So, what’s a guy to do when he’s getting a bit stir crazy and the fishing’s lousy? Head to the desert! A little place called Valley of Fire State Park (VOF). It’s in Nevada, about 60 miles northeast of Lost Wages. It was 30° F and snowing at home the morning we left. Eight hours of driving later, we were in VOF, basking in the 80° F heat. It had been nearly seven months since we’d felt temps like that. It didn’t even bother me that I was hours from the nearest native trout stream.

We spent four glorious days working on some serious sunburns. Hiked some pretty trails. Took 500+ pictures. Not a care in the world.

I though I’d share some pics with you (a bunch) in case you want to enjoy some vicarious warmth.

Enjoy!.

If you want to be on the cutting edge, and you haven’t signed up for notification of the premiere edition yet, head over to Rise Forms now and sign up.

We have a great line-up with some excellent fiction, art, poems, a personal narrative, and a book review to kick off your winter reading.

My grandson, William

I know I’ve been offline for some time now, but life has been hectic. Good news today though—I’m a grandpa! (yeah, way too young for this to happen, I thought, but apparently not).

His name is William. He is 19″. 7 lbs. 0 oz. Baby and mother are both doing well. Father? Well…you know, chip off the ol block—he’s doing fine.

In my last post I posed a little challenge to determine the two places I stopped. I said it was a trick question, and Harry was pretty quick on the draw when he said “bike trip” and “foolishly didn’t take a fly rod with you.” The fly gear was left home on purpose. Foolish? Hmmmm…jury is still out. Where were the two stops? Red Lodge and home and for the same reason: saddle sore!

In looking at a map of our motorcycling trip, it would probably be hard for a diehard fly angler to comprehend how one could choose to leave the fly gear behind with so many tempting choices in the path. Not to sound boastful (if that’s the right word), but most of these places I’ve been to multiple times and are a 4 hour drive or less away—it doesn’t elicit a great pull on me to fish them. But it does leave me in awe of the amazing opportunities I have to fly fish within a relatively close distance of home. I’m truly fortunate.

So a friend, Paul, invited me to come along with him and a few other guys for an annual trip they started doing a few years ago to Red Lodge, Montana. I jumped at the chance. These aren’t anglers, strictly biking. In fact, Paul is a bit of a speed junky (snowmobiles, jet skies, motorcycles, etc.). My wife and I went with him and a few other couples for a five hour bike ride a few weeks ago. He liked my riding style (fast), and that’s why he invited me for the Red Lodge trip.

We took a circuitous route to Red Lodge, not the fastest route. In fact, my father-in-law asked how long it took us to get there and how far it was. When I told him it was about 460 miles, and it took us 12 hours. He said that we must have been going awfully slow since that would average out to about 40 miles per hour. For those of you who might be motorcycle riders, you’ll understand that frequent butt breaks are important. And, one of the guys needed to stop every 100 miles to refuel. Plus, there is The Park.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Yellowstone as much as the next person, but it can be a real trial for those of us with traffic patience issues. Many of us who visit it, or the surrounding area with any amount of regularity find it both funny, and irritating, that people will stop in the middle of the road to take pictures of deer, elk, moose or bison. Or flowers. Really. (If you haven’t been to the park before, just picture a narrow, two lane road with virtually no shoulders.)

So, there we are, putt-putting along at 7 1/2 MPH. Then some stop and go stuff. And what should we find? Some guy stopped (which automatically means that that lane is now blocked) taking pictures of flowers. Again, I love flowers, but, aw, come on people!

And then the construction. We happened to pull up to some stop-n-go traffic just in time to hit the tail end of a pilot car line. When we got to the traffic stopped going the other direction, Paul decided to count how many cars were waiting in line. 278, with a couple dozen more rolling up right behind them. Boy, I’m glad we got there when we did!

Just outside the very northeast corner of the park (probably the least visited area, but it does have Slough Creek and Soda Butte Creek) is Cooke City. That’s where the grizzly attacked the three campers, killing the one. It’s a fun little town, but more importantly, it’s the gateway to Beartooth Pass.

If you aren’t familiar with Beartooth Pass, you’re missing out on one of the most spectacular drives in the lower 48. The summit is nearly 11,000 feet (10, 947), making it one of the highest roads in the US. It is amazing to look down at snow in August. A large section of the road is brand new, making it an incredible ride for the motorcycle enthusiast (just make sure you aren’t stuck behind cars so you can really enjoy those corners).

This page has some great pictures and video of the road (none of it taken by me).

I tried taking some video (you’ll see it below), but ran into a couple of problems. For those of you who have ridden cruisers (that’s what the Harley-type bikes are called, as opposed to bullet bikes, etc.), you’ll know that these machines are a bit on the rough side—not very smooth. Your head can do a lot of bouncing around. At least, mine does. And just about everything else bounces around too. I took my Kodak Zi8 camcorder and taped it to the inside of my windshield in hopes of capturing our trip. Well, you can see some of the results in the little bit of video I put together. It’s a bouncy bugger! Also, I couldn’t see the screen, so I never knew if I got the thing turned on or off. At one point in time I didn’t get the thing turned off, and I ran out of battery before making it anywhere close to Beartooth.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the other end of Beartooth is Red Lodge. This is the first time I have ever been there, and I can say that I’ll definitely be back. It’s a nice little town with some incredible background scenery. We decided to avoid traveling through the park again, so the next morning we left for Bozeman, crossing Yellowstone River (which I have never fished outside of the park) then rode south along the Gallatin River (another one I’ve never fished).

I must say, that for being a bike ride, I was looking at a lot of water as we rode past rivers. I did see a number of rises and quite a few anglers and wished I were on the river too. Maybe I’ll sneak a rod along with me next year.

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week I’ve been gone, roaming a little corner of the Rocky Mountains containing what some might call the Mecca of fly fishing in this area. I traveled a total of 1030 miles (Google claims 1006, but odometer says 1030) in 36 hours. These are the rivers I came in contact with, meaning I crossed over them or came within spitting distance of them (I could see them), during that time. You guess the two places I stopped. Some of the rivers/places are more famous than others, but some have been featured on my blog and so may factor into the picture since you know my love for them. No, that wasn’t a hint.

1. left home
2. Idaho
3. Cub River
4. Bear River (Black Canyon)
5. Blackfoot River
6. Tin Cup
7. Wyoming
8. Salt River
9. Greys River
10. Snake River (above Palisades Res.)
11. Idaho
12. South Fork Snake (below Palisades)
13. Teton River
14. Fall River
15. Island Park
16. Henry’s Fork of the Snake (Railroad Ranch/Harriman)
17. Yellowstone Park
18. Wyoming
19. Madison River
20. Firehole River
21. Gibbon River
22. Yellowstone River
23. Slough Creek
24. Soda Butte Creek
25. Montana
26. Red Lodge
27. Rock Creek (heh-heh)
28. Yellowstone River
29. Bozeman
30. Gallatin River
31. Madison River
32. Idaho
33. crossed numbers 16-1 again (in that descending order, 16 through 1)
34. arrived home

Good luck!

fine print: yes, it’s a trick question

View Stalking the Stalker in a Google map.

Warning: This post contains no fishing, no fish and no fish byproducts: it is piscatorially and ichthyologically barren.

Wednesday morning dawned a bit foggy. But we were finished fishing, so weather wasn’t much of a worry. The morning plans were to swing by Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s spread. In my early life, I desired to be an architect and went to an architectural design and drafting school in Arizona. I still have an interest in architecture, and couple that with my interest in history, especially early US history, and Monticello was on my “Bucket List.” Somehow, on my two previous trips to the east, I didn’t make it there.

Monticello sits on a hill to the south of Charlottesville, and I can imagine it has a commanding view of the surrounding countryside. The fog limited our view to just teasing glimpses of what that view might be like. As with most historical sites, Monticello has been properly commercialized through exorbitant admission costs, a fancy museum, a large staff, guided tours, yada, yada, yada. It was nice to see that visitors have free rein to the grounds, which are fairly extensive. For those of you who like history, maybe you’re like me and you’ve grown weary of the sameness of tours and museums: once you’ve been to one Civil War museum, you’ve basically been to them all. Once you’ve been on a tour of one Revolutionary era house, you’ve been on them all. Sure, there are distinct differences from building to building, but I can find that information in a book or online. For me, I just like to bask in the ambiance of a place, try to imagine what it was like in its heyday, which is hard to do when surrounded by a bunch of tourists and a tour guide yacking away. Call me odd (wouldn’t be the first time), but that’s me.

The house structure itself was, at first glance for me, surprising in its size. I was expecting something much larger. Not that it’s puny or anything—the main floor is over 5700 sq. ft. It’s hard to explain, but the main portion of the house looked smaller to me than it actually is. It might have something to do with the “dependencies.” Or the trees. Something. There is plenty of information available online for those who are interested in the details of Monticello. We didn’t spend nearly enough time lounging around the grounds, but I don’t think Dan would have liked to just sit and look. In fact, I couldn’t do the kind of sitting, pondering, photographing, that I like to do unless I was alone.

We quickly wrapped up our visit and hit the road for Nashville, an eight hour drive. As we neared Nashville, Dan remembered that they have a minor league baseball team, Nashville Sounds. He called a couple of places and found out that the Sounds were playing a home game that night. We watched them spank their arch-rivals, Memphis Redbirds 9-0. It was a nice way to unwind after the long drive.

Thursday was a day of waiting. If you didn’t read Day 1, the main purpose behind the trip was for Dan to help his brother, Xxxxx*, transport some guns across country from Williamsburg, VA to Logan, UT. Dan thought it would be a good idea to get to Virginia early and do some brookie fishing. And he invited me along. Xxxxx was catching up with us in Nashville Thursday to complete the trip.

We did some laundry, ate at a Waffle House (about every three blocks is a Waffle House in the southeast—more prevalent than McDonalds) and got a bit of a nap in. As it got closer to departure time, we thought we should head to downtown Nashville since neither of us had visited there before. As we were driving in, a massive thunderstorm dumped on us, and the radio reports were saying that the freeways were clogging up with traffic. We needed to have the rental back to the airport and meet Xxxxx there, so we skipped downtown and headed toward the airport.

We met Xxxxx, loaded our gear into his SUV rental, and headed out of Nashville around 5:00. Our plan was to drive straight home to northern Utah, 1,700 miles away. We planned on taking turns driving, each one of us driving 2-4 hour shifts.

I must admit that driving a load of guns made me feel like a bit of a gun runner. The last thing we wanted was to get pulled over and have to explain what we were doing in a rental vehicle with Florida plates. We had Utah drivers licenses and Xxxxx probably still had his Mexico license since he had just returned to the country from Mexico City.

Somewhere near Salina Kansas, during one of my driving stretches, the wind had picked up a bit. With the weight in the back of the SUV, the front end was a bit squirrely and the wind caused me to sway a bit. It was nearing 3:00AM with hardly a soul on the freeway except for the gun runners, swaying down the freeway at 77 MPH.

And the Highway Patrolman.

He pulled out of the center median as I passed and followed us for a mile before throwing on his light. I woke up Dan and Xxxxx and eased the SUV to the shoulder.

“Can I see your license?”

I handed Mr. Tan Polyester Pants my license.

“Are you awake? You seemed to be weaving all over,” he said as he glanced at my license and looked through the windows at the boxes lining the rear of the SUV and stacked on the folded-down half of the rear seat. He seemed to step back and notice the sag of the rear end of the vehicle and debating with himself what the relationship was between the sag and the boxes.

“Could you tell me what’s in these boxes?”

“Uh…guns?”

At about that time, Xxxxx, from the rear seat, leaned across some of the boxes next to him, and handed him an identification wallet with a badge in it.

“I’m with ICE. And just so you know, I’m armed,” said Xxxxx, as he gestured toward the handgun near him on the back seat.

The KHP looked at the ID, then handed it back to Xxxxx, and returned my driver’s license to me.

“How many guns do you have in here?”

“27,” Xxxxx replied. “I collect them. I just moved to Utah and I’m transporting my collection to my new house.”

The KHP and Xxxxx chatted for a few minutes about guns.

“Make sure you’re awake,” he said as he strode back to his patrol car, still eying the SUV. I watched in the side mirror as he paused, about five paces behind the SUV, still looking at the vehicle. Then he came back to the Driver’s window.

“Could I see what’s in the back?” he asked.

We all piled out of the SUV and opened the back of it.

He glanced inside and saw a number of smaller boxes. “What’s in those?” pointing toward the smaller boxes.

“Ammo,” Xxxxx said.

“Uh-huh.” The mental chin-stroking was clearly evident as he processed this new information. He hemmed and hawed a few more minutes.

“Well, you boys have a safe trip,” he said. And left.

“So Xxxxx, how much ammo do you have in here?” Dan asked, after the patrolman closed his door.

“About 50,000 rounds,” he said.

And we did have a safe and quiet ride the remainder of the way home.

* I could disclose Agent Xxxxx’s name to you, but then I’d have to…well, you know.

We spent Wednesday and Thursday in Capitol Reef National Park. It’s about 300 miles from my house but has almost identical elevation I’m about 4500′ and CRNP is about 5000′ (in fact, it might be even a bit higher). But on Wednesday when we arrived, it was 94°.

Good news is that next week I’m heading east with my fishing buddy Dan. His brother needs some help driving his truck from Virginia to Utah. So we’re flying to Tennessee, fishing the Smokies, then up to Virginia to fish the Rapidan and Moormans. We’re hunting out the southern and northern Appalachian strains of native brookies. Lets hope the weather is more cooperative.

Here are some photos of Capitol Reef:

If you’d like a little music to get in the proper frame of mind, press play before looking through the rest of the post.

The Bluest Blues – Alvin Lee

April—an interesting month weather-wise. One moment it’s sunny and 60. Green shoots and blades poke out from winter’s detritus. Then, suddenly, it’s struggling to make it into the 30′s and everything is re-sheathed in white. Spring is just a temptress, toying with the hearts of anglers. A little more than 6″ of snow fell a couple of days ago with more forecasted the next two days. It’s enough to bring on the blues.

Blues comes in many varieties. But it’s in water where I find some of my favorite blues. Little grottoes in the early morning gather what little light they can to themselves.

Rushing, tumbling around rocks the rill races it’s course ever downward. A surreal little landscape of mist and moss. Thoughts of floating a fly through chutes and channels bob and weave their way through the dendrites.

Our patience, flagging in the wind like so many of last year’s forgotten leaves, will carry us: we’ll hang on and wait out the last fits and sputters of winter’s encore.

And, just around the corner, our thinking-spring-thoughts will pan out quicker than we realize. The white frame of winter will give way to a permanence of green. As permanent as seasons can possibly be.