Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior

The eastern end of Lake Superior has a shallow bay made famous by Gordon Lightfoot in his song the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The ship sank just 15 miles from the safety of this bay.

Soo Saint Marie

The locks at Soo St. Marie have been operating over 150 years. The aerial view shows the locks and the rapids on the right they were built to circumvent. The locks raise the ships 21 feet in about five minutes. All sorts of vessels use the locks, including the local tour boats.

Manistique

Lake Michigan from the north end.

La Crosse

A beautiful spot. My friend Ron spoke very highly of La Crosse before we left, we can sure see why. The campground is just opposite La Crosse on an island in the Mississippi. This shot is of one of the secondary channels of the Mississippi just behind the rig at our campsite.
Today we plied the river in a real stern wheeler complete with a convenient window for taking pictures of the dual wheels the boat uses for propulsion.

La Crosse's Waterfront

The Mississippi scatters around hundreds of islands at LaCrosse WI a location where the Mississippi, Black and LaCrosse rivers merge. At the north end an old railroad swing bridge opens for our sternwheeler. At the south end two new steel road bridges stand where the old wooden one burned down a few years ago necessitating ferry service for the locals. Must have been fun in February. The barges or "Tows" as they refer to them have 15-16 individual barges joined together. Further south, where there is more open water, 50 to 60 are joined up making tows that are humoungous.

La Crosse WIldlife

Hiawatha and friends on the old Mississippi.

Des Moines

Well.... They have lots of corn here.... Hmmmm..... Lets see... Not much else.

East end grain elevators

These shots are of a Co op at the east end of the yard. The low round grain bin must be 300' in diameter. All three elevators are adjacent to each other.

North Platte Power

These shots are of the motive power servicing facilities. The top photo shows the heavy repair shop on the left and the routine servicing on the right. The heavy shop has both elevated walkways on the sides of the units and a pit under the tracks to assist the workers in their maintneance efforts. This building can hold over 80 units inside its massive work area.

North Platte

The Baily Yard of the Union Pacific Railroad is the world's largest. At 8 miles long its almost twice the size of Conrail's largest. Having toured/walked/suffered through most of Conrail's yards during my tenure with the United States Railway Association I'm glad we didn't have to walk this one. These three shots are of the center section of the yard and of the westbound and the eastbound humps. Somewhat unique is the fact that both humps face the same direction. Usually they face the direction of the departing trains i.e. one faces east and one faces west. Here they both face east - i.e. to the right in the photos. The UP built the visitors tower from which these photos were taken last year and the vistas are wonderful.

Rushmore

The land of the giants. Somehow a guy who's name begins with Crazy crashed the party.

Painted Canyon

The eastern end of Teddy's park is an area called the Painted Canyon. This part of the Badlands is somewhat more open and more colorful than the other parts of the park. All of this area is beautiful. You can see what attracted the 24 year old Roosevelt to this area in 1883 and what convinced him that there were so many parts of the west that should be preserved.

Wild Horses

Here are a few of the horses we saw today. They look like the just stepped outside from a fancy stable. Every hair is in place.

Theodore Roosevelt National Park

Teddy Roosevelt Park, home to the Painted Canyon has some very beautiful vistas. His original cabin, shown here was three rooms down and one bunkhouse up. The park's colors are wonderful and it is reportedly filled with wildlife. We saw lots of signs the larger creatures had left on the highway over night but only a few wild horses and many many prairie dogs were actually visible on our trek through the park.

Billings to Medora

Well...... We have come over 1000 miles east from La Push on the Washington coast. We are in Medora North Dakota at the home of Teddy Roosevelt National Park. Today's leg was mostly over flat high speed interstate. We made great time and were treated to a railroad extravaganza. Our trip on Rt 1 in Canada and through all 704 miles in Montana paralleled the mainlines of two the today's biggest railroads. The Canadian Pacific and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe provided great entertainment as the miles rolled by. Even the highway has snowsheds in Canada in areas where you can plainly see miles of snowsheds protecting the railroad from avalances on the other side of the canyon. In Montana the BNSF's brightly colored engines can be seen hauling mile long coal trains. In fact, I can hear their whistles, and the deep throb of their engines as they roll through Medora while I compose this message.(only 100 people live in Medora so its all very close to the mainline track). We have seen at least 20 trains today. In one logation three trains were meeting each other. There is a major yard in Billings so we started the day with a view of a loaded coal drag with two units on the head end and one pusher. Patti got this shot of one of them about 50 miles from the Montana/North Dakota boarder. Oh... I almost forgot. The scenery around here is pretty nice too!!!

Wildlife

Our trip to the canyon started early. Significant geothermal activity was occuring on the road to Norris. Steam was everywhere and in several areas steaming water had flowed over the hillsides to the point where the streams were steaming in the early morning cool air. We also had a record day for wldlife sightings. A family of elk across the Madison river, two coyotes at Madison Juction and two magnificent bull elk with huge racks covered in moss? felt? soft looking stuff. On the trip to Billings on Saturday we were treated to two huge moose feeding in the stream next to the road. Unfortunatly all the shots are of poor quality because Mario Andretti WAS DRIVING and its very hard to get good photographs at 200 MPH.

Yellowstone River

Yellowstone Lake sits in the southeast portion of the park and drains northward to form the Yellowstone River. The river goes over two waterfalls before exiting the park. The river drops over 1000 feet through the Yellowstone canyon. These shots are of the upper of the two falls and show the rapids above the falls, the falls, and the area of spray at the bottom of the falls.

Yellowstone Grand Canyon

Views from the rim (we already spoke about why we don't climb down to the canyon floor) were spectacular. The canyon drops is 1000 feet down to the raging Yellowstone river below. These yellow rocks caused the indians to give Yellowstone its famous name.

Paintpot

This is the mud/pool/geyser at Paintpot. Apparently the mud forms if there is insufficient water to form a geyser. The steam and sufuric acid disolves the rock and it remains as this acidic mud because it is located above the water table. Below the water table you get pools and geysers. In may cases the plumbing beneath the features is connected. Pools frequently empty during eruptions only to refill within days. The varied colors surrounding the pools are caused by the bacteria that live there. The whites and blues live in hotter water and the reds, yellows and browns in cooler water. Each has its preferred temperature. Its really not quite that simple but thats all I cared enough to grasp:) Wasn't that interesting! Stay tuned for more of "Bob the science guy" tomorrow.