Out West: Looking Back

July 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · In Summary, Travel

So that finishes off my report for the trip to Yellowstone. Here are your links to the blog posts:

Technologies Used:

I used Twitter (link to my account) to comment on things as they happened. This was unusual, as I am not really a Twitter user (I follow other people, but up until the trip I posted tweets rarely). I tended to use Facebook (link to my account) and update my status that way, but I wanted to feel free to post as many inane tweets as I wanted without feeling like I was overwhelming uninterested Facebook friends. The entire point of Twitter is to post inanities, so I sent a link to my Twitter account via Facebook for any friends who were interested and then left it at that. I posted one Facebook update the whole trip. Everything else went on Twitter. I set up my blog so that all of my tweets would record as blog posts, so if you are a casual follower of my blog, you could see what I’m up to without actually having to go sign up on Twitter to follow me there.

But, even though the tweets were already in my blog, I couldn’t ignore them as I wrote the trip report, so I integrated many of them into the text. I also integrated notes that I’d made, written instead of tweeted because of lack of cell service.

The pictures that I included in the blog post were all made with my iPhone. This may sound strange since the entire trip was planned around real photography, the kind I do with expensive cameras and lenses and tripods and filters. Why would I bother with the crappy, low-quality iPhone pictures? There are two reasons. One is that I discovered Hipstamatic this spring, and I’ve enjoyed it. It is an iPhone app that makes crappy, low-quality iPhone pictures look like crappy, low-quality film photos, but in a good way. It adds vignettes and filters and colors that make the blur and noise of the camera phone look vintage and arty and interesting. So it’s fun to play with that. The second reason is that I’ve always disliked hauling out my big camera to take pictures of things that are really not worthy of a good camera photo. The big camera is bulky and a thief-magnet; the iPhone fits in my pocket and would be there anyway. It’s not worth it to me to use the big camera if the light is poor, or I’m just interested in the architecture, or it’s a self-portrait. Self-portraits, specifically. I like to take them so that I can put ‘I was there’ images on Facebook like everyone else, but I hate the vanity involved in setting up a shot of myself with a tripod and timer when I’m dressed in grubby hiking clothes and look like I’ve spent the last week in a car.

I can also upload iPhone photos to Twitter and Facebook and Flickr and email from my iPhone, and I did do that a lot. The Hipstamatic images look decent enough to integrate into the blog post without having to wait to process the ‘real’ images, which will probably take months. On my trip to California in 2008, I only used a real camera and I really never went back and illustrated those trip reports with the images when I finally finished them a year later. So it was nice that I was doing the iPhone photos for this reason as well- instant gratification.

As for all the photos I took with my big camera, of course I have not finished them! But I have started them, and that is very exciting. I started processing pictures last week before I left for DC, and I hope to get work done on many more in the weeks to come as my computer is up and running at home (for the most part). It will take a long time to get through them, as I took more than 8200 photos (this total does not include iPhone photos). But you can keep track of the ‘real’ images as I upload them to my Flickr photostream here, or you can see them all (including some iPhone photos) in chronological order here.

Some of my favorite iPhone apps used on the trip:

Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter (I’ve tried several Twitter apps, and the new official one is my favorite).
WikiTap is my favorite Wikipedia browser
Hipstamatic, for making cheap iPhone photos look arty
Road Trip LE, for tracking gas mileage
The Weather Channel, for hoping that there would soon be sunshine
And Clock, Weather, Messages, Notes, and Mail. Even though Clock could not always be relied on, especially in weird Western Nebraska.

I didn’t really use the Maps app that much because I had a real road atlas and also GPS in my car.

I integrated custom Google maps into the blog posts again. I did this also for my 2008 trip to California. I am a custom Google map fan! They are fun to make, even though it can sometimes be a tempermental little program. I enjoy making them when I’m planning the trip, and I enjoy tracking where I was afterwards by making an official record of the journey. In the Google maps, I used special icons to denote where I slept each night, where I stopped for photos, where I stopped for lunch, and that kind of thing. You can open those links in Google Earth and probably have a pretty good time exploring, if you’re into geography like I am.

I also integrated plenty of Wikipedia links for more reading on specific topics. I like Wikipedia for its concise and interesting summaries. You can scroll to the bottom of the Wikipedia entries for links to the sources that are cited throughout, which are (by the rules of Wikipedia) authoritative sources that might provide lots more information.

Looking Back

I was concerned at the time that the weather situation that I encountered in Yellowstone was going to make me look back on the trip with only a sense of frustration, especially after the meltdown at Old Faithful which caused me to skip a lot of the most famous geyser and thermal features in that part of the park. But that hasn’t been the case. Certainly I have not forgotten that part of it, but it was just part of the trip (like a similar meltdown in North Bay during the 2008 California trip; I get cranky after a few days on the road, especially if things are not working out), a low that made the high points that much higher.

When I review the maps of the journey (and I can’t seem to get Google maps to combine all four of the Google maps into one so that you can see everything at once), I don’t think of the low points. I think of driving through Nebraska and Montana and Wyoming, and how much I loved loved loved those landscapes. I was so taken with the West in that way. I had heard good things and still I had underestimated how much I would love it. I simply remember thinking that I could easily have taken a vacation to just western Nebraska and eastern Montana and Wyoming, skipped over all of the national park stuff, and had a blast. Next time I won’t doubt myself when I start planning routes. The further off the interstate it is (while still being a navigable stretch of paved road, because strange gravel roads make me nervous when I’m far away from the familiar ones of mid-Missouri), the more I will love it, especially at sunrise and sunset. Scenic Byways are.

When I think of Yellowstone National Park, I don’t immediately think of the rain. I think of the pretty sunny afternoon that I had on Yellowstone Lake, or the colors of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, or the the spectacular evening light in my beloved Lamar Valley. I think of driving along mostly quiet roads in the north and east sections of the park, far away from the congestion of the southwest corner. I think of the wildlife, not the thermal features. I think of the neat modernist cabin at Canyon Village, not the hot and dim room at the Old Faithful Inn.

When I think of the Grand Tetons, I think of the clouds swirling around the jagged teeth of the peaks, the sound of the Snake River in the valley as the sun set behind the mountains. I think of feeling relieved and grateful for a beautiful blue sky and puffy clouds that made wonderful landscapes on my last days of the trip. I think of a solitary walk along a mountain trail, chattering marmots, and a bear wondering about the contents of my pick-i-nick basket.

I think of Thermopolis and the smell of sulphur at the hot springs where I soaked next to locals and tourists alike on a cool cloudy spring day. I think of Dubois and the Wind River Canyon, a place to which I would happily return anytime.

I also think of things I missed, but in a good way. I didn’t see Missoula or the Bitterroots or Paradise Valley, even though they were all on my list of things to see. I didn’t see the Great Falls of the Missouri River or the Gates of the Rockies. I didn’t see Idaho or Glacier National Park. And I want to see all of these. Already I’m planning future trips to northwest Montana, and on to the Canadian Rockies, Banff and Jasper parks, Salt Lake City, the parks of southern Utah, the Four Corners, the Grand Canyon (but the less touristy parts), west Texas.

If I’d had an extra week, or an extra month, or even an extra half a day, it would still not have been enough. If there’s anything I really learned on this trip, it’s that I do not ever get tired of driving and seeing things (as long as I’m off the interstates). I do not get tired of my car. I do not get tired of eating from coolers. I want to get experienced with camping so that I can make trips like this but even cheaper, though I do not dislike staying in cheap mom & pop motels (built in 1953 and still advertising Color TV). I do not get tired of driving through landscape that other people avoid, ignore, or detour. I do not get tired of listening to music.

But I do miss my dog and my home, and it’s still nice to get back to everything. So I have to agree with this, which William Least Heat-Moon quotes in Roads to Quoz, and which I loved so I tweeted it at the end of my trip: