Escapade at Gillette, Wyoming

July 2013

The Escapade, run by the Escapees RV club, is mostly informational sessions about RVing, it's the RV version of SHARE.  They also have entertainment, we saw Ron and Kay Rivoli doing songs about RVing, often using the music from real songs.  One of the titles was "Your awning is flapping in the wind".  We bought some of their CDs.

There are other activities, too, including a "dress up your dog" day.

Some of these people clearly have way too much time on their hands.

There was a fierce thunderstorm on the 4th, so we watched the fireworks and lightning from the truck.

Guernsey

June 2013

We stopped in Guernsey, Wyoming on the way to the Escapade - a gathering of Escapees.  Guernsey is on the Oregon Trail, and is one of the few spots where the trail ruts are still visible.

There's also a place called Register Cliff, where a lot of people left their marks

More pictures.

Cowboy Poetry

We're at Escapade this week, a gathering run by the Escapees.  It's like SHARE for RVers ... if you know what SHARE is.  Or like Comicon is for Sheldon and Leonard, more or less.

Tonight the entertainment was Ham-o-Rama, where amateur performers took the stage.  One man read a poem:

We'd worked all day a-branding calves

And now we took a rest.

Buck opened up a six-pack,

Took a smoke out of his vest.

We started in to contemplate

The problems of the day.

Some stretched out on feed sacks,

Some on a pile of hay.

“You know,” he says, “for thirty years

I've been a-running steers,

And how this cattle ranching's changed

Could bring a man to tears.

Some people say that beef's too high,

Some say it causes cancer;

Any bureaucrat you ask

Will have a different answer.

And when I think of government

And all the funds they've spent

To get the public on our range,

And then they raised the rent.

They pay a man to raise no corn;

They buy another's cheese;

They pay you not to milk your cows

And turn loose half your bees

Then Pete says on the radio

They broadcast Tuesday night

That there are just too many cows:

That is the rancher's plight.

He said some feller took a count,

And don't this beat the band:

He says there are nine million cows

That live upon this land.”

Now Joe, he done some ciphering

And then said “Boys, look here,

What if those nine million head

Was one gigantic steer?

That critter'd weigh a million ton;

He'd reach from coast to coast;

Eat 90,000 ton of hay,

But what I like the most

He'd have his off hind foot near Buffalo

The front one in Tacoma,

The near hind hoof in Jacksonville,

The fourth one near Pomona

And after he ate all that hay,

Wouldn't it raise a fuss

If that steer did to Washington

What Washington's done to us?”

Hell's Half Acre

As we made our way through Wyoming, we came upon a sign for this place, and stopped to eat lunch and take some pictures. It's actually 320 acres, and was used by the Indians to herd buffalo into for an easy kill. The colors look better in person.

It's neat to be able to stop at any place we want, if it looks interesting.

Yellowstone - Day 2

On the second morning, we toured the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, and its waterfalls.

Then Yellowstone Lake, where there are thermal pools,

and an area of “paint pots”, which were mostly dry due to the low water table from the drought. When they have water in them, they look like pools of paint for an artist's palette, each one a different color.

We saw lots of bison today.

More pictures here.

Yellowstone - Day 1

Yellowstone National Park is a truly amazing place. If you've never been there, put it on your bucket list. It's huge, too much to see in a day, so we took 2 days.

On the first day, we started at Old Faithful and walked a lot around the thermal features near there. There are lots of pools of colored water, and the colors are due to the different creatures living in it, at different temperatures. Several of the pools are geysers, and erupt occasionally, some regularly and some very rarely.

We also went to Mammoth Hot Springs. As we were driving in, we got caught in a traffic jam due to a tourist who approached a bison for a picture. He was gored, thrown into the air, and then trampled. He was on the ground being tended to by EMTs when we arrived, and the bison was grazing nearby. Then the rangers arrived and used two jeeps to drive the bison away. They lose one or two tourists that way every year, and they are very serious about not getting close to the animals, or feeding them. When I was a lad, we went to Yellowstone and the bears would surround the cars and beg for food. No more, they are wild again and don't bother the cars. We didn't even see any bears, but we did see a family of elk crossing the street and settling down in the shade.

Mammoth Hot Springs is big mounds and terraces built up by deposits of minerals from the springs. They make some colorful and interesting shapes.

They've posted signs around some areas of the park that had been burned in the big fire in 1988.

As if the need for reseeding had not been caused by the fire itself !! Reminds me of the BP commercials telling all the wonderful things they've done for the Gulf Coast.

On the way back, we saw a big bull elk next to the road.

More pictures here.