US 14, Yellowstone to Sheridan, By Way of the Bighorn Mountains

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I have no images made during the best drive of the trip, only a vivid memory of the ten minutes or so, after dark and after driving most of the day last Friday, that we traversed a part of US 14 not far west of Sheridan, Wyoming, in the Bighorn Mountains.

That’s only a small section of the road, and it isn’t even the highest point in the Bighorns. All those curves came as we headed down from Granite Pass, which is more than 9,000 feet above sea level.

I know that mountain driving isn’t for everyone (such as Yuriko). But talk about a way to be in the moment. If you aren’t in the moment, you have no business driving such a switchback-y route. There you are, applying just the right amount of pressure on the brakes, edging the wheel just in the right direction, as the winding track unfolds ahead, each moment unlike the last. It’s almost as if you aren’t pressing those brakes or tipping that wheel. You and the machine are.

For bonus points, flip off your brights just the instant you’re aware of an oncoming car, and back on again the instant it passes. I did that too, but only two or three times, since it wasn’t a crowded road. More traffic would have raised the stress level a lot and harshed this particular buzz for me.

One more detail, for most of the twists and turns, and unique to our transit of the mountains: “All I Wanna Do” was on the radio at that moment, coming in clear despite our location. Somehow, that added to the experience, though I can’t call it a driving song. Still, it’s one of best capture-a-moment songs I know of.

Earlier in the day, we headed east from Yellowstone on US 14/16/20 – as we went eastward, the other two higher numbers eventually disappeared – and found it to be more of a straight road. Sometimes the drive revealed scenery equal of anything in a national park, rolling through the Absaroka Range and Shoshone National Forest, and, after passing through Cody, Wyoming, the Bighorn Basin, as an approach to the Bighorn Mountains. Part of of road is the Buffalo Bill Cody Scenic Byway.

Browns and dry yellow predominated. Just east of Yellowstone, you’re among the impressive Absarokas. They lent their name to a lesser-known new state movement in the 1930s. Lesser-known to me, anyway.US 14 Bighorn Mountains US 14 Bighorn Mountains

The mountains receded and the road passes through a broad valley.
US 14 Wyoming

Wait, what was that?US 14 Big Boy US 14 Big Boy

The Wapiti Big Boy, the Cowboy State Daily calls it, after the valley, and the nearest town.

“ ‘Big Boy restaurants were everywhere (at one time), and I’ve always wanted to have a Big Boy and celebrate what’s great about the Big Boy,’ said James Geier, who owns the Wapiti Big Boy statue and the land it now calls home,” CSD reports.

“ ‘I’m a sculptor and have a design business,’ he said. ‘My art and the placement of Big Boy was really all about wanting the conversation to go on, whether you’re a tourist going through the world or a local.’ ”

The road then passes Buffalo Bill Reservoir. A manmade lake on the Shoshone River. Once upon a time, William Cody owned much of the land now covered by the lake.US 14 Buffalo Bill Cody Lake US 14 Buffalo Bill Cody Lake

Beyond that is the town of Cody, where we tarried to buy barbecue and eat it in the main city park for dinner. I can recommend Fat Racks BBQ. Its pulled pork, specifically.

Heading into the Bighorn Mountains east of Cody.US 14 Bighorn Mountains US 14 Bighorn Mountains

By that time, the light was fading, and soon enough we were driving in the dark, though the road was well marked by reflectors, and illuminated by our headlights. Once we emerged from the twists, the drive to the motel in Sheridan was only about 20 more minutes, so the downward grade on US 14 essentially capped off a capital day of driving.

The I-90 Western States Road Epic

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I marvel that what Yuriko and I just did is even possible. Between Sunday, August 18, and Sunday, September 8, inclusive, we drove from metro Chicago to metro Seattle and back.

The kind of trip I call an epic. Which just means a long one. All together, we drove 5,916 miles across nine states. We visited cities, towns, remote farm and ranch land and forests, crossed plains, rivers small and mighty, hills, and mountain ranges. We visited our eldest daughter in far-off Washington state and reached the Pacific Ocean.

I call it an epic, but that’s only my idiosyncratic label. By historical standards, our trip was laughably easy. All we needed were some (but not a lot) of those three basic ingredients of modern travel in North America, and a fair number of other places: time, money and – perhaps the most elusive for many people, though of course the other two are often limiting – the will to go.

We did not need a supply train or pack wagons. We carried all the communications equipment we needed in our pockets. Food and fuel were easily purchased.

We did not need the permission of any authority at any level of government, beyond a drivers license or license plates, which aren’t specific to interstate travel. We paid no gang a toll, no one baksheesh to pass through their land.

We did not need to be armed. We encountered no hostility of any kind. Crime, of course, is possible anywhere, and I like to think we were careful. I was only really anxious about the possibility once, but even then nothing happened.

I’m positive that the greatest risk to life and robust health was the fact that we just drove nearly 6,000 miles over roads of varying size and traffic density, some of which were a bit hairy. I like to think we were careful about that, too, putting our combined 72 years’ driving experience to the task, and we got home with nary a dent nor a scratch, much less anything worse.

The epic was conceived and carried out in three parts of roughly a week each: the drive out west, the visit in the Pacific Northwest, and the drive back east. On that structure we hung four main events and many other smaller ones. And by events, I mean seeing places in three cases, and visiting family and friends in one. On the way out, we saw Glacier National Park. In Seattle, we visited Lilly and Dan, as well as two old friends of mine, Bill and Tom, and their spouses, but also spent a couple of days at Sol Duc Hot Springs at Olympic National Park. On our return, we saw Grand Teton National Park.

Some of the driving counted as a necessary chore, such as the route through Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota and ultimately Wyoming: I-90. If you want to, you can drive all the way to Seattle on I-90, a total of just a little more than 2,000 miles, according to Google Maps. We didn’t want to do that. We used I-90 to get to Wyoming and then Montana on the way out, and return from Wyoming on the way back. For us, that was two days’ worth of driving each way.

Once we got to Montana, we took smaller roads that crossed that state and Idaho and Washington state. On the return, we crossed another part of Washington, Oregon and Idaho, back to Wyoming, also mostly using smaller roads, except for a stretch of I-84. Those small roads sometimes provided exceptionally scenic driving, or driving through territory the likes of which we hadn’t seen before. And there was some fun mountain driving. By fun, I mean curves.

Going out, we reached the vicinity of Devils Tower National Monument after two days on I-90, and stayed there for two nights; next, Helena, Montana for a night; then a campground outside the St. Mary’s entrance of Glacier National Park for two nights. Spokane for one night; and into Seattle.

A view in Glacier NP.Glacier National Park

It would have been six nights in Seattle, but we spent one camping in Olympic NP in the middle of that week. The return began with two nights in Portland; a night in Boise; a visit to Craters of the Moon National Monument and then three nights near Grand Teton NP; one in Sheridan, Wyoming, and then back to the I-90 funnel back home.

A view in Grand Teton NP.Grand Teton NP

Squint and you can imagine randy Frenchmen of yore saw mammaries.

Cucumber Time

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Rain early this morning and clouds all day, and fairly warm. In the afternoon, we paid a visit to a warehouse store. In the retail world, Halloween is just around the corner.

As Halloween décor goes, I’ll say they’re impressive, though I’m not in the market for any such ghoulish simulations. Not even the Werewolves of Schaumburg (a lesser-known follow-up to the Werewolves of London?).

They retail for about $200 and $250, though I can’t remember which one was for which price. They’re a bit animatronic. For instance, the werewolf’s jaw opens and closes.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this long sentence in the Wiki article about the Silly Season, but I like the term “Cucumber Time,” so I’m quoting it here.

“In many languages, the name for the silly season references cucumbers (more precisely: gherkins or pickled cucumbers). Komkommertijd in Dutch, Danish agurketid, Icelandic gúrkutíð, Norwegian agurktid (a piece of news is called agurknytt or agurknyhet, i.e.,  ‘cucumber news’), Czech okurková sezóna (‘pickle season’), Slovak uhorková sezóna, Polish Sezon ogórkowy, Hungarian uborkaszezon, and Hebrew עונת המלפפונים (onat ha’melafefonim, ‘season of the cucumbers’) all mean ‘cucumber time’ or ‘cucumber season.’ ”

Considering the fraught politics of our time, and the equally fraught – if somewhat more permanent – 24/7 news cycle, and the way people glue themselves to their hand-held boxes, I’m not sure the Silly Season is an active concept any more, whatever you call it. Either there is no such season specific to August any more, or it’s all Silly Season.

No matter, I’m taking a long break for the Silly Season. Once upon a time, I worked for a news organization that didn’t publish during the week before Labor Day, just like the week between Christmas and New Years, and it was a paid week, no less. I thought that was a fine company practice; but it didn’t last.

Back to posting around September 9, assuming I survive the Silly Season, and I’d say the actuaries would still be on my side in that matter. But who knows. The Yellowstone Caldera (say) might blow, ruining everyone’s end-of-summer plans.

Virtual Lightbulbs & Cats

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Something new in the world of robots asking whether I’m a robot.

Or at least something new to me. Previously I’ve tended to run into a challenge to click on buses or motorcycles or traffic lights or the like. Maybe those have been cracked by nefarious robots pretending to be people, and so we need cats to foil them.

Whatever the case, there was a reason for the CAPTCHA photos of objects you’d find driving.

“In 2012, Google started snippets of photos from Google Street View,” says the Grove Street Auto Repair Blog. “By 2014, the CAPTCHA system was primarily focused on training AI. Google has mentioned that by this time, they used CAPTCHA to teach self-driving cars, such as the new rideshare Waymo vehicles.”

I think I’d read about that before. It’s a steep learning curve for the robot cars, apparently.

It licks the air with crimson flare

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Wood debris fire in my grill, just after sunset, August 13, 2024.

Prompt for the free version of Chat GPT: Write a short poem in the style of the Romantic poets about the tongue of flame in my grill.

Result:

Amidst the twilight’s dusky veil,
Where shadows dance and spirits sail,
There roars a tongue of fierce delight,
In the grill’s embrace, so wild, so bright.

It licks the air with crimson flare,
A fleeting dragon’s breath laid bare,
Each flicker whispers ancient songs,
Of passion’s fire where heart belongs.

O, fiery serpent, weave your tale,
Of embers lost and moments frail,
In your embrace, the night does sing,
A hymn to life’s consuming spring.

Beneath your blaze, the dark recedes,
And dreams take flight on fiery steeds,
Till dawn shall break, and still you’ll stay,
A spark of dusk that lights the day.

Eh. It licks the air with crimson flare? Each flicker whispers ancient songs, of passion’s fire where heart belongs? Dreams take flight on fiery steeds?

This isn’t bad: O, fiery serpent, weave your tale, of embers lost and moments frail. Still, the effort’s underwhelming.

Summer Lunch

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As forecast, the week kicked off warm, but not too warm, and sunny, but not too sunny. Out latest bill from ComEd suggests a cooler summer so far: average temps for July of 74.1° F., which I assume means both day and night averaged. Last year, the average was 77.1° F. The latest bill was higher despite that, because for various reasons we’ve kept the AC at a lower temp this summer.

Another benefit of summer, if you attend to a garden.

The meat and bread, we bought. The tomatoes and cucumbers, we grew.

NYC ’83 Debris

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After returning from Europe in mid-August 1983, I spent about 10 days in New York City, a kind of coda to the longer trip. Expenses were low, since I was house sitting – apartment (co-op?) sitting in Greenwich Village – for Deb, a woman I’d met in Germany, while she was on the Jersey shore with her parents. A place New Yorkers went in August, Deb said, because their analysts were out of town. I think she was only half-joking.

If I were a different person, I would have spent late nights at the likes of CBGB, the Palladium, Danceteria, or the Peppermint Lounge (or the Village Vanguard or the Bitter End, for that matter), staggered back to Deb’s apartment, and slept most of the day. That would have been quite the time and place for that kind of activity. But no: I didn’t take a stronger interest in live music in small venues until I lived in Nashville for a few years, and I never did latch on to the alcohol or cocaine components of those kinds of nights. So any stories I’d tell about the NYC club scene 40 years ago would be necessarily made up.

I did a lot of walking. Mostly Manhattan, but one day I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and spent some time in that borough. I also made it up the Bronx.

The zoo was a little run down in those days, but nothing like the south Bronx territory I saw from the #5 IRT. The zoo guide above, looking at it now, is a model of compact information, unfolding to offer a good map of the zoo’s 265 acres on one side, and on the other side, other information about the zoo, and the various trails in the facility one could follow to see different kinds of animals: the Wild Asia Trail, Africa Trail, Reptiles and Apes, Bird Valley Trail, etc.

I see that elephant and llama rides were available for an extra fee in those days. I wonder if that’s still the case.

Back in Manhattan, there was always Art to see.

Note the adult admission price: $3. Or the equivalent of about $10 these days. And what is the adult rate as of 2024? $30. That’s just gouging, MoMA. You have no excuse.

Vistas. I don’t remember what I paid, but the ESB price now is absurd. I’m glad I’ve already been there. 

I went to the top of the Empire State Building at night, and marveled at the glow of the city, but also at just how many vehicles on the street below were yellow cabs. I was at the World Trade Center observation deck during the day; a lost view.

Thursday Updates &c.

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Cerulean days. Thursday dusk on the deck.

It’s come to my attention that Jim Varney did occasionally perform live with Gonzo Theatre. At least, the Tennessean posted an image of him doing stand-up at the Municipal Auditorium in downtown Nashville on November 14, 1982, describing him as a member of the troupe. So maybe he was sometimes; but not specifically on the night we went, and he isn’t in the publicity shot I have in my possession. A Tennessean article about Gonzo Theatre from the year before doesn’t mention him either.

Argh, we could have seen Varney live but, being ignorant young’uns, we didn’t know about the show. Bet he was a hoot and a half.

We were out and about the evening NBC broadcast the Olympic Parade of Nations nearly two weeks ago, so we didn’t see that. Since then, I haven’t felt much like following the Games. But occasionally I look at the medal counts. I see that the UK has 57 and France 56 thus far. Is that the count that the French really care about? No hope to best China or the U.S. (or even Australia), but maybe they’ll top the limeys.

What do the French call the British when they’re in a derogatory mood, anyway? One source says rostbifs.

I also checked the nations that so far have a single bronze. They are:

Including one for the Refugee Olympic Team. How about that.

“Boxer Cindy Ngamba became the first-ever Refugee Olympic Team athlete to win a medal this week, giving the team its first piece of hardware since its creation nearly a decade ago,” NPR reports.

“Ngamba was born in the Central African country of Cameroon and moved to Bolton, England, at age 11, according to her official biography. She took up soccer at a local youth club, where she discovered boxing by chance at age 15.

Ngamba, who is gay, cannot return to Cameroon, where same-sex sexual relations are punishable by up to five years in prison… Ngamba qualified for the Refugee Olympic Team earlier this year, becoming the first boxer to do so.”

Good for her. Hope she gets to stay in the UK.

Down in Oklahoma

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Received a collection of postcards from my brother Jay recently, who picked them up at an estate sale, where occasionally one finds such things.

One of them featured some period-specific doggerel about Oklahoma, with 7-24-40 written on the edge, which no doubt was when the card was new. It wouldn’t have been the only gag postcard of roughly that vintage. The card was printed by Curt Teich (it says Curteich on the card), as so many were, on behalf of Mid-Continent News Co. of Oklahoma City. No copyright date.

Nothing like a wild-and-woolly oil patch, eh? That’s the vibe, of course, but some specifics are a little hazy. The populace is “boost”? As in, prone to steal? And what was it about wearing dresses to their knees for big girls and wee ones? A sideways comment on Oklahoman female morality? Also: “whist out” in the morning? The context is clear enough, but that’s a turn of phrase that seems lost to time.

A Quiet Suburban Spot

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Rain blew through last night and so did cool air. Dropped temps by about 20 degrees F. compared with yesterday, making today feel like a pleasant day in October. The days ahead look to be warm and dry: a nice run for declining summer.

Spotted near a suburban street recently in Du Page County.Bloomingdale descanso Bloomingdale descanso

I parked – off the road – and took a look. I drive this street fairly often, maybe twice or three times a month, and hadn’t noticed this descanso before. That probably means a recent accident, though a simple search using the street and town names and a few other items turned up nothing. A look at a fatal accident database with a helpful map pinpointing the incidents (just the kind of thing to set your teeth on edge) told me there was a fatality on that road in 2017 involving one car, one drunk driver, and one death.

If this were that person’s memorial, it seems odd that it was take so long, so I doubt it is. My search wasn’t conclusive, but that was as far as I wanted to take it. Someone died unexpectedly on this uncrowded, obscure suburban street, and someone wanted to remember that person.