Andrea Downing's Blog, page 9

POSTCARDS FROM THE PAST

TR NP

Visiting historic sites gives you only a momentary glimpse into the lives of people who lived there and, indeed, into the lives of those live there now. In Theodore Roosevelt National Park, separated into three separate units, we get to know briefly the TR who treasured the strenuous outdoor life, invested in cattle ranching, and loved both to hunt and to try to preserve the wilderness around him. He had two ranches here in North Dakota: the Maltese Cross

The Maltese Cross ranch house

and, later, the Elkhorn, and he claimed that his years in North Dakota helped him become President. The park is a clipping of a life, a few words on a postcard about a man who went on to lead the Rough Riders in Cuba and go on to many years in the political arena as well as write forty books.

But the town outside the park is named Medora for the Marquise de Morés, whose husband founded the town in 1886 and named it for her. Their hunting lodge sits on a hill

Chateau Mores

overlooking Medora, a home these Sardinian/French peers lived in sporadically for only three years. Living like royalty with their own private fiefdom, the Marquis de Morés ran cattle and started an abattoir, sending his prepared meat via refrigerator cars (on ice) back east . The couple lived well in their twenty-six room house on the hill, which the locals called ‘Chateau Morés’; they had servants, and imported china, silver and furnishings. Guests came for hunting parties. But what the plaques in the house and the docents on duty don’t tell you is the rest of the story: how the Marquis was an adventurer, started a railroad in Viet Nam, became an avid anti-semite in France, or how he died, murdered in North Africa.

dining room at Chateau Mores

Medora most likely would not exist without either of these men: the Marquis who founded it and Teddy Roosevelt around whom it seems to exist today. It’s a very quiet place right next to a very under-visited national park, and yet seems to survive on the tourist trade. Long cargo trains come through several times a day but never stop and, it appears to us, only about three families own most of the shops in town.

But that’s only a passing impression from a three day visit—my postcard to you.

MEDORA MAYHEM!!!!

This gang hit about every shop in town. Most damage was done to the Ice Cream Parlour.

From left to right, Killer Karen Casey Fitzjerrell, the Tiny Texan; Cutie Cristal Downing (don’t let her baby face fool ya, folks—men fall at her feet); and notorious gunslinger Deadeye Downing.  Known to be holed up in the North Dakota Badlands.

HOW THE WORLD TURNS

a small portion of Little Bighorn National Historic Battlefield

Over the last two days we have had virtually no internet and no cell phone at the ranch at which we were staying. For cell phone, you had to walk out down to the end of the road; for internet, you had to plug in directly to the modem, which my computer cannot do. Therefore, I had to write my post, put it and the photos on a flash drive, plug that into my daughter’s larger computer and have her plug in with the ethernet line to the modem. Downloading or opening any page was so slow, you could go away and cook dinner while a page loaded, and even then it was all hit or miss. Frustration was great and the wine flowed, but so did the thoughts in my poor brain. How the hell did I get to this point where I go berserk when I have no cell and no internet? I was born LONG before the computer took over our lives; I shouldn’t need it! Cristal, born in the ‘80s on the cusp of the computer revolution, pointed out that kids today can’t imagine life without computers because they’ve always had them. Well, I’m that kid…and tonight I’m happy to have internet once again in a cabin in Medora, ND.

On the way here, we stopped at the Little Bighorn National Historic Site, driving the five miles around the signs and back, posted explanations of what took place, along with a cell phone commentary. The battlefield sits in the middle of the Crow Agency reservation, with small stone markers showing where the dead lay, white stones for the cavalry and red for the native Americans. While I was totally immersed in seeing the battlefield, I realized suddenly that I had very mixed feelings about its existence as a national landmark. Libby Custer tried for years to perpetuate the ‘myth’ of her husband’s heroism. History has revealed, I daresay, the jackass Custer actually was, as well as the unspeakable injustices of what we have done to native Americans. I imagine that, in some ways, making the site a National Cemetery for the warrior dead up through the Vietnam War has given the site some ulterior purpose.

The world does turn.

 

HOME ON THE RANGE

Living on a ranch in rural Wyoming must be about as far from living in New York as you can get in terms of lifestyle. I love it. I love hearing pheasants in the field, seeing horses on the road, and I love the knowledge that Open Range still exists, even if in limited areas. I like the novelty of a gun safe down the hall and a 3 mile gravel road to the house. I’m not particularly fond of rattlesnakes in the yard or the abundance of insect life, but you can’t have everything, after all. But most of all I love waking up and finding nothing but the proverbial wide open spaces and scenery no words can describe.

Today, Karen and I headed down the aptly named Crazy Woman Canyon on a round-about way of getting to Buffalo. Karen at the wheel—thank goodness—we wound our way along the creek, tall walls of sculpted rock either side at times. At other moments, the gravel road dipped and coursed into narrow tracks, large pickups as well as ATVs squeezing past us in the other direction. It was an eighteen mile scenic tour for which my Honda was not made, but endured and survived. As did I.

Buffalo, of course, resonates with history. It played a part in the Johnson County War, as did Fort McKinney for which there is a marker outside of town, but earlier the town was a hub for those who came to ranch on the Powder River. The old Occidental Hotel still looks pretty much as it did in the day, bordello-like rooms available for rent, and a sign saying that those without luggage must pay in advance.

The three of us have plenty of luggage, and we are hauling it onwards tomorrow, sadly leaving ranch living behind.

 

WILL AND GRACE

It never ceases to amaze me how man can be so inhumane to his fellow man. Today we visited the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, a fairly pleasant name for what was basically a variation on the concentration camp theme of World War II. Some 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent were interned during that conflict, about 11,000 of them at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Incarcerated with nothing more than they could carry from homes and businesses they had built up over years, they lived in conditions at which most of us would more than balk, in a climate for which they were not prepared. Yet, by sheer will and the grace of God, they overcame these conditions and created a veritable city with hospital, farms, repair shops and schools. Even more amazing was the fact that many of them actually left to serve in the American Army.

Homo Sapiens goes pretty far back and still we don’t seem to have learned our lessons. On the walls of the canyon in Medicine Lodge State Park are pictographs and petrographs going back some 12,000 years. Driving through Ten Sleep Canyon, which was probably created over millions of years of erosion, I wondered exactly how many years it would take us to learn our lessons?

Tonight, we are on the most beautiful ranch outside of Buffalo, WY, having driven down long miles of gravel roads, winding through majestic scenery but far from anything,. We’re comfortable here and, outside the house, the American flag is waving.

Hoping to add photos tomorrow, internet very intermittent here

THE ARRIVAL OF THE TINY TEXAN

 I’m going to attempt to write a reasonably sensible short piece while consuming some red wine which is being decanted from an item resembling an IV bag. This is what happens when the Tiny Texan arrives.

Cristal and I dashed from Yellowstone to try to reach Cody Airport by 12.30 noon. The road winds through some of the most spectacular landscape in the country, Shoshone National Forest and Buffalo Bill State Park included. Karen Casey Fitzjerrell was due in from Texas via SLC, and there was a full day of sightseeing ahead of us. But then one of those awful airline fiascos happened: Delta was offering ‘someone’ on their flight $1300 to get bumped. We advised Tiny to take the money and run but, no, Tiny told us some things were more important than money. I say, friends like that money can’t buy.

 

Karen Casey Fitzjerrell at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West

So here we are after an afternoon spent in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, set for a week in which the three of us will plow on to new adventures.

OK Tiny, now pass the booze….

BUFFALO GIRLS

Way back when I was a child, there was a series I watched called ‘Rin Tin Tin.’   I recall an episode depicting a buffalo stampede about to crush the child star, Rusty, when suddenly a white buffalo appears on the hill and all action grinds to an immediate halt. Well, nowadays it doesn’t take a white buffalo. Any old buffalo will do. I know because the stampede of tourists to Yellowstone Park ground to a halt today for about an hour at the appearance of buffalo.

I was told recently that if you no longer stopped a car to photograph the moose in Jackson, that’s when you were no longer a tourist. I may be nearing that point, although the abundance of wildlife out here still enthralls me. Luckily for us, we decided not to try to make Mammoth Hot Springs because just going the seventeen miles up to Canyon Lodge, past Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Artist’s Point, Inspiration Point, the Mud Volcano and the Sulphur Caldron, AND Upper and Lower Falls, took us almost three hours—that did include photo stops, but still…

And then there was the interesting incident of the buffalo herd crossing the road, when one decided not to cross after all, but came straight down the lane to check out Cristal’s lovely blue nail color. Up close and personal.

 

 

WEATHER THOU GOEST?

A short time ago, The National Park Service posted on Facebook, “Pack your Patience.” I had been warning Cristal over the months of our planning that Yellowstone would be horrendously crowded and that, what normally took a sprightly hour and a half drive from Jackson, would take far longer. Since we are moving on east through Wyoming, we had decided that, instead of trying to visit Yellowstone on a day trip, considering the crowds we’d come on up for a night or two before moving on to Cody. What the NP service didn’t tell us is, “Pack your woolens, rain gear and spare blankets.”

Driving up through Grand Teton NP is glorious; a few spots of rain didn’t bother us at all. Traffic was surprisingly light and we were able to stop for photos. But no sooner had we got up to Yellowstone, ready to check into our cabin, than the skies opened, the temperature dropped to 49 and we froze. Forty-nine heralds winter in NYC; here it’s considered a temporary feature of a summer day. I don’t know what it is about me; perhaps I’m the eternal optimist. Despite warning all my guests constantly that the Tetons and Yellowstone can get snow any day of the year, and to pack woolens and rain gear, I failed to listen to myself and left the warm clothing in the wrong suitcase, had on cloth shoes for driving and a light rain coat.

If the weather doesn’t lift and the internet works (only available intermittently), tomorrow I’ll be writing about nothing more than the tedious book I’m reading.

LAST DAY IN JACKSON

You may have noticed that we haven’t done a whole lot of sightseeing while here in the Tetons. It isn’t a case of ‘been there, done that’ because my fascination with this landscape and its history seems to never be satisfied. But our stay in Jackson was always meant to be our pit stop, our R & R before turning around and heading east–on to whatever new adventures await us on the return journey via a different route. I knew, as well, that we’d be fighting crowds, and that my enjoyment of places I love would be tarnished by the hordes of people. When I return in Oct., I’ll most likely have the place pretty much to myself, and you can’t ask more than that.

Whether, in actual fact, we’ve had the R & R we wanted is somewhat debatable. The longed for late lie-ins were cut short by noisy neighbors off on their own agenda of sightseeing—and who can blame them for wanting an early start to cram as much as possible into their day? There also seems to have been endless errands to run, everything from going to the car wash to taking jewelry in to be fixed and what seems like nonstop laundry so that we have all clean clothes to at least start part two. As someone who is used to having dry cleaning picked up and delivered, and doing my shopping via keyboard for delivery right into my kitchen, it has also seemed to me that a load of time has gone to driving to Albertson’s, finding parking, going down the aisles, through check-out, loading the car, hauling groceries up the steps and unloading them in the kitchen.

But to be honest, even if I never again got into the national park itself, the drive from Jackson down to Wilson on Rte. 22 is so breathtaking, it has revived us pretty well and we’re ready to go. Apologies that, from a moving car, it’s difficult to capture the panorama of Jackson Hole on this road. Nothing can do it justice.

RAINY DAY WOMEN

For weeks now high temperatures, generally in the nineties, have followed us through the country with an unremitting grasp. I thought the Tetons would give us relief but we arrived in the midst of a heat wave, high eighties, near as damnit to ninety—until last night. Treating ourselves to a rather fine dinner at our favorite restaurant in town, we stepped outside to one of those rains that’s neither too heavy to put you at a standstill nor light enough to permit you to dash from awning to awning without an umbrella. By the time dinner was over, temperatures were down, a respectable chill was in the air, and lightening was flashing as if the good Lord couldn’t make up his mind as to whether it was night or day. As Designated Driver, I slipped on my driving glasses, hit the windscreen (windshield?) wipers, and headed for home.

Blindness comes in many forms. A combination of dead bug remains, badly cleared up, with the bawling skies was bad enough, but then the specters began to appear—those ghostly bodies of fog that dance upon the road blocking your view. No one in front of me to mark my way with red tail lights, I had someone on my back probably thankful I was leading him, while putting pressure on me to keep going. The sheet lightening flashes were no help, nor were road markings in worn yellow. Cristal gave advice on steering, since her eyes are far better than mine, and we turned with relief onto the Moose-Wilson Road only to see flashing red and blue lights. I held the steering wheel to a straight lane at thirty-five mph, passed the sheriff, and eventually turned with huge relief into our own road.

This morning the temperatures hovered in the low sixties while fog hovered on the hills, and flattened grass out back revealed elk or, more likely, moose had taken refuge from the storm. Maybe he, too, was frightened by the specters.