From Acadia to Yellowstone: 12 months of National Parks, Forests and Monuments

Author assing around in White Mountains last year

“I can’t believe that was a year ago,” I said a year ago.

I was in New Hampshire with my two friends named Ben, one from my hometown, the other from my college.

The previous August, Ben from College, Max from College and Tom of “Tom’s On The Move” fame, had left for a month-long journey in Peru.  If you scroll back far enough through the hallowed pages of this blog, you will find my riveting accounts of that adventure — from our wanderings in the dry deserts around Nazca , through Machu Picchu and the shits, until at last I scaled the glacier to the summit of Yannapaccha. 

A year later, the two Bens and I were getting to go on a slightly less ambitious adventure in the White Mountains, along the barren 5,000 ft ridge from Mt.  Lafayette to Lincoln and then Little Haystack.

The mountains weren’t quite as big as Peru’s but they have a stunning New England beauty that is all their own. As we hiked through the pines and up into the barren alpine zones, we talked about what kinds of adventures we could have next.  Peru was just so damn awesome, what could we do to top that?

It’s debatable whether I’ve topped anything over the last 12 months, but I’ve also been pretty busy.  In that time, I’ve seen more National Parks and Monuments than I have in all the previous years of my life.

If for no purpose beyond my own callow validation, I’ve included listed some pictures and descriptions of my visits to these awesome places. Feel free to stop reading now. The page view counter has already registered your visit and I can feel good about myself regardless.

The White Mountain National Forest-New Hampshire, Maine

The Bens looking out over the Lafayette ridge in the White Mountains

I’ve done more hiking here than anywhere else and I still think it’s beautiful. Westerners may scoff at a range who’s highest prominence is just over 6,000 feet. Yeah, laugh all you want. Try climbing Mt. Washington in winter when it gets to 20 below and hurricane force winds are blowing ice into your face. 4,000 feet.

The ridge along Lafayette wasn't quite so intense when I hiked it last, but it made for a nice summer trip with plenty of hundred mile views across the New Hampshire landscape.

Acadia National Park-Maine

Waiting for the sunrise on Cadillac Mountain

A fine place to see the sunrise come up before the rest of the country does. Max, Josh and I climbed up Cadillac Mountain in the early morning hours, managed to avoid tripping or falling down anything, and watched the sun rise out of the ocean. The carriage roads around the island afforded some spectacular running. None other than Mr. Nelson Rockefeller had built them and they are reminiscent of the paths through Central Park — only they weave around mountains. 

Rockefeller also deserves some credit for buying up the land for Grand Teton National Park (included a little further down).

One day I went kayaking and got to see some of the local attractions like the Cranberry Isles and The Thunder Hole.

  

Sand Dunes National Lake Shore-Indiana

I can’t say that I really got a chance to experience this place, since I was simply driving through. I made a point of pulling off the highway though, even though it was pouring rain. I got drove down to the beach, got out and skipped a rock across lake Michigan.

If the weather hadn’t been so crappy, and I wasn’t so hell bent to keep pushing west, I would have camped there. Instead, I drove a few hours more and spent that night sleeping at a truck stop inside my car.

Anyway, Sand Dunes is administered by the National Parks service, so I’m going to add it to my count.

Badlands National Park-South Dakota

My dad on our trip to the badlands

I first encountered this strange desert landscape when I made the drive out to Wyoming. That’s also where I ran across my first rattlesnake and saw buffalo for the first time.  In March, my dad came out to visit and I got to go over the same territory of  buttes and canyons. This still may be the most beautifully strange place that I have ever been.

The Black Hills National Forest-South Dakota, Wyoming

Spearfish canyon in March

There is plenty to love in the Blackhills if you are into driving RV’s or have always dreamed at spending the night in a Flintstone-themed campsite. From Wall Drug to the Reptile Gardens to Mt. Rushmore millions of Americans have flocked to the sacred lands of the Sioux, now an oasis of tourist schlock. 

But there is still plenty of beauty out there. I am particularly impressed by Harney Peak, the highest point in South Dakota, which I have been up twice since moving out west. The nearby Needles rock formation is spectacular.

There is also Spearfish Canyon, which is a fine place for cross-country skiing or hiking, and the Bearlodge Mountains, in Wyoming, which afford much of the same scenery with fewer tourists.

Devils Tower National Monument-Wyoming

No, there is no apostrophe in Devils Tower.

I still haven’t climbed it, but I have been around its base for what that’s worth. Not only is the tower itself a spectacular sight to behold, but the land around it is very pretty. There are the ponderosa pines and the Red Beds near the Belle Fourche River down below. In my trips there, I have had the chance to see hawks and bald eagles wheeling around its summit.

The Bighorn National Forest-Wyoming

Looking past a cairn towards summit of Cloud Peak

The majestic Big Horn Mountains lie right outside of Buffalo, just 70 miles west of me. They are a nice place to get away to that’s not so far.

I’ll just want to have some good snowshoes in order to hike there when winter rolls around.

Grand Teton National Park-Wyoming

View of Grand Teton between two pine trees

I can’t wait to go back here and climb some more mountains.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument-Montana

Memorial to fallen Indians  on the Little Bighorn Battlefield

If Custer had come in on a day like the day Ben (from my hometown) was there, the battle probably wouldn’t have happened. The smoke from a fire on the nearby Cheyenne Reservation obscured cut the visibility drastically so that he probably wouldn’t have spotted the Indians from the “Crows Nest” up in the mountains. It was a great way to see where this terrible battle occurred, which hardened the United States resolve to  subjugate native  tribes and land.

 I had read “The Last Stand” by Nathaniel Philbrick earlier in the year, which gave me a better sense of how the battle had unfolded, and how strong personalities like Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse had clashed with against one another like tectonic plates. As wonderful as the national parks are, in many ways they seem like a compromise made necessary to check the land-grabbing ambition of Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny won and the west was tamed.  As great as the parks are, they will never match that original freedom over the land.

Shoshone National Forest-Wyoming

&Custer National Forest-Montana

Shoshone National Forest near Cody, Wyo.

I haven’t really hiked in these places yet. But based on my drives to and from Yellowstone, I really want to.

They have the beauty to match Yellowstone and the Tetons and have the added bonus of being less populated and not requiring campers to register their places in advance.

 Both Shoshone and Custer are in the Absaroka range, in Wyoming and Montana respectively.

On the way from Cody to Yellowstone’s east entrance, the mountains in the Shoshone Forest have a Utah-like quality to them with majestic, weathered stone overhead. The elements have hewn the rock into strange, towering formations that would look right at home in a surrealist painting. Even with the desert quality of the landscapes, there is still snow on the peaks, that climb as high as 13,000 feet.

On my second trip to Yellowsone, Ben and I went to the Northeast Entrance via Red Lodge, Montana, taking us through Custer National Forest and through a different segment of Shoshone.

After we stopped to sample beer at the brewery in Red Lodge, we went over the pass, which tops out at almost 11,000 feet.

We stopped at the Montana/Wyoming border and went for the walk in the tundra. Above us glaciers remained, scorning the heat of summer. Below, pine forests climb the slopes..

Shoshone on the Wyoming side, was far different from the Utah-like waste near Cody. Instead, the mountain slopes were lush with pines and meadows full of wildflowers. It was spectacular in the late day light.

Shoshone National Forest near the Montana Border

Yellowstone National Park – Wyoming, Montana and Idaho

Ben looking at the Yellowstone River at the start of our hike in the north part of the Park

In my two excursions to Yellowstone, I have covered a good part of the territory. From Mammoth Hot Springs, to Grand Prismatic and of course, Old Faithful. Along the way, I saw plenty of buffalo and elk.

Needless to say, the place is not overrated. It is filled with tourists up to the Wazzoo, but I think the park does a good job of accommodating them all.

Plus, when I did want to get away, I managed to. Ben and I spent two full days of hiking near Mammoth and the only time we saw people was near the trailhead. In their place, we had an ungodly amount of bugs, which was a drag.

On my first trip out, my dad and I climbed to the top of 10,500-foot Mt. Washburn and got the treat of taking in a panorama that included the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Yellowstone Lake and the distant peaks of the Tetons.

Like any place, taking the time to walk away from the car and get into nature firsthand makes the experience all the more rewarding.

Elk horn resting near the trail in northern Yelowstone

And there you have it! 12 months, 12 national parks, forests and monuments. And while I’m on the subject of federally maintained lands, I guess I’d be remiss if I left out the Burnt Hollow Recreation Area 20 miles outside Gillette. This land belongs to the government via the Bureau of Land Management. When I don’t have the chance to explore the far-flung and spectacular places, it’s nice to have something relatively close and still pretty good.

I would like to thank Big Government for setting aside these areas specifically for me to play in, and for the amount of work they have put into keeping them unspoiled and full of wonder.

Grand Prismatic, Yellowstone

Buttes, Rattlesnakes and Canyons: They’re Called The Badlands for a Reason

 After I crossed the Missouri River, there were no more neat grids of fields, but a far less civilized arrangement of sagebrush and hills.

The land in western South Dakota pitches and rolls like a confused sea and seems just as endless. When I came through, cattle drifted about the emptiness like wayward vessels, their backs shimmering in the heat of the sun. Occasionally, a ledge of crumbling stone would jut out like a bone through a butte of dried-up grass. In other places, erosion had carved deep arroyos into the dusty ground. For all I could tell, they might have been cut by a downpour last week or they could have been marked in the land for a thousand years or more.

The word that comes to mind when I think of this landscape is “unfinished.” Some master-architect had gone off some half-written blueprints and never got around to putting in trees or water features. The guy had left broken rock lying around, maybe planning to make them into ornamental walls later on. When it came time for the paint job, he’d cheaped out and made everything beige.

Beige was the rage, the color for rocks, for dirt and all the grassland flora. The whole thing looked slap-dash and unstable, built from crumbling low-grade materials that could fall apart at any minute.

I had a difficult time accepting that for hundreds of miles, this unruly chaos was actually the law of the land. No one had come to level off the buttes or neaten up the shrubs. There was only the road, closed off on either side by barbed wire fencing.

Inside the Badlands National Park

Cresting a rise, I estimated that I could see about five miles of highway to the front of me and about the same distance in the rearview mirror. I was alone. But I had my Led Zeppelin going strong — the BBC sessions in case you were curious — and was loving every minute of the crazy journey. The road could go forever. After thousands of miles, I had finally discovered bliss behind the wheel.

I laughed, I honked at cattle, drove a hundred miles an hour. I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

For every car I saw, there were at least two billboards. The signs for Wall-Drug were spread out over maybe two hundred miles “An American Experience!” they shrieked to the passing cars. Then there was 1880 Town. “Come Ride With McNasty!” the signs exhorted, an attempt to lure little kids behind the gates.

To the south, I could see a place where the land dropped away. Miles distant, there was a tawny mesa jutting out above the plains.

I pulled off at a highway exit. It was $15 to get inside the park. My fee got me a map of the trails, brochures about local wildlife along with warnings not  to travel far without water.

It was indeed burning hot and dry. The land showed it. There was an overlook where you could look out over a cliff, over the prehistoric land. The cliff itself was made of something in between stone and crumbly mud. It dropped away, perhaps 300 feet, revealing alternating stripes of beige and rose colored sediment that lined up perfectly with the stripes on the opposing walls a half-mile away.

The land looked so water-starved that I imagined I could have pissed out a whole other canyon if I’d wanted to.

The soil was cracked up like alligator skin, parched out of its mind by the sun and wind. It was hard to tell where the rocks ended and the rock-hard soil began.

Powerlines at sundown

After staring at the godforsaken land for the appropriate amount of time, I got back on the road, following it in between the buttes. The landscape would have worked just fine in any of the Road Runner cartoons. I stayed vigilant for falling anvils and all suspicious packages labeled “ACME.”

The road descended the cliffs over a series of steep switchbacks to a park information center.

Beyond the parking lot there were countless tall buttes, shimmering in the bright sun. The headwall I had just driven down stretched for dozens of miles either way and rose 500 feet. Back in the day, pioneers had come to grief trying to drive their wagon trains over the forbidding escarpment. The cliff itself was cut up into a labyrinth of deep canyons, mind-bogglingly complex. Within a half-mile of careless walking, I thought, it would be a cinch to become hopelessly lost.

The author  exploring a canyon

Beyond the handful of tourists snapping pictures at the visitor’s center, the wide empty land impressed me, and I knew that I needed to explore.

To do this, I put on my running clothes and a small backpack that I loaded up with the maps, my camera and plenty of water. I brought a compass so I wouldn’t have to rely on the difficult-to-distinguish features of the landscape as guidance.

It was good to be running again, exciting even from the road. The map showed some trails nearby, but before I got to them, I saw some power lines that lead into a canyon.

“I wonder how many people have been down there.”

I ended up walking more than running, simply staring into the grandeur. Eventually, I lost the lines and wandered through the crisscrossing nexus of secondary canyons. I paid close attention every time I came to an intersection. After all, the steep, eroding walls made it almost impossible to climb out of the maze, and I forgot the turns, it might not be so easy to find my way back. A creek had run through the place during the wetter seasons, and there were still sections of puddles and sticky mud.

A frog, resting in the muck, was seemingly unperturbed by my sticking a camera in his face.

High above, birds nests made from mud clung to canyon walls. Several dozen of them were clumped together. With their gourd-like shape and the dark openings at the top, they made me think of featureless, terracotta dolls, jawas to the Star Wars fans amongst us.

There were a lot more of these suckers up high on the canyon walls.

Eventually, the canyon started to narrow and I decided to turn around and see what the marked trails had to offer.

The first thing I noticed at the beginning of the path was a sign that read “Beware of Rattlesnakes.”

The word “beware” has so much more poignancy than “caution” or even “danger.” When I think of caution, I think of wet floors in malls—“don’t fall on your dumb ass!” “Beware” is a word that should strike fear into your very soul. 

As I started up the steep embankment, the sun, low in the sky, cast a blush over the land. Among the buttes, there were those highlights and deep shadows that landscape photographers prize. As I climbed higher, I could look upon the endless Dakota grassland stretching east.

Near, the top I went off trail so that I could reach the top of a local butte.

I guided myself up a nimble pitch of rock, balancing on a ridge of scree that was treacherous as marbles on a tile floor.

Suddenly, there came a sharp rattle.

“Oh shit!”

I leaped back and nearly fell bass-ackwards the way I’d came.

Yup. It was a rattlesnake, maybe four feet long, coiled like a spring with its head bobbing ominously from side to side. The little forked tongue flicked the air, and the bead eyes locked into mine, communicating indifferent regard.

I had read that the snakes around here attacked rarely, but would give a warning. After that, it would behoove the interloper to step away and I was all too happy to do so. The snake kept watching me, but made no move.

Feeling a little braver than before, I reached for my camera and took a few shots. Disdaining paparazzi, he began to slither off.

I started back down to the trail, chastened by the encounter.

Yeah — you better run! 

The top of the pass leveled out into pancake-flat prairie land. I started running again, but slowly and with my eye out for assassins in the dust.

At the top of a small hill of dirt, I surprised an entire herd of mule deer. They burst into flight, bounding off in strange, lock-kneed leaps.

Suspicious mule deer

It was still light enough that I felt comfortable going back off trail, and ascended another butte. From the top, I saw dark clouds climb above the broken landscape. The sunken light lit them with a hellish glow from within.

I shivered in my t-shirt. Before, it had been baking hot. Summoning  what nimbleness I could muster, I negotiated the slippery scree on the way back down and ran the remaining two miles back to my car.

That night, I pulled into a campsite, but stayed inside the Mazda.  A honking wind out of hell ripped across the flatland, buffeting the sides of my metal and glass shelter. My makeshift tarp shelter would have been futile with no trees to tie up to, and because wooden barriers prevented me from moving my car to a place where I could park on the tarp. As in Wisconsin, the car sleeping really sucked. At least I slept for free. I woke up early enough to head out before the fee-collector came around.  

Canyonlands