Category: National Historic Landmark

WESTWARD TO JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING

11/6/2015

Notice the rubber tires rather than wagon wheels? Can't imagine the rough ride via wagon wheels!

If you’ve ever ridden in a covered wagon, you’ll understand first hand why many pioneers walked or rode horses across the plains. Before bumper cars there were covered wagons.

Suffice it to say, my chiropractor is still working out the kinks in my back following a an authentic Western experience. It doesn't get more real than Bar T 5 and the pioneer behind the dude ranch responsible for all the fun.

GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK: BIG, BOLD & BEAUTIFUL

10/27/2015

We entered Wyoming's Grand Teton National Park ten miles south of Yellowstone via the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway (Highway 191) on a late-summer day, commemorating the moment with a cheesy, kitschy photo that put me and Jimmy square in the middle of the masses (2.5 million visitors annually) that had gone before us.

More than 48% of the land in Wyoming is owned by the Federal Government.

What can I say?

I said, “Cheese” and went with the flow.

HAVE NATIONAL PARKS' PASSPORT, WILL TRAVEL

10/19/2015

I am such a geek! I’m tickled pink (the color works for me; the month of October is all about Breast Cancer Awareness) with my new National Parks Passport.

No deplorable passport photo required.

I never have to renew/surrender this particular passport; which means I can go on and on and on collecting rubber stamp cancellations and Passport stamps (and memories) for all 408 U.S. sites that are currently part of the National Park System. How awesome is that!

It’s an awesome program open to geeks of all ages.

YELLOWSTONE'S MADISON CAMPFIRE MYTH: IF IT AIN'T SO, IT OUGHTTA BE

10/8/2015

Intrepid explorers; noble thoughts; a campfire in the middle of 3,500 square miles of majestic canyons, rivers, waterfalls, mountain ranges and the largest caldera in North America bubbling with volcanic enthusiasm.

All consorted in the creation of the myth surrounding the nation’s first national park; and the ensuing scrutiny a century later that brought into question the very nature of the meaning and symbolic worth of not only Yellowstone National Park, but all of America’s legendary national parks.

Ah, history! If the facts are the bare bones providing accuracy, folklore is surely the tasty morsels that encourage consumption.

Besides, who doesn’t like a good story? I have pictures, too!

AN ENCOUNTER WITH NORTH AMERICA'S SOLE SURVIVOR OF THE ICE AGE

10/2/2015

Approximately 30,000 bison live in public and private conservation herds in North America.

I had no idea Yellowstone National Park was the only place in the United States where bison have lived continuously since prehistoric times.

Yep! Field trips are the way to go!

Of course bison have always been little more than a tiny blip of historical data on the periphery of my radar, at least until one foggy morning a month ago when the "Patriarch of the Plains" emerged from the past to fill my void of indifference. Let me just add, tiny and buffalo don't have a single thing in common.

PRESENT GIVES WAY TO PAST IN MONTANA'S VIRGINIA CITY

9/29/2015

In total darkness, with hands uplifted, Wilber F. Sanders administered the oath.
“Men, do your duty.”

If history has any say in the matter, that duty entailed killing upwards of 100 thieves and murderers (in the day, road agents, one of whom was the local sheriff) by what came to be known as Montana’s Alder Gulch Vigilantes.

SAILING INTO THE PAST AT GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

9/23/2015

I half expected a visit from the Loch Ness monster.

From the dock along the shore of Glacier National Park’s largest subalpine lake, I watched the DeSmet gracefully emerge from the fog and quietly glide past the dock she’d called home since her launch in 1930. And then she turned, as if playing coy had been her intention all along, and headed back to shore.

I could only hope to be as charismatic at 85!

Granted, I didn’t have 75 million years of geological magic to insure an exquisitely sculpted bone structure with which to enthrall in one turn of the dance floor; and what a marvelous dance floor Glacier National Park’s Lake McDonald.

GOING TO THE SUN VIA MAGNIFICENT GLACIER NATIONAL PARK

9/10/2015

Glacier National Park, home of the Blackfeet Indian Nation and 3 million visitors a year. I wish that was fog!

I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Actually, I couldn’t see the forest for the smoke.

Two days and a million magnificent Montana acres with which to work and Jimmy and I arrive Glacier National Park (GNP) in the midst of three separate wildfires obliterating the otherwise spectacular scenic beauty of this Crown of the Continent.

Holy smokes! Karma can be such a beast, especially when it comes to travel.

NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST

8/28/2015

Have you been wondering where I’ve been the last week?

Jimmy wondering about wandering.

Jimmy has done some wondering, too, as have I. There was Fargo, Minot, Stanley, Havre, Glasgow, Cut Bank, Essex, Virginia City, Goat Lick, Great Falls, Fairmont, Silver Star, and Twin Bridges to mention just a few points on the map in faraway places as mysterious as they were unique.

Then again, this is A Place Called Roam, and I have a reputation to uphold.

I’ve outdone myself this time.

RANCHO DE TAOS' LUMINOUS LANDMARK

7/29/2015

The church and the surrounding plaza, both made of dirt, seemed almost one, as if the irregular planes of the adobe structure had naturally risen from the earth. There was no denying the simple elegance of one of New Mexico’s most powerful and luminous landmarks, the Church of San Francisco de Asis at Ranchos de Taos.

In the early morning light, set against a clear, blue sky, is was easy to understand why the World Heritage Site was . . .

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