Thursday, September 15, 2011
Post #11 - West to East - Jackson Hole to Saratoga
Hello S&P Bloggers,
The time between our last post and this one can be explained with two words; motion and inactivity. Motion because we've added about 3,000 miles on the car since Montana, and inactivity because we have either been sitting in the car or sitting on a couch since Montana.
We left Bozeman and spent the day in Yellowstone and Grand Teton NPs. Both parks are well known for their abundance of wildlife, and the former is equally famous for its geothermal activity and the latter for its majestic mountain range. In Yellowstone we fought the traffic and saw our share of wildlife, most impressive being a fully mature male elk. He must have been at least a fourteen pointer, he was enormous. We also checked out Old Faithful. The crowds can make the experience muddled, but the geysers are an amazing natural occurrence. Yellowstone in general is a gigantic caldera that can blow at any time. It's a "super volcano". If it does go, it's more or less the end of humanity. Driving through the park you can see geyser after geyser smoking up from the ground, water bubbling everywhere. It's certainly not normal, and it's yet another reminder of how small we are compared to the power of mother nature. Driving south we hit Grand Teton NP. The Teton Mountains are gorgeous. After seeing most of America's mountain ranges in a relatively short period of time this summer, we have to say the Tetons are probably the most beautiful. Individual mountains like Rainier or Hood are amazing, but they stand alone and are hard to see as part of the Cascade Range. The Ranges of the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada are both unbelievable, but by the time you're looking at them you're already at 8,000 to 10,000 feet and you cannot appreciate their massiveness. The Tetons rise seemingly out of nowhere 7,000 feet right in front of you, and the effect it has on you is palpable. The Tetons are a range that should be high on the list for anyone wanting to see the natural beauty of the country. There is a lot to do in the area as well, summer or winter. Jackson, where you would most likely be staying and our final destination that day, is a small but cultured place. The popularity has exploded over the last twenty years. There are great restaurants and bars, boutiques have sprung up all over, and a number of five star hotels overlook the mountains. There are now a number of hedge funds and the like based here as well. The secret that was Jackson has not been a secret for a long time, but it is still a great place to visit. Summer provides limitless hiking and biking opportunities, not to mention white water rafting and horseback riding, etc...We have never been out during the winter but Jackson Hole is known to be one of the best mountains in the country for downhill skiing. If you could figure out how to make money here and enjoy outdoor activities during all four seasons, then there are few places that can compete with Jackson.
Pat's cousin Will and his wife Sashie have figured out just that, and we stayed with them for three nights. This is our second rendezvous with our old friends from NYC. We stayed at Sashie's childhood home in Hong Kong four months ago. It's incredible how time flies. Will, Sashie, and especially their son Jasper seemed much more relaxed in their home environment. In Hong Kong Jasper was jet lagged and going through a "throwing" and "hitting" stage. In just four months he seemed like a different kid, which apparently happens a lot with children. He's not yet two, but he seemed like such a little man compared with the Jasper we saw in Hong Kong. Seeing that was amazing. Kids are amazing.
We were tired coming into town, as were Will and Sashie dealing with work and a rowdy boy. We spent much of the three days lounging. It felt great. Sashie put Jasper in day care so we could take a long hike, but it just didn't pan out. Watching movies on a couch was just too good to pass up after all the camping and partying we did on the west coast. We did manage to get out of one nice dinner and also an afternoon at the pool with Jasper, but overall the visit was subdued and perfect. Thanks to Will and Sashie, we'll see you guys soon.
We have a couple of other shout outs to family members as well. Congrats to Pat's cousins Kristen and Honora for your new baby boys! The Stymacks family continues to grow at an Irish Catholic rate. Also congrats to Shauna's cousin Amy who has just told us she's three months pregnant! So awesome, it's about time a new baby is coming in the Lazzaro clan.
With that said, we left Jackson and drove across the entire state of Wyoming to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The drive was much more picturesque than we thought it would be. The Big Horn Mountains in eastern Wyoming are gorgeous, if sparsely populated. Once in South Dakota we drove through the Wild West town of Deadwood, home to an HBO TV series and murder site of Wild Bill Hickok. It's now a hokey strip of casinos and "saloons", but fun nonetheless for a night. We didn't spend the night, however, driving instead further south through the heart of the pretty Black Hills to Lake Sheridan. Our campsite was right on the lake making it a perfect last spot for our summer of camping. Unfortunately the warm weather ended in Jackson and we got sporadic wild precipitation and wind during our three nights there. The first night there was one of the most impressive displays of lighting we have ever seen. It was strange because it was silent and there was no rain. It was basically heat lightning, but it wasn't humid. Our second night we got heavy rain fall along with a few minutes of hail, some the size of a quarter. Finally on the third night we got strong winds much like we had back in Texas, when Pat was forced to use the wall of the tent as a blanket. Luckily the tent held up and kept us dry the whole time. Thanks to Pat's Aunt Ann and Uncle John for the tent and camping gear we needed while in the woods this summer.
The Black Hills are great. They remind us very much of the Adirondacks. There are a lot of clean lakes in the middle of a large Pine forest. Like Deadwood there are parts that are a little hokey, with billboards all over the place advertising "Mystery Mountain; Come Survive It!" and "Gold Mining Opportunities for the Whole Family!". With that said there are a few national treasures here as well. Our first full day we drove first to Mount Rushmore, then to Custer State Park, followed by Wind Cave NP and finally the Crazy Horse Monument. Mount Rushmore is cool. Ninety percent of the project was done by dynamite, which to us sounds crazy. We guess dynamiting is an accurate science. The parks were cool for their abundance of bison, and we forced ourselves to get out and take a couple of hikes to see them. The last and maybe most impressive site was the Crazy Horse Monument. It is not even close to complete, and may not be in our lifetimes. It is being constructed entirely by private donations as the original designer twice refused federal funding. When you see it you are at first disappointed. For now it is just a face in the distance in a large chunk of normal looking granite. Once you go into the visitor center and watch the video, however, you realize the vision of the future and scope of the project. Eventually the monument will be Crazy Horse, a young Lakota Native who was stabbed in the back by a U.S. soldier while there was supposed to be a truce, on top of a warhorse pointing straight into the distance. Not only is the design intricate, it's absolutely gargantuan. The four faces in Mount Rushmore would be able to fit in Crazy Horse's hair (once the hair is completed). They have no idea when it will be done, but it will be a site to behold when it is. Once finished, the plan is to have a state of the art university and medical center for Native Americans sitting underneath the monument. It was incredible to see the aggressive plans actively being worked on all around us. Our second day was spent in our final (and twenty second) NP. This was Badlands NP. The Badlands seem to be from another world, like in parts of Utah, but in a completely different way. Strange dirt and rock formations carve an inhospitable climate that drove the early American settlers crazy. We were able to get out of the car and take of few decent hikes, some of the only exercise we've had in two weeks! The park is definitely cool, but we've started to break down a bit and not appreciating everything like we once did. It's time to sleep a while in Saratoga and recharge the engines.
We got up early and were on the road by 7:30 to drive almost a third of the way across the country to Madison, Wisconsin. After eleven hours and 800 miles we arrived in Badgerland. It was amazing to see the transformation of the landscape. You have a relatively flat and arid climate all the way from the Black Hills to the Mississippi Rive on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin. All of a sudden the Mississippi appears and it's green and there are trees again. You feel like you're back east, even though you're in the Midwest.
Madison is a cool town. There isn't much there other than the school (and the capital building), but the school is enough. UW is a state-of-the-art university and we've heard it's one of the most fun places to be an undergraduate. We had lunch and made our way into the corn fields, literally in the middle of no where for Pearl Jam 20. PJ20 was a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the band being together. Acts like The Strokes and Queens Of The Stone Age preceded the main event, three plus hours of Pearl Jam. It was epic. They played until 12:30am. Chris Cornell of Sonic Youth (and Audioslave) came on and sang Hunger Strike from the Temple Of The Dog days. They played a bit from every album and it was a fitting tribute to their work thus far. Pearl Jam is Pat's favorite band, and the show only slightly beat out his Phish experience from earlier this summer. There are other bands that have been more prolific over the last twenty years, but none have had more "game changing" songs. Even if there are only four or five tracks per album on their later stuff that move you, they are still four or five songs that mean something and are as much poetry as great music. No one out there can put such meaningful lyrics with either kick ass rock n' roll or, well, slow rock n' roll. As with Phish we were lucky to see one of the greatest bands of this generation play as if they were just starting out.
Tired and a little hung over, we left Wisconsin and drove around Chicago, through Indiana and into Michigan before finally getting to Detroit where Pat's aunt and uncle live. Although we were exhausted we stayed up late catching up with them. It was a short and sweet in and out but thanks to Denise and Jack for putting us up for the night. We soldiered on another four hours to Toronto. We can now say we've been in nine countries in 2011. We spent three nights with Pat's sister Kathleen and did very little. Other than a fun night out at the Blue Jays game, we basically lounged on Kathleen's couch for days. We were just so out of it from being on the road for seven months that we didn't want to do anything. Thankfully Kath didn't mind and simply went about her business. She said each time she came home we were just a little deeper in the couch. We've been to see her a bunch and Pat's family is doing Christmas there so we didn't feel bad doing nothing. Even with the rest we were still exhausted and didn't truly catch up on sleep for another week.
We left Toronto for a six hour drive to Saratoga! This was the end of the road for Pat's car, and since we started there we're stopping the mileage count there as well. The grand total was 13,984.2 miles in exactly three months; June tenth to September tenth. That's the equivalent of driving from New York to Los Angeles two and a half times! We went to twenty-seven of fifty states and twenty-two of fifty-seven national parks. Twelve of those parks are in Alaska, Hawaii, or the U.S. Virgin Islands so really we hit half of the parks in the lower forty-eight. It was an intense schedule but we saw a lot. The country is so big and beautiful it's almost impossible to believe. We are so lucky to be doing this whole year of traveling, but we feel the most lucky about seeing America as Americans. After four and a half months in Asia and now three months in America, we can see first hand how lucky we are to call this land home. At times this portion of the trip was tougher than Asia, however. The times when we were in the middle of nowhere and in a national park with no ability to shower and sleeping in a tent were hard. Nonetheless we made it through and now have a little time to reflect on what we've seen and experienced. We have three weeks in Saratoga to sleep, eat, and prepare for our next leg.
We did take a quick forty-eight hour trip to NYC to remember 9/11/01. Pat's sister Cecelia finished a journey of her own that day on Rockaway Beach. After three months and over four thousand miles on a bicycle, Cecelia and her boyfriend Casey and two others dipped their wheels into the Atlantic Ocean. You will have to read Cece's blog for more specifics on all that, but it was a special weekend.
There will be a long break here as we take some time to recover and prepare for South America. Starting October fourth, we spend three weeks in Peru and another two and a half in Costa Rica. My guess is we'll write a blog around October twelfth after we finish our five day hike into Machu Picchu.
Until then ladies and gents, thanks for continuing to support our adventures.
All the best,
S&P
The time between our last post and this one can be explained with two words; motion and inactivity. Motion because we've added about 3,000 miles on the car since Montana, and inactivity because we have either been sitting in the car or sitting on a couch since Montana.
We left Bozeman and spent the day in Yellowstone and Grand Teton NPs. Both parks are well known for their abundance of wildlife, and the former is equally famous for its geothermal activity and the latter for its majestic mountain range. In Yellowstone we fought the traffic and saw our share of wildlife, most impressive being a fully mature male elk. He must have been at least a fourteen pointer, he was enormous. We also checked out Old Faithful. The crowds can make the experience muddled, but the geysers are an amazing natural occurrence. Yellowstone in general is a gigantic caldera that can blow at any time. It's a "super volcano". If it does go, it's more or less the end of humanity. Driving through the park you can see geyser after geyser smoking up from the ground, water bubbling everywhere. It's certainly not normal, and it's yet another reminder of how small we are compared to the power of mother nature. Driving south we hit Grand Teton NP. The Teton Mountains are gorgeous. After seeing most of America's mountain ranges in a relatively short period of time this summer, we have to say the Tetons are probably the most beautiful. Individual mountains like Rainier or Hood are amazing, but they stand alone and are hard to see as part of the Cascade Range. The Ranges of the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada are both unbelievable, but by the time you're looking at them you're already at 8,000 to 10,000 feet and you cannot appreciate their massiveness. The Tetons rise seemingly out of nowhere 7,000 feet right in front of you, and the effect it has on you is palpable. The Tetons are a range that should be high on the list for anyone wanting to see the natural beauty of the country. There is a lot to do in the area as well, summer or winter. Jackson, where you would most likely be staying and our final destination that day, is a small but cultured place. The popularity has exploded over the last twenty years. There are great restaurants and bars, boutiques have sprung up all over, and a number of five star hotels overlook the mountains. There are now a number of hedge funds and the like based here as well. The secret that was Jackson has not been a secret for a long time, but it is still a great place to visit. Summer provides limitless hiking and biking opportunities, not to mention white water rafting and horseback riding, etc...We have never been out during the winter but Jackson Hole is known to be one of the best mountains in the country for downhill skiing. If you could figure out how to make money here and enjoy outdoor activities during all four seasons, then there are few places that can compete with Jackson.
Pat's cousin Will and his wife Sashie have figured out just that, and we stayed with them for three nights. This is our second rendezvous with our old friends from NYC. We stayed at Sashie's childhood home in Hong Kong four months ago. It's incredible how time flies. Will, Sashie, and especially their son Jasper seemed much more relaxed in their home environment. In Hong Kong Jasper was jet lagged and going through a "throwing" and "hitting" stage. In just four months he seemed like a different kid, which apparently happens a lot with children. He's not yet two, but he seemed like such a little man compared with the Jasper we saw in Hong Kong. Seeing that was amazing. Kids are amazing.
We were tired coming into town, as were Will and Sashie dealing with work and a rowdy boy. We spent much of the three days lounging. It felt great. Sashie put Jasper in day care so we could take a long hike, but it just didn't pan out. Watching movies on a couch was just too good to pass up after all the camping and partying we did on the west coast. We did manage to get out of one nice dinner and also an afternoon at the pool with Jasper, but overall the visit was subdued and perfect. Thanks to Will and Sashie, we'll see you guys soon.
We have a couple of other shout outs to family members as well. Congrats to Pat's cousins Kristen and Honora for your new baby boys! The Stymacks family continues to grow at an Irish Catholic rate. Also congrats to Shauna's cousin Amy who has just told us she's three months pregnant! So awesome, it's about time a new baby is coming in the Lazzaro clan.
With that said, we left Jackson and drove across the entire state of Wyoming to the Black Hills of South Dakota. The drive was much more picturesque than we thought it would be. The Big Horn Mountains in eastern Wyoming are gorgeous, if sparsely populated. Once in South Dakota we drove through the Wild West town of Deadwood, home to an HBO TV series and murder site of Wild Bill Hickok. It's now a hokey strip of casinos and "saloons", but fun nonetheless for a night. We didn't spend the night, however, driving instead further south through the heart of the pretty Black Hills to Lake Sheridan. Our campsite was right on the lake making it a perfect last spot for our summer of camping. Unfortunately the warm weather ended in Jackson and we got sporadic wild precipitation and wind during our three nights there. The first night there was one of the most impressive displays of lighting we have ever seen. It was strange because it was silent and there was no rain. It was basically heat lightning, but it wasn't humid. Our second night we got heavy rain fall along with a few minutes of hail, some the size of a quarter. Finally on the third night we got strong winds much like we had back in Texas, when Pat was forced to use the wall of the tent as a blanket. Luckily the tent held up and kept us dry the whole time. Thanks to Pat's Aunt Ann and Uncle John for the tent and camping gear we needed while in the woods this summer.
The Black Hills are great. They remind us very much of the Adirondacks. There are a lot of clean lakes in the middle of a large Pine forest. Like Deadwood there are parts that are a little hokey, with billboards all over the place advertising "Mystery Mountain; Come Survive It!" and "Gold Mining Opportunities for the Whole Family!". With that said there are a few national treasures here as well. Our first full day we drove first to Mount Rushmore, then to Custer State Park, followed by Wind Cave NP and finally the Crazy Horse Monument. Mount Rushmore is cool. Ninety percent of the project was done by dynamite, which to us sounds crazy. We guess dynamiting is an accurate science. The parks were cool for their abundance of bison, and we forced ourselves to get out and take a couple of hikes to see them. The last and maybe most impressive site was the Crazy Horse Monument. It is not even close to complete, and may not be in our lifetimes. It is being constructed entirely by private donations as the original designer twice refused federal funding. When you see it you are at first disappointed. For now it is just a face in the distance in a large chunk of normal looking granite. Once you go into the visitor center and watch the video, however, you realize the vision of the future and scope of the project. Eventually the monument will be Crazy Horse, a young Lakota Native who was stabbed in the back by a U.S. soldier while there was supposed to be a truce, on top of a warhorse pointing straight into the distance. Not only is the design intricate, it's absolutely gargantuan. The four faces in Mount Rushmore would be able to fit in Crazy Horse's hair (once the hair is completed). They have no idea when it will be done, but it will be a site to behold when it is. Once finished, the plan is to have a state of the art university and medical center for Native Americans sitting underneath the monument. It was incredible to see the aggressive plans actively being worked on all around us. Our second day was spent in our final (and twenty second) NP. This was Badlands NP. The Badlands seem to be from another world, like in parts of Utah, but in a completely different way. Strange dirt and rock formations carve an inhospitable climate that drove the early American settlers crazy. We were able to get out of the car and take of few decent hikes, some of the only exercise we've had in two weeks! The park is definitely cool, but we've started to break down a bit and not appreciating everything like we once did. It's time to sleep a while in Saratoga and recharge the engines.
We got up early and were on the road by 7:30 to drive almost a third of the way across the country to Madison, Wisconsin. After eleven hours and 800 miles we arrived in Badgerland. It was amazing to see the transformation of the landscape. You have a relatively flat and arid climate all the way from the Black Hills to the Mississippi Rive on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin. All of a sudden the Mississippi appears and it's green and there are trees again. You feel like you're back east, even though you're in the Midwest.
Madison is a cool town. There isn't much there other than the school (and the capital building), but the school is enough. UW is a state-of-the-art university and we've heard it's one of the most fun places to be an undergraduate. We had lunch and made our way into the corn fields, literally in the middle of no where for Pearl Jam 20. PJ20 was a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the band being together. Acts like The Strokes and Queens Of The Stone Age preceded the main event, three plus hours of Pearl Jam. It was epic. They played until 12:30am. Chris Cornell of Sonic Youth (and Audioslave) came on and sang Hunger Strike from the Temple Of The Dog days. They played a bit from every album and it was a fitting tribute to their work thus far. Pearl Jam is Pat's favorite band, and the show only slightly beat out his Phish experience from earlier this summer. There are other bands that have been more prolific over the last twenty years, but none have had more "game changing" songs. Even if there are only four or five tracks per album on their later stuff that move you, they are still four or five songs that mean something and are as much poetry as great music. No one out there can put such meaningful lyrics with either kick ass rock n' roll or, well, slow rock n' roll. As with Phish we were lucky to see one of the greatest bands of this generation play as if they were just starting out.
Tired and a little hung over, we left Wisconsin and drove around Chicago, through Indiana and into Michigan before finally getting to Detroit where Pat's aunt and uncle live. Although we were exhausted we stayed up late catching up with them. It was a short and sweet in and out but thanks to Denise and Jack for putting us up for the night. We soldiered on another four hours to Toronto. We can now say we've been in nine countries in 2011. We spent three nights with Pat's sister Kathleen and did very little. Other than a fun night out at the Blue Jays game, we basically lounged on Kathleen's couch for days. We were just so out of it from being on the road for seven months that we didn't want to do anything. Thankfully Kath didn't mind and simply went about her business. She said each time she came home we were just a little deeper in the couch. We've been to see her a bunch and Pat's family is doing Christmas there so we didn't feel bad doing nothing. Even with the rest we were still exhausted and didn't truly catch up on sleep for another week.
We left Toronto for a six hour drive to Saratoga! This was the end of the road for Pat's car, and since we started there we're stopping the mileage count there as well. The grand total was 13,984.2 miles in exactly three months; June tenth to September tenth. That's the equivalent of driving from New York to Los Angeles two and a half times! We went to twenty-seven of fifty states and twenty-two of fifty-seven national parks. Twelve of those parks are in Alaska, Hawaii, or the U.S. Virgin Islands so really we hit half of the parks in the lower forty-eight. It was an intense schedule but we saw a lot. The country is so big and beautiful it's almost impossible to believe. We are so lucky to be doing this whole year of traveling, but we feel the most lucky about seeing America as Americans. After four and a half months in Asia and now three months in America, we can see first hand how lucky we are to call this land home. At times this portion of the trip was tougher than Asia, however. The times when we were in the middle of nowhere and in a national park with no ability to shower and sleeping in a tent were hard. Nonetheless we made it through and now have a little time to reflect on what we've seen and experienced. We have three weeks in Saratoga to sleep, eat, and prepare for our next leg.
We did take a quick forty-eight hour trip to NYC to remember 9/11/01. Pat's sister Cecelia finished a journey of her own that day on Rockaway Beach. After three months and over four thousand miles on a bicycle, Cecelia and her boyfriend Casey and two others dipped their wheels into the Atlantic Ocean. You will have to read Cece's blog for more specifics on all that, but it was a special weekend.
There will be a long break here as we take some time to recover and prepare for South America. Starting October fourth, we spend three weeks in Peru and another two and a half in Costa Rica. My guess is we'll write a blog around October twelfth after we finish our five day hike into Machu Picchu.
Until then ladies and gents, thanks for continuing to support our adventures.
All the best,
S&P
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
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