Gone fishin'

   OK, so you don't really care about fishing. Still, you should know that trout prefer to live in really nice places. Even if you don't care--or absolutely disapprove--perhaps you will still appreciate the scenery. For the record, we have not kept any of the trout we have caught for 30 years or so. A trout is too beautiful and too valuable to be caught only once so we put them all back so someone else can experience the joy of a fish on the line.
   Some people take the opposite view and don't understand why we would toss back a perfectly good fish. Nobody puts back the walleye and perch they catch on Lake Erie. Two responses: we have plenty of food in the RV so we don't need to fish for meat; trout fishing, for us, is about the sport of acquiring the knowledge and skill to catch a fish. Reading the water, selecting the appropriate fly, presenting the fly so that it appeals to the trout, keeping it on the hook (which, by the way, is barbless so release is easy) and handling it gently during release. After a really good round of golf, are you tempted to eat a Titleist or are you satisfied with the experience itself. Alright, maybe you're not all that satisfied. As hikers, Shirley and I appreciate that golf is a nice walk that has been ruined.
   Getting to a trout stream often means driving a back country gravel road that may be almost as pot holed and rutted as a street in Toledo. Then, after donning our waders, it also may involve hiking back to a stream. So we get a twofer--a chance to catch beautiful trout and to take a little walk in the park.

Not possible for fish to hang out in water like this?

If you look closely, you might barely make out the trout in the lower center, taking shelter in the relatively quiet water behind a rock. That's why we drop a fly in the sheltered side of a rock.

This one is somewhat easier to see.

I thought I saw a trout rise at the edge of the weeds.

So Shirley showed me how to catch it. Very generous of her, don't you think?

Would you be really disappointed if you spent a couple hours following a winding stream through this valley and came up with nothing? Nah, we're not either.

A few years ago, greenback cutthroat trout were endangered but have made a comeback. Catch and release is part of the strategy for their recovery.

Speaking of endangered fish, Shirley caught this rare elkjaw trout.

Much of our fishing is done in national forests where open range means keeping an eye out for pedestrians in the roadway.

Sometimes the stream is just an easy walk from the road.

Sometimes it means figuring out how to get down there safely. And back out.

Soda Butte Creek in Yellowstone has been a favorite place to fish for years but more than once somebody else called dibs and then went stomping through the best holes.

And if you have heard the deep, bass rumble of a bull bison, you will appreciate that this fellow was not in a sharing mood.

The upper Salmon River near Stanley Idaho is a lovely place to fish.

For years, Shirley just tagged along and read a book while I fished. In 1999 she decided that was just not fair and took a fly fishing lesson in Durango, Colorado. She still insists on telling people she is "just a beginner." And I keep telling her that, after her first couple of thousand trout, she is not allowed to say that any more.

So, this is just a little brook trout she caught north of Durango. But catching it was still enough to put a smile on her face.

This is somewhat more typical of her results.

Probably just my imagination but the fish seems to be smiling because he knows he is going back.

This fox was trying to sneak up on ground squirrels. I don't think he was into catch and release.

I like to stand downstream from a beaver dam and cast into the deeper water behind it.

Shirley took this nice cutthroat in Pacific Creek.

 Notice the red slashes under the jaw of the cutthroat trout that give it its name.

A mayfly is a favorite trouty lunch. Which makes mayfly patterns popular with fishers.

The art of fly fishing is knowing how to cast. The science is knowing where to put the fly. The joy of fly fishing is getting to do it in places like this. With someone like this. Yes, I know. I'm a lucky man.

On the way to someplace else

   When Shirley and I travel, our ultimate destination is often two or three days driving time from home. Sometimes even more than that. Think of any place in the West. Or Alaska. So, because we have time in retirement, we break up every long drive by stopping at other places along the way. We would not consider driving to western South Dakota just to see Mt. Rushmore, for example, even though it is iconic. Literally. But, if we are in the general neighborhood anyway, it certainly deserves some of our time.
   Here is a sampling of places that we have visited on our way to someplace else. Beginning, of course, with Mt. Rushmore.

Just to show that Mt. Rushmore would be quite impressive if it only featured one president.

Early studies by Gutzon Borglum are preserved in his on-site studio.

The inscription on the monument at Valley Forge is a quotation from Washington: "Naked and starving as they are we cannot enough admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the soldiery." 

Washington relied heavily on Gen. Anthony Wayne at Valley Forge. As president, he appointed Wayne Commander-in-Chief of the US Army and sent him to subdue Indian uprisings in Ohio. 

Washington's headquarters was a borrowed farm house.

Recreation of the Muhlenberg Brigade huts during the winter encampment at Valley Forge.

The Lincoln birthplace monument near Elizabethtown, KY is just a few miles off I-65 south of Louisville.

Inside the monument is a representation of the cabin in which Lincoln was born. For years, some insisted it was the actual cabin. A tree-ring analysis conducted in 2004 showed that the trees had been felled 30 years after Lincoln was born. The symbolic cabin inside a marble monument is to show the promise of democratic government--even the most humble can rise to greatness.

This cabin represents Lincoln's boyhood home on Knob Creek before the family relocated to Indiana and then to Illinois.

Lincoln's father Thomas is often depicted as a shiftless ne'er-do-well. Tax rolls, however, suggest that he was among the top 20% in the county. Even so, those cabins still look rather humble. 

Devil's Tower is the focus of Indian legends as well as where the alien spaceship landed in the 1977 Steven Spielberg classic film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. 

There is a trail around the base of the Tower so you can look at the same thing from 360 degrees.

Some people choose to see the Tower from way up close. And way up high. On at least two occasions, summer hail storms suddenly popped up while we were there. Lightning crackling all around. Hail the size of  golf balls. No place to hide if you are hanging from the side of that big rock.

Fort Laramie looks nothing at all the way western forts are depicted in the movies. Note, for example, that there is no palisade fence around the fort.

Officers' quarters included space for wives.

 The sutler's store had everything you might need. Providing you didn't need much.

But the bar offered consolation.

Enlisted men's quarters 

This marker shows where Gen. Custer died on Last Stand Hill at Little Big Horn. His body was hastily buried two days after the battle and later moved to a tomb at West Point. 

Likewise, the markers around him represent where his soldiers died, not where they are buried.

7th Cavalry markers are white, Indian markers are red. As the victors, the Cheyenne and Lakota Sioux took their fallen warriors with them.

The battle was fought on the run once the cavalry discovered their predicament. A 4.5 mile road takes you to the sites of skirmishes and desperate fights that made up Custer's Last Stand.

It is hard to tell how many Indians might be among those trees. Custer seriously underestimated the several thousand Cheyenne and Sioux camped along the banks of the Little Big Horn River. 

Indians who scouted for the cavalry have white markers. No matter which side they were fighting on, all died "defending their way of life."  I regret failing to get photos of the markers for horses and mules that died defending the equine way of life. Seriously, though, there are markers for them too.

No offense to the Meador family but the Sioux and Cheyenne had much more interesting names.

The monument at the top of Last Stand Hill lists all 263 men of the 7th Cavalry who died.

The battlefield is in the Crow Indian Reservation just off I-90 in southeastern Montana. The Indians still herd beautiful ponies.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down...

so Robert McColloch bought it for $2.4 million, numbered all the bricks and stones and...

reassembled the whole bloomin' thing in Lake Havasu City, AZ.

The power for all those lights in Las Vegas, and many other cities as well, is provided by Hoover Dam 25 miles away. Lake Mead, created by the dam, also provides water for parts of Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico.

Lake Mead is a major recreation area for the region.

Judge Roy Bean was the self-proclaimed Law West of the Pecos. This is his opera house, town hall, and seat of justice. Also his residence.

As you know from My Darling Clementine, Judge Bean had a thing for actress and singer Lillie Langtry, the Jersey Lilly. She finally accepted his invitation to visit his original Jersey Lilly "opera house" but the Judge was dead by then. Probably a good thing. After performing in major cities, she was not likely to have been impressed by what he had to offer.

At least she had a place of honor over the bar.

The King Ranch, just south of Corpus Christi, TX, is 825,000 acres--larger than Rhode Island. 

They breed and raise cattle and horses as they have since 1852. In recent years they have expanded into all sorts of agribusinesses from turf grass and  sod production to palm trees and citrus groves in Florida. 

Still, when you think of ranching, this is more like what comes to mind.

This is the most recent family residence and ranch headquarters.

Then there is the old headquarters named for its location on the Santa Gertrudis Creek.

The longhorns are raised for historic preservation--and to entertain visitors.

On our way to Big Bend National Park, we encountered heavy fog at the base of the mountains. Pulled into Marathon, TX to wait for it to burn off. In the lobby of the Gage Hotel, Shirley spotted a coffee table book about the architect who designed the Gage and several others in the southwest--Henry C. Trost from Toledo, OH.

We were so impressed by the Gage that we decided to stop at the Paisano in Marfa, TX.

This is where the cast of Giant stayed during filming: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Carroll Baker. 

The lobby repeats themes you will recognize from the Gage.

Then in Van Horn, we just had to visit the El Capitan. Met a woman wearing an Ohio U sweatshirt. Said she has family in Sylvania.

See the patio fountain at the Paisano, three pictures up. Yep, there is a pattern here.

Trost's Rule One--you gotta have taxidermy in the lobby.

I prefer my coffee saucered & blowed when I can get it for only 5 cents more than regular.

 

Register Cliff on the Oregon Trail was a stopover point for pioneers.

Some late comers, including this shameless fellow, can not resist the temptation to add their pathetic names to the cliff. Glad we're not related. He doesn't even know how to spell it.

Scott's Bluff is another landmark along the Oregon Trail. 

Getting to Scott's Bluff, in far western Nebraska, is a lot easier today. Once you adjust to the thought of driving 17,000 miles across Nebraska.

Colorado National Monument is just off I-70 near Grand Junction. Saddlehorn Campground is reached by a really steep climb along the face of a cliff  where there are great views across Fruita Valley to the Book Cliffs on the horizon.

The Monument is only two hours from Arches National Park in NE Utah. We stopped because we knew there was zero chance of getting a camp site in Arches late in the day. As it turned out, there was also zero chance the next morning.

Still, the road in the Monument takes you to places that are worth seeing.

 The vertical stripes on the cliff face, called desert varnish, are mineral deposits left by flowing water. In the lower center you can see what is a water fall during spring snow melt and after summer flash floods in the monsoon season. 

Our first visit to Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was on our way back to Tucson  from Death Valley. The plan was just to spend the night but it turned out to be way better than expected. When we got to Tucson, we turned around and went back to Organ Pipe. Since then, it has been our ultimate winter destination. You might want to see the blog post filed in December, 2017 that has more photos of Organ Pipe. Good luck finding special places of your own when you are on the way to someplace else.