through the Rocky Mountains which did so much to enable settlement of Utah, California, and the Oregon Territory. The absence of South Pass might have contributed to another country holding what are now the western two or three tiers of US states. While Wyoming 28 is now a road less travelled, it was THE road for many pioneers in the 1840s through 1860s. Once the transcontinental railroad was completed, the 5-6 month journey on the Oregon Trail was reduced to a 2-3 week train trip.

A short distance from the monument, we stopped at the South Pass City State Historic Site for the abandoned town of South Pass. It was not there for the Oregon Trail, but rather for gold mines that ran sporadically from the 1890s to about 1950. The buildings were restored and furnished to the 1890s. It was a nice stop.

With a current population of about 7 people, South Pass City didn’t offer much for lunchtime dining, so we drover further down a gravel road to Atlantic City which has about 50 people and an eating place. After checking out the restaurant, we opted to drive on. Leaving town, we came to a fork on the road which wasn’t on our official Wyoming highway or Rand McNally maps. I thought we should take the left fork, but Mavis our navigation system said to go right and we deferred to her judgment.

That choice was brought into increasing question as we continued down the washboardy gravel road at speeds of 5-15 mph, were told to turn onto a couple wheel tracks departing from said washboardy road (we declined), and were told to turn onto a couple wheel tracks departing said road and leading to a steel gate (we declined again). I eventually activated my hiking GPS to get a second view of where we were relative to Wyoming 28 and eventually got back on the road we wanted.

This incident along with a similar scenic route Mavis took us through in Montpelior en route to the trails museum led to some conclusions about Mavis’ knowledge and programming.

1. In rural areas, NAVTEQ, the map supplier to Garmin and Mavis, must just use local maps without checking to see if the roads on the map would be considered roads by most drivers.

2. The questionable roads did not have speed information associated with them. Mavis must be programmed to use some speed like 40 or 55 mph to evaluate routes even though, as we found out, those speeds are not achievable.

Our trust in Mavis for routes involving non-paved roads was greatly diminished for the rest of the trip.

Back on the paved road, but now well past lunch time, we consulted Mavis for dining options in the upcoming town of Lander. “Mom’s Malt Shop” sounded good, so we locked in the destination. On reaching downtown Lander, Mavis guided us right to the location of a building which had a “For Lease” sign. Fortunately, the town had a new McDonalds, not listed in Mavis database, to which we returned for lunch. I wondered if the opening of McDonalds had something to do with the closing of the malt shop.

Leaving Landers, there was again driving through open country until we paralleled the Sweatwater River and eventually got to Casper. Along the way, we made stops at the Oregon Trail landmarks of the Devil’s Gate and Independence Rock. The girls climbed pretty much to the top of Independence Rock.

We ate at a nice Mexican restaurant in Casper en route to Hilton Garden Inn, our 4th and final free night on the trip.


Day’s mileage : 353 Total mileage : 2313 miles Day’s estimated hiking : 2 miles

West-X Day 8 (8/6/2009) : Potatoes and Pioneers

Today proved to be cool with scattered showers until mid-afternoon. Grey clouds were draped over the mountain peaks, occasionally leaking rain onto the earth below. Fortunately this was a driving day with two museum stops, so rain was once again not a factor

We headed south out of Idaho Falls to the town of Blackfoot, self-proclaimed potato capital of the world. Our objective, requested by daughter L, was the Idaho Potato Museum. It provided a nice historical view of potatoes in the world and in Idaho. With our admission, we also got three boxes of dehydrated hash browns made from Idaho potatoes.


Leaving the Snake River basin behind us, we turned east into the mountains through the tourist town of Lava Hot Springs, famous for its bathing pools fed by hot springs and through the town of Soda Butte where we had lunch at a Taco Time restaurant.

We then descended into the Bear Lake Valley and the town of Montpelior , ID where we picked up a branch of the Oregon Trail and toured the National Trails Center Museum. Costumed docents took us back to 1852 and through a number of theatre stages and narration/instruction helped us get provisions in Independence, MO at a gun shop and a general store, load our wagons, camp on the trail, and arrive at Oregon Territory after 2000 miles and 5 ½ months. Tomorrow we pick up the trail again near Ft Bridger, WY.

We continued south in the valley and then along the eastern shore of Bear Lake itself into Utah. At Garden City, UT, we had supper at a pizza place which featured a 28" diameter size called "Old Ephraim". The large pizzas and boxes were a unique sight.

Bear Lake in Utah

Rounding the southern end of Bear Lake, we crossed an indifferent mountain pass into a plain in Wyoming. It was a stark landscape with limestone hills, yet it was scenic with broken clouds and evening light shining on the buttes. We drove past, but did not stop at, Fossil Butte National Monument, through the town of Kemmerer (birthplace of JC Penney’s cahinj of stores and now a mining town), and then south to Mountain Butte, Wyoming were we spent the night at a modern cabin at Mountain Cabins Inn.

Day’s mileage : 289 Total mileage : 1960 miles Day’s estimated hiking : 0 miles

West-X Day 7 (8/7/2009) : Craters of the Moon and Scenic Sand Dunes

Because of the previous day’s forecast of rain in the morning, we had decided to have a leisurely start to our new day so hiking would be in the afternoon instead of the morning. I had originally feared temps in the mid-90s, but we were fortunate that temps would be in the 60s for hiking. On rising, we learned that the forcast and changed and rain was now forecast with highest probability in the afternoon. The precipitation ended up being only a few sprinkles which didn’t impact our day.

Our first destination of the day was Craters of the Moon National Monument about 90 miles west of Idaho Falls. We took US 20 which qualifies as a “road less travelled” thought a sparsely vegetated plain and Idaho National Laboratory. Jutting out from the plain were three large buttes of volcanic origin. We could also see little building sites off in the distance with restricted access roads.

We drove by EBR-1, Experimental Breeder Reactor 1, which played a leading role in nuclear power research in the 1950s and 1960s and is now a historic site. It is where the first electricity was generated by nuclear power and also the only place in the US where there have been fatalities in a nuclear accident. We didn’t stop due to concerns about rain later in the day, the fact that I have been in decommissioned reactors elsewhere, and lack of interest by other family members.

Craters of the Moon is part of a large volcanic area which is currently dormant, but left lava flows, spatter cones, cinder cones, and lava tubes (caves) which we explored. Indian Tunnel is the largest lava tube and it has some collapsed areas so it has good natural lighting throughout. At Boy Scout Cave and Beauty Cave, flashlights were needed by each person. We lacked flashlights in sufficient number and quality to do much exploring and this was a disappointment.

Hiking up a Cinder Cone

Hiking on a lava flow

Heading east, we stopped in the nearby town of Arco, population about 1000, for lunch at a place called Pickle’s. It was a small town burger joint where the girls ordered the Atomic Buurger, named not for it’s spiciness, but in commemoration of Arco being the first town with 100% of its energy supplied by nuclear power: an experiment involving EBR-1.

After lunch, we continued east to the Scenic Sand Dunes near St Anthony, ID. The story there is that winds which pick up sand in the Snake River basin can’t get it over the mountains. The result is an area of sand dunes up to 400 feet high. We had hoped to have an experience similar to the one at Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado, but that was not the case and led to the second major disappointment of the day.

Scenic Sand Dunes in managed by the Bureau of Land Management and priority is given to ATV use rather than hiking. There is also no visitor’s center. Not wanting to be run over by an ATV nor wanting to walk great distances from parking areas to the dunes, most of our viewing was at a distance. This was the low point of our whole trip.

Potatoes, white sand dunes, and mountains

After the disappointing drive along the southern boundary of the dunes, we returned to St Anthony where we had a picnic supper along the Henry Fork of the Snake River before returning to Idaho Falls and our hotel.

Day’s driving mileage : 301 miles Total driving mileage : 1671 miles
Day’s estimated hiking : 3 miles

West-X Day 6 : (8/6/2009) : The Grand Tetons and on to Idaho Falls

The day started with a crash of thunder at midnight and there was rain at other times prior to our 6:15 AM MDT departure south to the Grand Tetons and then west into Idaho. The drive to and out the south entrance of Yellowstone was uneventful and we then encountered a brief road construction delay. The rest of our day didn’t quite follow the itinerary, but the result was a very good day.

Grand Teton National Park is directly south of Yellowstone and basically consists, moving east to west, of a rolling, grassy plain at 6000 feet of elevation followed by wooded mountain lakes followed by a dozen ragged mountain peaks which rise 4000-6000 feet above the plain and the lakes. It is very scenic.

Our original plan was based on a one day itinerary in Frommer’s, so we stopped first at the Colter Bay visitor’s center on Jackson Lake to pick up additional information as well as view exhibits. We planned to do some hiking and found out that moose were regularly seen in Cascade Canyon just west of Jenny Lake to the south. Wanting to take advantage of the wildlife activity and coolness of the morning, we cut our stay at Jackson Lake short and proceded to Jenny Lake.

Between the lakes and south of a place called Signal Hill, we encountered a crowd of people and several rangers along the road, frequently an indication that something is up from a wildlife perspective. We joined the crowd and spent 45 minutes watching a 2-year-old black bear in the woods. It was hoped that the bear would cross the road in a corridor blocked off by the rangers. The crowd and the steady flow of traffic on the road probably led the bear to decide after all that time to head deeper into the woods. It was fun watching and the best bear viewing we had on the trip.

Due to the bear watching delay and the length of time since breakfast, we decided to stop at Jenny Lake Lodge Dining Room which Frommer’s rates as one of the best eateries in any national park. We arrived about 11:00 only to find out that lunch wasn’t served until Noon. We then decided to head further south to the village of Moose where, at the bear site we had learned, there was a moose seen near the Snake River. The moose was still there and we watched it from the bridge over the river for a while.

We drove a little further to the Chuckwagen of Dornan’s for lunch, which also didn’t start serving till noon. Between the drive, the moose, and the nearby store, it wasn’t much of a wait. We ate outside, under a tent, with a great view of the mountains.

After lunch, we headed back to Jenny Lake for the afternoon. We hiked the south side of the lake and then to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point on the west side. The trail had a lot of small, angular rocks which made it rough for walking. There were also building clouds followed by a light shower as we got to our Hidden Falls.

Thunder was heard as we boarded the boat for our trip back across the lake. While it didn’t start raining until we were back in our minivan, the spray from the boat got the girls wet and made for a refreshing ride. We then headed south out of Grand Tetons to the town of Jackson which I didn’t like due to its touristy appearance and congestion.

Yellowstone and Grand Teton have different characters starting with nature. Yellowstone features elk and bison while Grand Teton features bear and moose. Yellowstone is more of a place to see while Grand Teton is a place to do. Besides the hiking at GT, there is water recreation on the lakes, bike trails along the roads, float trips on the Snake River, and more horseback riding opportunities. Grand Teton also appears more upscale as evidenced by the bottles of Perrier mineral water at the general stores.

Leaving Jackson, we took a brief detour in the rain to drive through the ski resort town of Teton Village. The ski tram operates in the summer to take visitors to the top for a view of the area, but not during thunderstorms. We resumed our westward travel which took us over the Teton Pass (8431 feet) and a lesser pass into Idaho. It was another opportunity for our minivan to show its vigor in old age. I also found myself more proficient in downshifting to utilize engine, versus wheel, braking.

After some routine driving, we made a surreal entrance into Idaho Falls, ID. Like Fargo, it is relatively flat. It had 30-45 mph winds as we arrived though a light industrial section of town, similar to Main Avenue is western Fargo. The wind had picked up a fine dust which gave the city an eerie orange glow. It reminded me of dust storms on Mars.

Mavis’ recommended route to the hotel was blocked by construction and as the detour brought us to a McDonalds, we took the opportunity to eat supper and get four more Beanie Babies via Happy Meals. The toys were mostly ones we had, but they could and would be used as trade items. After supper, we continued to the Hampton Inn which was to be our free home for the next two nights. We stopped at a second McDonalds where through trade and cash purchase, the set of Beanie Babies was completed. A collateral objective of our trip had been achieved and greater menu possibilities were available for the rest of our trip.

At the hotel, a check of the weather indicated heavy rain for the next morning….

Day’s mileage : 247 Total mileage : 1370 Day’s estimated hiking : 3.25 miles