Carr Family Reunion & B’day Celebration — Las Vegas, September 9-13, 2015

We flew out from Bismarck, ND, to Vegas on Wednesday, September 9, in order to attend yet another in a string of Carr reunions.  This one would be extra-special:  Barb’s father Cliff was turning 90 and two of his siblings — Evelyn from California and Joe from Idaho — attended.  We spent the first night at an east-side hotel/casino, and then gathered with the other attendees to move into a large multi-dwelling residence on the west side of Vegas.   We had used the same place two-times ago, so we knew the commodious property would serve us well:  large equipped kitchen with multiple ovens, comfortable seating everywhere, gazillions of bedrooms and bathrooms, a swimming pool and a pool table and a large poker table.  Everything got used.  Perfect for a reunion with 38 attendees.   Folks took turns preparing meals, with Dan taking responsibility for the BIG meal on the day of the official birthday celebration.  Two prime ribs, baked potatoes, vegetarian squash-pasta, and salad.  After the birthday cake, everyone gathered around the huge high definition TV to watch the slide show Barb had put together featuring pictures of Cliff from childhood to the present.  He was in the Navy, a farmer, rancher, pilot, father of twelve, ran a trucking company, built the Carrington Livestock Auction in ND and ran it for many years, ran a dude ranch in Minnesota, sold real estate in Las Vegas, and became a skilled woodworker.  He is on his computer every day playing chess and is the first person we know to have upgraded to Windows 10 (which is something we would not have done until forced to).  He has been writing short stories for a number of years and has self-published a few of them.  Quite a remarkable guy!

The nine siblings kept track of the food expenses, with the contributions equalized at the end.  Audrey had primary responsibility for securing the venue.  The reunion was a four-day get-together, so everyone had an opportunity to partake of some of the famous madness on the strip.  We had gone to one of the Cirque de Soleil “Zarkana” shows a month ago, and so only went to the “Bodies” exhibit at the Sphinx.

Very successful reunion.

Oh, and we sold our Camry to Audrey since we had purchased a (very) used Chevy Tracker to pull behind our camper.  We flew back to Bismarck on September 13, a visit that was covered in the previous blog.   To learn what we did AFTER Bismarck, tune in next time.

Visiting Mom, Sister & Friends — 8/31 to 9/9, 9/13 to 9/16, Bismarck & Valley City, North Dakota

Every year when we are back in the States, we spend considerable time in Bismarck.  Many of you know why:  that is where Mom and sister Zona live!

This year, we will also spend a lot of time in Bismarck, but in several segments.  We interrupted our visit to fly back to Las Vegas for Barb’s dad’s 90th birthday celebration, and we interrupted it again to head to Minnesota for a time.  But to talk about the Vegas and Minnesota visits is to get ahead of myself.  More about them later.

While in Bismarck the first and second times, we slept in our camper, parked up behind Zona’s house and plugged into her storage building.  But we had most meals down at the house, when we weren’t taking advantage of some great restaurants downtown for lunch.  We played a lot of cards with Mom and Zona, with Mom proving once again that at 96 she is still a better player than the rest of us. She also posed for me in pictures that Zona used to advertise (and sell) her recliner.  We visited with niece Cathy & her hubby Jon and their kids Cole and Katy, and went to one of Cole’s football games.  Barb joined Zona at a bookclub meeting.  Friends Marvin & Violet and Floyd & Sheila and Dawn came to visit. High School buddy Curtiss DuRand extended a North Dakota visit and came to see me briefly.  We toured the State Capitol Building on a foggy/rainy day.  I spent DAYS washing and then waxing the camper.

And on our way to Minnesota, we stopped overnight at a campground in Valley City, ND, where Lynne & Steve joined us for dinner.  Barb & Lynne are a dangerous pair.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park — Medora, North Dakota – August 28-31, 2015

When we learned that sister Zona and mother Mom (Evelyn) were going to be in Minneapolis for the weekend attending the Minnesota State Fair, we decided to delay our arrival in Bismarck, ND, and spend a long weekend in the extreme western end of the state at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park.  There is a nice campground within the Park, but we opted for the commercial facility with more accommodations:  sewer, water and electricity, located just outside the Park and a stone-throw away from the little tourist-saturated village of Medora.

As is our common practice, our first stop was at the Visitor Center where we took in the orientation movie and then joined a ranger for an informative and entertaining tour of Teddy’s Maltese Ranch cabin.  Next day, we took our little Geo Tracker out for a tour of the Park.  Gorgeous scenery, as befits a place called “badlands”, but not so bleak and not so dramatic as the parks in Utah.  We saw pronghorn antelope, prairie dogs, a western meadowlark and bison.  We returned to Medora to take advantage of the famous pitchfork fondue steak supper, and then rushed back to the Park to join a ranger at Wind Canyon for a scheduled full moon walk.  Fortunately, we were confused about the appointed time and arrived an hour too early.   “Fortunately”, because the early hour meant there was still light in the early evening and on the drive we saw a coyote, wild turkeys and a flock of grouse.

On Sunday we drove up to the Petrified Forest Wilderness Area, part of the National Park but accessed by a separate gravel road that runs northward to the west of the main park.  Pleasant walk from the parking area to the petrified area.

Monday morning we broke camp  and drove the 133 miles east to Bismarck, where we were greeted by my ever-young 96 year-old mother and my just-turned 69 year-old baby sister.  But more about that visit in the next edition of our blog.

 

 

Heading East — Island Park, Idaho to Glendive, Montana, August 20-27, 2015

On August 20 we moved on down the road to the Buffalo Campground in the Targhee National Forest. Buffalo Campground is located 26 miles south of West Yellowstone, Montana in beautiful Island Park, Idaho along the banks of the Buffalo River at an elevation of 6,200 feet.  There are no hookups, but the campground is huge and we found a nice pull-through site for our one-night stay.  Next day, we continued east to Bozeman, Montana, where we turned north and motored through lovely country some 10 miles to the ranch of Roxanne Linderman, nestled some 5 or so miles below the Bridger Mountains.  There we visited Roxanne and her sister Monica, who lives on a plot cut from the ranch.  Monica is a long-time friend of Barb – they were in school together as girls, and Monica has visited us on Tusen Takk II several times.  The ranch was homesteaded in the 1860s and still has log-cabin structures, including a barn, a chicken coop, and a portion of the main residence.  Roxanne has an interesting array of animals on the ranch, including llamas, alpacas, unusual breeds of sheep and cattle, and many types of poultry.  She was busy doing some haying while we were there, and I got a chance to do a tiny bit of tractor and truck driving.  Monica, silly goose, is still working as a computer consultant in hospital software, so she is only home from her job in Florida on weekends.  She had to fly out on Sunday afternoon, but we were enjoying our visit on the ranch with Roxanne so much that we delayed leaving until Monday morning.  Roxanne took me out on a dune buggy so that I could find and photograph a magpie, but instead we found a large herd of elk.  On a different walk, I found and photographed sandhill cranes in the grass.  Earlier, I had popped off a whole series of two in flight.  Processing later revealed the incredible extent to which they fly in synchronization — I illustrate the fact below with but two of a dozen photos.

On our way back toward Bozeman, we noticed that we had a chip in the camper windshield, so we made an appointment to have that fixed before leaving the area.   We deposited the camper at Sunrise Campground in Bozeman and spent the afternoon at the Museum of the Rocky Mountains, where we enjoyed the many exhibits about the dinosaur fossils displayed there, and also attended three (!) different programs in the planetarium.  Next morning (8/25) we got the windshield taken care of and then moved on down the road a bit to the little town of Roundup, Montana, where we spent the night in the nearly-deserted campground at their county fairgrounds.  We spent the night of 8/26 at the Big Sky Campground in Miles City, and the next night in Makoshika State Park campground near Glendive, Montana, the largest of the State Parks in Montana.  The name of the park comes from the Lakota Indian mako sica, which translates to “bad land” or “bad earth”, an apt description for the geology of the area, a fertile source of dinosaur fossils, including many that are now exhibited at the Museum of Rocky Mountains.

Camping in Fairgrounds — Bannock County, Pocatello, Idaho; August 19, 2015

August 19 we  camped in county fairgrounds in Pocatello, Idaho. Barb had used an app to discover the campground. Cheap, and in very good condition, with water and electricity at each site. A commodious WC with clean showers. Single pumpout. Marvelous facility. But what made the site special were the evening activities. Almost every night there is something going on. Wednesdays, as we soon discovered, is set aside for barrel racing and team roping. An adjacent large parking lot began filling up with a gazillion trucks and horse trailers. By the time we walked over, the team roping was underway in a covered arena and the barrel racing in an outdoor arena. This was a family affair, with moms and dads on horses and kids too. Other families lined the fences as spectators.Perhaps a few words of explanation would be advisable for the benefit of the city slickers among our readers.When a large calf (upon whose head a set of horns have been affixed) is released on one end of the arena, it makes a mad dash toward the gate on the other end. Two mounted riders pursue the calf. One attempts to rope the horns or neck, and the other attempts to rope the rear legs. When this is successful, the calf is immobilized on the two taut ropes stretched between the two riders. Success is rare but timed, with the winner being the team with the least time.In barrel racing, the rider enters the arena at a full gallop and must circle each of three barrels arranged as the apexes of an equilateral triangle, and then dash back out of the arena. Circuits accomplished without knocking over a barrel are timed and the shortest time wins.The contests were undertaken with friendly efficiency, in an atmosphere that reminded me of the evening softball games held in communities all over America. Each contest had a cordial announcer voicing the times over a PA system. What fun!

Arches National Park — Utah, August 16-17, 2015

When we naively arrived at the campground at the Arches Nat’l Park on August 16, we learned that they were “full”, and that reservations were usually necessary months in advance.  We stopped at the visitor center and watched the orientation movie, where we learned that the Park contains the largest concentration of arches in the world — more than 2000.  We then went on to Moab and checked into the KOA campground.  Next morning, we detached our Chevy Tracker “dinghy” and went back to the busy and crowded Park to see some of the sights.  We had intended to begin early enough to avoid the heat, but somehow didn’t get to the trailhead for the Delicate Arch until about 8:30 am.  Fortunately, it was partially cloudy at that point and we traversed the “moderately difficult” trail without difficulty.  Nice arch, but crowded in the immediate vicinity.  On the way back along the path, we visited an historic log cabin farm house, and then a cliff with spectacular pictographs.  We drove to and stopped at several other locations, including the Balanced Rock and the Double Bridges sites.  At the latter I photographed a young couple having fun taking interesting pictures of each other.  By mid afternoon the temperatures had gotten uncomfortable, so we returned to the campsite for a second night before venturing further east.  But those adventures deserve their own blog entry.  See you then?

Capitol Reef National Park — Utah, August 12-15

We spent two days getting from Bryce Canyon Nat’l Park to Capitol Reef Nat’l Park, stopping for an overnight at Escalante, where we enjoyed the sunset painting the cliffs to the northeast.  Next day, we took Hwy 12, described (deservedly) as one of the most scenic highways in America.  We found Capitol Reef National Park to be a lovely place, quiet and peaceful in the campgrounds and scenic beyond description in the surrounding Park.  No sooner had we arrived than we were joined by Janice & Steve in their camper “Sloth”, who took some time off from their duties at Bryce.  We hiked together and enjoyed sharing some meals and more card-playing.  We all picked some apples, and Janice made another of her delicious desserts.

Here are some (heavily) edited words from Wikipedia:

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Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth’s crust that is 65 million years old.  In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. This warp has weathered and eroded over millennia to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

The area was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building, that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.

The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that early settlers referred to as “reefs”, from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. Today, State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.

The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert country.

Freemont culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around 1000 CE.  In the 13th century, all of the Native American cultures in this area underwent sudden change, likely due to a long drought. The Fremont settlements and fields were abandoned.

Many years after the Fremont left, Paiutes moved into the area.

In the 1870s, Mormon settlers moved into these valleys, eventually establishing a number of settlements.  In the 1880s they settled the Freemont River valley in the 1880s and established Junction (later renamed Fruita), Caineville and Aldridge. Fruita prospered, Caineville barely survived, and Aldridge died.

By 1920 the work was hard but the life in Fruita was good. No more than ten families at one time were sustained by the fertile flood plain of the Fremont River and the land changed ownership over the years. The area remained isolated. The community was later abandoned and later still some buildings were restored by the National Park Service.

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The many orchards planted by Mormon pioneers are maintained by the Park Service and different fruit can be harvested throughout the growing season by visitors.  We just missed the peaches, but were there for the yellow apples.  We were told that there was no charge for fruit eaten while in the park, and the charge for fruit taken away is a nominal one dollar per pound.  We did some of both.   🙂

There are many spectacular Nat’l Parks in this area of Utah, but I think Capitol Reefs is our favorite so far.

 

 

Bryce Canyon, Utah — August 8 – 11, 2015

On August 8 we checked into the campground at Bryce Canyon National Park, where we were met by campground volunteers Janice and Steve (former cruising friends aboard Sailacious, now land cruising on their spacious Monaco camper) who directed us to our site.  The scenery at Bryce is spectacular.  Fiery thin red and orange “fins”, capped with hard concrete-like dolomite that retards their erosion,  some punctuated with windows and arches,  and pillars called hoodoos.  We took some free park tours and did some hiking on the rim trails and on the trails that descend down through the fins.  Have I said the sights are spectacular?

We enjoyed spending time with Janice and Steve.  We shared many meals, including some delightful desserts, and played a variety of games in the evenings.  They also gave us a number of valuable hints and bits of advice about the camping life and the care and nurturing of our mobile home.

When after four days we announced our intention to head to Capital Reef Nat’l Park, Janice and Steve decided to take some time off and join us there.  But to learn more about that experience, faithful readers must  tune in to the next exciting episode of Barb and Chuck Go Camping.

Colorado River Raft Trip — Grand Canyon; July 16-24, 2015

On July 16 Barb & I drove our ’99 Camry to the south rim of Grand Canyon.  With us was Barb’s sister Audrey.  Barb’s daughter Danielle, and her daughter Abigail also made the trip from Las Vegas in a rental car.  Just outside the southern rim we were met by Barb’s son Jeffrey and his son Zane, who were arriving from Utah.  Most of us went to the spectacular Imax movie about the Colorado River that travels through the Canyon.  Then we all viewed the Canyon from various crowded overlooks on the rim, overlooks filled with folks speaking languages from all over the world.  Many were brandishing selfie sticks and virtually everyone had a camera.  On one promontory a raven sat and squawked at the crowd.  A woman behind me explained in a Brooklyn accent to her son that the bird was a California Condor and received my gentle correction with extreme skepticism.

We all stayed in a motel just outside the Park that night.  Next morning, Danielle and Audrey returned to Vegas and the rest of us continued on to Marble Canyon where we would leave our vehicles.  We spent the night at a local motel and were shuttled the next morning to the put-in spot at Lee’s Ferry.   After a brief orientation by the Grand Canyon White Water guides, we were on our way down the Colorado:  two large rafts, each with a crew of two, and a combined passenger total of 21.   We were each given a large waterproof bag containing a sleeping bag, a sheet, and a small pillow.  Each bag was large enough to receive the duffel bag we had each been permitted to bring along with our clothes and personal effects.  We were also issued a smaller waterproof bag to be used for stowing items that we would want to access during the day.

When we stopped along the river bank to make camp, everyone pitched in and joined a “bucket brigade” to offload the tents, folding seats, and folding cots, as well as the afore-mentioned waterproof bags.  (Everyone then set up their own camp items.)  And, of course, we all helped offload the kitchen stands and tables and cooking pots, etc.  The food was abundant and varied and delicious.

We all got wet in the largest of the rapids.   The water was cold enough that most of us learned to wear waterproof pants and jackets for the big ones.  (The rapids are rated on a scale from 1 to 10; we went through a number in the 6-8 range, and two extra-exciting number 9 or 10’s.)

The scenery was spectacular.  We stopped several times each day to do a hike.  Into slot canyons, caverns, waterfalls, and historic sites on the river (including an ancient granary). In the evenings the skies filled with bright stars.  Most people after the first night stopped setting up the tents and slept on the cots out in the open. It was a magical time.

At the conclusion of the trip (after six days and 187 miles down the river) we were lifted out of the canyon on a helicopter.  Barb was lucky enough to command the front seat beside the helicopter pilot.  We were taken to the Bar-10 ranch, were we were given lunch and could take showers.  There, we caught a small fixed-wing plane back to Marble Canyon.

It was the experience of a lifetime. We highly recommend it!

High Roller and Zarkana; Downtown Las Vegas — July 15, 2015

In anticipation of a trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon, a number of us gathered in Las Vegas, where we decided to take in a show.  In town were Barb’s daughter Danielle and Danielle’s daughter Abigail, Barb’s son Jeff and Jeff’s son Zane.  Also attending were Barb’s sister Audrey and, of course, Barb & I.  We arrived downtown extra early, so that we could first take a ride on the giant High Roller.  The wheel, which has 28 transparent pods capable of holding 40 passengers each, is so massive that a ride consists of just one slow revolution that takes 30 minutes.  Here is Wikipedia’s description:

High Roller is a 550-foot tall, 520-foot diameter giant Ferris wheel on the Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada, US. It opened to the public on March 31, 2014, and is the world’s tallest Ferris wheel.

After our ride we had dinner and then attended a performance of “Zarkana”.  Barb and I have seen a number of different offerings by Cirque du Soleil.  Zarkana is a return to the kind of acts that we saw originally.  Great fun.