Month: July 2015

South of Lake Sakakawea we visited the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site.  The visitor center displays and video, the replica earthlodge, and the actual sites of the Hidatsa villages were all very interesting.

The Hidatsa lived close to the Mandan people along the Missouri River and its tributaries.  Both tribes lived in established villages, where corn, beans, squash, and sunflower crops were important components of their diet along with fish and game.  Dried corn, beans, and squash were stored for winter in cache pits dug into the ground.

The 30 to 40-foot diameter earthlodges built on terraces near the river were relatively permanent summer homes, lasting about 10 years.  In winter they moved to forested areas for protection against winter winds and built cruder lodges, seldom used for more than one winter.  The depressions left behind when the villages were abandoned over 100 years ago are still visible.

One village site we walked through near the visitor center is believed to be the home of Sakakawea, guide to the Lewis & Clark expedition.

The green, gently rolling agricultural areas of North Dakota suddenly gave way to the stark erosional scenery of the badlands as we drove west.  We saw a pronghorn at a distance and a few solitary bison.  Our campsite in the National Park was visited during our first night there by a bison that left a large fresh “night deposit.”

Rocks in the park are almost exclusively sedimentary, with horizontal layers of tan sandstone, thick bands of gray bentonite clay (former volcanic ash), thin veins of lignite coal, and reddish rock above the lignite (baked by subterranean lignite fires smoldering for years at a time).  These layers have all been exposed by deep valleys carved by the Little Missouri River.

We saw the Medora Musical, a western theme song and dance extravaganza held in a large amphitheater.  Their feature act was the Chicago Boys, an amazing gymnastics act.

We hiked into a petrified forest that has numerous big cypress stumps from 60 million years ago.

The scenery in the Black Hills of South Dakota is so truly awesome that it’s no wonder the tribes of the area have long considered it sacred ground.  Sheer-sided river gorges, tall granite spires, spruce and pine forests, deep creek and river valleys, and lakes provide great biking, hiking, and sightseeing opportunities.  A trip here three years ago with Lowry, Kyle, and Abby made us want to return.  One day we hiked to Cathedral Spires, a cluster of tall, narrow granite towers, and then continued on to the summit of Harney Peak, which at 7,242 feet is the highest point between the Rocky Mountains and the Pyrenees in Europe.

The road to the trailhead passes through a one-way tunnel that seemed barely wide and tall enough for our car with the bikes on top.  Afterward we cooled off in Sylvan Lake, nestled among yet more fantastical rock formations.

The next day we biked a section of the Mickelson rail trail, farther north than the section we biked in 2012.  Our ride followed creek valleys cut steeply through slate so strongly folded that the layers are nearly vertical.  We were well away from paved roads, rarely in sight of any buildings or even gravel roads.  We passed through two tunnels, over several bridges, and through the town of Rochford, a thriving gold mining town for a very brief time in the late 1800s (virtually a ghost town three years after it was founded!).

Driving between western South Dakota and western Wyoming, the transition from green range land to arid sagebrush country was occasionally interrupted by some impressive mountain ranges and canyons.  We couldn’t resist interrupting a travel day for a detour to see Devils Tower.  To appreciate how immense this formation is, see how tiny the climbers appear compared to the huge monolith (if you have trouble spotting them in the first photo, they are enlarged in the second one).

We camped along the way in the Bighorn National Forest, with a view of peaks decked with snow fields.  We really roughed it that night—the campgrounds we tried were all filled up, so we found a spot at the edge of a large meadow where we could park Vagabond near a group of RVs and horse trailers.

Descending from Powder River Pass the next morning, the highway passed through spectacular Tensleep Canyon.  The Powder River basin was a key area in the conflict between the native Indian tribes and the advancing wave of American miners, herders, and settlers in the 1800s.

Later in that day, our route took us through the majestic canyon carved by the Wind River through the Owl Creek Mountains.  Highway signs along the way identified the exposed geologic formations of the canyon walls and their ages.

At the Colter Bay visitor center in Grand Teton National Park, we met Monte Yellow Bird, Sr., an Arikara/Hidatsa artist whose colorful artwork displays the rich symbolism of Native American traditions (aka Black Pinto Horse:  see blackpintohorsefinearts.com).  He explained the meanings of various motifs in his ledger art, and also talked with us for some time about the history of various tribes near the continental divide and in the northwestern plains.  (Ledger art was drawings on whatever unused paper forms were available on the reservations, such as ledger paper, after the traditional bison hides were unavailable.)

For our Wyoming hike, our choice of the Cascade Canyon trail rewarded us with superb scenery for relatively little effort.  We saw a colorful variety of wildflowers, a western tanager, and constantly changing views of the Grand Teton and other rugged peaks towering above us as we hiked through the canyon.

Our bike ride the next day followed a paved trail down and back through open sagebrush meadows in the wide and flat Snake River valley, with great views of the Tetons the whole way.  One time when Paul stopped to take a picture, Amy didn’t notice and rode ahead out of sight.  Paul rode hard to catch up, but didn’t find her by the time he reached the end of the 19-mile trail.  As it turned out, Amy had stopped to wait, but just far enough off the trail that they didn’t see each other as Paul hurried by.  We were reunited in the early afternoon, thanks to cell phones and helpful cyclists Amy sent scouting for a rider in a blue helmet and a big moose on his shirt.

The scenery for our Idaho hike was very different from our typical hikes.  Along the 52-mile-long Great Rift, in the Snake River Plain, lies an otherworldly landscape of ancient lava flows, lava tube caves, and cinder cones, and spatter cones from volcanic eruptions over the last 16 million years.  The most recent lava flow here was about 2,000 years ago.  We learned two words that will come in handy next March when we travel to Hawaii:  a’a’ and pahoehoe, describing the two basic forms of lava.  We saw lots of both pahoehoe lava (the smooth type) and a’a’ lava (the rough type) as we hiked in Craters of the Moon National Monument.  There is very little plant life growing on the lava even after 2,000 years.  The a’a’ lava (a’a’ means “hurts the feet” in Hawaiian) is extremely rough and very hard.  One can imagine the difficulties faced by the emigrants traveling west along the Oregon Trail in this region!

The next day we biked in more friendly terrain in the foothills of the Sawtooth mountains.  In the photo of our lunch spot, note the sandstone picnic table and bike rack.  The gravel bike trail followed a river valley north of Ketchum.

Day 41 was a travel day to Great Basin National Park.  (The day number refers to our planned itinerary of 112 days.)  On the way we passed through Twin Falls, Idaho, and stopped to see the huge Snake River gorge that was carved out 17,000 years ago when Glacial Lake Bonneville let loose in one of the largest floods in earth’s history.  We also stopped at a highway rest area with a nice display of the history of the Pony Express.  Horseback riders rushed the U.S. mail across the country in as little as 7 days (typically around 10) in the early 1860s, but telegraph soon put the Pony Express out of business.

Day 42:  The Great Basin is very arid.  Its broad, flat, open valleys are interrupted by numerous north/south oriented mountain ranges.  We hiked from about 10,000 feet up to the 13,063-ft summit of Wheeler Peak, Nevada’s second highest mountain.  This was certainly one of the most scenic trails we have ever hiked.  Wheeler Peak is impressively big, rising steeply about 7,500 feet from the valleys on the east and west sides of the Snake Range, and the glacial cirque on its northeast side is one of the largest in North America.

The trail ascends gently through aspen, pine, spruce, and fir at first, then through open meadows to a ridge top.  We saw several mule deer up close (they’re pretty tame compared to our eastern whitetail deer), and lots of high elevation wildflowers.

The upper half of the trail is above treeline and moderately steep, but well graded with switchbacks.  We had to hold onto our hats firmly in the very strong wind.  Amy’s sister Barb joined us at the end of the afternoon to camp with us for the next two nights in the national park.

Day 43:  We hiked to a grove of bristlecone pines.  These trees grow at high elevation just below treeline and can live for hundreds, even thousands of years.  This one was dated at 3200 years old (though much of the tree is dead, the part on the left is living):

Even the remains of long dead trees last a long time.  We also took a ranger-led tour of a large limestone cave with very intricate formations.