Way Out West, part 2

Montana's plains and rolling hills became even more rolling. We could see distant mountains dotted with snow. (It had snowed in Yellowstone two nights before.) (Yes, it was August.) Suddenly we were in beautiful Paradise Valley, where the Yellowstone River twisted and turned. So lovely and peaceful!

After a while of following the river we started going up and up. Around a hairpin turn was the famous archway entrance to Yellowstone. There was Ft. Yellowstone (now being used by the Park Service), a rest area, and Mammoth Hot Springs.

I'd been to Yellowstone back in the 5th grade, when the family was stationed in ND. I recalled being almost traumatized by the stench of sulfur. This trip, the sulfur didn't seem to overwhelm the senses for some reason. And of course, back then tourists were encouraged to feed the bears, so they'd come right up to the cars and beg. Around 1972 or so, Yellowstone made the decision to keep the bears wild, and they closed dumps, installed bear-proof garbage cans, made it illegal to feed the bears, etc. They lost a lot of bears that first year, but since then things have been fine. And you don't go NEAR a bear.

Mt. Rushmore had been hard on my knees with its uneven surfaces, but all the stairs at Yellowstone made the situation worse. Everything seems to be UP. And those few things that are down seem to require a greater number of stairs to go back UP to your original position. My knees were not happy, especially the left one. (Now that I'm back home, especially after I've been through a bout of post-vacation plague and was bed-ridden for a day, ye knees are happy again.)

You have to stay on the walkways (which are constructed by workers who wear extremely insulated gear and use thermal-detection equipment) because there are horror stories of people who didn't.

One we heard a lot was about two California men, who'd arrived with a pickup and a large dog in the back. They got off at one of the boiling springs (we'd see the site the next day), and the dog, who was not tethered, decided to join them and take a swim. Splash!

One of the men (not the dog's owner) automatically jumped in to save the dog. The crowd managed to hold the owner back. The dog died, of course, but the one man hung on for one more day in hospital at Salt Lake City. "Guess that was a stupid thing to do," were his last words.

I yelled at some young Japanese tourists for getting off the walkway to take their selfies. I mean, there were signs everywhere to stay on the walks!

The elk didn't read. We saw several there moseying around Ft. Yellowstone, right up around the sidewalks. Later we'd see occasional animal tracks through various hot springs, and once saw a bird hopping around one, seemingly undisturbed. There was one visitors' center that had a picture of a bison with all four legs badly burned, walking up a road with a grizzly stalking him, just waiting for him to stumble.

Our step-on guide (a local expert; most bus companies will have one or two during the course of a tour) on the second day lived in the park in an RV trailer. She could have used the dorms the park has for its other employees, but she and her husband own a dog, and animals are not allowed in the dorms. The first day she ever camped at Yellowstone, her neighbor warned her to keep her small dog on a very short leash instead of the retractable leash she had, because coyotes were known to rush out of nowhere and grab small dogs, never to be seen again.

We saw a coyote trotting across the street when we got to our hotel.

But before that, we drove the Yellowstone roads. Top speed is 45 MPH, often reduced. Our tour director, whom we're calling "Tom" here, told us we were lucky because it was August 25, and that was the day Yellowstone employees at the Old Faithful Inn and elsewhere celebrated Christmas, since they weren't employed at the park when Christmas actually rolled around. So at our rest stop at lunch, the employees in the diner I ate at (meh food; huge crowd) all had Christmas hats on. When we got to the Inn, there was a Christmas tree in addition to the hats. Santa showed up later, and employees handed out cookies to the kids. Sound systems in both places were Christmas tunes. Fa la la!

We had also timed things right because the next week, work would begin on a tiny bridge across Isa Lake, which would require a 2 1/2 hour detour. Isa is a pond, really, covered in lilypads, and is the only natural lake in the world that drains into two oceans backward. It sits right on the continental divide, and the eastern outlet winds around to ultimately flow to the Pacific, while the western outlet winds to flow to the Atlantic Ocean. The lake was named for a pretty, rich young lady whom the discoverer happened to spot as he was trying to figure out a name for the place. Typical. (Hmph.)

Back to the driving. At both ends of the park I had to notice that we passed sheer drop-offs. Luckily, most of them seemed to be off the left side, and I was seated on the right. But for 20 minutes I had to cover my eyes because we were hanging over the side of the road on the right. There were no guard rails that I could see. A lady on the bus said thank goodness for that, because they'd probably mess up the view. !

Tom noted that snow guides were up, when they hadn't been the previous week. These are 6- or 8-foot poles with reflective tops that line the roads, and are to tell snow plows where the roads should be when the snow arrives. "Yes, it gets that deep," Tom told us.

Yellowstone isn't the most-visited US park, but it's #2 or #3. It gets MILLIONS of visitors a year, and the vast majority of them arrive during the three snow-less months. There were always crowds, but surprisingly, it was never too bad.

Get this: HALF of the entire WORLD's geothermal features are in Yellowstone!

We saw Yellowstone Falls, which are twice as high as Niagara. (It seems EVERYTHING's higher than Niagara! Niagara must have a great press agent. On the Canadian side.) When we got back from the photo stop, one of the women complained that she'd been trying to take a picture when two newly-arrived Japanese tourists DEMANDED that she move aside so they could shoot. I saw this happen a lot. Hey, aren't American tourists supposed to be the rude ones? Folks, always remember to be polite, especially when you're in large groups of tourists!

Then we went through the Lamar Valley, where it was bison mating season. Dozens and dozens of bison! They seemed just to be hanging around. Getting that final cigarette in, you know. We spotted one that people said was dead (he could have been asleep for all I knew), and we surmised that he had given his all in mating. The next week would be the beginning of elk mating season, and the valley would be filled with them, or so we were told. I noticed that the bison usually chose to appear nearby on the opposite side of the bus from where I was. (Okay, the next day they chose my side so I got some neat pics of them, but these pics have the picturesque river in them.)

Note: Tom said it is illegal to pull over and stop in the park unless an animal is actually blocking your way. (Traffic slows to a snail's pace when drivers detect wildlife to be seen/photographed. You see slowed traffic ahead; you start to look around for what they're gawking at.) He said that one herd of bison had been using a highway pass as a shortcut the previous week, and traffic had been held up for hours in either direction, affecting almost all the park's schedules. If you do get a traffic ticket in the park, be aware that this is federal property, and thus fines are MUCH higher than state fines would be. (Don't worry about pulling off too much, as there are a lot of "photo opportunity" pull-offs.)

Things smoke in Yellowstone. You can't take in a vista without seeing a cloud of steam rising somewhere. There are mud pots and hot springs and geysers, etc. This one above happens to roar like a dragon as the steam comes out of it. Plus our guide told us that with all the small earthquakes Yellowstone produces (since it does sit on top of a super volcano, and the main part of the Park sits within the old caldera), the fissures that allow all the geothermal activity can shift around. Huge, periodic geysers have been shut off by Mother Nature, like the Excelsior Geyser. Roads have had to have been moved because a hot spot shifted and melted the pavement. We heard of one night when park employees were skinny-dipping in a warm natural pool in the moonlight, and Yellowstone had a fairly large earthquake. The pool emptied in moments, leaving them sitting there in their altogether!

(Which reminds me: if you're visiting Yellowstone on your own, take advantage of the tours that are offered by knowledgeable guides. Some of them last all day, and you ride around in vintage vehicles. You'll learn a lot more than you would on your own.)

One of the things that surprised me was that in this huge park, which has so very many visitors, the visitor center we went to had very few displays that functioned properly. You pushed the button for the little show, and nothing happened. I think only two of the displays were functioning. How disappointing! Especially since most of the displays were about super volcanoes! Yeek! (I noted that predicted ash from the next big blowup would NOT directly affect Portland, OR, which is high on my retirement possibilities list. Mt. St. Helens was also on the map, and I noted that ash patterns went east, not west. Whew!) Super volcanoes are fascinating to study, but seriously frightening to consider.

We visited Yellowstone Lake, which is one of the larger lakes mumble mumble, I forget, but it's big. Okay, Wiki sez: "Yellowstone Lake is the largest freshwater lake above 7,000 ft (2,100 m) in North America." The hotel there (besides being our rest stop) was quite nice. A ship once sank in the middle of the lake, and there are tours that will take you out there to see it.

Then it was off to our accommodations for the next two nights: the Old Faithful Inn. Tom told us that a room cost around $400/night (wrong! It's just under that for 2 nights; I just looked it up), and that staying here took up the majority of the cost of our trip.

I might suggest staying elsewhere.

Sure, the decor of the main part of the hotel is colorful with all its timbers and huge fireplace, etc. But there's no wifi, radio or even TV, as they say they want to keep things rustic. (Okay, I think none of the accommodations in the park have these things.) The lobby is often filled with pandemonium: kids and tourists running, yelling, stopping suddenly, taking pictures…

We were put in the west wing, which is a more modern wing in that it has private bathrooms. I was wondering why the second floor in the main section had a public bathroom as I wandered down the hall one morning, when I realized it was the one the guests used. There were showers in the back (though not in the one on the first floor). At decent morning getting-ready-for-the-day times, it must be PACKED. The one time I used it, a woman brushing her teeth over one sink refused to let me get twenty seconds worth of water to wash my hands.

Let's see. Two showers, three stalls, two sinks, a BUNCH of guests wanting to use same...

But I had a private bath. When you turned on the bathroom light, the fan came on as well, sounding like a semi truck idling. The ice machine across the hall was a trifle quieter. My mattress was lumpy, you couldn't control the temperature in the room (even with the window open and temps approaching the 30s outside, it was stifling!), and the light bulbs were about 10W. I had to go down to the desk to ask for a reading lamp, which was supposed to have been there already. The tub was incredibly slippery. It had a grab bar at the opposite end of where you needed it, and there was no traction or mat in the thing. I showered as quickly as I could, fearing for my very life!

"Rustic" is one thing, but...

We were told that the inn's restaurant was booked 9 months in advance, but that Tom (the self-proclaimed greatest tour director in the world) had booked tables for us that far ahead, as he did for all his tours. So I tried it out. They have a limited menu and I ordered the bison pot roast and roasted root veggies with a salad, because I didn't trust the other items on the menu to be all that fresh. Yes, I'm paranoid. The salad never arrived, but it didn't show up on the bill, either. The couple I ate with were really, really picky (yes, pickier than me!), so in this expensive restaurant with its fancy food the woman finally settled on only the pea soup. She bullied her husband into the same thing (but he had a sundae as dessert once he saw I was ordering the same. He had the large; I had the small.). Then she complained about the color of the soup. That they didn't get more crackers. That the prices were so high (hey, lady, we had a chance to look over the menu before accepting our reservations, and the prices were on it), that the restaurant was so noisy. (It was. You couldn't hear yourself think!) (I saw a review on Travelocity the other day that came to the same conclusions and said the restaurant at the Snow Lodge was by far a better choice.)

(We had a number of couples where the wives seemed to direct their husbands' actions, and the men let themselves be led. Otherwise I don't think they could have fed themselves, looked in the proper direction, or whatever. Is this a matter of couples' pairing personality-wise, or it is age? The couples that were like this were very old.)

And of course the next day—which thank GOD was our "free afternoon"—the dinner hit me like a cannon. It didn't help that I'd just finished my final round of pills the day before. I ran to my room and its private bathroom and UGH! was sick for most of the afternoon. Seriously sick. I had scheduled to do my laundry that afternoon (over at the Snow Lodge, which is one of the two other hotels in that location. The Snow Lodge also has wifi available for a price in its lobby), and found the public rest rooms over there. My apologies, Snow Lodge guests. By the time laundry was done my GI tract was feeling faintly human again. After some ice cream at a local shoppe, it said it might be ready for dinner in a couple hours.

Note: bring your own laundry supplies. The laundry room was out of everything, and the manager and staff were frantic and embarrassed by the oversight. (Of course I'd brought my own.)

Dinner that night was at the deli in the Inn, with pre-made food. DEE-licious! I had the ham 'n cheese croissant, serious yum!, with a pre-made salad. Later I talked with the people behind the coffee bar on the second floor, and the one confided that once he got back to civilization, it took about two weeks for the sulfur smell to come off. "My friends tell me I smell like sulfur," he said. "Do I really?"

"Probably." That morning at our breakfast buffet I'd taken my plate back to my table and was all set to dig into what looked like delicious fare. But one sniff and all I could smell was sulfur. (I'm allergic to sulfa. Could that have played into my illness?) (Ah. Google says it's impossible for a human being to have an allergy to sulfur.)

That night I joined some others in our group on the extensive balcony that faces Old Faithful. During the day, people sit on the east-facing benches there and watch. I noticed that quite a few (Americans, not Japanese) spread their junk all over the benches so others couldn't sit there. "My husband's coming back any minute," they'd say, and you never saw any husband. They just didn't want to sit next to strangers.

When I got back to my room I recalled that I'd wanted to stargaze here since there'd be no city lights. I peeked out my window for an advance view and saw… Bats. Lots and lots of bats, careening everywhere just inches right outside my window. It was an omen! There'd be no stargazing. Brr!

But the hotel's main draw is that it's right next to Old Faithful. It has clocks in the lobby that tell you when the next scheduled eruption is, and you add and subtract 10 minutes to that, because OF doesn't run on any clock. It's just approximately every 90 minutes.

 We'd noticed the crowds gathering when we'd first arrived, and I got to the main viewing spot just as OF took off. Wow! Then later I just happened to be strolling about, noticed the crowds, and meandered over just in time. Finally I caught it at sunset, with the last rays of the sun catching just the top of the steam cloud.

The next day dawned, well, not exactly foggy, but clouds were lying on top of the trees. Guess that's fog. Okay, it was foggy, and added to the general steaminess of Yellowstone, things were pretty pea-soup. We visited a number of geothermal features, almost feeling our way along the boardwalks. We discovered that when pools are a lovely shade of blue, that means the water is too hot to support any life. When you see other colors, the water is still darned hot, but certain algae can live in it.

Ah! The clouds lifted around noon to make a beautiful day! And just in time to see Gibbon Falls, which falls over the rim of Yellowstone into its caldera. Gorgeous! I took a million pictures; let's see how many paintings I can get out of them.

Yellowstone: Beautiful landscapes. Mysterious and sometimes frightening landscapes. We didn't see that much wildlife, but I'm told that lots of people do. It's the luck of the draw of which week you get there.

Next time: the rest of the trip: Grand Tetons! Jackson! Salt Lake City! Casper, WY! And even Denver!

Way Out West

As soon as the 2014 company schedules came out last winter, I checked with our production manager and my supervisor, and then made reservations for Caravan's "Mount Rushmore/Yellowstone" bus tour. I timed it after the "ankle biters" (as our tour director—let's call him Tom—referred to them) had gone back to school. Thus I was on the "geezer" tour, where I was one of the youngest riders. Also one of two singles (our tour costs more, but we get two seats on the bus to pile our bags upon).

MUCH planning went into this, as I wanted to hit Casper, WY, to do book research for my "Three Worlds" series (see book covers at right). Finally I decided to rent a car at SLC, drive to Casper for a full day touring, and then hightail it to Denver, where I'd have an afternoon to look around before heading home the next day.

The night before I left, I was congratulating myself. All bags were ready to go, and I could sleep in until 8:40 the next morning—what a luxury!—before heading out to RDU Intl. Luckily, it hit me that I needed to print out boarding passes. Then as I sat down to begin that process, I began to wonder how I'd come up with the odd time of 8:40 at which to get up.

Ack! My plane took off at 8:40! Which meant I had to get up before dawn to get on the road. Whew, managed, though I hadn't gotten those boarding passes. Wasn't able to print them out on the way back, either. Is there something about the AA website that causes probs? Others seemed to get their passes okay.

It helped me wake up when the german shepherd in the security line developed a sudden fascination with the lady in front of me. He liked her front. He liked her back. His handler politely asked the woman if she could come with him, and she complied, looking surprised and yet not all that surprised. Hm.

Grabbed a yogurt breakfast at RDU. I was recovering from a significant GI problem that had started with a weekend's food poisoning and escalated from there. My doctor warned me that when my pills ran out, I might have some, uh, problems, so I should be sure to eat yogurt. This I managed to find, though I did indeed run into a prob when the pills ran out. TMI? I'll try not to do that again.

The first plane ride I ever took was TERRIFYING. First of all: plane. In sky. Nothing holding it up. Then: turbulence that lasted the entire ride. This time: Kind of relaxed. Hardly hyperventilated at all. So proud of myself! The flights home from the trip were even better, assisted by my yearning to get, you know, HOME.

Always check your planes before boarding. With four rides total, I had two happy planes, one zen-calm one, and one who merrily flapped its elevators at me (we ran into a bit of turbulence on that flight, something I think the plane enjoyed). Make sure you don't bother your plane on takeoff or landing, and thank them afterward. They appreciate it.

Dallas/Ft. Worth airport is HUGE, and requires riding a tram just to get from one side of one terminal to the other side, much less the next terminals. There are currently 5 terminals, with room set aside for a sixth. Each terminal has at least 2 stops, some of which may be in different counties. There are some very nice restaurants, lots of USO parlors, and all in all, it's a nice airport.

Rapid City's brontosaurus (or whatever)

Rapid City's airport, on the other hand, was TINY. The parking lot might hold 1000 cars. Maybe. There was a couple waiting for the same hotel shuttle. They'd arrived two days early for their tour. (Caravan runs one tour a day along the same route. Make sure you take the tour that starts on Friday, so you can see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir the next Thursday.) I'm not sure what their logic was.

Rapid City is a small city with a lively downtown and life-size "casual" President statues on the corners. Tourists stand next to the various presidents to have their pictures made. JFK's statue includes a young JFK, Jr. One of the presidents sits on a bench that you can share.

Went strolling in search of dinner, and an elderly gentleman enjoying coffee at a sidewalk cafe, yelled, "Great rack!" at me as I passed. Thanks a lot, jerk. I kept an eye out for him for the rest of the stay, and considered throwing a drink of my own at him so he could enjoy it, too.

Had a nice dinner at a pub, and the next night had one of the best Mexican dinners of my life at a little place down the street from the hotel. I was hoping to get my fill of fine Mexican fare on this trip, but this was the only place that had anything worth mentioning. (The Qué Pasa Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Bar. Find it. Eat there.) Also, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that, unlike the restaurants along my New England trip last year, every last one of the cafes/restaurants I ate at on this trip knew how to make iced tea. Okay, one place served more iced tea-flavored water, and one place failed, but most were right on. Encouraging!

Iced tea is important.

Rapid City's in a deep valley. Looking out my hotel window, I couldn't help but notice a large brontosaurus, or whatever they're called, perched on the rim of the surrounding hills. Not quite sure why (except that there were a lot of Sinclair stations/drilling stations along our route, and their symbol is a bronty). This is confusing, as the most famous dinosaur discovered around RC was Sue the Tyrannosaurus Rex. (Named after the person who discovered her.) Now, over in Casper, WY, they've just installed a large TRex statue at the Tate Museum, though that museum's well-known for Dee, the Columbian Mammoth, who was discovered in that area by a guy named Dee.

After an organizational meeting, the next morning we all set off in our bus with Ray, our intrepid bus driver, and Tom. First destination: Crazy Horse.

The model shows how it'll look when finished. In the distance, the round hole is the space under his arm, put in now so equipment can get through from the back.

The face is finished. Not sure how they'll put in the feather on top of his head.

WOW!!!! Crazy Horse is FABULOSO!!! He's HUGE (6115 feet high, making Mt. Rushmore seem tiny), and the non-profit organization doesn't get a penny from the government for their work. He might get finished in 100 years. His face is done. A $4 tour got us on a school bus that motored right under the sculpture. This being a weekend, there was no blasting going on, but our bus driver told us that we HAD to stay inside the safety zone. Of course, two idiots immediately took off and man, did he yell at them! Really, the best locations for pics was where we were anyway.

The setup. The dark part back there is Crazy Horse. There's a stadium to the left to use for the future university. (Currently they have a two-year program, with scholarships.) Don't know what the dome/hill in front of the horse is (an Indian Mound museum?), and I suspect the hospital will be all the buildings to the right.

Crazy Horse is more than a statue. The project was commissioned to be an answer to the US's thumbing its nose at Native Americans by putting up Mt. Rushmore in the middle of what was supposed to have been Indian territory. Chief Standing Bear said, "My fellow chiefs and I would like the white man to know the red man has great heroes, too."

When a reporter from National Geographic asked Crazy Horse where his lands were, he replied, "My lands are where my dead lie buried." Thus the pointing pose.

The site is also going to be a university, a museum, and hospital for Native Americans. There's an extensive model in the visitors' center that shows it all. Impressive! I stuck some serious $$ in their donations box. Some of Korczak Ziolkowski (the designer/sculptor)'s family still work on the project, though most are outsiders.

The center has a movie and large amount of display space as well as a well-stocked gift shop and craft demonstrations. Don't miss it! Note: not too much walking required.

The Black Hills of SD are also spectacular. At first they reminded me of the Appalachians, but they seem to be a bit higher (though I haven't been to the high Appalachians). Beautiful scenery.

Tom said most tourists miss this pull-off view spot behind Mt. Rushmore, where you can see George W. in profile.

A few miles down the road on the way back to Rapid City is Mt. Rushmore. This was conceived as a tourist stop out in the middle of nowhere, utilizing various rock spires to be Western heroes like Lewis & Clark, Sacajawea, Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, etc. The sculptor/designer turned it into a large rah-rah USA monument. You've seen the pics. I've seen the pics. It looks like its pics, except picture a terrible walking experience. Signs warn of uneven pavement, but you can go down (usually up) steps that have a rise of four inches or maybe 7 inches (which I think is somewhere near legal standard) or even a foot or more. In the same group of steps.

I don't see any way that Mt. Rushmore could be considered wheelchair-accessible. Lord knows I watched enough parents struggling with their children's strollers. Rushmore does have one elevator down to the theaters and gift store, but everything else has steps. Really oddball steps.

Well, there it was. Four heads. We got to see the "back" of Rushmore as well. The carving was supposed to be much larger but WWII was in full swing, the original sculptor/designer died, and they'd run out of government money (they couldn't afford to put Susan B. Anthony in the group), so they kind of threw up their hands and said, "Good enough."

What it was supposed to look like.

The cafeteria there (check out the chandeliers with the sculptor figures hanging from them) is supposed to be better than the restaurant at Crazy Horse, so we went there. It was good enough, plus a lot of people loved the ice cream shop. I never saw 2X tees in the gift store, though. Note: lots of stairs required to see everything up close, though the various visitor centers are pretty much on the same level (see elevator note above).

Mt. Rushmore is shtick; it is first and foremost a curiosity intended to bring tourist dollars to South Dakota. The exhibits are either about the making of the curiosity, or in some way wave a made-in-Taiwan flag in your face without really showing you why you should want a flag waved at you. Why are these four Presidents so important? The monument merely presents their likenesses to us. (There's a hidden Hall of Records with copies of important national documents like the Constitution. But like I said, that's hidden.) Crazy Horse is a continuing mission, a true memorial that not only honors an entire people, but sets up a system to strengthen them through coming years. It is education in so many ways, plus a sense of community.

For whatever reason, Tom shortened our visit by 15 minutes, which meant I missed the talk that one of the rangers gave about how the monument was carved. However, we'd seen a movie about it in the bus. Or maybe in the visitors' center. The more fleet-footed people on the tour reported that the talk held pretty much the same info, and could be skipped.

Clicking should get you a larger version of this.

Before I left NC, I checked the forecast for the route, and discovered that rain was forecast for all but one day. However, the only day it really rained was when we hit Little Bighorn. Along the way, we passed Sturgis, where for 10 days each year there is a HUGE motorcycle rally, and Caravan suspends its tours to avoid it.

As Montana turned into plains and valleys and rolling landscape and plains and plains and plains (Billings was in a deep valley surrounded by a rock ridge), we passed the Devil's Tower, as seen in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. When I say "passed," I mean we could see it in the distance. From a moving bus, I took a pic.

I think this is Devil's Tower. There are similar structures around that also show up in my photos, but this is the shot from the right spot in the list. I think. I love the zoom on my new camera! This was REALLY far off in the distance, and the bus ride was not a steady one.

Tom, our tour director, LOVED Little Bighorn. He told us all about it and Custer and everything Custer did wrong and what an egomaniac Custer was, and we saw a movie, and Tom detailed the various ways the Native Americans mutilated the bodies of the dead soldiers. Blech. Tone it down, Tom.

It began to rain as we approached. The Bighorn visitors' center is rather tiny, especially when a bus arrives with 48 people to add to the crowd. Less than half could fit into the lecture room (ordinarily they have lectures outside, but even so, they didn't have enough seating there as well), so I missed a second lecture on a different subject.

There are a few museum-type artifacts on display, and a modest gift shop that I'm hitting myself because I didn't get this one biography of a Lakota or maybe Crow (I think) woman that I haven't since been able to find anywhere, not even on the Bighorn site. However, they did have camera SD chips for sale, and by now I'd begun to suspect that I might have need of more memory before the vacation was through. I picked up a 2 GB one for, I think, $13, but changed my mind and reached for the 4GB. "Hey, it's only two bucks more," I told the clerk. "I'll take it." She called her supervisor over and they both went to check out the 4GB chips. Each one had a different price, higher than the next one. They gave me the one I'd grabbed, which was the cheapest. Yay! (No, I didn't have to use it, but it's there and available.) (And I'd begun to recharge my camera every night, just in case. Not quite sure how to read how much of a charge is left. One of the people on the bus had their charge give out just as our day's tour of Yellowstone began, so they didn't get any pictures until the next day, after they'd recharged.)

It was pouring cold, cold rain, but I'd exhausted the contents of the visitors' center and there was still a lot of time left on our stop. So I zipped up my raincoat and went outside. It was POURING. Wind was rough. For a while I thought it was sleeting, but recalled that highs that day were supposed to be in the mid-60s. It wasn't hail, but the rain was that hard! Ugh.

For outside touring, you've got the graveyard at the top of the hill with graves of the whites marked. There was a fire a couple decades ago, which allowed for precise study of various remains, etc., so everything's where it's supposed to be now. Down the hill there's a hiking trail with more gravestones marked along the way, and next to the visitors' center is a very large cemetery with (I was confused about this) veterans and American Indians through the years interred there. I think it goes up to WWII, but it may have more recent graves than that.

We stopped at Billings for the night. Next: Yellowstone! TO BE CONTINUED.

Battle of the Cakes!

I had a brief, friendly argument on Facebook concerning the difference between Pig-Pickin' Cake and Better Than Sex Cake. I'll give you the two recipes I've used or at least have eaten after having it baked by others, and let you decide.

Note: I'm darned if I can find the cookbook with my mom's recipe in it (it was one of those fund-raising cookbooks that gather recipes from ladies at the church), but here's one I found online. They're all pretty much the same, so no one's feathers should get ruffled.

Pig-Pickin' Cake
Called such because this is the cake you eat at a pig pickin'. That's where an entire pig is barbecued in one piece, poor thing, and the crowd picks from the poor, delicious corpse. Of course there's potato salad, slaw, corn on the cob, and sweet tea (with hard liquor available out in back of the barn) to accompany.

1 box yellow cake mix
1 11-oz. can mandarin oranges, undrained
4 eggs
1/2 c. oil
1 3.5 oz. pkg. vanilla INSTANT pudding mix (a very few recipes use a 6 oz. box)
1 15-oz. can of crushed pineapple, undrained
1 12-oz container of Cool Whip
OR an 8-oz can of pineapple with a 9-oz. Cool Whip, depending on how much frosting you need.

Preheat oven to 325°. Mix cake mix, oranges, eggs and oil. Batter will be thin!

Divide batter into three 8-inch pans (for the classic version) or two 9-inch pans or one 9x13 inch pan. Bake 30 min. or until cake tests done.

Frosting:
Combine pudding mix and pineapple (with juice). Fold in Cool Whip. Spread on cooled cake. Don't frost the sides; just slap the stuff between the layers and on top. Oh, you can frost the sides if you want to and have enough frosting. You have my permission. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours before serving.

VARIATION: Ooh, I need to try this.

Before frosting, poke holes in your layers and pour the pineapple juice over them. Don't bother with the juice in your actual frosting.

Cake must be stored in fridge!

(Picture approximate to what I remember it looking like, without the chocolate scribbles, and substituting pecans for the walnuts shown. Also in making three layers, not four, and it being a yellow cake base and having the frosting between the layers and… Well, it looked sorta like this, in a cakish way.)

Better Than Sex Cake

1 box yellow cake mix
3 oz. vanilla instant pudding
1/2 c. water
3 eggs
1 1/2 c. oil
1 c. sour cream

Blend and beat well (probably in the neighborhood of 2 minutes once it's mixed). Stir in:

1 bar German chocolate, grated fine
6 oz. chocolate chips
1 c. chopped pecans, because you can't have a sex cake without some nuts

Grease and flour three 8- or 9-inch pans. Bake at 350° 35 to 40 min.

Frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 c. butter
1 box confectioner's sugar
1 Tbsp. vanilla

Use a mixer to mix it until it's frosting consistency. This one gets frosting on the sides as well as between the layers and on top. If you're feeling creative, sprinkle a little toasted coconut and/or nuts on it all.

My Writing Process (A Blog Tour)

Thanks to Reese Ryan (< please visit her site), I get to grab the metaphorical baton and provide a stop on a blog hop. This should be short & sweet.

I have to answer 4 questions. Let's get started!

1) What am I currently working on?
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?
3) Why do I write what I do?
4) How does your writing process work?

Hm. Pronoun switch on question 4. Sometimes it's not fun to be a grammar nazi.

Let's mash this all together. This year is special for me. At some point early in 2013 I looked at the "last opened" dates on my novel files and was SHOCKED!!!! with multiple exclamation points at how VERY long it had been since I'd last worked on the stories I considered important to get published toot sweet.

Also, for the past year our local writers' group, HCRW, and other sources had been stressing getting our work processed in a professional manner in order to stand out from the self-published crowd and make sure we were presenting our best work.

So beginning last December, I've been re-issuing old books, this time professionally: with pro covers, pro formatting, pro editing, with actual, bought-for-me ISBNs (those are inventory-type numbers) and copyrights. (And lots of money doled out to pay for all this.) I also planned to finish the first major arc of my Three Worlds superhero fantasy series. I've given myself one year to get everything (including website) in order. With Vol. 3 I'm running six weeks behind schedule, but all should still get done by December.

My writing process is thus different this year, as most of this is editing mode. The unpublished books were sitting already written, but they were written long ago and in need of serious updating of style (and tech) as well as cutting. Usually my goal is to write for one hour each day. Most people have daily page count goals, and perhaps when I retire I'll be able to do that, but for now I go by time. On difficult days I employ a timer. On really difficult days I disconnect from the Internet.

My Three Worlds work may be contemporary romance, but it's got these superheroes in it. I like to take über-powerful heroes and ask, "How would they work in the real world?" It's kind of like The Incredibles, but more so. As a fan from way back of superhero comics, I have favorite kinds of superheroes, favorite kinds of superhero organizations, but always thought they weren't operating logically. Now I can make up my own. My organizations have money problems, PR units, med techs who accompany the action teams, transportation problems, and lots of cool gadgets. The biggest problem with that last item is that our own tech is advancing so rapidly that I have to keep changing things to make them futuristic.

A few others write superhero romance, I've noticed, but these are more romance-oriented than mine (though this first arc is pretty romantic), and most of the ones I've read haven't set up as intricate a universe as I have to. I'm settling back for a long series! Also, Three Worlds has a lot of paranormal/New Age stuff in it: telepathy, ghosts, angels, "how do we relate to the universe?" questions.

That's because I'm really interested in that kind of thing. I've always been fascinated with the paranormal, and even attended a psychic school for 3 years way back when. These days I'm a member of the Rhine Research Center Book Club, which is immersing me in the latest scientific explorations of psychic phenomena. It's sooo cool! And some of the people in the group can do amazing things!

So that's it for these questions. Hope you'll try my books. (If you like 'em, please write a review. If you'd don't like 'em, please write a review.)

I'm passing the baton on to two other bloggers. Check 'em out next week! Here they are:

Maggie Maxwell is a speculative fiction writer with a love for adventure, superheroics, and a good laugh! She's over at the Wandering Quille.

Selena Blake is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 20+ erotic paranormal and contemporary romances. Fans gobble up her Stormy Weather series. She's a fan of action movies, green tea, Milky Way bars and thunderstorms, not necessarily in that order. Find her online at http://www.selena-blake.com

COMMENT ON THIS POST TO WIN! I'm giving away a free ebook to a commenter. If you also want to be put on my mailing list (like an email a couple times a year), please include your email address, camouflaged from spambots by putting things like "@" and "." in brackets and spelled out: [at] [dot].

The Livin' is Easy

SUMMER FOR LOVE BLOG HOP

GRAND PRIZES

(6) $50 Amazon or B&N Gift Cards

Comment with your name and email to be entered into the Grand Prize drawing. Comments without name and email will not be counted. Commenting on each and every stop will increase your chances of winning.

Winners for the (6) Grand Prizes will be drawn and announced on THE ROMANCE TROUPE blog by June 10th.

Find a list of all stops here!

Before we begin, let me announce that from the 4th through the 6th, you can buy Lost in the Stars (vol. 2 of the Three Worlds saga) for just 99¢ on Amazon! Sorry this price couldn't stick around until the 8th and thus the full run of this blog hop, but Amazon has conditions on its sales.

Welcome to my stop within the "Summer for Love" Blog Hop! Hope you enjoy it. Stay tuned to the bottom of this page for a chance to win a FREE EBOOK!

SUMMER! Astronomically, it occurs between June 20th-ish and September 22nd-ish. But that's if you live in the Northern Hemisphere. In the southern one, summer happens while we northerners are having winter.

Thus it is that our two lead characters in the superhero romance, Touch of Danger (vol. 1 of the Three Worlds saga), find themselves meeting and romancing during summer, even though it's February. Being that they're in the tropics doesn't hurt either.

Lina O'Kelly was just starting her own vacation...

. . .

White fear washed through her like ice, and once again Carolina O’Kelly asked herself if now wasn’t a good time to take another step back from life. She couldn’t think straight. This was all getting too real, and if she got flustered she’d die.

The hotel was burning down around her.

Wishing wouldn’t stanch the smoke. She shivered in the heat of the tropical morning.

Come on, do something! she ordered herself through the numbing daze. Focus on goal A. Okay, this is me now, doing something. She sat frozen on the bed.

The hotel posted no fire instructions on the door that allowed tendrils of smoke to curl into the room, despite the wet towels stuffed under it. No fire trucks had yet shown up here in the middle of nowhere.

Hard reality was that no matter how anxiously she wished, the ParaNet was probably on the other side of the world stopping some war or another. The harder reality was that Lina O’Kelly was too damned unimportant for even the most minor of ParaNetters to care about.

It was up to her to save herself. As usual.

“This is not funny, God,” she muttered, and the flames of righteous indignation blazed through her inner freeze.

She jerked the knot on the sheets in her lap tighter, letting out an “umph!” for her efforts. It didn’t feel secure to her. She stepped on one sheet and pulled up, testing—and the knot slipped.

Damn.

So she reknotted it and pushed the thought of failure away as if it were a physical thing. It was five long stories to the ground from this rapidly-crumbling firetrap someone had advertised as a hotel. A bitter, dark fume oozed out of the electrical outlet next to her.

She set to work on the next sheet, tying it to the thin blanket with renewed determination. All she had to do was plan and take action: one, two, three, like all the Zig Ziglar motivational speeches she listened to.

Goal A? Get out of hotel. Alive.

Dying was not on her list of life goals. Sure, she might break a leg on the way down, but if she did, she’d still be able to crawl to safety.

She tugged on the new knot. This one held—good. Hope bloomed within her. Gathering up her prize, she ran to the balcony and threw it over the railing. It unwound down the side of the ugly cement structure—less than halfway. The bloom soured into a tight ball in her gut.

**You’ll need more sheets,** they told her.

“I noticed,” she replied. She closed her eyes, took a deep, cleansing breath and tried not to notice the burning taint that came with it. Squaring her shoulders, she hauled the liferope back up. She looked around her room desperately. Long locks of dark hair still wet from her shower slapped against her face as she turned. The room’s curtains were already ripped; they’d never begin to hold her. Where could she get some more sheets? How much time did she have?

Damned cheap hotel! She should have paid more and stayed down the road in St. Catherine, at one of the nice, nonflammable hotels there. Trying to save a few bucks—stupid! Stupid! Lina cursed herself as she dragged her chain of sheets back inside.

She grabbed some clothes, her wallet and her iPad, and stuffed them into her beach bag before she paused to stare at it. What was she doing? Having something to wear besides this nightgown was a B goal at most. This was not survival.

She was getting rattled again. Remember Goal A. Everything was expendable except herself. Still, the bag was packed; no need to waste it. She tossed it onto the balcony to grab on the way out.

She fumbled at sneakers, but her hands shook too badly to pull the laces into any kind of bow or knot. Get hold of yourself, Muttbutt! she berated herself. She hurled the shoes out over the balcony, venting her rage and frustration. Put the shoes on once she was down and safe.

Lina wanted to kick the walls and scream. This damned cardboard hotel didn’t offer much for survival. Hell, the fire alarm hadn’t even peeped yet. She’d used up all her room’s resources. What was left? Oh—other rooms. Behind a chair stood a connecting door to the room next door.

Of course it was locked. Nothing in this life came easy. She hurled herself at the door—yowch!—did it again—and it gave. One more heave and it crashed open.

The cloud of dark gray smoke hanging in this room whirlpooled from the disturbance. After she pulled her nightgown’s bodice up to cover her nose and mouth, Lina yanked one corner of sheets and blankets off the bed there as quickly as she could. Still she had to pause to cough out the bitter smoke.

Suddenly someone pounded at the hallway door. The sound stopped. She heard male coughing in the corridor, then the pounding resumed. Please, God, let it be a fireman!

“Hold on!” she cried as she unlocked the door. It stuck. The person on the other side threw himself against it. As it finally slammed open, a new, darker cloud of smoke followed. Heat poured in like a wave. Lina doubled over in a paroxysm of coughing. The blind sound of man-coughing echoed her. He wheezed as he shoved the door closed behind himself and then pulled Lina closer to the balcony and fresh air.

She gasped it in and rubbed her tearing eyes.

“You okay?” the man asked.

She blinked against the blur. Tall. Brawny. Dark hair, medium-brown skin. A familiar, chiseled jaw line and even more familiar black clothing. Valiant?  Awright, Valiant! Yes!

Valiant of the ParaNet.

Valiant equaled safety. Lina’s shoulders sagged with relief.

But... but he wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t putting out the fire with his parapowers, wasn’t sweeping her up in his arms to fly her from this horrible mess. This had to be someone dressed like the famous parahero.

But no. The right sleeve of the costume might be in shreds, but the face was definitely his.

“I’m, I’m fine. Thanks,” she managed to say. One step farther back; this wasn’t reality, was it?

“Oui, I’m the real thing,” he assured her, and his voice held Valiant’s French-Canadian accent, the rich timbre. “But non, maintenant I have no powers. Sorry. Don’t worry. We’ll get out.”

He scanned the area outside the balcony, assessing the situation much as she’d done. Then he turned back into the room to circle the place as he kept low out of the smoke, checking what was in drawers, searching for tools. Valiant tried the phone but put it back when someone told him no one was answering downstairs. Oh—she had. Her body was talking while she numbly stood somewhere behind herself. Too far from reality, Lina. Come back. Don’t forget the fire.

Valiant without powers! How had that happened? And a helluva time for it to happen. God was certainly having a good belly laugh at her expense today, but He had no business laughing at Valiant. Valiant was one of the good guys. He was Important.

Valiant went out to the balcony again.

“There’s no way down out there,” she told him. “I think we have to make our own rope. Help me with these sheets. Please?”

He grunted his acceptance of her plan and together they wrestled the final sheets off the bed. While he dragged the bundle to her room she retrieved towels out of the bathroom.

Once back, she wet the towels and stuffed them around the connecting door as... Valiant... snapped the TV off. CNNi had been airing PanRand, with that spectacular footage of Valiant towing a transatlantic jet on his back to a safe landing. The powerless version here and now sat on her bed and knotted cheap sheets together.

He nodded with his chin at the sheets she’d already worked. “They’ll never hold,” he declared. “Watch.”

He made some kind of sailor’s knot with his sheets: over, over and through. He gave it an ineffectual tug and frowned.

“I’ll get used to this,” he muttered, and then jerked the knot tight with more force than was necessary. He displayed the result to her before starting on a new sheet.

Lina quickly undid her knots and retied them the way he did. When she pulled on the two ends, the connection was definitely stronger.

Her guides’ warning cut through Lina’s concentration. **Get out now.**

“You could have given me a little more warning,” she griped.

“Warning?” Valiant asked.

“Sorry, not you,” she said quickly. “Um, we’ve got to get out now.”

He fished inside his black vest. “I have some twine we could add to these knots. You have a scissors or knife?” he asked.

“Sorry,” she told him, trying not to panic at the stream of **hurry, hurry, hurry,** in her mind, “but we’ve got to get out now, ready or not.” She knotted her first sheet to the balcony railing. Throwing the line of sheets over the edge, she caught the last corner. “Come on, give me yours,” she demanded.

“Not yet. We’re in enough trouble as it is. We have time to make this safer.”

“No, we don’t,” she told him. “They say we have to get out now. Hurry!” 

“Qui? Who says?”

“My guides. Please don’t argue with my guides; they’re usually right. Usually.”

He sat there on the bed, frowning at her and not moving.

“I know it sounds weird, but please. Please! We’ve got to hurry. Now, they say.”

**Tell him to roll when he hits.**

“And they say to roll when you hit,” she added as she grabbed the sheets from him. He opened his mouth to say something when she held up a warning finger. “Tell me I’m crazy once we’re down. Please, we’ve got to get out now!”

He shook his head in surrender and worked the final knot himself. “It should be more secure,” he warned, then shrugged. “The cards we’re dealt,” he said as if that decided things.

Lina watched the line of sheets and blankets fall. The final length was close enough to the ground; good. “Okay, you go first. I have to get my—”

But he was already lifting her up, swinging her over the railing as if he’d done this a million times before. “You’re first. Make it quick.”

. . . 

Hope that piqued your interest! Now that you've made it down the bottom of this page, I've got an EXTRA special offer for you: Leave your name and email address in a comment (make sure you write "[at]" instead of "@" to discourage spam robots) to be put on my e-newsletter mailing list (which I must get around to writing) (I'll only send it out every few months, and you can opt out at any time), and be entered NOT ONLY in The Romance Troupe's overall contest, but also in a contest to get a free e-version of any of my books! If you can't comment for whatever reason, send me an email (this won't enter you in the Romance Troupe's contest, though): carolastrickland [at] yahoo.com (see how it works?). (If you want Lost in the Stars as your prize, you'll have to wait to receive it until it goes into wide distribution somewhere around the 20th of this month.)