INDIANS, RANGERS AND BEARS

What is this, a sports blog?  Nope, nothing that exciting.

One of the attractions of Colter Bay is a very nice, although small, museum of Indian crafts and artifacts.  It is part of a larger collection donated by David T. Vernon to the Smithsonian.  Unfortunately, this is the last season for the museum.  It will be packed up and sent off for conservation efforts, and the space now occupied by the museum will be part of the enlarged visitor center.  I don’t think this is a good tradeoff.  A lot of nifty stuff here, including the very nasty war clubs in the center picture below.  Note the spikes!  Yikes!

The spoons are made either of bone or wood, scraped and smoothed with stone.  The tomahawks are actually peace pipes.  See the bowls opposite the blades.  We really enjoyed the displays and think future visitors to the park are going to be shortchanged.

We signed up for another early morning ranger walk.  Breakfast in the rig then out the door and J E E Z U S is it cold!  Somewhere in the low 40’s.  Okay, that’s cold for we wimpy SoCals.  Back in for another layer, then we fast-hoofed it the 1/2 mile to the meeting spot, which warmed us up some.  We met with ranger Doug Crispin, who was a full time ranger for decades, now retired, but still working summers at various parks.

Doug is but one of a series of great rangers we have met in these parks this trip.  If there’s one federal agency that deserves increased funding, the Parks Service is it.  We were joined by about twenty others, so it was a large group.  First stop was the standard (by now) stunning view of the lake and Tetons.

Part of the hike took us back to Swan Lake, an incredible lily pad-filled lake that seem to stretch forever.  Never seen that many pads before.  Glad I didn’t have to paddle the kayak through that stuff.

The only wildlife we saw was a pretty good size bull elk, but he kept moving in and out of trees so I didn’t get a photo.  Did see a beaver house across the water,

and evidence of budding dam activity:

We got a talk on the devastation being wrought by the pine bark beetle, which is familiar to us from the damage all around the Tahoe area.  Doug pointed out the telltale signs that a tree was done in by the beetle, which are these white nubs formed by the tree trying to expel the beetles by forcing out sap.

 

The beetle is pretty much wiping out the sub-alpine fir, and doing a number on the lodgepoles.  We also saw evidence that bears are alive and well in the area.

Um, you don’t really want to try climbing a tree to get away from a bear.  The black bear can climb like a cat, and even the griz can get off the ground.  Bear spray, says Doug, bear spray.

After the walk we decided to splurge and get some lunch in the camp grill.  Excellent tuna sands on pita bread.  All right, Xanterra.  I sat outside while Loni used the loo, and was treated to a scene of a Japanese tourist group couple berating each other for some unseen thing.  Couldn’t understand a word, but if looks could kill.  Back to the rig and loaded the scoot with ten days’ laundry, soaps, and shower items.  Hot showers while the clothes spun.  Ahhh.  While there, I saw people sitting around the laundry with laptops.  Yesss!  Free wifi.  I hotfooted it back to the rig and got my iPod and downloaded emails for the first time in a while.  We had one from Meghan and John, saying they had just finished Israel (hooray!) and were on their way to Petra, Jordan, presumably to search for Indy’s grail.  While in Israel, they had visited Elat, the city at the upper end of the Gulf of Aqaba (sp?), and the site just ten days previously of an attack on a bus that killed a bunch of people.  We are very happy they are out of Israel safely.

Our final chores were to load the scoot back on the rig, accomplished without drama this time, and to dump the tanks, something we have done scores of times without incident.  Well . . .  The dump station hole had the usual heavy metal foot-pedal cover, but this one was set at an odd angle that made it difficult to get the hose set in properly.  Can you see it coming?  I didn’t.  I insert the hose, reach back and pull the valve open, and KAWHOOSH!  Hose jumps out of the hole – JUMPS, I say, and does the serpent routine, spraying, well, no need for details here.  Suffice to say it took a lot of water to clean up the dump site and me.  The joys of RV camping.  We’re off tomorrow for Yellowstone.  Geezers for geysers.  Just time for one last pose in front of the beautiful Tetons.  Good memories now for the both of us.