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| Elkhorn Arch, Downtown Jackson |
After our overnight stay in Sheridan, Wyoming, we drove
north across the border into Montana. Here we visited the Little Bighorn
Battlefield National Monument, the scene of Custer’s Last Stand. The Native
Americans won that particular battle but of course lost the overall war. The site was formerly known as the Custer
Battlefield National Monument. In 1991 President George H W Bush signed a law
that changed this to its present name. We had a drive round this extensive
area, conducted by a guide from the Crow Tribe. We stopped at various sites,
all against a splendid “Big Sky Country” backdrop. Then there was time to look
round the Visitors Centre and nearby memorials. We were particularly moved by
the words of Chief Two Moons of the Northern Cheyenne tribe who in 1916 wrote:
“forty years ago, I fought Custer until all were dead. I was then the enemy of
the white man. Now I am his friend and brother, living under the flag of our
country”. After lunch in Billings, we re-crossed the border with Wyoming,
continuing to Cody for an overnight stop. This town is named from William Cody,
aka Buffalo Bill.
We now had a full day, and part of the next day, in
Yellowstone, which was established in 1872, the first national park in the USA,
and generally believed to be the first such park in the world. The weather on
these two days was to be very different: bright sunshine on the first, snow on
the second albeit this was still September. Nilani, our tour guide,
thoughtfully rejigged our itinerary to ensure that we saw the park’s premier
attraction, Old Faithful, on the first rather than the second day, in case the
snow prevented us from reaching it.
Yellowstone has to be one of the highlights of any tour of
this part of the USA. The scenic drive from Cody provided a taster. Its vast
acreage is above all known for its geothermal features with many hot springs
and mud pools, as well as its own version of the Grand Canyon. There are still,
in the northern part of the park, reminders of the devastating fire in 1988,
since the policy is to let nature takes its course rather than chop down the stricken
trees. Usually wildfires do no great damage, and indeed can be good for the
ecosystem, but this one got seriously out of control. The Old Faithful geyser
is so named because it can be relied on to erupt at regular intervals. It is
commonly supposed that these are hourly but generally the interval is a bit
longer. This is in contrast to the geyser we have twice visited in Rotorua, New
Zealand, where there is no predictability at all: first time we were lucky,
second time not. We were fortunate with our timing at Old Faithful as we were
there long enough to see it erupt twice. Nearby, the historic Old Faithful Inn,
the largest log structure in the world, is worth a visit even if one is not
staying or dining there.
Our overnight stop was in West Yellowstone, just over the
border in Montana. Cody and West Yellowstone are both “gateway towns “to the
National Park. Cody lies to its east and is charming. West Yellowstone – bit of
a clue in the name - lies to its west and is not charming.
The weather forecast was right and there was thick snow as
we re-entered Yellowstone. We were nevertheless able to fit in the stops that
had been scheduled for the previous day. But we were glad that Nilani had
rejigged the itinerary for, as we drove through the park towards Old Faithful
we were turned back: the road ahead was closed for a coach apparently had come
off the road. Nilani had to think on her feet. We were to have continued
through Teton National Park to the mountain resort of Jackson for our overnight
stop. It was now decided that we would retrace our journey to West Yellowstone
then divert into Idaho before returning to Wyoming. It was disappointing that
we would as a result miss out one of our national parks: we had to content
ourselves with seeing the Teton Mountains from the distance. But, swings and
roundabouts, this disappointment was outweighed by our delight at seeing
Yellowstone in the snow. Later we met a know-all from another coach who boasted
that his party had driven through Teton National Park before the road closed.
But another chap in the same party confided that they had seen nothing of it
due to poor visibility.
Lunch in West Yellowstone was at McDonald’s. Normally we
don’t touch this chain with a bargepole; this reminded us why. Approaching
Jackson we drove along the scenic valley of the Snake River. Some in our party
had booked an optional river float. I think that they were relieved rather than
disappointed that this was cancelled due to weather conditions!
Our hotel in Jackson was a little way out of town but we
were able to use its free buses to get into the centre. It is an elegant resort
with a spruce central square that is guarded by four gates made of elkhorn.
Dinner was back near our hotel, in the Gun Barrel Steak and Game House, a
characterful place with a real Wild West atmosphere. The staff were friendly
and food good. For my main I had an elk dish. The next morning we had,
unusually, to pay for breakfast as we were instead having an included picnic
lunch, to be eaten overlooking Bear Lake, en route to Salt Lake City. We were
actually pleased as our included breakfasts had tended to be fairly basic. Here
I could at last indulge in that signature American dish, corned beef hash.
We had a two-night stay in Salt Lake City, the capital of
Utah. We were thus returning to a city that we had first stayed in nearly fifty
years previously, when making our way by Greyhound Coach across America. Utah
is known as the Mormon State with around two thirds of its inhabitants adhering
to that religion. Mormonism, or more formally the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (LDS), has its origins in a vision which came to Joseph Smith
in 1820. Its adherents migrated from the east coast, ultimately reaching what
became the Territory, later the State, of Utah. Following a further vision,
polygamy was banned. The church is hierarchical but there is no clerical garb:
for male priests it’s a white shirt worn with a tie. Coffee and alcohol are
prohibited so I don’t think I’ll be signing up any time soon. But Utah,
contrary to what some assume, is not a dry state. Rather as in Norway, alcohol can only be
bought from approved outlets so it won’t be found in the local supermarket.
And, one cannot have a pre-dinner drink in a restaurant: one must first be
seated and place one’s order for food.
Salt Lake City is the world HQ of the LDS. Before
transferring to our hotel we had an included visit to Temple Square. The Temple
itself is out of bounds to non-Mormons but the visitor is otherwise welcome to
look around. We were ushered into the Tabernacle where two sister missionaries,
the one from El Salvador and the other from Thailand, gave us a talk about
their religion. Such talks are not at all “in your face”, though any show of
interest will be eagerly followed up. Nilani recalled a previous client, who
was an atheist, giving the sisters a hard time. She had felt it necessary to
apologize but was assured that they had come across worse! All our party
listened politely.
We had an optional tour of the city the next day. This first
took us out to the Great Salt Lake. As might be inferred from the name, it has
very high salinity so one floats rather than swims in the lake. In this
respect, though not really in any other, it resembles the Dead Sea, on whose
shore we had stayed when touring Jordan. Back in the city we visited the This
is the Place Heritage Park, so called because it is the place where, in 1847,
Brigham Young saw the valley that would become the Mormon Pioneers’ new home.
Here are the striking monument of the same name and the heritage village which
recreates buildings from the pioneering era. We got talking to a lady in period
dress who was working at a spinning wheel.
This must in its time have been very monotonous work. Why,
one didn’t even have the diversion of a radio to keep one's spirits up! But
this clearly deep-thinking lady suggested that maybe people in those simpler
times were happier than their present day counterparts, with none of the
stresses of the modern world to worry about. We rounded off our tour with a
visit to the Utah State Capitol, which we had visited in 1968. Here we enjoyed
a self-guided tour of this beautiful building. Images of the honeybee, a state
symbol (yes, every state has its official insect), are much in evidence.
We had the afternoon free in Salt Lake City. First priority
was lunch. We settled on the LDS-owned Joseph Smith Memorial Building (JSMB),
which is adjacent to Temple Square. We had a good meal in its Roof Restaurant,
from which fine views over the city are to be enjoyed. I made the mistake of
having a starter as well as a main. It was dawning on me that American portion
sizes are huge. By no means do I have a dainty appetite but I was not able to
finish my main course of pasta. I assured our friendly waiter, Jason, that it
was good; I’d have managed to finish a British-size portion!
The ten-storey JSMB is a handsome building which in former
times was the prestigious Utah Hotel, the “Grande Dame of Salt Lake City”. In
1968 we had been lodged in a rather less prestigious establishment. Coinciding
with our visit was one from a somewhat more noteworthy figure, Hubert Humphrey,
the Vice-president and Democratic contender in the forthcoming presidential
election. He stayed at the Utah Hotel and used his visit to make an important
speech in which he distanced himself from Lyndon Johnson’s policy on Vietnam.
He was defeated in the election by Richard Nixon.
The late sixties were a time of turmoil in America, though
we saw none of it ourselves. There was much unrest over Vietnam and over civil
rights: earlier in 1968 Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King had both been
gunned down. On our journey across America we had stayed in Chicago where,
weeks earlier, the Democratic Convention had been accompanied by riots, and we
passed through Detroit, where there had been devastating riots a year
previously. These are generally held to mark the start of the seemingly
inexorable decline of the once-proud “Motor City”.
This was also the period of youth rebellion and of the
hippies. In San Francisco we took a trolleybus out to Haight-Ashbury, the
centre of hippiedom. This was out of curiosity for we were not at all hippyish
ourselves: no room for any flowers in my unfashionably short hair! But there
was a kind of dotty idealism that was not altogether unappealing. After all who
does not want love and peace? Unhappily there was also the drug culture and the
terrible “Manson Family” killings in 1969 put an end once and for all to any
illusions of innocence. In Salt Lake City, by contrast, we had seen a sign in a
barber shop urging customers to come in for their short back and sides since
“the clean American look is still alive”. And so it was, at least in Utah. We
then spent some more time in Temple Square, this time visiting, in fact
revisiting, the North Visitors’ Center. We remembered from 1968 the striking
statue, white against a starry background, of Jesus Christ. Then, as we
sometimes do, we went our separate ways for an hour or so, as Cathy wanted to
look round the large department store, Nordstrom, whereas I didn’t. We entered
the store together before I went off for a walk and straight away we came
across another instance of American friendliness. In a five-minute conversation
we learnt from the lady who greeted us that she had a son in Denver (where we’d
started our journey), a daughter who had married an Englishman and was living
in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, where she was studying for a doctorate at Oxford,
that she could not afford the fare to visit her, and that she had not long been
widowed. This was not told in any self-pitying way, nor was she trying to sell
us anything.
Our hotel was about a mile out from the centre. Again we
were able to avail ourselves of free public transport since the city’s trams –
not there in ’68 – are free in the central (though not the suburban) area.•
First Published in VISA 140 (August 2018)
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