Well, as most of you know or figured out from my July 29 post, I've been on vacation with the family. We left 2 Saturdays ago, and came back on Wednesday evening. It's good we came back when we did do to what we found when we got to my parents house, but that's another story and I probably shouldn't talk about it yet - maybe later.

Anyways, in Grand Teton we visited lakes, took lots of pictures of the lakes and mountains, and the other usual park things. I managed to slide down a hill and get covered in dust and rip up my hand a bit. It actually wasn't bad until I got annoyed with the wounds leaving marks places, but nothing some betadine, bandages and tape didn't fix. We went to Signal mountain which provides views in all directions of everything. Of course appropriate to the name it has a nice tower at the top which is right next to the path. Being the geek I am I have some nice pictures of the antenna arrays, cabling styles and runs, the microwave uplink, the building, etc.. :) I thought it was funny that everyone wondered why their cell phones were maxed out slightly down the mountain but the strength went down next to the antenna. The fun world of RF...

After the night in Grand Tetons park, we went to Xanterra world, also known as Yellowstone National Park (Mount Rushmore Memorial falls under this too). The parks aren't that commercialized, but it's sorta funny since the park/nature stuff is branded NPS but everything in buildings other than the visitors center has Xanterra branding everywhere. We stayed in Yellowstone for 3 nights, saw all the "sulfur pits" as we started to call the hot springs, and saw old faithful both at night and during the day. The geothermal stuff was cool at first, but due to the smell we didn't stay long or find them that interesting. We also saw moose and osprey, and got good pictures of both. The moose was across a pond and I didn't want to bother getting out of the car, so the pictures are OK but not the greatest. The one Osprey was only maybe 50 feet down over a ledge so I got some great full frame shots of both it and another one coming down looking like they're gonna fight. We'll see when I'm motivated enough to post them.

The highlight of that park was probably the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". Basically it's the canyon through which the Yellowstone River runs, and has an awesome combination of rock and trees on the sides and base of the canyon. There was another osprey nest with birds in it just below Lookout point, but it was pretty far away so I'm not sure if the photos have enough detail to see much (you could barely see the nest with just the eye, let alone things in it). We hiked down to Red Rock Point, which had a great view of the falls as well. It's not a long hike in length (maybe half a mile), except it has a lot of switchbacks, dozens of steps, and was probably a few hundred feet down. While normally a few stories of stairs doesn't bother me, climbing back up this one wasn't so much fun. Think of me plus the fact that it's a few thousand feet up in the mountains for why.

This is the hike where I realized something interesting too. On the way down the path is steep enough that you have to force your legs to move slower as otherwise gravity will give you a decent rate. The switchbacks also are pretty much 180 degree bends right back against itself with no railing at the pointy end and a nice drop off. I realized this wasn't actually much worse than a lot of other things, and thought it unusual considering the emphasis put on safety in recent years. Then it hit me. This is a national park, meaning federal government, meaning 28 U.S.C. S1346/S2680(a). BTW, basic safety training for the rangers has been ruled discretionary in the past. It must be nice being the federal government...

The west side of the park also has some nice river and falls views, and it's more flat. Stuff is pretty close to the road as well, so you can see lots of stuff quickly. Another thing we saw lots of in Yellowstone was Buffalo. They were right around (and in) the road in one area, which resulted in lots of good pictures. There were a lot of idiots walking up close to them, but I didn't hear of any of them getting hurt. It's unfortunate that some people either insist on getting a close up picture on their camera without a decent lens, or for some crazy reason think their young kids want to see the buffalo up close and it's a good idea. People were seriously going up to within 5-10 feet of them, including climbing down into the depression where they were. Did I mention that there were a lot of young buffalo with their mothers? Yea... That was just in one place, and there were buffalo all over the park close by the road. It was actually sorta funny in some places seeing people (who had apparently just entered the park) pulled over to watch/take a picture of a single buffalo when there were herds of them just up the road. We also saw a grizzly on our way out of the park, and I got out and got some good pictures of that. There was a tour bus of some older people that had unloaded and everyone was at the side of the road watching this thing off a decent distance away. It started walking on a path that brought it a bit closer to the road and I heard one lady say to another that it's getting closer so they better get closer to the bus. I looked up to see where they were relative to the bus, and the distance from them to the bus was about 2/3 of the distance from them to the grizzly. I just sorta laughed and figured whatever makes them feel safe.

We left Yellowstone on Monday and headed for Mount Rushmore (also Xanterra land). We sorta stopped at Devils Tower but only drove a mile into the park since we didn't want to pay to go up to the base (and everything closed like 10 minutes after the time we arrived). So we just took pictures by the sign and at an overlook down the road and continued our journey. By the time we arrived it was too late to do much of anything, so we just set up camp and called it a night. The next morning was showers, which were nice, and then off to the mountain.

For those who don't know, I have interesting memories of Mount Rushmore. My last visit was in 1989, and after falling 6 feet onto my face, getting completely bloody, and laying on a backboard from about 21:30 until 03:00 (including a long ambulance ride) and then going through x-rays of my back and neck... I'm actually probably lucky that my parents were there since they're both trained and could handle the medical stuff while the rangers basically could tell them where the infirmary was and call an ambulance but nothing else. I just realized how that ties into my thing above. Anyways, we get there any everything's completely different. There's no 80+ steps to get down to the amphitheater (it's level with the ground), there's parking ramps, a new visitor center, everything. Turns out it was all approved in 1990, and they worked on it from then until 1998. Makes me wonder... Anyways, the place is nice, and they have a trail up right by the base that gets some cool pictures. They consider it strenuous, but it's only like a half mile and less than 200 steps, so not bad at all. We basically went to everything during the day, and being as there's not too much had a few hours to kill.

So next stop was Jewel Cave. We went there in 1989 as well, but nothing much has changed. They still have the same tour, and still do the same things (like turning out the lights on the one platform), and the same things to look at are in there. Last time I wasn't in the best mood though since it took place the day after the experience at the mountain, and this time I also had a camera with, so I enjoyed it a bit more. It was actually sorta funny since we had a half hour to wander the visitor center before the thing I had looked at the stuff on the walls. Apparently nobody else really had, as the family asked me questions and I'd tell them and then somebody else would ask the guide and it'd be the same answer. I thought that was funny. After that we went back to the mountain for the evening lighting ceremony. There ended up being a "lighting storm" (apparently South Dakotans have interesting names for what actually was a rather weak thunderstorm), and they cut short the movie. Everyone started running when it rained a bit, so we sorta looked around wondering why they were getting so worked up about it. They turned on the lights, and I got some pictures of the mountain. I didn't even have to worry about heads in the way either. The lights also made interesting patterns in the rain, especially with the pulsing illuminating the rain drops brighter every half inch or so. Eventually I went back to the visitor center and looked around a bit trying to find a map of the old setup, and only found one aerial photo that a ranger who had been going there every year her whole life knew was in some book. Better than nothing I guess. That was it for the night, and it was back to the campsite.

Our campsite was actually overflow due to them giving us misleading info on the phone, but it actually turned into a good thing. Most of the campsites are just rows of sites, while ours turned into us being the only people in a big field that also had the group camp facilities (so we had a table and a fire pit). It was better than a regular site, although I wouldn't want to try it in an RV or a vehicle without good traction or with low ground clearance. Wednesday morning we packed up and headed home. Stopped for Pizza in Mitchell at a place we had visited in 1999. My brother ate 15 pieces (we think, it was just under 2 pizzas but we don't remember how they were cut) the last visit, but the buffet was closed at the time we arrived so this time he had to be limited. It was good though. Then we drove home, parked in the middle of the street and unpacked (part of the above untold story), and then my bro and I headed home. Thursday I returned the GPRS card. The speed wasn't too great, the latency was iffy and was already mentioned in a previous post (pretty impressive to not lose any packets in the 3 minutes it took them to travel, but...), and it just wasn't worth the cost for long term use. With their policies I actually am only going to end up paying the prorated charge for the time, with activation waived and full equipment refund. Can't complain there. I spent the rest of the night rebuilding some relatives' computer, which wasn't as bad as usual and it was good to see them again. Friday has been sitting around the house and also watching Pete finish moving out. He seems like a good roommate, although I really only saw him for about 10 minutes of his time here (he moved in while I was gone). It's a long tale, but now it's all told and I can ignore this thing for a few more days (maybe).