Birds of prey

At the Buffalo Bill museum in Cody, Wyoming they have a number of birds of prey who have been rescued and cannot be released into the wild. These birds are part of an educational program for those who visit the museum. The Raptor Experience is an interesting program.

The peregrine falcon, Hayabusa, was ready for a snack.

He began eating a small bird while the trainer talked about the birds.

This is a video of the peregrine eating his bird.

The other bird was Suli, a turkey vulture. Suli was larger than the peregrine and was dining on a rat.

All of the birds at the Draper Museum Raptor Experience have their own individual Facebook pages, click the link above and scroll down to find them. You can also donate to help defray the cost of their care.

Woodcarving art

We saw wood carvers in numerous towns during our trip. These sculptures were in Craig, Colorado. In June they have a competition  called 'Whittle the Wood' and some of the previous carvings are on display in town.

 This is the top of the horse head sculpture.

This one forms the base.

 A group of bears play in another tower.

The whole tower is about 8 feet tall.

Detail of the next sculpture show playful otters.

These are carved from tree trunks!

Best of the West!

First I will start off with a disclaimer. We didn't see ALL of the west, but we did travel 2,320 miles across Wyoming, South Dakota, Montana, Idaho and Colorado in search of incredible sights and tastes. Along the way we chose some 'Best of' places to share.

Best Dinner - In Steamboat Springs, Colorado there is a restaurant called Mahogany Ridge. It is also a brew pub which means they brew beer on site. We went in to sample their brews and stayed for dinner. It had gotten a great recommendation from the owners of the hotel where we were staying. They have tapas plates from 4 - 5:30 with a big selection to choose from. We tried 3 different tapas and all were yummy! After thoroughly examining their extensive menu, I chose the maple glazed chicken breast stuffed with cranberries and pecans. The dipping sauce I loved was a porter cream and it was absolutely delicious. Don had the tandoori spiced yellowfin tuna, again it was outstanding. This was the best dinner of the two week trip. Our server, Jamie, was knowledgable and delightful. All of the entrees had dipping sauces served with them, very creative combinations to enhance the bison, elk, beef, chicken or fish that comprised the entree. What an outstanding restaurant!

Best Breakfast - In South Dakota there is a cafe called Cheyenne Crossing. When we were leaving Hill City, we were told that the breakfast here was worth the drive. We were heading north towards Deadwood, so going to Cheyenne Crossing was not far out of the way. The drive there was beautiful and the breakfast was mouthwatering. When eating a breakfast like that, you can easily wait till late in the day for dinner, skipping lunch all together. Hash browns and biscuits and gravy will definitely fill you up!

Best Scenic Drive - Iron Mountain Road in Custer State Park is a breath taking scenic road with 'pig-tail' bridges and tunnels that only one car can pass through at a time. While in Custer State Park, in the Black Hills, we also saw bison roaming freely sometimes across the road. Cars simply have to wait until they move. It isn't a long route, but definitely worth the time to explore.

Best Historic Site - Custer's Last Stand at Little Big Horn was an opportunity to relive history through the story telling skills of the Native American presenter, Sam Enemy Fighter, who recounted the events of the Battle Of Little Bighorn as we drove across the ridge above the river where 7,000 Native Americans were camped on their way to Canada. The battle has been studied in great detail and Sam's retelling brought the events to life. He is a member of the Crow tribe and has studied at university in Montana. He was very knowledgable and a great presenter. Custer was a respected general in the Civil War. He was sent to bring the Native Americans back to the reservation to live. The 2,000 warriors that were at the encampment did not want to give up their nomadic lifestyle and chose to fight to ensure their freedom. Custer was warned by his Native American scouts that he was seriously outnumbered, but chose to engage the Native Americans anyway. It was a short battle and cost the lives of virtually all of the soldiers. White headstones show the location of the fallen soldiers who are buried at the top of Last Stand Hill and red headstones show where Native Americans fell. Officers were interred at Arlington. In 2003 a memorial was placed to honor the Native Americans who fought in the war.

Best Brew Pub - Crow Peak Brewing in Spearfish, South Dakota was Don's favorite brew pub. Their 'Bag of Dirt' Porter was delicious and sitting on the 2nd floor porch looking out at the scenery in late afternoon was delightful. Every time we visited a pub I asked the brewer if anyone was using the spent grain to make bread. Alas, no one was, they use the spent grains as compost and feed for livestock. I have tried to spread the word about baking with the spent grains and shared the related posts on my blog. That being said, I plan to use some spent grain as I prepare the garden this fall. No livestock to feed at our house, the cat and rabbit probably wouldn't like the taste.

Best Museum - Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming is just about a half hour from the eastern entrance to Yellowstone National Park. You need to allow several hours to enjoy this amazing place. The gun collection recounts the history of many of the owners of the guns as well as the events surrounding their use, great history there. The Natural History part of the museum shows the wildlife of the area and their art collection has paintings of the western landscapes.

Best Exhibit at a Museum - We had our favorite exhibits within museums too. Mine was the T Rex at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in Hill City, South Dakota. Stan the T Rex was enormous and just one of many examples of prehistoric animals there. Don's was the gun exhibit at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, see the link in Best Museum.

Best Scenery - Yellowstone simply can't be beat for diversity of landscape. The geology of the area is fascinating and constantly changing since it is sitting on top of an active volcano. Road repair in the area was needed when the gravel turned to an 'oatmeal' consistency and the tar was 'liquid-like' due to the underlying heat. Signs everywhere tell you not to stray past the trails since the seemingly solid ground could give way to boiling hot pools of water. Waterfalls, geysers, hot pools and mudpots provide a never ending source of wonder.

We used our AAA books to help find sights to see and recommendations of people we met for restaurants and brew pubs. The local folks always know what is best!

Great trip, great food, great sights......what an amazing country!

Spotting the International Space Station

We have had a few clear nights on this trip, one when staying in a cabin just outside the eastern entrance to the Yellowstone Park. Tonight in Steamboat Springs, Colorado it was clear for a while so I looked up the International Space Station to see if it would be passing overhead. This link allows you to choose your country, state and city and see the next few times that the ISS will be visible where you are. I was lucky, it was to pass over within about 10 minutes of the time I looked it up. The website tells you from what direction the ISS will appear and how many minutes it will be visible. It also tells which direction it will be when it disappears from view. Tonight it appeared in the west, right on time, and traveled towards the south east disappearing after 4 minutes.

The ISS is very bright and doesn't blink like an airplane.
These next links show earth from the ISS.

Vimeo video of earth from the ISS

Vimeo of earth from the ISS by Michael Konig, 2011

On the second video you can see the aurora borealis over the north pole.

Happy observing!

Yellowstone: geysers, mud pools and bison!

Geysers, mud pools and hot springs are found all over the southern loop within Yellowstone. That area is the remains of the caldera for the still active volcano that formed this area.

Old Faithful is probably the best known but others are beautiful and fascinating.

 

This is a video of Old Faithful. 

Sometimes the geysers and hot springs form tall formations around the opening.

 Hot pools may containing boiling hot water. Bacteria and algae live in or near the pools. The colors change with different kinds of microorganisms, depending on their ability to withstand and live in different temperatures. These organisms that live in the hot pools are called extremophiles.

For more information related to the extremophiles go to this link.

 Mud pot in Yellowstone.

Dead lodgepole pines with white bobby socks.

We saw bison in Yellowstone also. One was walking beside the road in an area where they were doing road construction. We had to keep moving, so this is the shop I got. He was only about 4 feet from the car, peacefully munching on grass beside the road and not paying much attention to the cars. Unfortunately he ducked his head and we kept rolling so I didn't get all of him!

Another one was near a stream as we walked on the trail near Old Faithful.

Can't get this close to a real moose and haven't seen one. There has been a lot of rain this summer so some of the animals are staying higher up in the mountains. I will have to add him to the list of animals I want to knit when I get home:
prairie dog, magpie and now moose!


Mr. Moose and I say "good-bye" for now!

Yellowstone, waterfalls are simply awesome!

The geysers, hot springs and waterfalls are incredible and worth every stop and hike to see them.

 Upper Falls in Yellowstone. This link has info about all of the Yellowstone water falls.

The Kepler Cascades were named in 1881 for the 12 year old son of Wyoming’s territorial governor, Kepler Hoyt.

Stay tuned for geysers and hot springs!

Devil's Tower, Wyoming

Devil's Tower has been a source of fascination for me ever since I saw the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It is a stock, a small intrusive body formed by magma which cooled underground and was later exposed by erosion. * (Source of information Park News 2013, National Park Service, U. S. Department of the Interior) The magma which formed Devil's Tower cooled and crystallized into a rock type known as phonolite porphyry. It is a light to dark-gray or greenish-gray igneous rock with crystals of white feldspar. As the rock cooled, it contracted forming hexagonal (and sometimes 4,5,and 7 sided) columns separated by vertical cracks.

This is a view as you drive up from the entrance to the park.

There are several legends about the Tower.

This is the opposite side. The sun is not shining on the rock from this view, but we were near the base of the tower, near the boulders that have broken off of the tower.

Various climbers were making an assent to the top. With my binoculars we watched them climb for a few minutes. Records of Tower climbs have been kept since 1937 and every year some 5,000 climbers come from all over the world to climb on the massive columns using over 220 climbing routes.

Prairie dogs are found in the flat lands at the base of the mountain where the tower is located. This one posed for a picture before scurrying to his hole and disappearing.













If you want to read about the climbing experiences of those who have reached the top of Devil's Tower, just do a Google search on climbing Devil's Tower. It is fascinating reading!

Spearfish Canyon and Deadwood graves and beer

Sheer rock walls are the norm when driving through Spearfish Canyon. The stream cut the canyon through the rock about 5 million years ago.

One of the waterfalls, Roughlock Falls was the location for one of the last scenes in Dances with Wolves. 

Above the falls the stream is clear, shallow and swift moving.

Even the tallest of the falls at Roughlock is only about 20 feet tall, and easy to access with a 1 mile drive off of the highway.

Bridal veil falls is a tall and narrow column of water. There has been a lot of rain this year, so everything is green. This also means that the big horn sheep don't come down from the mountains to eat, so we didn't see any.

 In Deadwood, we went to Mt. Moriah Cemetary where Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane are buried. She died after he did and asked to be buried next to him. There are graves with dates from the early 1800's.

Just at the edge of Spearfish, we found a local brew pub, Crow Peak. The had a number of their beers on tap. Like many of the microbreweries, they provide their spent grain to farmers to feed their livestock. The brewer said one of the farmers who received the spent grains presented him with a chicken grown on his spent grain. He plans to use the spent grain in his compost pile and others use it to make bread. It's a good use of the by product of a delicious beer. 

Mt. Rushmore, bison, T Rex and teddy bears

The day began with a trip to Mt. Rushmore. The road is winding and narrow and includes some one-lane tunnels through solid rock. Honking your horn lets people know you are entering. The tunnels aren't long and you can see out the other side, but they are just barely wide enough for one car to pass through at a time. The pigtail bridges on Iron Mountain Road help to align the road to the one lane tunnels that pass through the mountain. 

A herd of bison were leisurely strolling along the road in Custer State Park. Many calves were present too. It seemed that the bison were oblivious to the cars and walked where ever they liked.

There is a wonderful exhibit of dinosaurs and fossils of all kinds in Hill City at the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research. Stan is a famous T Rex that was found in northwestern South Dakota. This T Rex skeleton is a replica of a T Rex.

This is the actual skull of Stan, the T Rex.

Less menacing than Stan are the 8000+ teddy bears that Jackie Miley has collected at Teddy Bear Town. This picture show a fraction of the collection in her location in Hill City, SD. The bears are not for sale and Jackie receives bears from all over the USA and the world to add to her collection from people who have visited her. Some bears come with stories, sometimes poignant and sometimes funny and she displays them all. She has set a Guinness Book of World Records for the largest collection of teddy bears.

Adventures in Wyoming and South Dakota

Driving through southwestern Wyoming we found the Chugwater Soda Fountain in Chugwater, Wyoming. It is one of a handful of buildings and claims to be the oldest soda fountain in Wyoming. Great homemade milkshakes there! Chugwater is also known for its chili. This cafe serves bowls of steaming chili. I settled for taking home a packet of their chili seasoning which includes a recipe for making the chili. The Chugwater Chili Corp. will ship all kinds of chili items.

The Wyoming countryside changes around every turn from grasslands with mountains in the distance to spectacular rock formations.

Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, SD is an indoor working palentological site where more than 61 mammoths have been unearthed.

Many cultures used the bones of the mammoths to create their homes.

You can walk inside, this is a view from inside looking out the door.

The Colombia Mammoth was larger than the wooly mammoth. This replica was on exhibit at the visitor's center.

 In Hill City, SD John Lopez created a sculpture of a horse using all kinds of metal objects.

Majestic, just like his live friends who can be seen all over South Dakota.

Maybe tomorrow we will see some buffalo!