A Voyage of Discovery: Betsy and Bubba on the Road

I know now that someone, at least one someone, is reading this weblog, since Nancy Whitin e-mailed to find out if I’d actually driven off the edge of the Sylvan Pass. So I’d best be more disciplined about keeping up.

The hotel opened on May 19th with the annual opening ceremony, that involves the staff, and a few early bird guests, gathering in the lobby while Bethanie, head of the bell staff, plugs in the mahogany grandfather clock at exactly 11:00 AM opening day. The season will conclude with her unplugging the clock at 11:00 AM October 8. It would seem a little more romantic or dramatic if she had to swing the pendulum, plugging it in seems a little tacky, but so be it. Of course, with the multiple power outages we experience here, it will be a full time job keeping the clock on time, or we’ll be working at least an extra week!

Despite my greatest fears, I am functioning reasonably well on the computer. Still a bunch of tricks to learn with this arcane DOS-based system, but the staff is very helpful, and most have been through multiple seasons with the system from hell, so they can straighten me out and keep me out of trouble.Certainly none of the mistakes I make are life and death matters, and, in my first week, my cash drawer and register log have balanced out. Most of the guests are delightful. They are here to enjoy a vacation and the park, want to know what we can tell them that they might enjoy, want to find out where to spot wildlife and tell us what they spotted. There are the occasional guests from hell. They walk in loaded for bear(the appropriate place to do that, I guess!), already know they won’t like their rooms or the meals, certainly don’t like the staff; the reassurance is in the knowledge that they’ll be gone in one or two days.

For the pleasant ones, you become a little like the barkeep in their favorite neighborhood bar. While there are four desk clerks lined up, they’ll return to the one they started with to share stories of their day, get a heads up on tomorrow’s weather, or just chat.

Many of the guests are international visitors. Their accommodations are booked by travel agents at rates even more extravagant than the already high rates; we are duty bound not to tell them the real rates, nor to make any alterations to their rooms, even if they want to pay to upgrade.

One guest checked in but demanded a change in rooms before they even saw the room they were assigned to. Three days later, they asked for a new room, were shown the original room they refused and loved it. The certain solution is service with a smile, no matter what, and get the supervisor to resolve any issues. A couple of the stafff sought the opportunity to be a “senior guest service agent”: the first line behind the desk clerk. Not I; I seek to resolve no problems, just want to be another bozo on the bus this summer.

I got a few days off to visit with Carol, Jim and Roger. I drove over to West Yellowstone where they were staying, and convinced myself to actually book a motel room for the night, so long had it been since I’d enjoyed a real bath tub. On Sunday, Carol and I drove up to Big Sky, about 40 miles north of West Yellowstone, and went for a ride in the Gallatin National Forest. Nice horses, gorgeous views, fascinating crossings of raging streams with water up to our shoe soles. I’m not sure Maybelline would have been up to the task.

On Tuesday, they picked me up and we drove to Bozeman for a little tour, then on to Billings. I remembered Billings from our first visit as a cute and quaint little western town. Billings has grown enormously, and not, from what I saw, necessarily for the better. Homeless shelters, missions, addicts on the street, bars on homeowners’ windows, closed businesses, a general sense that bigger has not necessarily been better for Billings. I dropped them at the Billings airport on Wednesday morning and drove back to Bozeman, delighting in driving a little car that gets 52 miles a gallon instead of a big van that gets 15 miles a gallon. I visited with Andra while Bubba swam in their fishpond, and took a little tour of their neighborhood, ran a bunch of errands and headed back into the park.

Apparently I’d missed all the excitement. There are two young male grizzlies in the neighborhood. Both have just been kicked out of the family unit by their moms, in anticipation of new arrivals. One cruised through the employee rv park Tuesday night, parked himself on a neighbor’s picnic table for a while, and finally drew the attention of the rangers, who are doing their best to prevent the creation of problem bears by hazing them out of the area. I was blissfully unaware when I returned last night and strolled out to the bathroom in the dark. Tonight I’ll be a little more observant.

Scheduling gave me another day off today, so I enjoyed the car, and drove up to Gardiner to visit with Sue Stormer who will be boarding Maybelline when I can finalize her trucking arrangements. She is competent, knowledgeable and friendly, and has a bunch of young girls working with her who are the same. She tells me that May will quickly acclimate. I hope she’s right, but also feel a little timid about taking off alone on trails here where the physical challenges are so much greater than May and I have experienced together. I will need to find some riding buddies.

I took a leisurely ride back through the park later in the afternoon, and enjoyed one of my favorite sights: the regeneration of the forests. In 1988, a mild winter resulted in a moderate to severe drought by May, when the first of several fires was ignited by lightning strikes. Drought conditions, lightning, and at least one fire started by careless disposal of cigarettes, resulted ultimately in the burning of 800,000 acres within the park and 600,000 acres in surrounding national forests. When the kids and I first came to the park in 1992, scarred burned “ghost” trees stood eeriely against the sky, but a wealth of grasses, forbs, wildflowers had emerged upon removal of the canopy provided by the trees. We have returned to the park on several occasions since, and I have had an opportunity to see the unique phenomenon of rebirth.

At first glance, if you haven’t been watching the landscape over time, it still looks eerie, disturbing and lifeless.
In high winds, the ghost trees can come crashing down with an explosive sound. But the lodgepole pines have a unique biology that is stimulated by fire. In addition to their regular cones, the have special ones called serotinous cones. These cones have a resinous coating which, in the heat of fire, melts and releases the seeds. Now, nearly twenty years after the fire, the floor of the old forest is carpeted with young trees, in some areas still quite small, in others, as high as 15-20 feet.
For years, Smoky told us to prevent forest fires at all costs. The fires are a pretty natural part of the ecology of the area, and, while we hope for less disastrous fires than the ‘88 ones, the forest ecology is quite remarkable in restoring itself without our intervention or help.

I spent the rest of my afternoon at LeHardy Rapids on the Yellowstone River. The river is just below flood stage, and the flow has abated a little from last week, when the ice went out on May 18. As the flow slows, the bird life is returning. The harlequin ducks are nesting secretively along the rver’s edge. Only one male was fishing the rapids while I stood in the woods on the banks. This section of the river appeals to them- fast-moving and relatively secluded. They disappear under the quick waters and dive for crustaceans and mollusks.
Also frequenting the rapids are the white pelicans, in what I’ve heard referred to as the wash and rinse cycle: they drift down river with the current, diving along the edges for mollusks, then fly back upstream. There are dozens of pelicans swimming the river. The males have an interesting ridge, a sort of keel, on their beaks, during the breeding season.

This is the season of fertility: grizzlies and black bears strolling through the meadows with their cubs, heavily pregnant elks waiting to deliver (and the grizzlies are waiting for them as well) birds paired off and breeding, bison calves just big enough now to frolic behind their mothers’ backs, wildflowers emerging every day as the snows recede. Well, at least for the moment; snow is forecast for Friday night.