Utah, Idaho, Wyoming & Montana: round trip about 1400 miles
Southern Entrance to Yellowstone National Park
Every time I see the distinctively shaped brown national park signs, I am reminded of a sweltering August afternoon at the beginning of the second grade. The school I attended as a child was built in 1938 and was a two story building made out of dried blood red colored bricks. Like most buildings in those days, it had 14 foot ceilings and windows that must have been eight feet tall and four feet wide. They had huge counter weights built into the seals in order that may be raised and kept open more easily. However, most of the counter weights were broken and with a great deal of struggle, the window could be lifted 10-12”, just enough so an old text book could be propped under it to hold it open.
I did not feed nor molest any animals during this trip!
The floors inside the classrooms were all hardwood, but not polished and varnished but oiled to a dark flat dark brown color. We didn’t have any cooling system, but the entire building was heated by a coal fired boiler that fed cast iron radiators that lined the walls and the hallways. Once fired up, the steam from the boiler would make the radiators hiss steam from their relief valves that filled the air with a distinctive metal-like water vapor. The radiator in my second grade classroom was rainbow colored and appeared to be sweating or melting from all the coloring crayons that we melted against its filigree ribs whenever the teacher was not looking.
Dragon's Mouth:geothermal vent
On this particularly sweltering August day, we were just getting use to the idea of being confined to a single room all day after a long summer of running free, swimming, fishing, wandering across the fields and woods during the day and staying up late in the evening watching fireflies from the porch as they began to light up the fields at dusk---then later sleeping under out single electric fan, the kind with the metal grate that vibrated against the case and had that big electric motor that gave off a faint electrical burning smell after it warmed up.
All from Norris Gyser Basin
The same smell that came from our fan at home also came from the oscillating fan that sat on a four drawer metal filing cabinet next to the teacher’s yellow oak desk. It would crane its head around slowly blowing 70% of the time on the teacher and 20% on the right side of the front two rows and 10% of the time toward the window. On this day, a special projector screen had been brought in to the front of the class and was being raised like a sail on the fishing boats we had seen in Sunday School class … the kind that Jesus stepped out of and walked on the water---one of his many miracles summed up in comic book style pictures and offered to us, a hyper group of poor farm kids, as our very own.
Old Faithful
The vibrating and droning of the electric fan would eventually put us to sleep at night, despite the hot immobile summer air, which had driven us from our beds onto the living room floor with out sheets and pillows. Being the youngest, I would take this opportunity to ask my sisters a million questions … whatever crossed my mind, in hushed tones until one of them managed to find the borders of sleep and would scold me into silence.
This museum in Montpelier, Idaho is a hoot! They have re-enactors that won't break character from 1852. They take you on a journey up the Oregon Trail.
The teacher repeated that scolding now … “Hush up!” We were about 200 projector slides, each snapping into view, given a brief introduction and replaced by another into what was a twelve tray collection of Mrs. Steinberg’s summer vacation photographs.
Queer Eye for the straight guy meets cowboy cool in Alpine, Wyoming
Mrs. Steinberg wasn’t my teacher, but no doubt, she was a good woman. Yet, she had this way about her, not that she meant to talk down to you, but she was afflicted with that thing that puts a chasm between you and other people … a thing called money. Now, she was a school teacher, true enough, and teachers made less than 10,000 dollars a year, but she was married into one of the wealthiest families in the region. It was a farm family, but not all farms or farmers were equal. There were farms and there were BIG farms. Her family was part of the latter select few with a twist. They were big farmers that had sold a substantial amount of land to the coal companies. This was a way of winning the lottery in our area long before we had the state run lottery.
The magestic Grand Tetons
I remember that she always carried a burgundy leather “Agner” purse with a large brass horseshoe looking letter A at the clasp and matching penny loafer shoes. Her “way” also translated to the other teachers and as a result, her slide projector vacation photos had been set up for my class as a special treat. Now a real organized vacation is not something we ever took, and at the time, for most of us students, this was not something we had seen before.
My camping spot in Gros Venture Point in Grand Teton National Park
It’s not like we needed to escape the pressures of the city---we had all the fireflies, tadpoles and minnows we could catch in a foil covered mason jar just outside our own back doors. Not that-that was everything. I had an old silver bicycle that my mom had picked up for me at the flea market. It was the kind with a big white banana seat and large arching chrome handlebars. I couldn’t ride it right away because it needed a new back wheel, which cost over $20 at the local hardware store—about three times more than what my mom likely paid for the bike. I was lucky enough to come up with a used wheel somewhere that had an extra wide tire mounted on it that rubbed a little on the inside of the frame when you pedaled the bike.
Outside the Animal Art Museum in jackson Hole, Wyoming
Where I lived was well known for its rolling hills and I lived on one of them, a medium sized one that was lower than the one that the barn sat on. A long gravel driveway connected the house to the barn, and then another driveway connected the house to the asphalt state highway another ¼ mile down that hill. If you started from the barn, after pushing the bike up the very steep hill, you could get a pretty good chance of getting a good ride down the hills to our mailbox next to the state road. That is if you made it. This was a steep gravel road constructed out of limestone rocks as big as a child’s fist. If you made it to the mailbox, in a cloud of white limestone dust, you were rewarded with a dose of adrenaline, which you needed for the long push back up the hill. There was no hope of pedaling this bike back up this steep grade, especially on this type of surface.
More Tetons-ain't they grand?
Once you made it to the asphalt, you could pedal on the street surface, but it soon went up hill in both directions as well. If you made it to the top of one of these hills, it was still a long way to anywhere that looked much different. The terrain had a way of holding you against your physical limitations … you really couldn’t see that far, certainly not beyond the next hill. Recognizing these limitations, it was then that I desired more than anything the 1hp Briggs & Stratton bicycle engine they advertised in the back of comic books. They cost well over $100 and like the hills, it was something that at the time I could only dream about overcoming.
Artist Point, Yellowstone National Park
After a long day’s ride on my motorcycle, I finally found a campsite just inside a national park and just in time to pitch my tent before it became too dark. After an all too brief sight selection process regulated by my bladder, I paid the attendant and parked my bike outside the restrooms. Quickly doffing my helmet and gloves, I quick like a bunny made for the door. As I stepped inside, the stagnant air overwhelmed me and I was immediately back there in the boy’s bathroom of the old school house, standing on the painted wooden box that made us tall enough to pee in the trough. The rusty drain and the smell of stale urine were the same. It prompted the memory of the unaskable question that haunted my second grade mind for weeks; “Why did I pee yellow and most of the other boys pee clear?” I finally decided that I was different because I lived way out on a farm in the country and that made me pee yellow … kinda like a country egg.
Coming into Ennis, Montana
Too cool not to photograph
The vacation pictures had been interesting at first --- Yellowstone National Park, but now we were into her drive across Canada and I needed a bathroom break soon. I should have asked while she was setting up, but I had gotten sidetracked listening to her conversation with our teacher. I remember she told her, “They probably will never get a chance to see this themselves.” I don’t think her meaning was to put on airs and her sentiment was most likely genuine---and probably correct. At the time, I knew she and I were different, but it wasn’t until later that I really understood what the word poor really meant – or learn that my father started off in the coal mines shoveling spilled coal back into rail cars for $2 an hour before the union job.
Stayed in this cabin in Nevada City, Montana
Old mining and rail equipment in Nevada/Virginia City, Montana
Just for you Cripple Creek folks out there
More old mining equipment: Virginia City had the biggest gold find in the world according to the locals.
What I did have in spades at the time was pride and she awakened something inside me, though poorly understood, which had been both affronted and intrigued. What I did understand was that there was a difference between “having the chance” and “taking the chance.” Every since that day, I have made it my priority to see what of this world I could see and explore what I am able to explore—all on my bike named chance.
Old Cars for Gypsy
Craters of the moon National park in Idaho
I encourage you all to do the same and take your own “chance” every “chance” you get.
You always have such a great sense of humor ... and your subtle wit gave me an unexpected laugh.
..Thanks...BTW..Beautiful looking bike.. 
