Making the [National Park] Rounds

At some point, I came to an odd realization: I've seen more of the natural wonders of places like Mongolia, Argentina, Nepal, and New Zealand than I have of our very own U.S. of A. This didn't seem right - there's no shortage of natural wonders to see in this country of ours ... so, over the past twelve months, I've started making a conscious effort to check some of the more famous American outdoor sites off the list.

Let's begin in upstate New York just under a year ago - the Niagara Falls:

Iguazu's still bigger, but Niagara is mighty impressive

Traversing this grand country of ours (by rail) for a couple of days brought me to the Great Plains, and pretty soon, I was staring at one of the grandest man-made outdoor sites in the world:

South Dakota's Mount Rushmore

Which brings up some philosophical quandaries - it surely is an outdoor site, but it's not exactly natural... I say as long as it's a National Park, and is one of the more heavily visited of American sites, it belongs on this list!

So, moving right along - likely the single best known of America's natural wonders, and certainly the grandest (no pun intended) is Arizona's Grand Canyon. This one, I'd actually been to once before, but that was all the way back in '99, when I was such an un-seasoned traveler that I didn't even have a digital camera. All fixed on the visit this past March:

The Canyon was glorious and snow-covered shortly after sun-rise on this early spring day

So, Niagara, Rushmore, Grand Canyon... how to round that bunch out? Right - Yellowstone! You don't get a lot more authentic with your outdoor sites than the gigantic tract of land comprising the world's first National Park. So, early June, just under a year since having started this latest journey of discovery at Niagara Falls, I landed in Yellowstone to join my parents for a week of sightseeing at this grand national park.

Yellowstone, looking positively other-wordly with geysers smoking all around

The geysers are constantly going off - this one is simply [and appropriately] named "The Grand," seen sending a powerful spray of water up here

When not exploding, the thermal features are busy smoking (a bit menacingly) and creating an astonishing array of bright colors. The Grand Prismatic Spring pictured

I didn't have much time to research Yellowstone before arriving - it's huge, there's a bunch of geysers, a lot of wildlife - no shortage of sites to see. The details of these sites we learned en route - none disappointed. Yellowstone is actually amazingly vast and diverse, it's not just Old Faithful and the rest of the geyser bunch - traversing the park puts you through an ever-changing cavalcade of scenery: the geysers and the hot springs give way to the lakes, waterfalls, and rivers, which merge into the Canyons, which lead you to Lamar Valley - "America's Serengeti," dubbed so for its wide mixture of wildlife out easily in view. And then, there's the Mammoth step springs up in the North-Western corner of the park, which simply defy classification altogether. Click here for a hundred or so pictures of the best of the park, but a few more of the highlights:

A pair of buffalo playfully fighting early in the morning... all of 20 or so feet away from the road

Mom, dad, welcome to the blog! The three of us at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone - not quite the Grand Canyon, but pretty Grand nonetheless!

And eventually, you might start thinking, "you know, one thing that's missing here? That's some big ol' mountains - up close and personal! There's snowy peaks off on the horizon, but couldn't they have planted them a little closer!?" Well, never fear - just drive South for two or so hours (and the one thing that annoys me about American National Parks is that you do absolutely have to drive everywhere) and you are surrounded by those snowy elusive peaks, smack in the middle of the Grand Teton National Park, dominating the valley of Jackson Hole:

The Teton Range

The mountains rising up above Jenny Lake on a beautiful, sunny day out in the park

And at this point... I think it's safe to say my American National Parks are beginning to catch up to all those other far off lands. Sure Yosemite, which I'm yet to see, makes a strong argument for being in the top five (and it remains high on the list), along with Alaska's Denali, Hawaii's big volcanoes, Florida's Everglades, Montana's Glacier National Park... who knows what else! But a few at a time, and so far, over these past twelve months, I'm off to a good start. Mt. Rainier, right here next to Seattle, continues to beckon to be climbed as well, and that may well be the next piece of American Nature to conquer, as I keep hoping/planning to summit this year... If I can get there before July 24th, it'll even fall within a year of Niagara!

So pretty... so beckoning! Not even nearly as tall as the mountains in Nepal, Bolivia, Peru... it must and shall be conquered!

Still not convinced about the variety of natural wonders to be seen in this vast land of ours? A few more picturesque destinations from the year past:
The Tulip Fields in Washington's Skagit Valley
Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada and the Rocks of Sedona, Arizona
The Mountains of Utah
A different perspective of Mt. Rainier, still just outside of Seattle
The Playa of the Burning Man festival... one of the most spectacularly amazing settings
Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay - did you know it too is now the domain of the National Park Service?
Victoria Island and its Burchart Gardens are in Canada, but I'm willing include the great land up North in this little exhibition!
Devil's Tower, on the great plains of Montana (you're gonna have to scroll down some)

And a couple more natural sites of note rewinding another year back in the way back machine: Lake Tahoe and Crater Lake.

Where school buses go to die

What happens to that dear 'ol bus that would take you to school and back when you were a kid? Well, apparently, the school buses all have their different personalities, just like the rest of us, and they all go in a number of different ways. And what do a lot of retired Americans do now? Why, they dress up in bright and loud outfits and take a trip to Central America - school buses are no different:

The brightly colored, former school bus is the backbone of the public transportation networks in places like Panama City, Panama. This one is actually from Cochabamba, Bolivia, which is a place that most Americans (and American school buses) don't generally reach, but it certainly looks the part of its Central American brethren.

The ones who invested more time and money into their financial retirement planning during the long days of carting screaming, bratty little kids around the suburbs have a few more options. Instead of working through retirement on the mean streets of Panama City, they are able to afford to settle down in relative peace and comfort not far from the azure waters of the Pacific Ocean, near a Central American beach:

Witness this former North American workhorse now administering a surf camp at the beach town of Tamarindo, Costa Rica. Life under the palm trees is pretty peaceful in Tamarindo!

Unfortunately, life in Central and South America is fraught with danger, and there's constant competition for jobs from newer, younger, fresher immigrants coming across the border from up North, so not everyone can keep up. And when the time comes when you are no longer up to the task of being a brightly painted, suspension-optional transportation kog in a Central American municipality's public transport scheme, you are just put out to pasture in the fields of, say, Western Argentina

With the Andes providing a dramatic backdrop. If you are fortunate, like this guy, your final resting place will be near a National Monument - Puente del Inca here, and within a short hike from Aconcagua, South America's tallest peak

But not all Americans travel outside the country in their retirement years - many simply try to take in the many, many natural sites that North America has to offer. And the school buses are right there with them!

Who knows where this guy started, but he only made it as far as South Dakota, where he was turned into a tourist shuttle for the construction site of the Crazy Horse monument. Definitely missing out on a seriously psychedelic paint job though!

And then, there's a few school buses that were clearly forced to retire much too early - their adrenaline is still rushing, their engines are still roaring, and the fighting spirit is still strong within these ones! Fortunately, there's a place for these restless, competitive types too - it's the All-American institution called the Demolition Derby:

The Battlebus, ready to bring the pain, at the Derby in Monroe, Washington

School buses racin' and bumpin' around the tight corners. Yeah, that shady spot under a palm tree on the beach in Costa Rica may seem nice, but that's not the place for these guys!

Well, apparently these are all the school buses I've got pictures of... and all the witty commentary I have to offer. But my mother is always upset whenever a post doesn't have a single picture of me, so let's solve that - here I am, roughly school-bus aged. Except that I was in Soviet Russia at the time, where there were no school buses, but I digress. Besides, you wouldn't want to see any pictures of me from high school in Kentucky... I'm not sure I even have any!

I'm guessing this is 4th grade, I ought to be wearing my blood red Pioneer tie, but I think fourth grade was when we all got a little rebellious and learned we didn't really have to wear them in these crazy days of Glasnost and Perestroika...

Ok, here's me actually with a one of the buses above too: clicky here!

Americana!

I left Chicago by train, the same way I had arrived - from Union Station in the heart of the city. The station's waiting hall set a properly All-American scene:

This was making me feel fairly patriotic

So, in this patriotic, all-American spirit, I headed for my one last destination: Mount Rushmore. Actually, I was heading to Denver, then driving to Rushmore, but it just plain wouldn't be an All-American adventure if there was public transportation available...

Mount Rushmore National Monument, in the middle of South Dakota's Black Hills National Forest. This was, incidentally, my first time in South Dakota too...

Rushmore is absolutely unique - I've been trying to think of something to compare it to, but there really isn't anything. The monuments are huge - the faces are each sixty feet tall, and they are carved into one of the tallest peaks in the park. There are, of course, other giant monuments around the world, but all the ones I can think of fall neatly into two distinct categories: religious shines (topped perhaps by The Buddhas of Bayman in Afghanistan... until the Taliban destroyed them in 2001), or pure cults of personality - my favorite is certainly the giant golden Turkmenbashi sun dial in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. (Holy Crap - they are taking down the Golden Turkmenbashi!) Mount Rushmore, however, is neither religious in nature, nor was it constructed to immortalize those building it (or at least authorizing the construction), which, I think, makes it pretty uniquely American. The four Presidents depicted are (from left to right) George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. I think it's safe to say these four were already pretty well immortalized in American history books by the time the monument was completed in 1939. In a related sign of an American oxymoron, accessing Mount Rushmore is free of charge (something that would be inconceivable just about anywhere else in the world) - the parking lot, on the other hand, is privately run and will set you back ten dollars.

In defense of my rather grizzly appearance I'll note that the previous two nights had been spent in a seat on board an amtrak train and in a tent in the South Dakota wilderness. Was starting to look forward to my Denver hotel room by now!

In a mildly ironic twist of fate, Mount Rushmore, this most iconic of All-American monuments is actually located on what has traditionally been Native American land - Sioux land, specifically. Perhaps as a result (or in response?), the tribes are banding together to erect a commemorative monument of their own, not far from Mount Rushmore - Crazy Horse. And you've got to give them credit - they are dreaming big! The mountain chosen as the site, is one of the few that's taller than Rushmore in the area, and, as planned, Crazy Horse will become the tallest monument currently in existence in the world. Now I say 'currently in existence' because they are nowhere near completion - in fact, at the rate they are going (10 workers at the site, not accepting any money from the US government to help with the construction), it is estimated that the monument will take another hundred and fifty years to complete... Nothing highlights your imminent mortality quite like being on a bus and being told that none of you on board, not even the youngest children, will live long enough to see the completed structure, assuming they stick to the current pace.

So far, we've completed Crazy Horse's face - this took about 50 years!

The envisioned model of the entire structure - just another 150 short years! I am a little curious about the slow pace - if money was the only obstacle, you'd think with all the money the tribal casinos are bringing in these days all over the country, that would be an imminently resolvable problem?

Assuming the final statue is eventually carved to the design originally envisioned, will it be the largest monument in the world when eventually finished? Hard to say - China and India currently have competing projects to erect the tallest Buddha statue, but neither reaches the projected height of Crazy Horse (560 feet, or about 171 meters), but what will happen over the next 150 years, assuming it really takes that long? Noone knows for certain... but unless the Taliban come to power in more parts of the world, I think it's safe to say there will be more statues getting erected, and given a century and a half, 171 meters may not be an entirely indomitable limit.

And so, after seeing the two monuments, each representing a different take on the notion of All-American, it was time to pack up my tent and head back to Denver. Now Denver is about a six hour drive from Mount Rushmore; the road passes through parts of Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota along the way... and lemme tell you this ain't the most scenic drive you'll ever take! In fact, unless you are a big fan of vast, flat open spaces and really, really, really straight roads, you may grow kinda bored along the way - I surely did. At least the speed limit on the interstates in 75 mph - they clearly know just how straight, flat, and devoid of compelling scenery the roads are. The immediate area surrounding Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse is legitimately beautiful of course - the lush greens of the Black Hills National Forest and Custer State Part, interspersed with a variety of lakes, rivers, and scraggy mountain ranges... But as soon as you leave those behind, you are left with, well, flatness. Some highlights:

An oil derrick in the middle of the prairie actually seemed like a very appropriate site

The town of Deadwood is within the National Forest - it's famed for its Wild West, Gold Rush days (as the HBO show of the same name reminded us), but these days its attraction is the legalized gambling...

Cargo trains criss-crossing Wyoming

A faint rainbow over Northern Colorado after a brief, but fierce thunderstorm. I later heard about golf ball-sized pieces of hail coming down around Mount Rushmore the following day... breaking windshields(!)

And occasionally, you see a big, seemingly incongruent tower of a mountain over the horizon

Actually, that last one wasn't exactly a random site along the way - that's Devils Tower, another National Monument, just across the border in Northern Wyoming. It probably added another hour or two to the drive back, but I figured as long as I was nearby, it would be a shame to miss it. Plus, it gave me a chance to drive along I-90 for some 30 miles, and that made it feel almost like home (I-90 proceeds all the way West to Seattle).

I don't know a whole lot about Devils Tower honestly - it looks like the neck of a big volcano... and it looks that way no matter how close you are to it, so I didn't see the point of paying to actually enter the grounds of the national park. I've since read that it's actually possible to climb to the top of the Tower, which would have certainly been cool, but I didn't really have time to do it anyway, so back to Denver I went! After snapping a few more pictures...

You don't mess with Texas and you don't mess with 386 meters of Wyoming's Devils Tower!

It's cowboy country, ya know!

One last bit of adventure on the way back from the Tower - I actually had to head North, in the opposite direction at first to find the nearest gas station (these are every bit as uncommon as you might imagine in the eternal flat emptiness of the Great Plains). After filling up, I turned out around, pulled back out onto the highway, and sent my little Hyundai on its way back South... Then things went into slow motion in my head - hey, there's a big white car parked on the side of the road - Crap! It's a cop! - Was I speeding? I wonder how fast I was going? I've no idea what the speed limit in the town of Hulett is! - Fuck! He's pulling out - lights on... So, I was speeding. Technically, if he had waited, he may have had a better catch as I was speeding up (probably not much better though, as I did notice him and slowed back down), but as it turned out, the speed limit in tiny little outposts of civilization (e.g. Hulett; population: 516) in rural Wyoming (is there another kind of Wyoming?) is 30 mph, and I was doing 41. Fortunately, I was polite, and the officer was nice, and after running my rental documents through his computer he let me off with a warning, thus not making this the most expensive gas stop in my life! I did make sure to inquire as to what exactly the speed limits were in future rural Wyoming towns... Fortunately, that knowledge would not be needed any more the rest of the day.