YS, PART2: BLOWHARDS AND PRETTY HOLES

After watching Old Faithful go off, we decided to take a turn around the Upper Geyser Basin that surrounds the Inn area.  This is an extensive plain filled with geysers, hot pools, frothing holes, and lots of startling color in an otherwise white landscape.  There are miles of boardwalks that take you on a tour of the various features.  Signs everywhere warn that you should never venture off the walks, as the crusty ground, which looks solid enough, could be thin and you would sink through into boiling liquids.  Even pools that look serene and coolly blue are at the simmer level.  We heard a ranger talk about a young 12-year-old boy (back in the 1920’s) who “didn’t believe the water was all that hot” (allegedly his very words) and proceeded to jump into one of the pools.  Lobster, anyone?  I thought it might be an apocryphal story, but later saw some repros of old newspaper stories about it.  Yikes.  As you can see, the colors of these holes are wildly varied:

 

I bet the kid jumped in the nice, cool, blue one.  While we were out on the boards, we heard an announcement that the Beehive Geyser was about to go off, and boy did it.  Twice as high as O.F., its eruption lasted over 5 minutes, with the Inn as a backdrop.

We got lucky with this one, as its time between blowoffs is 11 to 14 hours.  Time your visit wrong, and you’d never see it.  Continuing on the boardwalk, we came to this gorgeous pool that looked like a berserk Morning Glory.

There were some pretty neat fumaroles, as well.  These were dotted all over the landscape, steaming constantly.

A ranger walked by, letting everyone know that another long-period geyser was giving signs of erupting, called Grand Geyser, which goes off every 10-12 hours.  Wow, we really hit the synchronicity jackpot today.  We beetled off that way and took up station next to an elderly woman holding a clipboard and stopwatch.  She turned out to be a volunteer recorder of the eruptions, and proved a font of knowledge about all things geysers.  She could read the waxing and waning signs and tell us whether or not an eruption would take place.  Good thing she was there, or we would have given up and left.  It was over an hour of false alarms before she said, “Yup, it’ll go this time,” and was right.  It started slow, then increased steadily before becoming a massive fountain.  This one is not very high, but it puts out huge volumes of water in its column. 

When it died down, we turned to go, but the woman said to wait a sec, as it often had a second act.  Sure enough, a few minutes later and it gave out with a second burst.  This, she called a “double,” and duly recorded it in her log.  Then she said she was late for her dinner and strode away.  That sounded good to us, so we rode the scooter back to our mobile cabin site and, well, toasted our lucky day.

Ah, but there’s good luck and bad.  It needs balance, and the next day it was my turn.  [ CLIFFHANGER ]

YELLOWSTONE, PART 1: OLD FAITHFUL

We had a short drive to YNP, as it is only twenty miles or so north of Colter.  Most of that drive is through the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway, dedicated thus as he was a prime mover (and donor of land) in getting this area of the Tetons protected.  Thankee, Johnny!  The road in follows the Lewis River, which has some great views.  It also was our introduction to the devastation wrought by the 1988 fires that burned 40% of Yellowstone.

This kind of scene is encountered frequently in the park.  In many areas, but not so much here, there is substantial new growth of trees about 6 feet in height. 

About ten miles into the park we came upon the Lewis Falls.  I guess Clark didn’t get as much recognition, as we didn’t come across anything bearing his name.  The best shot of the falls was from this metal bridge that spanned the river below the falls.  Unfortunately, that sucker had a lot of flex, and every car and RV that crossed it set up a shudder that made a mess of my tripod support.  I was trying to use the nifty feature of the S95 that takes three shots in rapid succession, each with a different exposure setting, then blends them into one picture, supposedly utilizing the best exposure for each area of the picture.  Of course, that requires that the camera be rock steady so the three shots are of the same thing.  Never did achieve perfect stillness, but it came out reasonably well.  I’m not convinced that this is really useful, but I’ll experiment more in the future.

Our first two nights were to be at Grant Village, the southernmost campground in the park.  It’s a no-hookups campground, so I asked the pretty young thing if she had any sites that got a lot of sun as we would prefer using our solar panel rather than our generator.  Either that was music to her ears, or I’ve still got it, cause she gave us a primo spot with no one nearby, plenty of sun, and even a peekaboo view out the back of a portion of Yellowstone Lake.  We got more lucky when a band of tent campers, about four sites away, who had loudly been playing their favorite music (booo), started packing up to leave.  Yess!  All is right with the world. 

We decided not to waste the rest of the day, and unloaded the scoot for a run to Old Faithful, about 19 miles to the northwest.  The road scenery here is unremarkable, except for the fact that it keeps crossing the Continental Divide at various points.  The scoot laughs at altitude!

Well, maybe not laughter, but at least it doesn’t gasp.  Once at Old Faithful, which is a surprisingly large and sprawling complex, we tried to follow the confusing signage to locate the geyser.  They had several big map signs, with everything shown on them, but not a one had any marker saying “you are here.”  Idiocy.  By guess and by golly we found the right area, and parked next to . . . two matching gray Vespa 200’s!  We’ve seen legions of Harleys, but no scoots until now.  As we were locking up, the owners came up and we chatted awhile, trading scooter war stories.  Yes, there are such things.

We shuffled off towards O.F., and people coming from that direction told us the next eruption (which now are every 90 minutes or so, down from every 45 before the earthquake) was in about 40 minutes.  Even so, quite a crowd was gathering.  Hey, what are all these people doing here during OUR stealth shoulder season?

Yes, folks, the Boomers are here!  We decided to tour the O.F. Inn while waiting for the next show.  This is, I believe, the first of the classic park lodges, and it is spectacular.  It also holds some family meaning for me as my grandfather visited the Inn as a young man back around 1908.  It was cool to look at something that is largely unchanged since he set eyes on it over 100 years ago.  Somewhere, I have photos of it that he took with his Brownie.  I’ll have to scan them and paste them here when I can locate them.

There’s a wing on the right, out of the picture, that is newer, but designed in the 1920’s by the same architect that did the original.  The porch on the front also is an addition, but the main part is just like it was way back then.  That’s Loni on the sidewalk.  Interestingly, a couple of those upper dormer windows are fake.  The “windows” don’t open into anything.  No explanation why the guy designed it that way.

We took a tour conducted by a lady in period costume, and she did a nice job.  Those “knees” that you see coming off the vertical poles are decorative only.  They don’t provide any support function at all.  The architect had his people scouring the forest for interesting and matching limbs like those, purely for artistic effect.  The guest rooms in the main building are all authentic period rooms, with exposed log walls and old-style furnishings.  In the 1920’s wings, the walls are plaster.  The dining room is big, but I’ve been in nicer ones in other parks.  It seemed a little bare bones compared with the rest of the place.  We tried to get a lunch reservation but they were booked up.  

Throughout the interior there is a lot of use of gnarled wood to form banisters and such.  Virtually all of it is original.

The cavernous interior space of the lobby is dominated by an enormous chimney that houses four fireplaces, one on each side.  A huge clock, now under repair, hangs off the side that faces most of the interior.  Sorry I didn’t put a border on the photos, they seem to run into each other.  The door is the interior side, and it is still the main entrance into the Inn.  From the heft of the hinges, it looks like they were trying to keep the grizzlies out.

The place is not insulated, so it is shut down completely during the winter months.  Sure wish I knew which room Grandad had stayed in.  Outside the Inn there were a number of old tourist coaches, used to transport guests to and from the Inn and around the park.  These aren’t replicas, but the real deal.  I thought they were cool.

Finally, it was time for the big show, so we decided to watch it from the front porch of the Inn.  Thar she blows!

O.F. isn’t the tallest geyser, nor does it put out the most volume of water;  it’s fame, I guess, stems from its regularity.  Other geysers have much more erratic and lengthy eruption schedules.  Regularity is good for geezers and well as geysers.

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.

WHADDYA GET?

The Tetons are wonderful to wander by both foot and kayak, even an inflatable.  We saw a notice posted at the Colter visitor center about a ranger-led kayak tour of Jenny Lake, which we had heard was a beautiful setting.  Reservations were required and, as always, our [epithet deleted] Sprint service was nonexistent.  The ever-helpful ranger offered to call for us and we got a slot.  Only downside is that Jenny is at least 35 minutes away, we had to meet the ranger at 8:00 in the water, and we couldn’t launch our inflatable at the meeting point, but rather at a spot about a half mile from there.  Add to that we had to actually inflate the darn thing after not having done it in over a year, and it meant another early up and out.  The upside was that the view on the way with the early morning light was great.

We kept an eagle eye for any wildlife, but saw only the butt end of an elk disappearing into the brush.  As for idiots, the early hour was no deterrent.  Some foreign-driver-whose-ethnicity-shall-remain-unstated was making an excruciating 28-point u-turn smack in the middle of the road.  What was he thinking?  Or not? The turnoff road to our launch point went from rough pavement to gravel and dirt, and required crossing a small wooden bridge before ending at a dirt parking lot.  Hmmm.  We weigh about 6.5 tons and this didn’t look all that sturdy.  I got out and looked underneath to check it out.  Ah, no sweat, the wood on top hid the steel girders underneath.  Nonetheless, I accelerated over it as if speed alone would ensure it did not have time to collapse under us.  Over we went and got to the cove.  We got the kayak out of the bag and set to work.

It was about 45 degrees out and my fingers were cold.  I couldn’t turn the valves to open.  I never seem to remember just how the valves work, and they’re not particularly intuitive, so my vocabulary gets a good workout.  Loni patiently endured.  Maybe my swearing heated the air a bit, as I finally got brain and hand working and got the things open.  Much pumping and both kayak and seats were filled.  Loni was fitting the paddles together and one didn’t want to click.  No time to analyze, just pound the sucker on the ground and force it!  Uh oh.  There’s supposed to be an A, B, C, and D part for each paddle.  We had just joined two B’s, apparently permanently as they wouldn’t separate.  More mighty swearing.  Fortunately, this only means we can’t offset the blades, but have to have them parallel.  No problem, as that’s how we like it anyway.  We got launched without mishap and headed up the lake to find the group.  We passed a dock with no one around and kept going.  Eventually, we found the commercial marina (where they rent kayaks and why we couldn’t launch ours there) and a few other folks who were taking the tour.  But the dockman said that the meeting point was . . . yep . . . that dock that we passed about a 1/4 mile back.  We were getting our day’s workout and we hadn’t even started.

The paddle was a lot of fun, even though the inflatable is directionally challenged, and it was a constant struggle to keep on course. 

   We mostly skirted the shoreline of about 3/4 of the lake, and then retraced, with the ranger giving us history and geological factoids as we stroked along.  He had a wonderfully clear voice that carried across the water.  There was one canoe along for the ride, with a family of three.  Most of the time only one of them was paddling, so they were constantly falling behind.  Never seemed to get coordinated.  So, we had at least one craft to feel superior towards.  That’s them in front of us, with little gray pontoons hanging off each side.  Never seen that before.

The paddle was scheduled for 3 1/2 hours.  About two hours in, well, I had to pee.  But there’s just no way.  I must have looked like a St. Vitus’ dance victim for the next 1 1/2 hours.  Willpower.  Sheer willpower.  Finally, we were finished – literally.  The others went back to the marina and we headed for our cove, and boy did I run for the rig.  Then, deflation, drying off, repacking, stowing, and some lunch.  Woof.  However, being dead game sports, as the Tennessee Shad would say, we decided to take the hike to Hidden Falls, a trail that wound around the lake and back up the hills, about 5 miles round trip.  The Tetons are ever present.

Along the way we encountered a couple staring through binoculars at a small pond about 100 yards away.  “Moose,” they whispered.  I reached for our binocs and grabbed air.  Uh oh.  The one time we forgot to sling them along.  The nice folks let us use theirs, and sure enough, a huge cow moose was standing shoulder deep in the pond, dipping underwater to grab a munch of tender greens.  Now, my nifty new camera (Canon S95) has many neat features, but an adequate zoom lens ain’t one of them.  It’s only 3.8x.  Trust me.  There’s a moose hidden in this shot!  If you look at the squarish white rock at the center of the shoreline, the longish dark object in front of it is the mostly submerged moose, with its nose to the right and body left.  Honest.

Fortunately, this is a well traveled trail.  Why fortunate?  Because there are some 400 black bears and 70 grizzlies in the park, and there have been two people killed this summer by bears, the most recent just a week ago.  No isolated hiking for us.  The rangers say there has never been an attack when hiking with four or more people.  We tried to stay close to other groups on the way.  And, by the way, bear bells are bogus.  The rangers say that the frequency of the bells sounds like running water to bears, and is ineffective to warn them off.  They all preach the effectiveness of bear spray, so it’s a good thing to have.  Costs $44 in the visitor center stores.

We made the hike without getting eaten, and the falls were quite pretty, albeit with a large crowd of people milling about.  We managed to get our pic taken with only one extraneous body in the frame.

A ranger said the flows this year were the best in recent memory.  Guess that’s the case all over the west.  I would have loved to have been in Yosemite this year.  That was it for this day.  We stumbled back down the trail and rumbled off.  On the way, we detoured to see the Jenny Lake Lodge.  Well, it sure isn’t on the lake;  in fact, it’s nowhere near it, and not very impressive.  Car tourists, avoid.  We also dropped in on the Jackson Lake Lodge, which was much bigger and more modern.  Big central lobby for lounging, with distant views of the lake.  It looked like it took pretty good coin to stay here.  Not us.  $7.50 a night at Colter with the geezer pass.  On our way in to our site we came upon the neatest RV we’ve seen in a while.  I like their style.

Chicken stir-fry with couscous tonight.  And a beer.  Boddington’s is your friend.

TO THE BREASTS! (AUX TETONS)

We left SLC, power, and internet, behind and made our way north towards Teton National Park.  Evidently, Garmin mapped this region back in the 19th century, as it never seemed to know where we were.  Bizarre turn pronouncements came out of the blue that we ignored.  We trusted the AAA maps instead.  This whole area is filled with scenic byway designations, almost all of them 2 lane twisties dotted with amazing lakes.  And then, this unsettling apparition.

Yikes.  About a month early and not exactly what we expected.  Ou se trouve le metro?  Before long, we returned from the twilight zone into familiar territory.

and started climbing again, and again, and again.

We went through the town of Afton, which apparently is the elk slaughter capital of the world. 

We saw a lot of “decorations” in this area consisting of entangled antlers, thousands upon thousands of pairs.  I guess I understand the need to cull herds, and all that, but I don’t think I could ever be the one to pull the trigger unless I was starving.

Update:  reader Joan informs me these are mostly antlers that have been shed and then collected from the ground.  Thus, no elk were harmed in the filming of this picture.

We began to follow the Snake River through its beautiful canyon and spied some rafters making their way down the river.

there were some minor rapids below where we had pulled out, but they didn’t prove to be any challenge as all the boats just glided on through.

 

We pulled into the town of Jackson and a grocery store to restock the larder.  Upon leaving, I took a wrong turn, and we ended up in the middle of the tourist trap businesses.  Boy, were there a lot of them.  More like a Solvang (CA) than a Gatlinburg, but we felt no desire to stop and peruse the western tschotsky shops.  I hadn’t realized it before, but there is no such town as Jackson Hole.  The Hole refers to the huge valley surrounded by mountain ranges, not to a city.  We navigated out of the city and soon were rewarded with our first view of the Teton Range.

I’ve never been here before.  Loni was here as a ten year old with her family on one of their infamous death march driving vacations.  But for some reason, her memories of this place were particularly strong, so this was something she was very much looking forward to.  The Range is not very big.  Pretty much what you see here is the entire deal.  But, viewing it from different perspectives makes it seem a whole lot bigger and varied, as we were to find out.  So gird yourself for multiple views.

We decided to make Colter Bay our campground.  It lies on the northeast shore of Jackson Lake, with the Tetons rising like Switzerland on the far (west) side.  This is a National Park Service campground, co-run by the rangers and by Xanterra, a private company that has landed the concessions in most of the national parks we have visited.  My experience in past years has not been particularly favorable with Xanterra, largely because of sky-high pricing and mediocre food.  But that was to change 180 degrees on this trip.  Virtually uniformly, we have found the employees to be very friendly and competent, the pricing to be quite reasonable, and the food tasty and somewhat adventuresome.  Kudos to a corporate host that is doing it right!  And I should mention also that the Park Service rangers and civilian staff have been outstanding.  I don’t know how they keep their enthusiasm (and patience) throughout the long season, but they do.  They truly are a dedicated bunch.  I hope these aren’t phenomena limited to Teton and Yellowstone, but extend throughout the system.  Maybe they’ve been Ken Burns-inspired.

Colter campground is oddly configured in that there are no back-in spots, but virtually every campsite is a pullout spot aligned with the road.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but some of the spots are not wide enough to get all the way off the roadway.  That was the case with the first site we were assigned, and it was too slanted for us to get anywhere near level.  Plus, it was cursed by nearby toy haulers (trailers that double as living quarters and carriers of motorcycles, OHV’s, etc).  We generally find these to be noisy bunches, and this group was fitting the stereotype.  Back to the entrance, and we got another site without any hassle.  This one was level, and the only drawback were the tall pines that came right up to the coach, shading us from the sun we wanted for recharging the batteries with the solar panel.  We had hardly settled in when we heard someone call, “Hello Lazy Dazers” from outside.  Turned out it was “Steve” from Ohio, whose ‘03 mid-bath was parked in the next loop over.  We had a nice chat.  He had just come down from Yellowstone and was cautiously limping home with the symptoms of early stage fuel pump failure, apparently a common problem for these Fords.  He had just turned 100k miles, so maybe we have a ways to go before it happens to us.  We’re at about 34k.  We had about a half hour of peace, when a trailer pulled into the spot in front of us, set up, and then started blaring the stereo from their truck cab.  What is it with people that just have to have the same noise here in the “wilderness” that they have at their homes?  My blood pressure was rising.  This kept up until 9:40pm, just under the 10:00 quiet hours cutoff.  Good thing, because I was still dressed and ready to hold them to it if they went over.

Our usual breakfasts are cereal and fruit, but we decided that we should finish off the Clarter Farms eggs while still fresh, so we feasted on our first morning in the park, blissfully quiet so far.

I wasn’t about to endure another afternoon/evening concert, and we really did need more sun, so we went back and again changed sites.  This time we got one that had no immediate neighbors and got plenty of sun.  Space 180, if anybody’s interested.

After settling in, we took a hike around the Colter Bay area, and found the first of many exquisite views of the Tetons at the marina on Jackson Lake.

There’s a nice walking path around the harbor area that provided a lot of views, with this being my favorite.  In fact, pretty much the quintessential vista.  No wonder Loni has such strong memories of place. 

CALLING JOSEPH SMITH

After freezing our buns off overnight in Lamoille, we reversed our course and drove back the way we came, and picked up I-80 for the really barren drive to Salt Lake City and our rendezvous with my old fraternity bro, Hal.  The drive through the balance of Nevada was more of the same (left), but the drop down into the great salt basin of Utah was surreal.

It’s no wonder that Brigham Young cried out:  “This is the place!” when he crossed the eastern mountains that rim what is now SLC.  He wasn’t about to tackle this grotesque wasteland that lay on the western side.  We drove seemingly endlessly across the salt.

I was reminded of my more adventurous youth when I was driving solo from my folks’ place in Indianapolis back to California for the start of my sophomore year.  I was in the great white whale (see previous entry, Clarter Farms), it was 10pm, and I started west across the Bonneville Salt Flats, at that time a two lane road with absolutely no lighting.  It’s DARK out there, save for the moonlight.  My lights started dimming and steadily punked out until I had only two yellow pools in front of the car.  I had to steer by the moonlight reflecting off the white center line, and hope that oncoming cars could see my jaundiced orbs.  Yes, it was a white knuckle drive.  Made it to Wells, where nothing was open.  Stopped the car at a gas station (it wouldn’t restart) and walked to a combo hotel/bordello for the night.  Next day found that the alternator was shot, would take 3 or more days to have one shipped in.  Augh.  Can’t be late for college.  Bought a new battery, and took off, being careful not to use any radio, fan, lights, etc., and never turned off the engine, even when refueling.  Made it all the way to Palo Alto, probably in time to torture Hal during Hell Help Week at the frat.

We haven’t see Hal since he visited us at our apartment in Santa Monica about 40 years ago.  He’s added a few avoirdupois, but the old Hal is still evident.

First things first, we had to exchange the secret handshake.  Only problem is, I never learned it in the first place.  Hal claims that we finally got it right, but you couldn’t prove it by me.

We’re standing on the grounds of Temple Square, on which sits the first tabernacle built by the Mormons, completed around 1871.  It’s an amazing building inside and out, with an exterior metal roof that holds itself up without interior trusses or anything.  An incredible engineering feet, accomplished only 22 years after they arrived in wagons and handcarts.  This is where the choir gives performances, and it houses this great organ.

You can see some of the interior of that roof.  No supporting beams or anything!  The square also houses, of course, the temple, which we heathens are not permitted to enter, but it is quite a sight from outside.

After giving us the cook’s tour of the square, Hal took us to a restaurant in an adjacent building that had wonderful views overlooking the temple as the sun went down.

The restaurant is a gourmet buffet, emphasis on the gourmet.  And very posh to boot.  That’s Loni with her back to us;  Hal is in the background filling his plate for, I believe, the second time.

Everything was scrumptious.  Extensive hors d’oeuvres and starters, 7 entrees including excellent prime rib, blackened catfish, etc.  AND, 22 (count ‘em, 22!) desserts!  Alas, after stuffing ourselves with all that came before, I could only sample four or so.  Sigh.  (Burp!)

We ate and talked for hours, but they had to shut down and, alas, Hal isn’t yet ready for the retirement game, and he had to drive home twenty miles or so.  Lovely Daryl couldn’t join us as she had to care for her mom, but we had a great time catching up with Hal.  He refused to let us pay for the meals (honest, I tried to protest), so we owe him big time.  Thanks Hal;  get thee to California so we can reciprocate!  As we were leaving, one last shot of the temple.  It really is a beautiful place.  I think Joseph Smith would have approved.