CLASSIC TRIP - Montana and Yellowstone 2002, Part 2

A friend from work had just been royally screwed by the company that runs the national park lodging. He'd just come home his mother's funeral in Croatia physically and emotionally exhausted and called up the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley and reserved their best room. His family would go with him and have some much needed R&R in the desert park.

When he arrived, he had found that they had overbooked and substituted him at a nearby motel...with no break in the price. Luxury room pricing for a lousy little motel room. Understandably, he has no pleasant thoughts about how he was treated.

I bring this up because he related his story to me right before I left for our trip to Yel lowstone National Park and had made reservations specifically for an accessible room with a roll-in shower. I was apprehensive about what would greet me at arrival...

We left from Big Timber, Montana right after breakfast. From here, it's a 23 mile drive on Interstate 90 to the town of Livingston. A 75 mile drive south on highway 89 takes us to Gardiner, Montana and the original entrance to Yellowstone National Park on the north side of the park.

We pass under the circa 1903 Roosevelt Arch and head to the small entrance station. There are about 10 cars in front of us and the line is moving very slow. After not moving for about 10 minutes, a ranger starts walking along the cars asking people to roll down their windows. When he gets to us, we find he is sending those who have passes around the entrance station. Since we have a Golden Access Pass, we happily comply.

If you're disabled and don't have one, get a Golden Access Pass the very next time you go to a national park or monument. This free pass allows you and everyone in your vehicle to enter national parks at no charge. In addition to saving you a ton of money (Yellowstone's entrance fee is $20), you might just get to skip ahead as we did. (Normal entrance fee in 2019 is $25 - Ed)

(Note: The Golden Access Pass is now simply called the Access Pass - Ed)

Our plan is this...we have two nights here in Yellowstone park. Our first day, we want to get to the Old Faithful geyser area and explore it. The next day we want to seek out the park's wildlife and see any other sights we can find.

We intend to make a beeline to Old Faithful after getting in. It's a 51 mile drive from the entrance station. Two and a half hours later we arrive. Several things delay us along the way: people stopping in the middle of the road to photograph animals (at one point, a lone moose was surrounded by about 30 people with cameras like paparazzi), cars driving 10 miles an hour in a 45 mile per hour zone, and when that was passed, about 20 miles of single-lane road construction with a 15 mile per hour limit.

Finally, at 2:30pm we pull into a parking spot about 200 yards away from Old Faithful itself (parking hint: there are three handicapped spots right in front of the Old Faithful Inn that no one knows is there). The thunderstorms that were predicted for the afternoon are threatening and a light rain starts to fall. On the bright side, the next predicted eruption of Old Faithful is only five minutes away, so we won't have to wait in the rain for very long.

About a minute after we find a good viewing spot on the paved trail, the geyser goes off with a huge fountain of steaming water lasting about 7 minutes. It's quite a show. Now the rain is starting to come down harder so we beat a hasty retreat to the adjacent Old Faithful Inn just as the lightning and thunder start.

Inside, the inn is a spectacular sight. The lodge, built in 1906, has a big lobby that soars several stories. Thin logs seemingly support the whole thing but in reality, a steel, load-bearing rods placed in the logs actually do the work. A multi-storied rock hewn fireplace with a custom pendulum clock anchors the area where you can relax in comfortable morris chairs while reading a book or newspaper. (Another hint: past the public Men's room and Ladies room, there is a large, unisex and very accessible bathroom for wheelers.)

We haven't had lunch yet so we head to the dining room. There's no wait for a table and the service is very good. My hamburger was a bit bland but my wife and Tim had french dip sandwiches that were very good. It was also pretty reasonable at about $7 per person.

Its still raining and there are several really well stocked gift shops in the inn and the surrounding area. We take our time hunting for souvenirs before finally heading down the road to Grant Village where we have reservations for the next couple of nights.

Back at Old Faithful, the old inn and the Old Faithful Snow Lodge were extremely nice and architecturally stunning (if possible, try to get an accessible room in the Old Faithful Snow Lodge for the best accessible rooms in the park). Here at Grant Village, the lodge is lackluster...looking like worn-out 1970's condos...needing a coat of paint badly. (I tried for the Snow Lodge, but they were already booked when I called in May to make reservations. The room prices are identical at both locations.)

Whoever designed this lodge needs a kick in the rear with handicapped parking that could not be any farther from the accessible room. We had to walk, lugging our luggage, all the way through the building. It was a miserable journey.

On the bright side, the bathroom was great. Roomy, with grab bars on the toilet, a roll-under sink, a sliding accordion door, and...best of all....a roll-in shower with bath chair. The bathroom made up for the run down condition of the place and the extra small beds. I do have to admit that when making reservations, the agents did not promise any more than what we got and, knowing that the beds would be small, we brought along a twin-sized air mattress so that we'd all have plenty of bed...so I don't feel that I had been taken advantage of.

There is little in the way of any amenities in the room. No TV, no radio, no A/C. There is a small heater and a telephone and the toiletries were just a touch above par for most motels. Certainly, the room is not where you'd want to spend a lot of your time and maybe that's for the best...forcing you out to see the beautiful park.

There are several levels of dining available to you at Grant Village. A coffee shop in the general store has fast food with table service, a restaurant overlooking Yellowstone lake offers moderately priced pizza and pasta, and the Grant Village dining room is the upscale, reservations-only location serving full-service meals.

We opted for the dining room. Service here was just a bit slow but the food was delicious. I had a pork chops while my wife had salmon and Tim had a chicken dinner. A very tasty cream of asparagus soup started the whole thing off. Another waiter in the restaurant is also doing a tour of the major league ball parks and wanted to compare notes. After dinner, we spent another half hour with the friendly guy talking baseball and stadiums. Pricing here is comparable maybe to a Cracker Barrel.

The next morning, we awoke to a bright and sunny day. With no TV or radio, we did not have a weather report so we crossed our fingers that it would stay this way. It did.

After a marvelous breakfast at the general store coffee shop, we headed back to the Old Faithful area to hike the geyser basin that we'd been rained out on the day before.

The Upper Geyser Basin (home to Old Faithful) has a wonderfully accessible three mile plus trail that gets you up close and personal to the largest concentration of thermal phenomena in the world.

We started off at Old Faithful and walked up the paved trail. Along the way, we saw such famous sights as the Castle Geyser and the Riverside Geyser which regularly shoots a 75 foot stream of water over the Firehole River. At the end of the paved trail is the second most famous feature of Yellowstone Park, the Morning Glory pool.

A boardwalk allows you to get right on top of the Morning Glory pool, a hot spring with crystal-clear water shaped and colored as such that it looks like a morning glory. Visitors over the years have not been kind to the pool...many have thrown money and other assorted trash into it, clogging up it's vent and allowing bacteria to grow in it. An orange rim around the spring attests to this.

To combat the pollution, back in the 1970's the park service relocated the road away from the springs and geysers and set back the boardwalk around the pool. It's helped, but the park service still pulls much trash out of the Morning Glory pool during its annual cleanup.

On the way back, we take the boardwalk and see the geyser field. There are mud pots, hot springs, and geysers galore along the accessible boardwalk. The old wooden boardwalk is gradually being replaced by recycled plastic boardwalk as it wears out. The plastic sections are very smooth for wheelers.

It's great to see a TV-jaded kid like Tim really get into the geyser field. He's really impressed when he gets within 10 feet of the ever erupting Sawmill Geyser. A big bison named George lounges in a small meadow nearby...George gored somebody last week, we're told, when they tried to push him into a shot with Old Faithful. Some people never learn...

At the end of the trail, there is one steep section (that can be detoured - check with a ranger before hiking to find the smoothest path for you) after crossing the bridge over the Firehole River. On the other side, we end up on the backside of Old Faithful where we stop and wait about thirty minutes for the next eruption. It's big and spectacular. It's also a fitting end to our visit of the Upper Geyser Basin.

We have lunch at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge dining room. Here's another hint for you: the fast food place in the lodge is only about a dollar or two cheaper for lunch than the dining room but it's very crowded and you wait a long time for service. For just a couple of dollars more, the dining room is a much better place to eat and unwind with full table service and no wait.

Back in the van, we make the 40 mile trek to Hayden Valley where we're told we're almost guaranteed to see wildlife. But first, as we leave the Old Faithful area we see a large herd of elk nibbling the grass of a nearby meadow.

Hayden Valley does not disappoint. Large herds of bison roam everywhere. Too far away for a good camera shot, they do show up good with binoculars. As I scan the valley and the Yellowstone River bisecting it, I see something odd. I move down about 1/4 mile to get a better view and look through the binoculars again to make sure. Is it....? Yes, it's a bald eagle resting on a branch over the river looking for a juicy trout. Looking around, I see it's partner soaring high over the valley. It's the first and only bald eagle I've ever seen in the wild.

We return to Grant's Village and after dinner in the coffee shop, head down to the amphitheater for the evening campfire ranger presentation.

Mosquitoes are everywhere. Thankfully, my wife brought along some high-powered DEET that we slather on. We don't smell too good, but the bugs don't bite. Others at the campfire are fiercely swatting as the extra high-powered Yellowstone mosquitoes dive bomb them.

The ranger tells us that mosquitoes are not among the park's protected wildlife, so feel free to swat, smash, and kill. They are a renewable resource she assures us...

The evening's presentation is a slide show showing how conservation and scientific techniques started in Yellowstone have caught on around the world. It was interesting, but I missed the old sing-alongs around the campfire of my youth. Couldn't we just have a couple of songs to go with the slide show? Oh well, it was still fun and educational to boot.

That was the last night of the trip. The next morning we exited through West Yellowstone, Montana where we saw a coyote and some more elk and bison before exiting. One thing we did not see was Yellowstone's most famous animal resident...a bear. When we arrive home a week later, there are three black bear sightings in our neighborhood. Is it now more common to see bears in our neighborhood that in our national parks?

-Darryl
Copyright 2002 - Darryl Musick

CLASSIC TRIP - Monterey, California

Interstate 5 is generally acknowledged to be the quickest route from the southern half of California to the northern half. It’s a no-nonsense, straight arrow, 70 mile-per-hour stretch of freeway through the Central Valley. It’s also one of the more boring drives in the state.

I much prefer highway 99 through the valley or the 101 along the coast where scenery and small towns at least pique your interest now and again. But today, we’re trying to minimize our driving time so it’s up the 5 we go until we get to the pass over to Hollister and then along a busy country road to the coast. Our final destination is Fisherman’s Wharf in Monterey and our time to get there is 6 hours, including a gas stop and a Burger King stop in Kettleman City.

Home for the next two nights would be the Doubletree Hotel (now the Portola Hotel - Ed) adjacent to Fisherman’s Wharf in downtown Monterey. This would cost us the advertised $89 per night, plus tax and parking...not a bad deal for the location.

It does take some effort to find the driveway to the hotel. The highway dips into a tunnel under it and then offers no place for a U-turn for a mile. Once we double back, the one-way streets that make up the downtown area keep us circling the block until we can arrive at the proper place to turn in. Since the valet only costs an extra two dollars a day, we opt to pull up to the door and let someone else worry about the parking.

I ask, but no accessible rooms are available when we arrive...I was also told this when I made the reservation, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. What we did get was a beautifully decorated room with two double beds, a view of the courtyard, with plenty of room for the chair but none of the usual accessible features such as grab bars. Since it was roomy, we compensated fine. Also, at check in we receive those delicious Doubletree chocolate chip cookies.

The next morning we head over to Cannery Row and have breakfast at the Culinary Center of Monterey, a combination cooking school, kitchen gourmet store, and restaurant. Their all-you-can-eat gourmet breakfast buffet is $12.95 per person with kids paying one dollar per year of their age. The restaurant is on the second floor but the main entrance (in back) is nicely ramped.

The tables here have a spectacular, if drafty, view of the bay and the food is very delicious. A very subtle chorizo and egg dish (the chef has a secret source in Salinas for the sausage), salmon crepes, cornbread french toast, and a fresh-fruit parfait are just a few of the delectable offerings today. We load up on this great food and head out for our day with tummies full.

It’s a forty minute drive north to the beaches of Santa Cruz. The last classic boardwalk amusement park sits on the sand here (Pacific Park in Santa Monica is a new version of these old beachfront parks but doesn’t count as a classic...yet). Admission is free and crowds of people are taking advantage of it this morning.

Santa Cruz Boardwalk and the Giant Dipper

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Larry Pieniazek under CC-BY-SA license

Our goal today is the 1924 vintage, Arthur Looff built Giant Dipper roller coaster. This classic woody is lovingly maintained and is on many coaster fans top ten lists. It’s also appeared in such diverse movies as The Sting and The Lost Boys.

We buy our tickets and check the access. Wheelchair riders enter through the exit where a button can be pushed to summon a ride operator to let you in. You get your choice of seats...we take the front. As usual, you must bring your own help for transferring out of your chair and into the seat, but the seat was just a bit roomier than most modern coasters and therefore just a bit easier to get into.

On Board the Dipper

Although the ride is exciting, the speed and elements seem quaint and tame compared to today’s monsters but it has one element that’s a doozy. When your train leaves the station, it immediately drops into a pitch-black tunnel featuring two very quick u-turns before coming out into the daylight and engaging the lift chain. No other coaster I’ve yet been on gives you such a quick scare and thrill before even starting up the lift.

The rest of the ride is medium fast (top speed 55 mph), with lots of curves integrated into it’s drops. The head-chopper effects are kind of minimal compared to such coasters as Ghostrider, Scandia Screamer, and the Cyclone. It’s a solid minute and a half ride, with one really all-star element...that tunnel drop out of the station.

Afterward, we munch on a mundane order of garlic fries. Not nearly as good as the garlic fries we got at the Date Festival in Indio or at Cajun Way restaurant in Monrovia, but better than nothing.

That’s it for us and the Boardwalk. Classic amusement park ride fans may also want to check out the circa 1911 Looff Carousel here too where you can still grab for the brass ring and get a free ride.

Next, we head over the hills, inland to the little town of San Juan Bautista.

For California history, you need to start with two things. The Gold Rush had a huge impact on the state (see our gold country and Yosemite reports for more), but before that, the Spanish set up a string of missions that every good Californian must visit at some time or another. Missions are special places for us and our family has visited several of them. Heck, my wife and I even got married in one.

The missions were churches, of course, but since the church and state were pretty cozy in those days, they were also forts with garrisons of Spanish soldiers stationed at each one. Each mission was built one day’s horse ride apart from each other in a string up the coastal side of the state. This mission road is El Camino Real. The padres were there to convert the heathens while the soldiers kept the peace and protected Spain’s interests in California.

History lesson over.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia

Robert A. Estremo under CC-BY-SA license

Here in San Juan Bautista, the mission still sits in a nice, rural setting across the lawn from the old stage coach stop, the livery, and of course the hotel. The hotel even boasts of such modern conveniences as a two story outhouse (what’s it like to be in the bottom one?).

The mission...still an active parish...is a beauty with wide aisles, an ornate altar, and a lovely garden. We wandered around the grounds and found some barn owls living in a palm tree and a young chicken attached itself to me and followed me around like a puppy until one of the nuns spotted us and put the bird away.  Apparently, it had escaped its coop and she wanted to put it back before it became a meal for the local wildlife.

One thing that always gets me when I visit these old missions is the Indian graveyards inside. Usually, a small plot of land will contain the remains of thousands of Native Americans. Here in San Juan Bautista, a plot about a hundred feet long by about fifty feet wide contains approximately 4,300 natives in the soil. It’s kind of a testament to the devastation wrought among the indigenous population via the European explorers and settlers.

Afterward, we have some ice cream over on the town’s main street while many Harley riders loudly start their machines as they leave town. On a side note, why do so many Harley riders take the mufflers off of their bikes? Why is it that they have to impose such a noisy thing upon everybody else? What is so cool about being so loud? Really, I want to know...if there is no reason, please do us all a favor and be quiet!
Back to Monterey...

Attached to the Doubletree Portola is Peter B’s, a brewpub and bar. It was four o’clock and the daily happy hour was starting. Peter B’s has a modern decor with a nice fireplace, a pool table, and many TV’s for the sports fan. We got a cozy table next to the fireplace and ordered some drinks.

The happy hour prices are just a nick lower than the regular prices. A 22 ounce beer was $4.50 compared to $5 regularly, so a screaming bargain this wasn’t. However, the popcorn was good and free and we could charge it to our room so we knocked back a few before dinner. For you whiskey drinkers, they specialize in the stuff along with the very good handcrafted brew.

It’s a very short walk to Fisherman’s Wharf from the hotel. In fact, you don’t have to even cross a street as the hotel sits on a viaduct connecting to the wharf while the highway goes under in a tunnel.

There are several restaurants here and all were gladly giving samples of their food. My wife chose tonight’s place, Rappa’s Seafood, I think mainly because it sat on the end of the wharf offering spectacular views.

Murphy’s rule on restaurants with a view: The better the view, the worse the food. In this case the seafood, at least, was very good with my wife ordering a seafood sampler with many kinds of ocean denizens on her plate. So Rappa’s breaks this rule

Murphy’s rule on seafood restaurants: Other than seafood, everything else will be less than par.

Unfortunately, Rappa’s keeps this rule with a New York steak that needed a healthy dose of A-1 to have any taste at all...a good steak should need nothing else to prop up its flavor. My son’s burger was also a bit less than overwhelming.

After our dinner, we come out to a wharf filled with fire trucks. It appears that the giant trash compactor that serves the wharf has a slow-burning fire deep within. I talk to one of Monterey’s firemen who tells me they will try to get it out but it’s looking doubtful. He’s not looking forward to what comes next: hauling the whole compactor off of the pier and dumping its foul-smelling contents in the parking lot to find the blaze.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the truck, the battalion chief has arrived and is handing out stickers to all the kids wandering by in a bit of impromptu PR.

We walk around the wharf a bit after dinner, checking out the sea lions on the buoys and rocks, a family of otters floating on their backs, and the usual tacky souvenirs on sale at the wharf’s general store.

All those tacky souvenirs makes my head spin!

We contemplate visiting the hotel’s pool and spa but nix that idea when we find it’s in a separate building and we’d have to do quite a bit of walking in the chilly outdoors in our swimsuits to get there. Instead, we visit a jewelry shop where my wife purchases some earrings as a souvenir.

The next morning, we head across the street to the Marriott to have breakfast in their cafe. Due to a quirk in the layout of the land, the Marriott’s coffee shop is actually closer to our room than the Doubletree’s Portola's. After a very nice last meal, we pack it back up and head home down the very scenic highway 101.

Funny, it only took us five hours to drive home on the scenic route when the quick route took longer...

-Darryl
Copyright 2003 - Darryl Musick

CLASSIC TRIP - New York 1999, Part 2

Back in 1999, we visited New York for the first time.  The first day, we took the subway to Coney Island.  Now, we head back to see some sights in Manhattan.  Back in the WayBack Machine we go...

Today is our Manhattan day. Maybe we shoulda done it yesterday too, but we just had to see Coney Island.


We retrace our steps to the Brooklyn Bridge station and start walking towards the Battery. It’s Columbus Day and we stumble onto a sidewalk festival around Bowling Green Park. The three of us eat a lot of strange and colorful food and wash it down with some beer and soda.

Arriving at Battery Park, we head over to the water to see the Statue of Liberty. It’s amazingly small. Much smaller than we were prepared for, but still, it’s one of those things you want to see. It reminds me of how everybody has to see Hollywood when they get to my hometown, only to be amazed at how dirty, depressing, and disgusting it is. At least the statue is just small...none of the other bad things can be said of it.

The wait for the ferry is several hours. We already know that the statue itself is not accessible, so we content ourselves by gazing at it from the shore. We do want to get a closer look, however, and NYC’s public transit system again comes to the rescue.

The big yellow boats of the Staten Island Ferry will take you right by Liberty Island on a scenic, free, and accessible cruise over the bay. Even close up, the statue still looks small. The view of Manhattan from the fantail is what postcards are made of though.

Back at the Battery, we walk a few blocks up to the World Trade Center. New York’s tallest buildings are actually a big complex of buildings atop a mall and a sprawling subway station. I am shocked and deeply saddened, today, that a few lunatics could erase it off of the landscape.

The map here shows several lines are accessible. The station master told us only the E line was. Lacking any other obvious signs of access, we boarded the E line to Penn Station, which our map said was accessible.

Penn Station, at least on the E line, turned out to have stairs...no elevator. Doing it over, we would take the E a little bit farther to the Port Authority station where there is an elevator. We work Tim up the stairs in relays with him and his chair and proceed down 34th Street to our next destination, the Empire State Building.

Along the way, hungry for lunch, we decide to try some New York pizza. We find a little hole-in-the-wall called Spinelli’s and have a few slices. Yes, New York pizza is delicious and, yes, you need to fold it to eat it right.

We find the usual handicapped entrance to the Empire State Building on 34th is closed but a maintenance worker quickly directs us around the corner to the entrance on 5th Ave. Although not signed as such, an accessible entrance does indeed reside there between two revolving doors.

A guard directs us to an elevator to go to the basement where the ticket counter is. Like Disneyland, you skip the line here if you are disabled and go right up to the counter to purchase tickets for the observation deck. Adults are $6, kids $3, and handicapped are comped.

Next, an ear popping ride up to the 80th floor followed by a another quick ride to the 86th floor deck. An additional elevator goes up to the 102nd floor but was closed this day. The deck we were on is the one you see in “Sleepless in Seattle”.

The view from here is amazing. On a clear day, as ours was, 50 mile views are possible. Even a jaded kid like Tim was impressed by it. After the obligatory visit to the gift shop for miniature versions of the building, we head uptown (by foot) towards Central Park.

Along the way, we swung through Rockefeller Center to see the ice rink and the Today set and then up 5th Avenue by Tiffany’s to the park.

We just did a quick loop through the southern end by Tavern on the Green and Wollman Rink to see what it was like. As it was getting dark, we headed south to Times Square.

Here the lights knock our socks off and the energy of the place seeps in. The the vibrancy of New York is on full display. We also find the only clean public restrooms we saw in the city at the Times Square Starbucks.

We’re only there for the facilities and end up having some drinks, music, and a marvelous time at the accessible Times Square Brewery.

At the end of the evening, it’s a short walk east to Grand Central Station for our train home.

Back in 2011 - This was, of course, only our first trip to New York.  After having had a taste, we'd return again and again.  Those reports will be coming up on future episodes.  

-Darryl