Ho Ho Ho Tux!

This is Tux, my mother's best cat ever, sitting on my bed near the Winter Solstice tree. Now my mom's had a lot of great cats, so it's saying something that even she admits that he's her favorite. Here he is dressed up with his Christmas ribbon and actually handling it with panache.

The winds died down enough for us to take a drive up to Mulholland for beautiful panoramic views that included the sparkling Pacific Ocean in the west. Now I'm back here happily contemplating which book I'm going to tackle! I did receive some of those on my list, most notably "Bridge of Sighs" by Richard Russo and "The Zookeeper's Wife" by Diane Ackerman.

Cindy very thoughtfully got me The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics book! This was on my list a few years ago. Well, I say better late than never! Actually, she didn't even know I'd once had it on my list, and this makes it all the more special to me. And she loved the Emmylou Harris boxed CD set I tracked down for her at Amoeba Records. Of course I was tempted to keep it, but it really is so much more fun to give than to receive.

So that also goes for the crystal necklace I ordered for Katie from www.julietsdream.etsy.com. She loved it, as I knew she would, along with the Chanel Mademoiselle eau de toilette and the mendocino-green cashmere sweater. And love the pink and white scarf she knitted and gave to me, and the terrific Coast Guard sweatshirt that her mom, my sis Carlo, gave to me.

Okay, off to get started on a vegetable dish for dinner. The pile of books will have to wait, and anyway I'll have to finish "Away" before I start the next one.

Cheers!

Merry Christmas!

Fierce Santa Ana winds blowing outside this Christmas Eve! I love being inside with my Winter Solstice tree (below, except the pretty white sparkly lights don't show).

I dined this evening at Ca del Sole with my mom and Cindy, saw Gigi last night, went to Tangie's "pamper" party (which turned out to be a huge Mary Kay pitch, but it was fun to be on the old Cardiff property again). I've had just the right balance of socializing and lone wolf time this Yuletide season. The flu had me in bed for several days with a temperature and sore throat so bad I could barely swallow. Although I was miserable, the down time did allow me to actually finish "The Mandarins" by Simone de Beauvoir well before the January book club due date! Now I'm into "Away" by Amy Bloom, which I hear is one of the best books of 2007. I hope some of the other 2008 bests are waiting for me wrapped up under that tree you see above! Fortunately I got all my Christmas gifts done and wrapped and sent before I collapsed with the flu.

So I'll be in here L.A. with Mom and Cindy this year. Although it would have been fantastic to go up to Astoria, Oregon, to share Christmas with Carolyn, Erik, and especially my niece Katie, I generally avoid the crazy holiday travels. But I like to think about the look on Katie's face when she opens up the ______ [blank in case she reads this before tomorrow] I ordered for her especially from Juliet's Dream! That, and the cashmere sweater and Chanel _________.

Merry Christmas and love love love to all my friends and family who visit this blog!

A Modest Freelance Life

You'd think that since I'm no longer traditionally employed, I'd have plenty of time to blog more than I have in the past two months, right? Which is to say that I haven't blogged at all. The reason being: I've had the good fortune to freelance for the Sun Community Newspapers (the Studio City, Sherman Oaks Sun, and Encino Sun). Their motto? "The Fiercely Local Voice of the San Fernando Valley."

Ever since I pitched the managing editor about a vacant property at the end of Hartsook Street back in September when I was first liberated from the New York Times, she's kept me busy. My most recent piece - a major cover story for the special 5th Anniversary Edition of the Studio City Sun - is still available online.

My wonderfully encouraging editor Karen Young allowed me to include two personal references, including one about how my grandfather, the policeman Phil Hargreaves, saved lives and pulled bodies from the river during the great flood of 1938 in the San Fernando Valley. Here's the link if you want to check it out. I've also attached it on the right side of my blog.

http://www.suncommunitynewspapers.com/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=370&cntnt01returnid=59

My favorite part is the ghost of Vera Ralston who allegedly haunts one of the stages on the CBS lot. She competed against figure skater and gold medalist Sonja Henie in the 1936 Winter Olympics in Berlin, where she claims she personally met Adolf Hitler and insulted him to his face. He asked if she wanted to skate for the swastika, and she replied that she would rather skate ON it. As to why she would now haunt the CBS lot is anyone's guess, but perhaps her spirit is nostalgic for her halcyon days as mistress and wife of studio head Herbert Yates. Apparently he gave her such preferential treatment that it lead to a lawsuit from studio shareholders. There wasn't enough room to run that bit, though. I mean you can't say everything in 2,300 words.

Cheers.

It's Never Too Late To Pursue Your Dreams

As my friend and Times colleague Mia Navarro said recently, "It's never too late to pursue your dreams. Jose Saramago started writing in his 60's!"

Well, that's what I've been doing since I left my staff position at the New York Times - pursuing my dreams. Please try to imagine, if you will, how liberating it is not to have an hourlong commute over Coldwater Canyon every day! First you must picture stop-go bumper-to-bumper traffic winding through a narrow canyon. It's as if my mind has cracked open with ideas now that the grinding oppression of daily traffic is no longer in the sched. And to be emancipated from nine to five slavery for the first time in over 20 years is like being reborn.

A colleague wrote to tell me that it takes courage to move on into the unknown. She's right. But by the time I took this step, I wasn't afraid anymore. I already felt reborn. I was starting each day with a morning walk that lasted as long as I wanted it to, and the ideas were flowing. I pitched my first story to the Studio City Sun and within 10 minutes, the editor told me to go for it. No, it's never too late to pursue your dreams.

Kearsarge Pass, For Myself

Once upon an autumn time in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, when snow had covered the slopes and ice had formed on alpine lakes and Jan was still my love, I made a promise to myself on an old Indian trading route now known as the Kearsarge Pass trail that I would come back someday and hike to the 11,861 foot summit for views into Kings Canyon National Park. In my younger days, I'd been a passionate backpacker and spent many summer weeks exploring Yosemite, the Hoover Wilderness, and the Ansel Adams Wilderness. That day with Jan on the Kearsarge Pass trail was my first foray into those mountains in nine years.

My love affair with the High Sierra began when I was fourteen and my father took me on a camping trip to Tuolumne Meadows. We took a hike on the Glen Aulin trail, where I swam in a pool beneath a roaring waterfall and thought I'd found paradise. After Dad died, my high school friend Desideria encouraged me to join her in a backpacking class with a visionary teacher named Jack Wright. A whole world of Sierra backcountry adventures followed until an poorly-planned trip to the Humphreys Basin in 1994 did a number on my knees.

But the knees seemed fine on the day Jan and I hiked up the snow-covered Kearsarge trail to discover Gilbert Lake at 10,800 feet, frozen in its tree-lined bowl beneath the towering granite slabs of University Peak. And the knees were fine as we navigated the steep descent back to Onion Valley after some impromptu ice-skating on the lake - the wisdom of which I questioned until Jan assured me his winter experiences on Dutch canals conferred expertise in identifying thin ice. As we continued our descent, I felt a yearning for future wilderness adventures. My soul had been Sierra-starved for too long. I would return to this trail when the lakes shimmered green-blue under summer skies and climb to the top with the man I loved.

And then I slipped on the ice. I landed hard. At the same time, I had a dreadful, perhaps irrational, feeling that the mountain was somehow angry with me. Was I dreaming dreams with the wrong man? Deep down, I knew the answer to that question was yes, though I could not yet admit it to myself. Perhaps that's why I let out a scream of rabid frustration - a scream that no doubt intensified Jan's ever-present feelings of ambivalence.

Over a quiet dinner at the Still Life Cafe, a French culinary gem in Independence with only a Subway for competition, Jan was mostly silent until hesitantly stating he intended to sign up for the Sierra Club Wilderness Travel Course. "Great," I replied enthusiastically. "I'd love to do that with you!" I hadn't updated my backpacking skills since high school. And I wasn't going to let a fall in the ice thwart my awakened appetite for mountain adventures.

But Monsieur Jan had different plans. "I don't think you can handle it," he said with an expression that mixed guilt with arrogance. My eyes must have flashed murderously, for his vague blue eyes slithered down to the table as he continued hastily, "And anyway, you've already had wilderness adventure experience. This is something I need to do for myself."

For himself. There seemed to be a preponderance of things that he did for himself - like inviting me to share Christmas with him and his family in Amsterdam the year before then changing his mind for no good reason other than his pathological ambivalence then telling me once he was overseas that he wished I had come. I was getting weary of fighting for authentic partnership with the man who'd passionately initiated our romance, only to now hear his bizarre suggestion that wilderness experience was somehow a thing of the past for me, while his lay grandly in the future, spread out under fresh blue skies like Tuolumne Meadows, full of promise. A great big bubble burst as a dream deflated and a fast-churning knot of tears choked my throat with feelings of exclusion and invalidation. I knew I'd never climb any mountains with him. That he was not a true partner. That my dreams would never come true.

At least, not with him.

I never forgave him for that night at the Still Life Cafe, for the ego-wounding exclusion or for later suggesting that I should take the Wilderness Training Course and pitch someting about backcountry travel for the New York Times. "But you said I couldn't handle the class," I reminded him. He scoffed, "Oh, you could definitely do it!" Apparently he had no recollection of what he'd once said or any idea how it had impacted me! Relievedly, he is now at a safe distance in Ireland.

But Kearsarge Pass remains.

For Labor Day weekend, I booked a room at an old 1927 hotel, the Winnedumah, down the street from where Mary Austin once lived and wrote "The Land of Little Rain." I lucked out with Room 131, probably the best in the funky hotel, with its views of the Sierra Nevada and walls painted the purply-rose color of the Sierra at sunrise. Of course, I fortified myself for the next day's ten-mile hike with a delicious meal at the Still Life Cafe, where I met a couple in their 70's. The man had just come down from a solo backpacking journey in the Rae Lakes area while his wife of fifty years, who can't handle the climb anymore, did her own thing in town. They were obviously still in love. Any bitter memories I may have had of Jan's insensitivity that long ago night were swept away by the inspiring example of this aged, big-hearted, active couple with sparkling eyes.

I tackled the hairpin turns and dizzying drops on the road from the Owens Valley at 4,000 feet to the Onion Valley trailhead at 9,000 early the next morning. Though it ascends gently at first through the boulder-strewn desert plain with dramatic views of the Sierra wall to the south, Mt. Williamsom looming over the old Manzanar Japanese concentration camp site, and Mt. Whitney deceptively reduced in the further distance, it soon makes a sharp ascent thousands of feet up into the granite face leaving only space behind.

I kept my eyes on the road.

At the trailhead, I pulled my pack full of water, sport drink, munchies and weather layers onto my back, gripped my trekking poles, and took a deep breath with lungs that had been smoke-free for nearly four years. I told myself that if I didn't have the stamina to reach the top or if elevation sickness struck, it would be okay just to hang out at one of the lovely alpine lakes along the way.

But after numerous lengthy switchbacks and a 1,730 elevation gain halfway up the mountain - exactly at Gilbert Lake, to be precise, which I'd last seen frozen under a bleak November sky with the most ambivalent man on earth - I knew I was going to make it all the way. Here's my first view of the lake.


After another 1.3 miles and significant elevation gain via stony switchbacks and far fewer trees providing shade from the relentless beat of the sun, I stood well above Heart Lake for this shot.

And here's Big Pothole Lake, the last before the summit close by, from a slice of trail that traverses a mountain of scree. By this time I was nearly at 12,000 feet and feeling some dizziness, especially when I took a quick look ahead and saw the jagged edges of the Kearsarge Pinnacles slicing into the sky from behind the soft boulders at the pass, beyond which lay nothing but air.


Approaching the summit. Note how the trail traverses the mountain at a substantial slant. If it had been a cliff plummet, I'd likely have frozen with vertigo. What dizziness I did feel could not deter me. I saw specks at the pass that I knew to be humans, and I was determined to be among them.


At the summit. Wow! Kings Canyon National Park and Kearsarge Lakes lay behind me. About a dozen other hikers and backpackers shared their exhilaration, stories and laughter at the top. I hung out up there for over an hour. This shot was taken by a gal visiting from New Hampshire on her way to Mt. Whitney with her husband.


Here are some other shots from the summit with Bullfrog and Charlotte Lakes also visible.





This is a view of the Owens Valley on the descent.



Afternoon showers and some good-sized hail fell upon me by the time I reached Gilbert Lake on the way down. My feet were hurting by then, reminding me to get arch supports (mine are unusually high) for my Vasque boots. I hope that will solve the problem of 8th-mile-syndrome (feet killing me), because I intend to get a new tent and sleeping bag for some serious future backcountry travel. I'd like to see if I can actually do that on my own.

For myself.

Part Five: The Excelsior Geyser, Grand Prismatic Spring, and Old Faithful

Is that an amazing blue or what? That's what I'm talking about. And I ask again, why does this blue touch the soul in such a way? Okay, maybe I sound nuts, but just go spend some time staring into Yellowstone's hot springs - here, at the Excelsior Geyser, the water temperature is 199 degrees Fahrenheit - too hot to support any lifeform - and you'll know what I mean. Or go to the other extreme, to the glacial alpine lakes of the High Sierra, devoid of life for the same reason, and see if the color touches your soul. There aren't enough ways to describe that blue. Well anyway, the Excelsior Geyser was once the largest geyser in the world but hasn't had a major eruption since the 1880's, when it erupted up to 300 feet. It did erupt from 20 to 80 feet for two days in 1985, and since then has been quiet. It is a thermal spring, the hot waters flowing into the Firehole River.

And now behold the following photos of the Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in Yellowstone, and the third largest in the world. Unbelievably awesome to look upon. The steam from this spring actually rises up in that brilliant aqua color. And then with the juxtaposition of the ochre-red outer border, it's a jaw-dropping sight, unlike anything I've ever seen on this earth.




Hey, it's a hot waterfall! Yeah, that's where the hot spring and thermal waters flow into Firehole River. This was an amazing spot. I found a little trail at a nearby meadow and walked downstream a bit, then sat right by the river for as long as time would allow, listening to the distant waterfall and the river rolling by.



This shot was taken by one of my compadres earlier in the day, when we were way up river at the Firehole Falls.


And I've lost track of which geyser this is, but it's erupting in the background as the photo is taken of me with four of my favorite new Sierra Club Pals, from left to right: Carole (my bus and roommate), Sanford, Annie, moi, and Della.


This is a double show at the Grotto Geyser group, about a 1.5 mile walk from the Old Faithful Inn. It was really hot that day, so Carole and I sat in some nearby shade and before too long, the fountain in the background started to blow. A guy nearby then said it wouldn't be long before Grotto, which blows on average of every eight hours, would start to blow from its sinter cone. Nice timing!


And last but not least: Old Faithful, from the second story deck at the Old Faithful Inn.

Part Four: Sights In and Around Pelican Creek Nature Trail at Yellowstone Lake

This photo is one of my favorites from the trip. Every time I look at it (it's my new desktop background), I feel transported to that beautiful place of wide open spaces, blue skies, and grey mountain backdrop. We had done so much exploring of geysers and mudpots and boiling aqua blue hot springs by this point that this slice of lovely nature and broad dramatic landscape was a soothing feast for the eyes. I shot this from the trail out over the lush meadows along Pelican Creek towards Yellowstone Lake and the mountains beyond.


I took this one just after the trail opened up from a forested area to the spectacular sight of Yellowstone Lake. The lake is about as big as Lake Tahoe, if I'm remembering correctly, but whereas Lake Tahoe is something like 1500 feet deep, Yellowstone Lake is about 200 feet deep. I couldn't capture the Lake in its entirety in any visually interesting way, so I decided to frame it in the edge of a beach and driftwood shot.



I love this shot of a small bison herd not far from the shores of Yellowstone Lake. Some of them may be responsible for a subsequent traffic jam that happened when they began crossing the road for fields on the other side, then stopped for no apparent reason. At first we didn't know what had caused our delay, but as we began to creep fowrard, we saw that a mama bison and two calves had just crossed the road enabling us to cautiously proceed, but a bull bison remained stubbornly blocking the other lane of cars. In fact he was looking at them like, "What are you going to do about it?" He was practically as big as the first car! As we drove on, I counted 147 cars at a standstill, but most of the drivers appeared unconcerned about the delay. People were shouting "Bison! Bison in the road!" to let them know what was going on, and that information seemed to make it all okay.

Part Three: Norris Geyser Basin, Mud Volcano Group, and Bison Mating Season

I have to admit, I had no idea that the Norris Geyser Basin even existed until I went on this trip. Sure, everyone has heard about Old Faithful and maybe they even think that seeing it blow once or twice is a representative sampling of all the park's geysers. They would be mistaken. On my recent trip to Yellowstone, we turned into the Basin and stopped in the midst of a pleasant but unremarkable forest to have a bit of lunch before making the two-mile tour via an extensive network of boardwalks. The forest is quickly replaced by an unvegetated expanse punctuated by steam, geysers, white calcium deposits, boiling ochre-red streams, and unexpectedly striking aqua-blue pools. These boiling pools were so precisely the color of the glacial lakes in the High Sierras that I knew that gorgeous color was due to complete absence of life. A ranger later confirmed this, and also explained the pools refract all colors in the spectrum except blue, which is why they seem to be reflecting the color of the sky. What is it about that color that is so beautiful to the soul? Later in the trip, we saw far more dramatic examples of these rich deep awe-inspiring blues on a vaster scale, but I was very excited to see my first one here.


The smell of sulphur in the basin is at times overwhelming, especially when hot drafts of noxious steam sweep in on the slightest of wind. More than a few times, I found myself reeling and gasping for the first fresh of patch air I could find. In the 19th century, people would roam too close to the edges of these pools or on the deceptively firm-looking white calcium deposits nearby, only to fall in and be boiled alive - or burned badly enough to live in great suffering until death mercifully relieved them soon after. Though we did not see any, you might occasionally spot the skeletons of deer or bison that roam too close to the edges. Humans are now safeguarded by the boardwalks. This is one of the boiling streams as it flows away from the geyser basin.


And this is one of the larger steaming geyser pools.



We visited the Mud Volcano group on a different day, but I'm including it in this entry because they were fascinating in a completely different way from the aqua-blue pools of the Norris Geyser Basin. This was a small region of boiling brown and black and hissing pools and fumaroles. Again, boardwalks protect humans from falling into the mudpots, fumaroles, sulphurous springs, and odorous pools. The area is too dangerous for trails and the volcanic heat underneath constantly eats into the nearby forest, so that an area that is green and verdant one year may be quite dead and eaten up a few years later.

I have to admit I'm particularly proud of the next photo, which neatly shows the boiling Sulphur Cauldron in the foreground juxtaposed with the serenity of a forested hill and blue sky with white puffy clouds. Add in your mind the sounds of a fierce gurgling boil and fizzing sounds, plus the smell of sulphur, and you'll have the idea.


And here are some other shots.




Just before we visited the Mud Volcanoes, we encountered a herd of bison on either side of the road. We stopped and watched them for a long enough time to realize that it was mating season, and that the males were establishing their turf with the females. Here's my favorite one - note the bison couple in the distance, and in the foreground, a male coming up close for a sniff of his prospective mate.



This is a close-up of the hopeful male making his approach.



And here's a solitary bull who hasn't found anyone yet! He's thinking of moving in on someone else's action and picking a fight. Seriously. That's what rutting bulls will do.

Part Two: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

A bulk elk decided to check out our little gathering about saving the grizzly bears at the Canyon Lodge Amphitheatre on Monday evening. I think he also sniffed out the catered dinner, courtesy of Canyon Lodge where we stayed for two nights. Yeah, Sierra Club trips aren't all about munching on granola bars or picking at trail mix!


Here's a shot of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone from Inspiration Point just before we began our five-mile hike along the North Rim for views of lower and upper Yellowstone Falls.


While hiking an easy two miles to the 300-foot descent down to Grandview Point, the increasingly symphonic sound of the river gushing through the gorge and crashing down 300 feet of volanic rock whetted our appetites for what would no doubt be a spectacular view. We weren't counting on the rainbow, though! Here's my favorite shot of lower Yellowstone Falls. You can click on the photo to make it larger, too.

And here are some of my new Sierra Club friends at the Grandview Point. I'm the one in the front with the Dogtown t-shirt (that's Dogtown in West Marin near Point Reyes National Seashore, for those who want to know). As I made the steep 300-foot ascent back to the rim, some guy, noting my t-shirt, said, "'Dogtown' - that's what you'll feel like once you finish this climb!" I laughed, little knowing that I would indeed feel like I was in Dogtown a mere two days later when I came down with a sudden fever at the Old Faithful Inn. But that's another story.


I was really inspired by the older women on this trip. You can see some of them in the shot - women in their late 60's and early 70's who mostly kept up with the youngest of us. I hope to be emulating that 20 or 30 years from now myself! Sadly, however, one of our younger companions fell and sprained her elbow, so she was in a sling and some pain for the rest of the trip. To her credit, she never once complained.

Meanwhile, most of us carried on hiking for another mile or so before making another steep descent down to the mouth of the falls. At this point, we gained some views of upper Yellowstone Falls - not as dramatic as the lower falls, but still beautiful (and loud) from a distance. If you look closely, you can see the red speck of our enormous Utah Trailways bus on the north rim in the distance.



And here, dramatically, is the mouth of the falls. Yellowstone River is a beautiful emerald green flow until it comes crashing over 300 feet of volcanic rock in a churning white fury. You wouldn't want to be haphazardly canoeing upstream at this point.


And here's a view of the gorge facing towards Inspiration Point from the top of the falls.

Part One: Mammoth Hot Springs and the Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park

So I signed up in March for this August Sierra Club Bus trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Although I could make a living at designing trips myself, it's nice to have someone else do the planning for a change, so I took a chance with a leader named Fred Dong who'd made the journey before. The outcome did not not disappoint! I likely wouldn't have seen as much if if I'd done the trip single-handedly. For one thing, it would have been a lot more expensive, and I would have had to do all the driving! I might have missed seeing that grizzly bear roaming in the distance in Lamar Valley, or that bald eagle near Tower Falls, or the silhouette of a buck elk with rack by the riverside against the evening sky near the Montana border. I might not have had the patience to stop as often as our big bus did for all of Yellowstone's hot springs, mud pots, geysers, and wildlife.

Or maybe I would have. I mean, come on, it was all fucking amazing.

But what's great about Sierra Club trips is the built-in companionship. There are invariably interesting, upbeat, fit, and enthusiastic folks to hang out with, and that's nice for a single gal like me. As much as I also enjoy solo travel, the Sierra Club has been a godsend in my post-Jan singlehood. Our group of about 55 folks met at the Salt Lake City Airport and boarded an enormous Utah Trailways bus. I never thought I'd be one of those bus tourists, but perhaps there's environmental benefit in carting dozens of people in one gigantic vehicle rather than one or two people in dozens of gas-guzzling SUV's or 4x4's.

The bus was helmed by a good-lucking Dutch guy named Adriaan who splits his time between Holland and Salt Lake City with his American wife. Now there's a gig I could go for! I asked Adriaan if he had any single Dutch friends (yeah, I'm ready to take a chance again, even with a Dutch guy), and he said as a matter of fact he did - someone named Harm who lives in Amsterdam and wants to settle down with an American woman. But, "Harm?" I asked skeptically. Adriaan assured me that Harm is a common Dutch name, while also joking about "staying out of Harm's way." Something tells me maybe I should.

The long drive from Salt Lake City to the northwestern park entrance in Montana was the most grueling of our trip, but worth it in order to get all those miles covered and work our way down to Grand Teton National Park over the course of a week. I highly recommend that strategy. In the town of West Yellowstone, I located the one bistro with regional wines by the glass and one of the best bookstores I've ever encountered in my travels - the aptly-named Bookworm Bookstore, with new and used stock I could dive into forever, and good regional literature. Of course the owner knew his history as well as his trade. He talked me into an out-of-print copy of "Old Yellowstone Days" which turned out to be well-worth the $30 price tag.

We stayed at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel cabins, where I paired up with a total stranger named Carole with whom I'd be share both room and bus time for the remainder of our journey. She turned out to be a delightful piano teacher from Diamond Bar, a reader like me, and a true lady. She was inspiring and wise, didn't mind that I read at night, didn't talk too much, and above all, was wonderfully considerate. She never once got on my nerves (well, maybe her perennial night-light did just a bit).

We explored the fascinating Mammoth Hot Springs on Sunday morning. The snow white travertine terraces were unlike anything I've ever seen, giving me a new perspective on what some forms of active volcanic activity look like in a landscape. I'll borrow here from the American Southwest site, which describes it better than I probably could: "the formations here are different to all others, with no geysers or large springs; instead the warm, subterranean water has created large areas of beautiful terraces; staircase-like structures made of deposited travertine, stained a variety of bright colors by bacteria and algae that live in the acidic waters." The photos do justice to it, if I do say so myself.





I love this shot of the white travertine terraces in the foreground, with the Gallatin National Forest in Montana in the background, somewhere within which is the small town of Gardiner and the historical Roosevelt Arch which we did not visit on our journey.

On Sunday afternoon, we toured through the verdant Lamar Valley, its open grassy expanses lined by the distant dramatic peaks of the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Gallatin mountain range in the north. The Lamar Valley is a good place for spotting wolves, grizzly bears, and bison. Though we did not see any wolves, we did see a grizzly bear plodding through the meadows in the far distance. Further on from Mr. Grizzly, we reached a small bison herd and made a photo stop. I walked through the rain to get as close as was wise - which turned out not to be very far due to a boundary sign that warned of grizzly bear danger. So from that vantage point, I took the following photos. I'm afraid they give only the barest idea of the majestic expanse of this mountain river valley. In this spectacular place, it was especially thrilling to pay homage to the bison - descendants of those that once numbered in the millions on our prairies and were sacred to the Lakota tribes.



And here are some pronghorn deer in a lovely foggy meadow near Lamar Valley.