Posts Tagged With: fishing

GART Day 21: Grand Tetons

The kids wanted to try their hand at fishing again. To discourage them I told them the best time to fish is early in the morning. Really early in the morning. That didn’t sway them so at 5:30am their alarms started going off and they got me from bed. It was a cold morning. But they still wanted to go.

We headed back to Gull Point Drive to a sand spit where we had seen others fishing the night before. The sunrise was beautiful over the Yellowstone River and Yellowstone Lake. We had the place to ourselves. And for good reason…it was cold. And windy. It may be in the 60s and 70s at 7800+ feet during the day, but in the early morning before the sun comes up its cold cold cold. We tried our luck anyway.

We fished a half hour on the point, then went back to where we saw that guy land the large cutthroat the day before and tried there. Still no luck. We tried another half hour near the entrance to Bay Bridge but again no luck. These fish were eating flies on the water and fly fishing was needed, not our spinner-and-spoon lures on casting rods and reels. We called it a day and went to get som coffee and cocoa spotting a white pelican in the early morning light as we returned to camp where Tawny was still asleep.

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We drove out through the south entrance of Yellowstone to Grand Teton National Park. We stopped at Colter Bay Visitor Center to get oriented to the park and have the kids check off another park in their National Park Passports. Grand Teton is dramatic. We drove through the park transfixed on the peaks rising straight up from the high plains as we made our way to Jackson.

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We dropped off the trailer at the campy but nice Virginia Inn Lodge (and Saloon, and RV Park, and Drive Through Liquor Store) which reminded us of the Madonna Inn from the first few days of our Great American Road Trip.

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We went into Jackson to walk around town square and take the kids to the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar so they could sit on at the bar on a saddle amongst the burl wood decor. This is more biker bar than cowboy. Unfortunately they have to be 21 or over to go into the bar. They wanted pictures so we sent the kids across the street to Ripley’s Believe it or Not while Tawny and I had a beer in the bar and took some pictures of the saddles for the kids at the suggestion of the woman who worked in the Cowboy Bar Gift Shop. Not 15 minutes later the kids called us to say they’d been through the Ripley’s Museum already – 3 times! We bailed and worked on finding a place for dinner. We ended up at The Rendezvous Bistro which had a line out the door when we arrived while thunder, hail, and rain poured down around us. The place was packed and offered us one of our better meals while on the road. After dinner the skies cleared and we enjoyed the large hot tub at the Virginian. Later that evening I updated my blog from amongst the taxidermic animals and patrons of the Virginian Saloon.

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Categories: Great American Roadtrip | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

GART Day 20: Yellowstone Day 3

One of my favorite things about Yellowstone is that its literally off the grid. No cell phone, no wifi, no Interwebs – for 3 days. Its probably a liberal leftist government agenda to get us all in tune with nature, and while that may have been a minor inconvenience to you (the readers of my blog) it saved me immeasurable time in having to tell the kids to “Get your freakin’ nose out of your device and look out the g-damn window!”. So, to the park rangers and stewards of Yellowstone, I thank you.

We slept in a little on Saturday because we knew we’d have to pack up the campsite and move from Bay Bridge to Fishing Bridge RV campground. While Fishing Bridge is only about 5 miles up the road, its a hard sided RV only park because of the frequent visitations by bears – no tents allowed. Usually you can’t check in until after 1pm so we hit the Fishing Bridge Visitor Center to kill a little time. The kids had been working on their National Park Passports and wanted to get cancellation stamps and stickers in the gift shop while Tawny and I got advice on the best way to spend our last day in Yellowstone. Then we headed to Fishing Bridge at 10:30 am, and as luck would have it our space was available. We unhooked the trailer and headed out on the days adventure by 11am.

We first headed up to Canyon, the Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon. On the way we passed through a heard of buffalo and almost had a buffalo pass through us. It was an encounter by inches.

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After the close encounter we took a break from wildlife and went for some landscapes of canyons and waterfalls.

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We drove on to Mammoth were we were told we’d see elk and to see the thermal terraces. We easily saw elk in downtown Mammoth but before the terraces we wanted to head out of the park to visit Gardiner so the kids could say they made it to Montana and add another state to their trip log. We had lunch there at the K-BAR (decent pizza), did some souvenir shopping, visited the Roosevelt Arch before heading back into the park to explore the terraces.

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Next we drove the long way back to Fishing Bridge so we could see Prismatic Spring which both Clara and Cody had bought a postcard of. Unfortunately because the day was somewhat cold the steam off the spring obscured see the true colors of it. Even so, it was a sight to behold as are the other pools nearby with colors that challenge the palette of the imagination.

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We got back to Fishing Bridge about 6:30pm. I had promised the kids I’d take them fishing (and had bought a fishing license for Yellowstone earlier in the day). You can only fish between sun-up and sun-down and on the rivers its restricted to fly fishing only. That meant we had to fish Yellowstone Lake for lake trout (invasive species) or cutthroat (native and must be released). We drove to Gull Point Drive and tried to find a good spot for fishing. We saw a guy landing a fish as we drove by. It was a beauty, a prized Yellowstone Cutthroat that looked to be just south of 20 inches. We felt the excitement of fishing a pristine lake. We asked what lures he was using, and luckily I had a few of the same. We dipped our lines for 90 minutes, but came up without a bite, although fish were jumping all around our casts. Hopefully we’d have better luck in the morning.

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Categories: Great American Roadtrip | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

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