Yellowstone Plateau to Cody Wyoming
September 2007
My drive across Utah from Great Basin National Park and up through thru Salt Lake City is uneventful even the traffic was not too bad. I call Lorin my friend who has housed Tom and me as we toured the Temple one year and had meant us in Saskatchewan for a goose hunt. Big mistake as he and his friends returned to that location and affected the hunting. Lorin is a paradox, an intellectual who is a Bishop with in the LDS congregation. Lorin was a an attorney who did his mission in Peru but couldn’t handle the combativeness of lawyering so he morphed into a mellow innkeeper and above all a devoted Father and Husband who passed on his love for the outdoors to his children.
As I pass eastward over the summit toward Wyoming, the rains quickly change to snow the last I would see for awhile I hoped. The big Ford 350 crew cab with tandem wheel housing the famous International built Navistar 7.3 Diesel climbs steadily and handles the large Lance camper with ease. I am in love with this machine and am at ease knowing she’ll handling the many miles ahead to Arizona and Mexico in the winter. I will checkout the Teton and hope to get a glimpse of the fall colors of the cottonwoods lining the Teton River and I will pass up through Lake Lodge onto Cody.
The fall colors are a peak and best of all the traffic is almost non-existence. The Teton are shrouded again in clouds and I recall Alan Ladd in Shane riding to town with the Tetons as a back drop to square off against Wilson played by Jack Palance. There are many antelope alongside the roadway. This Wind River highway is well designed and I assume Chaney was able to help steer funds back home. Also oil monies help Wyoming thrive but I am disappointed with the price of diesel at $2.78.
I climb up the Yellowstone plateau pass Old Faithful; I stop in to check out the restoration and it still well done. The crowds are all grey hair retired couple enjoying their time together like young honey mooners. I do checkout my room where I honeymoon and remember what a grand time we had fishing and having the lodge prepare our catch. Those days are way past. I pass lower biscuit basin and I watched an old man hook a nice rainbow. He was using a BWO and each time a cloud blocked the suns rays the trout came to the surface to feast on emerging mayflies.
I have the roads to my self as I travel to the Northeast entrance. Hayden Valley is vacant from animals. Conspicuously absent from the valley the Gibbons canyon and around Lake are the Elk and the numerous Bison. Reminds me of the Madison in 1996 when the rainbow disappeared and they blamed whirling disease for the collapse. Between not having the bears anymore, I wonder how much more regulating the biologist will do up here to restore the Park to its natural state; I fear there will be little to talk about in the coming years regarding animals probably a combination of hard winter and wolves.
