In September, we traveled to Wyoming so that Tom could attend a meeting of railroad writers and historians in Sheridan. Our route took us through Las Vegas and Salt Lake City, as well as Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, with a side trip to Red Lodge, Mont. On the return leg, we traveled via Rapid City, S.D., and Vail, Colo. In both directions we were able to visit friends along the way, and both coming and going we went through beautiful country with, luckily, good weather all the way.
The first friends we saw on this trip live in St. George, Utah. Gail grew up with Marcia in Massachusetts. She and her husband, George, retired and moved to St. George several years ago. It’s a great base for visiting Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, which we had done on previous trips. This time, we arrived late in the afternoon, and had dinner with them at the Gun Barrel, a steak and game restaurant. Tom had bison steak and Marcia had elk medallions.
From St. George we moved on to Salt Lake City, where we took a “side trip” to Boston, Mass., which we’ll describe in a separate report. When we got back from that trip, we spent the first night on the road in Logan, Utah, a historic and very appealing college town 85 miles northeast of Salt Lake City. Leaving Logan, we got our first taste of fall foliage as we drove through Logan Canyon.
By mid-day we were driving along the Snake River north of Alpine, Wyo., which also had some nice foliage. Both here and in Utah, we were surprised by the reds and oranges, which we associate with the fall colors in New England. We thought the color of fall in the west was more typically yellow, due to the predominance of aspens, cottonwoods, willows and related trees.
In early afternoon, we reached the south entrance to Grand Teton National Park, just north of Jackson, Wyo. The Tetons come into view suddenly as you approach the park from this direction, and although we had seen this view many times in 2008 when we worked in Grand Teton, it still takes our breath away.
We had reservations to stay two nights at Jackson Lake Lodge in the park. On our way there we stopped at one of the places we had missed visiting during our Grand Teton summer, the Chapel of the Transfiguration. It was built in 1925 and is used for Sunday services during the summer by St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson. The chapel was designed so that as you sit in the sanctuary and look toward the alter, you have a magnificent view of the Tetons.
That evening we had dinner with our friend Rosanna, who Tom had worked with at Jenny Lake Lodge in 2008. It was a lot of fun catching up with her.
The next morning we attended the Sunday service at the Chapel of the Transfiguration and then went to Jenny Lake Lodge for lunch. We were lucky to see many of the people we had gotten to know there in 2008. And, we had a great lunch of trout. Then it was back to Jackson Lake Lodge for dinner in the employee dining room, where we reconnected with more of our friends from last summer.
The next day, our destination was Red Lodge, Mont. This took us through Yellowstone National Park and out the northeast entrance near Cooke City, Mont. Along the way we got some great views as we descended from Dunraven Pass (where the Absaroka Range can be seen to the northeast) and then traveled along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River near Calcite Springs.
There are two main routes from Yellowstone to Red Lodge: the Beartooth Highway, which reaches an elevation of 10,947 feet and is acclaimed as one of the most beautiful roads in the U.S.; and Chief Joseph Highway, less direct than the Beartooth but also very scenic (click here for a map showing the Chief Joseph and a portion of the Beartooth). We had done the Beartooth in 2008, so we decided to go via the Chief Joseph.
This road is named for Chief Joseph, the leader of the Nez Perce Indians, who in 1877 led the remnants of his tribe across 1,400 miles, pursued by the U.S. Cavalry, in hopes of reaching Canada rather than undergo a forced relocation to a small reservation in Idaho. The retreat was unsuccessful – Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce surrendered 40 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border in October 1877 – but the stamina and strategic skills of the chief and his tribe earned them the respect of many military leaders.
The summit of the highway, at an elevation of 8,048 feet in the Absaroka Range, is Dead Indian Pass, where one of the wounded Nez Perce warriors had been left behind and was then killed by Army scouts. As you climb toward the summit from the direction of Yellowstone, the road winds through several corkscrew turns, with turnouts where you can view the valley of the Clarks Fork River to the west and north.
The descent from the summit going east offers very different views, as you look out toward the next major range to the east, the Big Horn Mountains. Between the two ranges lie the Bighorn Basin and its dominant geographic feature, Heart Mountain. In addition, there are red rock formations along the highway as you descend from the pass.
We arrived at Red Lodge in mid-afternoon. We had a reservation at the Pollard Hotel, which is managed by our friend Angela Beaumont. Until the end of the 2008 season she had served as general manager of Jenny Lake Lodge.
Angela greeted us warmly and made sure we had a very nice room with a balcony overlooking the rear lobby of the hotel.
The hotel has historic character (it opened in 1893) but with modern amenities and a friendly staff. Both the guest rooms and the public areas are nicely furnished and well maintained.
We had an excellent dinner in the hotel’s dining room with Angela and her husband, classical guitarist Michael Beaumont. In the morning we enjoyed breakfast in the hotel dining room and then explored Red Lodge before leaving for Sheridan. The town’s retail blocks consist largely of brick and masonry buildings from the late 19th and early 20th century, and there are a variety of shops and eating places to choose from.
Our route to Sheridan took us over the Big Horn Mountains via U.S. Highway 14A (aka the Medicine Wheel Passage) to Burgess Junction, and U.S. 14 beyond. The photo below shows our little Honda Fit as we got ready to start the climb.
The drive across the mountains turned out to be more of an adventure than we anticipated, thanks to a major highway reconstruction project. As Marcia wrote in her travel diary, “We drove through mud, rocks and huge potholes, concerned the Fit would bottom out and get stuck.” But the worst did not happen, and by late afternoon we arrived in Sheridan.
Tom was attending the three-and-a-half day annual meeting of the Lexington Group. Marcia came prepared with a big bag of scrapbooking materials, and the Candlewood Suites where we stayed proved well-suited for this type of project since it had a large work counter. She also spent some time exploring downtown Sheridan and decided that it was no match for the charm of Red Lodge. But we did find a couple of good Mexican restaurants and had meals there on separate nights with railroad friends from the Lexington Group meeting.
The centerpiece of the meeting was a bus tour of the Powder River Basin coal mining region south of Gillette, Wyo. Inexplicably, Marcia declined the opportunity to go on this day-long trip. But Tom certainly enjoyed it!
The mines themselves are open pits covering thousands of acres. The coal lies in seams covered by a few yards of topsoil, and large draglines like the one shown here are used to remove the “overburden” so that coal can be removed with mechanized shovels. This is at the North Antelope Rochelle mine, which in 2008 produced more coal than any other mine in the world.
This doesn’t seem like a hospitable environment for wildlife. But one of Tom’s unexpected discoveries was the number of pronghorn (commonly known as antelope, although they’re unrelated to African antelope) that live near the mines. The pronghorn graze even in busy areas like this one where coal trains are loaded.
After touring the mine, the three Lexington Group busses found a place to take a break so that everyone could enjoy their box lunches, in close proximity to a busy piece of railroad.
Our next stop was Custer State Park, S.D., where our friend Pat was spending the summer working in the store at Sylvan Lake Lodge. Marcia and Pat had worked together at the Jackson Lake Lodge gift shop in 2008, and we had visited Pat at her home in Florida earlier this year. She showed us around the lodge, which was built in 1937 and has a style similar to that of many national parks lodges of that era.
We had a very nice dinner with Pat in the lodge’s dining room. Tom had bison, appropriate since the next day Pat would be among the Custer park employees involved in the annual “Buffalo Round-Up.” To keep the park’s herd at manageable size, each year they conduct a bison drive through the park that ends up with some of the animals being cut out for commercial sale. We didn’t stick around for this – we had seen plenty of bison on trips to Yellowstone when we worked at Grand Teton.
We stayed that night at Rapid City, about an hour north of the park, and in the morning headed for our next overnight stop, Douglas, Wyo. Along the way we stopped at Mount Rushmore, which we had visited in 2007, but decided to revisit since we were in the area.
In addition to the iconic sculptures of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, this national park features an emphasis on Native American culture and history. Its superintendent for the past five years has been Gerard Baker, a Mandan-Hidatsa who has worked to provide visitors with information about the Sioux who were driven from the Black Hills following the discovery of gold in the area in the 1870s. The teepee shown here is part of Mount Rushmore’s Heritage Village.
In Hill City, S.D., a one-time mining town that’s now a tourist destination, we had lunch, and then Marcia explored the shops while Tom followed the Black Hills Central tourist train out of town.
Back on the road, we passed through Edgemont, S.D. (more coal trains), Lusk and Shawnee, Wyo. (ditto) and finally arrived in Douglas. In the morning, we headed south to Denver, where we would turn west toward Vail. At mid-day, we stopped at Fort Collins, Colo., where we searched for a lunch spot and stumbled across a folk art store (South by Southwest) that happened to contain a winery tasting room (Trail Ridge). The tasting room, in turn, happened to offer a cheese and cracker plate that was perfect for lunch, along with a glass of wine. It was an unexpected treat.
After lunch we drove around Fort Collins (home of Colorado State University). We liked the town very much. Time didn’t allow us to linger, but we do expect to get back to here soon.
We picked up Interstate 70 near Denver, and reached Vail in late afternoon. The aspens along I-70 were spectacular.
We explored the commercial area of Vail that evening. It was the off season, and many restaurants were offering two-for-one specials and other incentives. This allowed us to have a nice but affordable dinner at a European-style restaurant, where we sat on the patio and enjoyed the views.
The next morning we had a breakfast at the Lodge at Vail, an upscale Swiss-style property, where (again, because it was the off season) we had the dining room to ourselves. We were interested in stopping here because it is managed by Vail Corporation, our employer when we worked at Grand Teton. We then proceeded west through Glenwood Springs, Colo., where our stop happened to coincide with the arrival of Amtrak’s eastbound California Zephyr.
The rest of the day consisted mainly of a long desert crossing from Grand Junction, Colo., to Green River, Utah. But the desert can be beautiful. As Marcia wrote in her travel diary, “There are canyons, rock cliffs, mountains, rock formations and outcroppings in all different sizes, shapes and colors.” Beyond Green River, we had another few hours of mountain-climbing before we reached our overnight stop at Richfield, Utah. From Richfield it was on to Henderson, Nev., where we stayed with Marcia’s sister-in-law Marilyn and her husband Michael. By coincidence, it was Tom’s birthday, and the next day was Marilyn’s, so we celebrated with a nice dinner at the Orleans in Las Vegas.
From Henderson, it’s a 400-mile drive to Santa Maria. We’ve done it many times, and the key to a successful trip is timing it to avoid the Las Vegas traffic on Interstate 15. We were on the road early, and around noon we stopped next to the railroad at Tehachapi, Calif., to enjoy the picnic lunch that Marilyn had made for us.
It was a great trip – we visited lots of new places, saw many friends, and came back with a long list of things to do on our next trip to these areas.
The first friends we saw on this trip live in St. George, Utah. Gail grew up with Marcia in Massachusetts. She and her husband, George, retired and moved to St. George several years ago. It’s a great base for visiting Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks, which we had done on previous trips. This time, we arrived late in the afternoon, and had dinner with them at the Gun Barrel, a steak and game restaurant. Tom had bison steak and Marcia had elk medallions.
From St. George we moved on to Salt Lake City, where we took a “side trip” to Boston, Mass., which we’ll describe in a separate report. When we got back from that trip, we spent the first night on the road in Logan, Utah, a historic and very appealing college town 85 miles northeast of Salt Lake City. Leaving Logan, we got our first taste of fall foliage as we drove through Logan Canyon.
(Click on any photo to enlarge)
The next morning we attended the Sunday service at the Chapel of the Transfiguration and then went to Jenny Lake Lodge for lunch. We were lucky to see many of the people we had gotten to know there in 2008. And, we had a great lunch of trout. Then it was back to Jackson Lake Lodge for dinner in the employee dining room, where we reconnected with more of our friends from last summer.
The next day, our destination was Red Lodge, Mont. This took us through Yellowstone National Park and out the northeast entrance near Cooke City, Mont. Along the way we got some great views as we descended from Dunraven Pass (where the Absaroka Range can be seen to the northeast) and then traveled along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River near Calcite Springs.
This road is named for Chief Joseph, the leader of the Nez Perce Indians, who in 1877 led the remnants of his tribe across 1,400 miles, pursued by the U.S. Cavalry, in hopes of reaching Canada rather than undergo a forced relocation to a small reservation in Idaho. The retreat was unsuccessful – Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce surrendered 40 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border in October 1877 – but the stamina and strategic skills of the chief and his tribe earned them the respect of many military leaders.
The summit of the highway, at an elevation of 8,048 feet in the Absaroka Range, is Dead Indian Pass, where one of the wounded Nez Perce warriors had been left behind and was then killed by Army scouts. As you climb toward the summit from the direction of Yellowstone, the road winds through several corkscrew turns, with turnouts where you can view the valley of the Clarks Fork River to the west and north.
We had an excellent dinner in the hotel’s dining room with Angela and her husband, classical guitarist Michael Beaumont. In the morning we enjoyed breakfast in the hotel dining room and then explored Red Lodge before leaving for Sheridan. The town’s retail blocks consist largely of brick and masonry buildings from the late 19th and early 20th century, and there are a variety of shops and eating places to choose from.
Tom was attending the three-and-a-half day annual meeting of the Lexington Group. Marcia came prepared with a big bag of scrapbooking materials, and the Candlewood Suites where we stayed proved well-suited for this type of project since it had a large work counter. She also spent some time exploring downtown Sheridan and decided that it was no match for the charm of Red Lodge. But we did find a couple of good Mexican restaurants and had meals there on separate nights with railroad friends from the Lexington Group meeting.
The centerpiece of the meeting was a bus tour of the Powder River Basin coal mining region south of Gillette, Wyo. Inexplicably, Marcia declined the opportunity to go on this day-long trip. But Tom certainly enjoyed it!
The mines themselves are open pits covering thousands of acres. The coal lies in seams covered by a few yards of topsoil, and large draglines like the one shown here are used to remove the “overburden” so that coal can be removed with mechanized shovels. This is at the North Antelope Rochelle mine, which in 2008 produced more coal than any other mine in the world.
Our next stop was Custer State Park, S.D., where our friend Pat was spending the summer working in the store at Sylvan Lake Lodge. Marcia and Pat had worked together at the Jackson Lake Lodge gift shop in 2008, and we had visited Pat at her home in Florida earlier this year. She showed us around the lodge, which was built in 1937 and has a style similar to that of many national parks lodges of that era.
We stayed that night at Rapid City, about an hour north of the park, and in the morning headed for our next overnight stop, Douglas, Wyo. Along the way we stopped at Mount Rushmore, which we had visited in 2007, but decided to revisit since we were in the area.
We picked up Interstate 70 near Denver, and reached Vail in late afternoon. The aspens along I-70 were spectacular.
The next morning we had a breakfast at the Lodge at Vail, an upscale Swiss-style property, where (again, because it was the off season) we had the dining room to ourselves. We were interested in stopping here because it is managed by Vail Corporation, our employer when we worked at Grand Teton. We then proceeded west through Glenwood Springs, Colo., where our stop happened to coincide with the arrival of Amtrak’s eastbound California Zephyr.
From Henderson, it’s a 400-mile drive to Santa Maria. We’ve done it many times, and the key to a successful trip is timing it to avoid the Las Vegas traffic on Interstate 15. We were on the road early, and around noon we stopped next to the railroad at Tehachapi, Calif., to enjoy the picnic lunch that Marilyn had made for us.
It was a great trip – we visited lots of new places, saw many friends, and came back with a long list of things to do on our next trip to these areas.
Text and images ©2009 Tom and Marcia Murray
I am concerned about the sustainability of the American Bison, as Tom eats it everywhere he has the opportunity.
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