1958 Trip Part 2: Yellowstone and Beyond

On to Yellowstone! If you can't read my scrawled note in the scrapbook under the picture at left, it says: "Lots of bears in Yellowstone. These are some. One bear snapped at Uncle Mile's [sic] cigar!" (Sorry, as an editor I couldn't resist the "sic".) We should have spent July 10 in Yellowstone as near as I can recover it, though the date doesn't appear in the scrapbook. (As always, clicking on the picture should enlarge it.)

A closeup of the bear photo appears below the scrapbook shot.

I find from my recent reading in Are We There Yet? The Golden Age of American Family Vacations, already cited in this post, that this photo has a lot of don't-even-think-0f-trying-this elements, mostly the fact that the car ahead of us has someone (a kid?) outside the car. [ADDED LATER: and obviously, whoever took the picture (probably me) was outside the car as well.] According to the book, bear inuuries to tourists rose from 40 in 1952 to 70 in 1955, to 109 in 1956. No numbers for 1958 when I was there, but obviously it was a major problem. Thirty people bitten by bears acknowledged that they had approached the bear. This is dumb. This isn't Yogi Bear's Jellystone; Yogi didn't get his own show until 1961 anyway, according to Wikipedia. The book also describes injuries and a few tragic deaths of kids who fell into hot springs and geyser pools, which are beautiful but boiling hot. Unaware of the lethality of the place, we enjoyed Yellowstone. My scrapbook notes that we saw Old Faithful erupt three times, though of course in those days you couldn't watch it on a live webcam. I know we also saw Yellowstone falls and a lot of other geysers, Mammoth Hot Springs, etc. As far as I can reconstruct we spent only one day in Yellowstone, staying that night at a motel in West Yellowstone, Montana, just outside the west gate of the park. But Yellowstone is still very much with me, though I haven't been there since.

I still remember Yellowstone as a great, wild, amazing place. I've still never seen geysers anywhere else, though I know Iceland and a few other places have them. The whole geothermal thing at Yellowstone is amazing, and still so to me.

As for the bears, well, we now have bears proliferating again in the east -- black bears, not the bigger brown bears and even grizzlies of the west -- but I still plan to respect them. And not feed them.

From West Yellowstone, Montana, we crossed western Montana, stopping for a while in Virginia City. Though not as well known as its Nevada namesake, it was quite happy to sell the Old West atmosphere to tourists, and the attached photo was taken there. My chronology slides a bit here because I am not sure whether we stayed in Lewiston, Idaho en route to Canada or on the way back. At the moment I'm opting for the way back and saying that we stayed in Butte, Montana on the night of July 11, then drove across the thin neck of Idaho and northeast Washington, near Spokane, into British Columbia on the 12th. I know we went to Mass in Nelson, BC on the 13th.

I recall the beautiful lake and mountain country around Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and various sites where I first learned about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce. We crossed into Canada north of Spokane en route to Nelson, BC, where Uncle Miles had business. It's in beautiful country along Kootenay Lake (here's the town's current website) but to me, the main excitement was that this was the first time I'd ever been in a foreign country! There was a different flag (the old red ensign then: no maple leaf yet) and you even still saw the Union Jack occasionally. The jail was spelled "gaol". The fountain drinks tended not to have ice in them. I think BC then was one of the most British parts of Canada, but it was all British enough to me.

I bought a British flag, and for years had a copy of Macleans Magazine, Canada's longstanding national weekly. That issue of Macleans was in my scrapbook for decades, but has since disappeared. That British Columbia seemed exotic to me seems odd after my years of Middle East meanderings, but it was my first venture outside the U S of A.

From Nelson we headed south again, through northeast Washington and Idaho. We tried to visit Hell's Canyon on the Snake River on the Idaho-Oregon border, but despite crossing the Snake several times never actually got there. I remember seeing wild parts of the river, but we never got to the canyon. I can honestly say that to this very day I am not sure whether I have ever set foot in the state of Oregon. If I did, it was looking for Hell's Canyon that day (July 13? or 14? 1958). We spent the night in Lewiston, Idaho. I remember having dived over my head in the swimming pool and having to be pulled out at our motel, named for Sacajawea. It may have been this one, shown in a vintage postcard and apparently still there, but at this distance I'm not sure. I'm sure if one Sacajawea inn closed, another would open soon; she's a big name in those parts. Even before she was on the dollar.

That brings me at least up to the current date so I'll stop again for now.