The Adventure: June 29: saying goodbye

As written in my journal on the 29th, edited now with comments in parentheses:

"Today I leave. Seems weird to be packing up again, as it really does not feel like I've been here very long at all. (hopefully I did not completely drive B insane!). I am going to miss this place and the animals and the scenery and pretty much everything about it. I am so glad I came on this trip. I have had a wonderful time here and wouldn't trade that for anything. I am so hyped up about art now, I must get my art into this place. I just hope I can maintain this enthusiasm when I get back to my relatively dull existence in the sweltering valley that is Sacramento. I hope to return here some day. I have so many fond memories from this trip."

So yeah, it was hard to leave, it felt like a very short ten days. I told myself that morning that I would not cry... phsaw yeah I totally did, a lot, it was a little embarrassing. :-) I'm not good with goodbye, and for ten days that was home and family and so much fun, and it was hard to leave.

If you haven't already figured it out, I had a great time. :-) The Adventure of a lifetime, but hopefully not just once in a lifetime. Being back home has been a big adjustment for a lot of reasons. I loved it up there. I really could see myself in a place like that. I know, I know, the winter would suck, but I'd stay in and make a lot of art. Anyway I have to have something to complain about on the blog! ;-) For now, you're stuck with me whining about summer in the valley. Artistically speaking, that place and I were a perfect match, I can't stop thinking about Jackson Hole. I WILL go back. I've traveled a lot but never has a place really pulled at me like this, I can't shake it. It is hard to keep the enthusiasm when I'm here. I have a list of art pieces to create that I think would be real assets to my portfolio as far as seeking gallery representation there. I am applying to an art show that takes place there in September 2009, but it's not a show I'd have to be present for (though if I got in I'd sure as heck go see it!). I will not get into details on this now. If I could find a way to spend a long time up there, like even a whole summer, and do a string of art shows, I'd jump on that.

To my dear friend B: thank you for the Adventure. I sincerely hope I see you again some day. I hope you stay there, I'll need someone to check in on those galleries and make sure they're displaying my stuff properly. ;-) May the Force be with you, and may "four hundred children" always make you laugh. And write that book gosh darn it!!!

So long critters!

See ya Tetons!

Farewell Jackson Hole!


Such memories. :-) Happy Trails!

The Adventure: June 28: Granite Canyon Trail Ride

It was another lazy morning until the farrier came out and reshod Amigo (remember he lost a shoe a few days earlier in Teton Canyon). However, considering his problems with navicular disease he was still too sore for a ride that day so that ruled out another jaunt through the field.

So lacking any other specific plans it was decided that we would go out to Jackson Hole and trail ride with B's friend R. R has Rocky Mountain horses, I'd never ridden one of those before. Size-wise similar to Shylah (in height AND girth, lol). ;-) I'd also never ridden in an Australian saddle before. It was pretty cushy. My horse for the day was a chestnut mare named Sugar. She was okay but we didn't really click and she was kinda disrespectful at times (and not the time and place for me to do anything about that), so it wasn't as fun a ride as the previous ones had been. However, I did enjoy getting to do some gaiting, she was really really smooth and that was a lot fun. She weren't no Shylah or Sara though! :-)

Here are pics from the ride. This was in Granite Canyon (aptly named!) which is in the Grand Teton National Park. A lot of my pics came out very blurry, perhaps an indication that the coolpix camera was starting to have some problems.



Hmm, could that be some granite there in the canyon?

Look at those ears, she's contemplating tossing me in the river and making a run for it (she was NOT a fan of water and got airplane ears every time we were near it).

And then we saw bears. Bears! Plural! A female and two cubs! And where was my camera? Why it was turned off and put away in the camera bag. Why? Because I'd had to dismount and fix the saddle when Sugar suddenly managed to deflate and I started slipping over the side. And somehow it didn't dawn on me to get the camera back out. Yeah, I really have impeccable timing sometimes. See those brown blobs? Those are bears. We were REALLY close, like "OMG do we need to turn around?" close. I was concerned what the horses would do, recalling when Shylah saw a bear once. Eh, the horses were fine. I was in a bad photo spot, and the camera was slow and not focusing where I wanted it to.

The cute blob with the face is one of the cubs. Oh these are cinnamon bears. Or are they called cinnamon black bears?

Back view of the bear blob.

Purty!

We all went to dinner at a little place in town, and on the way back what should I see but moose #3! Now I thought the third time was supposed to be a charm, but it was almost dark and she was moving fast and was looong gone by the time we turned around. Foiled again! Sadly, I have no moose photos to show you. :-( That of course means I just have to go back some day.

Next: my last day, sigh...

The Adventure: June 27: Yellowstone: the grand finale

After taking all those eagle pics, we hoofed it on back to the truck and headed onward toward the exit. Bryan was in a hurry as he needed to be somewhere, so the eagles were to be the last of the photo-stops. He looked over at me and smiled and said something like "well, we saw everything but bears and wolves, that's pretty good." I agreed that was pretty fantastic (other than lacking photographic proof of mooses). It couldn't have been more than ten seconds later, as I stared absentmindedly out the window, saying goodbye to this wonderful place, that I saw a female elk running along the bank on the far side of the river. Wow pretty, I thought. B saw her too and said "did you see that elk?" "Yup."

And then my eyeballs just about fell out of my head and my jaw dropped open and I said something totally unladylike, like "oh sh*t, there's a wolf chasing her!!!!"

A WOLF!!!! Did you catch that!? A wolf!!! Chasing the elk!!! OMG!!!!

Well that was the quickest U-turn on the face of the planet. Time crunch be danged, we were barreling back down the road trying to catch up! We were sure we'd missed them, they must have gone up into the trees along the other side. B pulled off on a side road that went down to the river. We saw no sign of them, but figuring "what the heck" I said let me hop out and I scrambled down a trail to the shore, with my camera of course! I expected they were long gone, so imagine my complete surprise when I saw the elk cow in the middle of the river, heading back toward the riverbank on the other side. I fumbled for a moment, and that was as long as it took her to get out of the water and head up the bank:




Well cool, I thought, she must have lost the wolf and I got some neat pictures of her.

And again my eyeballs about fell out of my head when suddenly from around the bend I saw a wolf in the river, swimming toward shore. I just held the shutter down and shot, grinning like an idiot and thinking "I can't believe I'm seeing this."










Somewhere in the course of all this two more people showed up, they had also been following the elk but thought they'd lost her til they saw B's truck turn around and head down this side road. I can't remember if B had walked up by this point. Was it then that they said something about having seen two wolves?

Second wolf?

OMG! Yes, a second one, running along the far shore. This is the one I had seen chasing her originally, I had no idea there were two!






And just like that they were gone, and I think we were all standing there with looks of absolute shock on our faces. Had we been even seconds earlier or later we would have missed the whole thing. I still can't believe I saw that. What happened to the elk, I don't know. She seemed to have a pretty good head start on those wolves, but in what way nature ended up taking its course, I have no idea. That was the last thing I would have ever expected to see. I didn't even think about wolves because I thought "no way." I'm still just sitting here kinda shaking my head because I can't believe we saw that. Talk about once in a lifetime!

Fate, I tell ya, fate!

I don't think I stopped smiling the entire way back to Teton County. Actually I haven't smiled as much as I did on this trip in a long time. And every now and then one of us would say "I can't believe we saw that!" The ride back was gorgeous, that part of Montana is OMG beautiful, and B said it was the area where "A River Runs Through It" was filmed. Stunning. Unfortunately I did not see Brad Pitt's character wandering around, or I might have done something embarrassing like throw myself at him. ;-)

Wow. Wow. Wow. Still in shock!

The Adventure: June 27: Yellowstone: bald eagles!

Yellowstone Lake is immense. Absolutely immense. I thought Clear Lake was big!

We were on our way back to West Yellowstone to leave the park. There was a 1/4 mile stretch of road that was posted "no stopping" because of bald eagles nesting. We'd driven past this twice already but it wasn't til now that it was like "oh yeah, that huge nest up there in the tree!" So we pulled over past the closure and walked back (as far as allowed) to take some pics. It was impossible to get great shots considering the distance but nevertheless this is a bald eagle and its baby. Bryan was back there last weekend and said this chick has fledged. Cool!



I'd seen these eagles first thing that morning along the river near the West Entrance but told B not to stop because they were back pretty far from the road. Well, they probably weren't any farther away than this, but it's okay. There were a lot of animals we passed up that day (elk, bison) because of all the pics from the previous day. I occasionally found myself thinking "we should have stopped for that one" but realized later that if we had done one thing different that day and altered the schedule by even a few seconds we wouldn't have seen what we saw next. You'll see.... ;-)

Up next: the moment you've been waiting for! What we saw! (Yes, I have been dragging this out as long as possible) ;-)

The Adventure: June 27: Yellowstone: falls and big bull elk!

We headed north from Norris Geyser Basin.

Here's a pretty scene overlooking a lot of trees. There were some discovery channel people down there filming some sort of interview so everyone was getting hushed by a ranger right here. You'd think they could go a little farther off the beaten path for that sort of thing. I guess if you ever see this interview and hear a loud truck in the background that will be B's claim to fame. ;-)

And here's a waterfall. I don't know what this is. My journal says we stopped at Tower Falls, so I'd have thought this is that, except in my photos this comes before Mammoth Hot Springs, and Tower Falls was after that according to the map, so.... essentially I have no idea. Maybe I didn't photograph Tower Falls, or maybe this is it. Or maybe I'm just totally confused. Yeah, that would be typical!

A scene from above whatever falls that was:

All along we'd been seeing a fair amount of female elk, most of which we did not stop for, having seen a lot on the 26th. And there was the occasional far-away group of little bachelors, but the big boys had been pretty elusive up til now. I think we actually stopped to get some scenery pics in this pretty valley and then realized there were two bull elk way the heck out there. Again, love this camera. I could not have gotten these shots with my little camera.

Pretty valley, can you see the two elk?



Uh oh, getting grumpy with eachother!



Interesting that the one on the left is ear tagged.

So northward we went from wherever this was and stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs for lunch. What a zoo, there were a ton of people there. Did not walk around the hot springs itself, just did a drive-by photo on the way out. I don't know what that odd geological formation there in the foreground is, and I shall also refrain from mentioning what we called it.

Next we stopped at Lower Yellowstone Falls and went to a place called Artist Point. Wow yeah, gorgeous. If it wasn't for the gazillions of tourists, I could have stood there and stared at this place for a long time!




A sleepy bull elk by the side of the road on the way out.

Next stop: Yellowstone Lake, and bald eagles!