Down in Galveston, Up in Yellowstone

Back to posting on Tuesday, since of course Juneteenth is a holiday. I just found out that since last year, there’s been a mural in Galveston commemorating the issuance of General Order No. 3 by (Brevet) Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger, who would be wholly obscure otherwise. The artist, Reginald C. Adams, is from Houston.

Something to see if I ever make it back to Galveston, which is more likely than, say, Timbuktu. But I don’t believe I’ll go to Galveston in the summer again.

I downloaded a National Park Service image (and thus public domain) today of the road near the north entrance of Yellowstone NP, showing the damage from the recent flooding. Damn.Yellowstone NP flood 2022

Many more pictures of the flooding in the park and in Montana are here, along with a story about the curious absence of the governor of Montana.

“Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance,” the NPS says. “Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.”

No doubt. We entered the park at the north entrance back in ’05 and spent some time in that part of Yellowstone. The Gardiner River was much more peaceful then.Gardiner River 2005

“Just south of the park’s north entrance, there’s a parking lot next to the Gardiner River. Just beyond the edge of the lot is a path that follows the edge of the river, under some shade trees,” I wrote at the time.

“The river is very shallow at that point, with a cold current pushing over piles of very smooth stones… piles of rock moderated the current a little, so that you could sit in the river and let it wash over you. It wasn’t exactly swimming, but it was refreshing.

“Along the road, just at the entrance to the parking lot, there were two signs: ENTERING WYOMING and 45TH PARALLEL of LATITUDE HALFWAY BETWEEN EQUATOR and NORTH POLE.”

Wonder if that sign is still standing.

Everyone at Yellowstone

Has it been ten years since we visited Yellowstone NP? So it has. Tempus fugit, dude.

Ann of course doesn’t remember it. But she was there. On a boardwalk over certain death by scalding. That kind of thing makes parents a little nervous.

Ann, Yellowstone, 2005Lilly claims to remember the trip, but maybe she’s just humoring me. I’ll bet things are fuzzy and conflated with other trips.

Lilly, Yellowstone 2005Originally, we’d just planned to go to the Black Hills. Yuriko persuaded me that we might as well go on to Yellowstone, because we might not have time later. She was right.

Yuriko, Yellowstone 2005The shirt I’m wearing was from another long trip. When we bought our tickets for the Trans-Siberian in Hong Kong from an outfit called Moonsky Star Ltd., whose mascot was a monkey in a cap, smoking a cigarette and holding a bottle of beer, we got a couple their shirts as a lagniappe.

Dees, Yellowstone 2005Also note the pen clipped to my shirt. Probably in case I had any postcards to write immediately.