A Prediction

I read today in an AP story that “The Republican numbers are going to pick up,” according to a Republican pollster. This hopeful comment was prompted by the "avalanche" of early voting, mostly by Democrats.

I doubt it. I suspect that many, if not most, Republicans -- that is, the reasonable portion of the Republican party, not the rabid reactionaries of Tea Party ilk -- will quietly stay home, unable to bring themselves to cast another vote for the stock clown that won the race four years ago. That, plus the diminution of help from Russia, will result in a win, possibly even a landslide, for the Democrat.

Will it be as bad as it could be? Will the Republican party also lose its majority in the Senate, as voters turn from scaramuccia to arlecchino? Will enough of the spine-challenged members of that once-august body find themselves dragged down to defeat on the coattails of the fact-challenged incumbent? As a Republican, I hope not; as an American, I hope so. And as a Texan, I wish it were Cruz, the 21st-Century McCarthy, running for re-election this year instead of Cornyn.

It is what it is.

Blog Posts from the Park City Trip

To read the posts from this trip in order, click on this link, then click "newer post" when you get to the end.

To see the pictures from the trip, click on this link.

And by the way, I got the last two counties in Utah on this trip. That makes 34 states completed.

Oh, and in case you're curious: no, I didn't make it home on Saturday. Had a flat tire outside Lordsburg, had to drive to El Paso at 50 mph on the spare tire to get a pair of rear tires. Front tires will be replaced next year. (And, some good news: turns out my deductible for the slashed roof is only $100. Having that car insurance is finally going to pay off.)

...And the Rest: Park City Trip

To read the posts from this trip in order, click on this link, then click "newer post" when you get to the end.

To see the pictures from the trip, click on this link.

After another breakfast at our now-favourite bagel place, we both started off on Wednesday feeling the need for some exercise, so I checked my All-Trails app and found what looked like a trail suitable for a fat ol' guy with mobility issues, at a place called Willow Creek. It turned out to be a nice easy mostly-paved two-mile-long path around a small city park out in the northern reaches of Park City. We followed that up with a stop at the Kimball Art Center, which is listed as a museum but isn't; it's a bunch of small studios where Suburban Housewives (if such exist) learn to make the kind of ceramic and painted projects that were once the special province of eight-year-olds at summer camp.

We took the radical step, then, of driving into downtown Park City, the congested five or six blocks of Main Street that, heretofore, we had experienced only on foot. During the day, parking is free, which was a nice surprise, so we found a place on Swede Alley and walked over to the Park City Museum, an unexpectedly large building containing three floors dealing with the city's history, from its founding in the 1880s as a silver-mining center, through the customary Tragic Fire That Destroyed Most of the City, to its rebirth in the 1950s as a ski destination. Notably, Park City was the home of the first and last skier's subway, as a mining company tried to repurpose its existing tunnels and shafts for access to its new ski runs on the mountains above its defunct mine. The experiment lasted but a single season, as the mine was so leaky that soaked passengers on its 16-passenger train would step out into the freezing atmosphere of a Utah winter and "immediately freeze like a popsicle." And of course, the Sundance Film Festival figured prominently in the most recent parts of the town's history.

After a couple of hours at the museum, we walked up the hill to our preferred people-watching spot. Unfortunately, there was a gigantic SUV parked in front of that spot, so we retreated across the street to a bar that offered seats right by a window looking out onto the sidewalk, and there we indulged ourselves with beer and diet coke (and a $5 hamburger special that turned out to be one of the best burgers I've had in a long time). The best thing about people-watching isn't the people -- they are ordinary in every way -- but in the conversation and memories they provoke. How else could two people sit for an hour or two, watching tourists and dog-walkers traipse up the steep slope of Main Street, Park City, and back down? It's not like these were celebrities promoting their films; that happens in late January, when I, for one, am unlikely to ever be in a snow-prone area.

After a spell back at our condo, watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and doing laundry (just because), I made Curtis pick a place for dinner. He stoutly resisted making a decision until it became clear to him that if he didn't pick a place, we weren't going anywhere. He finally made the painful choice, a place called The Boneyard up on Kearns Avenue, which is The Other Major Street in town. Turned out to be a pretty good choice. I had a chicken pot pie that was too much food, and got to watch the Netherlands:Mexico friendly on delayed broadcast from across the room.

Our plans for the final day in Park City involved a trip down to Jurassic National Monument, which is two and a half hours south of our condo. We decided, for that reason, that rather than come all the way back up to Park City just to check out on Friday, we'd check out on Thursday and then stay that night in Panguitch, which is a lot closer to Las Vegas. And a room in Panguitch isn't much more than the money we would save by not having to drive that distance. (The Sacramento Jag uses premium gas. One of the odd things I've noticed is that, while regular gas here costs way more than what it costs back home, premium is about the same price in both places. Go figure.)

So we packed up the car, turned on the dishwasher, and headed off to see the fossils. Grabbed coffee at a 7-11 (best coffee I've had in PC) and picked up some bagels at a place in Heber City (French Toast -- not good -- and Asiago) to eat in the car. We stopped to see Bridal Veil Falls just outside Provo

and then let Google Maps take us to the country's newest national monument.

Instead, it took us to the Bureau of Land Management Field Office in Price, Utah, where the one guy working there wasn't surprised to see us. He showed us where the monument is on the map, and explained the route in excruciating detail, of which my mind focussed on the thirteen miles of "well-maintainged dirt roads".

The monument is a working dig site at a place called the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry. Like Dinosaur National Monument, but on a much smaller scale, it has two small metal buildings covering the active dig sites, where hundreds of bones are being excavated in the painstaking way of modern paleontology. There are a number of hiking trails that take you around the monument, some quite long, but that might be a project for another trip, when I'm not wearing a brace on my ankle. And when I'm driving the Subaru, which I don't mind taking on dirt roads (aka gravel roads), well-maintained or not.

The most interesting facts about the place, to me, are these: (1) the proportion of preserved carnivores is much higher than the proportion of preserved herbivores, and there's almost no preserved plant matter; and (2) no one has yet come up with an explanation for why so many fossils would be preserved in this particular spot. It wasn't a marsh or watering hole, it wasn't a bend in a river where carcasses might wash up, and it wasn't the site of a disaster -- in other words, the fossils were laid down over a long, long time, not in a single cataclysm. There's no discernible reason for this particular fossil field to exist.

The only other stop we made was at Butch Cassidy's boyhood home, right next to the highway in Centerville, Utah, a few miles from Panguitch. A local somebody has contributed to the preservation of this part of the famous criminal's history, which is a one-room log cabin and a small outbuilding. Interesting factoid: the real Butch Cassidy was better-looking than Paul Newman, while the real Sundance Kid was no Robert Redford.

Leaving Panguitch this morning (Friday) I took Curtis through Cedar Breaks, which I had seen eight years ago and thought as beautiful as Bryce Canyon. Curtis agreed.

I then dropped him at his house in North Las Vegas and headed east towards home. Thanks to a number of slowdowns on the highways for construction and accidents, I've only made it as far as Tucson, which is now my Least Favourite Place In The Whole World: dusty, somewhat sleazy, and thirteen hours' drive from home, so I may not make it back tomorrow.

And here's a link to all the pictures from this trip.

Another Day or Two: Park City Trip

This is the second post covering the trip to Park City. You should read them in order. Here's a link to the first post of the trip; when you get to the end, click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left.

The confusion about the car museums in western Colorado has left a sizeable hole in our plans for this trip to Park City. We had just enough things planned to all but fill the days here, and the fact that the museum in Gateway is apparently not open this season, despite the info on the web, means we have a day to fill in a place that, let's face it, isn't really filled with things of great interest to two fat ol' retired lawyers. 

Tomorrow is that day, so we're going to be kind of grasping at straws to find something to do. But that's tomorrow; meanwhile, yesterday and today have been pretty good.

 First of all, we found a breakfast place that we like, one with light meals available, and drinkable coffee. We went there yesterday morning, & liked it well enough to go back this morning.

Yesterday we drove into Lehi, which is a suburb south of Salt Lake City. It features a number of interesting museums (and a well-regarded botanical garden, but we didn't see that). We started at the Museum of Natural Curiosity. It's a children's museum, but we went anyway, and to be honest, we really enjoyed it. Mainly because, that early, there weren't any kids there and we could play with all the stuff ourselves. Usually, there are kids swarming all over the exhibits, and it just seems too rude to elbow the little bas... uh, brats aside so we can see, for example, how an Archimedes screw works, or how air blows brightly coloured plastic balls through clear plastic tubes, or how a tornado feels. We spent at least a couple of hours there and had fun, although by the time we got to the last part of the museum, there were enough kids there to be In The Way. All in all, though, we timed it pretty close to perfectly.

After lunch at a fru-fru cafe in a building dedicated to new age stuff -- think expensive yoga classes and spa treatments -- we went to the Museum of Ancient Life. That is, dinosaurs. Oh, they had all kinds of stuff about Carboniferous forests and pre-Cambrian shellfish and stuff -- the boring stuff -- and there were, you know, things about ancient man hunting mastodons and all. But it was about dinosaurs. Four big exhibit halls, two about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs. A full Supersaurus skeleton (not actual fossilized bones, of course, but every bit as impressive), so big that it was impossible to get a photo of the whole thing. (It's actually hard to see one end from the other.) A brachiosaur skeleton looking down on you. A pair of T-Rex fighting over a dead Edmontosaur. Stegosaurs and allosaurs and ankylosaurs and mosasaurs and pleisiosaurs and all kinds of other 'saurs that I never heard of. I loved it.

shoe for scale

We took the scenic route home over Guardsman Pass to cap off a really nice day; and we kind of stumbled on a pretty good place for dinner, after our first choice turned out not to be open. (bad Google Maps!) 

This morning we were back at our preferred breakfast place, and after a stop at Walgreen's for some supplies, we sat out in the parking lot discussing what to do. See, today was going to be a day with a hole in the schedule, too, so I had thought about driving up to Flaming Gorge, just because it's pretty there and it would take all day. But when we got right down to it, I didn't want to do that. It would have felt kind of pathetic, driving all that way through counties I'd already been to just to pass the time. We might as well have stayed home and watched TV.

Then Curtis found a listing for a car museum in Salt Lake. (It's not listed on the web site I have bookmarked.) It seemed to have a pretty good collection, about a hundred cars (the only other car museums in Utah are the Toyota Land Cruiser Museum -- thanks, but no -- and a little thing up in Ogden with eleven, count 'em, eleven cars). We decided to go. 

As I was finishing my cigarette I said to Curtis, Call and make sure they're open. We are trying to get used to having to do that. He called and left a message. I found a different number for the museum, and called it: not in service. So we were just about to be back to the Flaming Gorge plan when the guy returned Curtis's call. 

It's not actually a museum anymore. It was, but the guy has shut it down & now it's just his private collection of cars, spread through three buildings near downtown Salt Lake City, and yes, he'd be happy to open it up for us. He was on his way back from Breckenridge but would be there in about an hour. We got there in about a half-hour, and waited out front until he arrived. He opened up the buildings and went about his business while Curtis and I wandered through his collection of cars. (There used to be about twice as many, but there was a will contest and ... hmmm. What we saw was what he had left after the contest.) 

1960 Coupe deVille

Olds Toronado

Packard with guidelamps

The cars weren't pristine restorations set behind velvet ropes. They were cars in every condition, crammed into the available space. It was OK with him if I opened hoods and doors now and then, and I couldn't resist playing with the fuel-filler cover on the old Cadillac Fleetwood -- you know, the kind hidden in the taillight. There were lots of Cadillacs and Lincolns, including less-often-seen models from the '50s; there was a '64 T-Bird convertible hardtop (my mother's dream car); a '28 Rolls, and '37 Cord, a '29 Auburn, a couple of Packards, some Nashes, big Chryslers, a '64 Imperial convertible and the gigantic GM cars from the '70s.

I don't know how long we spent prowling through this guy's collection, but even considering the unpolished state of the display, this was a real treat. Goes a long way toward making up for the disappointment of Rangely and Gateway. 

This was a great day. We have nothing planned for tomorrow.

Waste Not ... uh ... something something

 So we had a "bonus week" available, a not-quite-free stay in a condo provided by the company that we book through sometimes for our annual Condo Week trips. There are some restrictions, mainly that we can only book a month and a half in advance. We've had this bonus week for almost 2 years, and have sat on it thinking that, eventually, we'd want to use it. Then Coronavirus showed up, and suddenly it's not something my wife is interested in.

We were going to let it go by the way -- it expires near the end of this month. Were we going to the Lake this October, like we usually do around the time of the Huntsman Games? Would I get to make another trip in the Sacramento Jag? Did I even want to? What about the dog? Things seemed to conspire against it, so we reconciled ourselves to the thought that it would go unused. The Huntsman Games were cancelled; Nancy, who usually meets us out at the Lake, had her schedule all disarranged by the virus; I injured my foot in Jackson this summer and my mobility is limited. All kinds of things were keeping the planning in flux, so finally I just decided: I was going to see what was available, and just go somewhere. 

Park City, Utah, is the choice I made. I contacted my old friend Curtis, who lives in Las Vegas; he and I have gone hiking every October for a few years, in conjunction with the Huntsman Games. I could collect him, we could go up to Park City, and spend a week in a condo doing whatever it is people do around Park City in October. I could be back in time for the rescheduled trip to the Lake in the second half of the month. I would get to take the convertible, I would get to visit the two remaining counties in Utah, I would get to go to the two car museums I wanted to see in remote parts of western Colorado, and we could have our traditional hike-and-kvetch trip. Hiking would be limited this year, because of my injury, but kvetching is undiminished by the pandemic. It'd be great.

Well, so far, it's only good. The drive out, on the freeway, was of course as boring as three days on the freeway can be (athough it was better on the third day, after I collected Curtis, who can make conversation). I spent the first night, Wednesday, in a dreary little mom-and-pop motel in Lordsburg, New Mexico. It seemed okay until I decided to take a shower, and found that there was no cold water available. And the hot water was really, really hot. Thursday night I was at the Strat, in Las Vegas. This is the hotel with the 1200' tower with an amusement park on the top. The room was reasonably priced, even with the "resort" fee, and I had a nice view toward the east from 20-something floors up.

sunrise from the hotel

I didn't see the amusement park, but I did go up to the bar for a look around. Vegas is a sleazy-looking place in the daytime, but at night it looks as exciting as everybody seems to think it is. Vibrant, colourful, flashy, as long as you don't look too close. Downstairs in the hotel there's the usual over-the-top casino, designed to disorient. I walked through it a few times on one quest or another, and managed to get lost almost every time.

In the morning, I loaded up the car in the parking garage (one of the reasons I picked this hotel is that they offer free parking in their garage) and headed out to get Curtis. When I got to his place and got out, I found two slashes, about 5 inches long, in my convertible top. I'm just guessing the work of the passenger in the white Toyota that parked next to me in the garage. So that free parking will turn out to be the most expensive parking I've ever had. 

The drive from Curtis's house to Park City is, according to Google Maps. a little less than six and a half hours. We managed to do it in about ten. I mention this because I don't know where all that extra time came from. I mean, I always manage to exceed Google Maps' estimates, because I don't quite go the speed limit usually, and I make a lot of stops along the way. But three and a half extra hours ... well, that may be some kind of record. 

I was really only concerned about it because I knew we'd have to check into the condo. But around 4:30 that afternoon, the condo office called my landline to give instructions on how to check in. Ain't it lucky, there was someone to hear the message. (Actually, there is a sign on the office window with a phone number to call for late check-in.) 

It being late and already dark, all we did Friday night was walk up the road to "downtown", about 8 blocks away. Lots of cars but not many people out; but all the restaurants were full and each had a few groups waiting for seating. We first located a place that would be showing the Aston Villa:Liverpool match on Sunday -- first things first -- and then turned our attention to somewhere for dinner. 

In the relentlessly trendy heart of Park City, we were unable to find any truly satisfyingly ordinary place to grab a light supper. We ended up at some overblown fusion place that may actually have a name, but the only thing that attracted us was the fact that there was nobody ahead of us in line for a table. The restaurant's virus protections were over the top (a good thing): the server who took our order was not allowed to touch anything on the table; they had designated employees going around collecting menus. When it was time to pay, they gave us a sanitizing towel for the credit card. Impressive. The food was good, and only moderately overpriced. The ambience was nice -- we sat outside, with a propane heater nearby to keep the slight chill at bay. 

Saturday, having verified on line that the car museum in Rangely, Colorado, was open from 10AM to 6PM, we went for breakfast in Heber City and then drove east. It's about three hours, each way, and included passing through one of the two counties I had yet to visit in Utah. The sky was clear, though oddly hazy at the edges when we left Park City. The route took us through national forest lands, with trees and rivers and reservoirs in the first half of the trip, and high desert after that. There is, I am always reminded, a stark beauty to desert landscape, and this trip was no exception. It was almost as colourful as the Painted Desert: greys and reds overtopping each other, browns dark and light, mountains in the distance ... except that there didn't seem to be any distance. In fact, throughout the day, the visible horizons got closer and closer, and the scent of wood smoke got stronger and stronger until the sun turned red at four in the afternoon. Ah! Fires out west! That explains it.

smoke from forest fires

So after our three-hour drive to Colorado, we pulled up in front of the Rangely Auto Museum. Which was closed.

feet on the ground: Kennedy Station

We had lunch in a little Italian place in town, then headed back through the smoke. I took a detour through the little community of Bonanza, Utah, just for the variety, and along the way we found a historical marker for Kennedy Station, a stage stop on the route between Vernal and the Dragon Mine.

 

 

sheep parade

 We also got stopped by a flock of sheep running across the road in single file on their way to a watering hole. After watching them for a few minutes I decided just to plow my way through, as there appeared to be about twenty minutes' worth of sheep yet to cross. They were still crossing when they went out of sight in my rearview mirror.

So now it's Sunday. Breakfast this morning was in a grill a few miles up the road. There aren't a lot of choices in this town. This place wasn't bad, but the service was ... uneven. Hint to waiters: when someone orders coffee, that should include cream, sugar, sweeteners, and a spoon. And when you refill the cup, it's best to stop pouring before pulling away. And even in a fancy-schmancy resort town like this, two dollars for a single slice of toast is too steep.

Well. So. Sunday noon and we head down to Main Street, where we earlier identified a bar that would have the Aston Villa:Liverpool match showing. That match proved to be a metaphor for this entire trip so far: exciting, engaging, intensely disappointing. Villa beat the Reds, 7:2. Sadness overwhelms.

But not for long. After the crushing defeat, we walk farther up Main Street to the top of the town, thinking of making a small hike to the Ontario Tunnel, which turns out to be a drainage culvert. Somehow that lacked appeal, so we went back down the hill a ways and found a shaded bench where we planned to do a little people-watching. That turned into hours and hours of people-watching, and so far that has been the best part of this trip.

On Trump

I watched about three minutes of Monday night's "debate" between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, then flipped away confident that I'd gotten the gist of the performances; news from every source Tuesday morning confirmed the accuracy of my conclusion. But thinking about it on the long drive across country on the Interstate got me to wondering, not for the first time, about Trump's supporters. They make up about a third of the electorate; they are all adult enough to vote, and drive, and have at least an average education, and presumably they are largely able to function to some degree in the real world. I know a couple of these people pretty well myself, and I know that they, at least, tick all those boxes. How, then, can anyone still support this man, after three and a half years of lies and failure? (I even read an entire book, Strangers in Their Own Land by Arlie Russell Hochschild, hoping for some insight on the question.)

I've had conversations, in person with one and by email with another, and both of the Trumpistas that I know stick resolutely to their support for him. They have no articulable basis for it, beyond "I like what he's done" -- though they can't really say what that is. When I look at Trump's accomplishments, other than the lies and the cover-up of those lies and the denial of reality and the readiness to brand any uncomfortable fact "fake news", I see next to nothing. 

I see a very, very bad tax law change, which redounds to the disadvantage of most people, including both my Trumper friends. I see the missile attack on a Syrian air base in response to that nation's use of chemical weapons (at least Trump did something, even if halfheartedly; Obama, despite his "red line" warning, did nothing). I see the Gorsuch nomination to the Supreme Court (Gorsuch is a knowledgeable and, I think, reasonably mainstream judicial thinker, with respect for principles and traditions, though I wouldn't say I necessarily agree with his outlook). I see the Kavanaugh appointment; however questionable the man's behaviour may have been when he was in college and drunk, I think, after a certain amount of time, it's just too late to hold that against him. (Plus, I think there's a certain amount of unfairness in using the mores of the 2010s to judge the behaviour of a 20-year-old living with the mores of the 1980s; it's kind of like condemning the founding fathers, now, because things they did that were commonplace in the 1780s are considered reprehensible in the 21st Century.) It's too early to form an opinion of Kavanaugh's respect for the rule of law and the traditions of American jurisprudence, and to be honest I'm not all that optimistic about him as a justice; but I'm prepared to be persuaded one way or the other. So let's give Trump the benefit of the doubt and say that the Kavanaugh appointment can be chalked up on the Accomplishment side of the ledger.

And that's about it. One of my Trumper friends said he liked Trump's stand on immigration. (That was the only particular he could articulate.) I have no opinion about it, one way or the other: I don't consider immigration a big deal, though I understand why people in the formerly lily-white midwest, and in the historically black-and-white south might be frightened out of their minds (as they seem to be, from here) by all the taquerías suddenly sprouting up in their quaint little farming communities. It can be scary to be suddenly confronted with a noticeable number of people who talk with a different accent and eat strange foods, I suppose, if all you've ever known for generations is steak and corn and coleslaw at the church social. 

But one of my Trumper friends lives in San Antonio, a city that has had a very, very large population of people whose roots are in Mexico and Central America. (At one time, I calculated that my wife and I were the only "anglos" on our street, but I think now that I had forgotten about the elderly couple who lived across the street and a couple of doors down. One of them, at least was anglo -- a term that, around here, just means "not hispanic".) Most of them are from families that were long-settled here when Travis drew a line in the sand. Some of the more recent arrivals speak with that accent that we call "Mexican" because Mexicans are by far the largest part of the group; or speak only Spanish. Either way, they get by; their children -- whether "dreamers" or native-born citizens -- are indistinguishable from the rest of the population. They are as American as my friend or me, and here in South Texas, they are no kind of "threat" to our way of life. Hell, they have influenced and defined our way of life, mostly for the better, as much as any ethnic group. (The other large ethnic groups here are German and Polish, who are distinguishable only by their family names; a fair number of Blacks, whether descended from slaves or more recent arrivals, who seem to me to be about as integrated into the fabric of the city as everyone else, unless they hold themselves apart (as some people are wont to do); growing populations of East- and South-Asian people, groups just now getting large enough to start moving out from the concentrated enclaves that immigrant groups seem always to start with;  and smaller numbers of Arabic and Caribbean people, who are mainly recent-enough arrivals to still stand out for their accents and their overly-polite uncertainty about How We Do Things Here. They'll get over that, presumably, and their kids will be mostly indistinguishable when their time comes.) My friend has no cause to be so agitated about immigration here: all these people, where ever they came from way back when or last year, they're here now, and they're part of us. (The other friend lives in South Louisiana, where there are blacks and whites, and the whites are either Cajun or otherwise. I can see where he might have a knee-jerk reaction to novel ethnic changes.)

So I can see how people in places where large-ish new concentrations of immigrants from non-European places can be disconcerting; but I see it as a temporary issue, one of perception and unfamiliarity rather than any kind of real undermining of American values. I can respect my friends' discomfort with immigration without agreeing with it. What I can't respect is Trump's shameless playing up to that prejudice, and his unconstitutional diversion of funds appropriated for other purposes to his boondoggle border fence. (I know, he likes to call it a wall, but it's not a wall, it's a fence, and not a very effective one at that.) And let's not even talk about the cost of this project.

And then there's Trump's "muslim ban," the exclusion of immigrants from a bunch of what he considers "shithole countries". This policy amounts to nothing more than a tawdry bit of window dressing on our side of the question, much like the old exclusions of East Asians that provoked our first immigration policies many decades ago. Those policies at least had the questionable virtue of being in line with general attitudes, back when the American melting pot was as ethnically homogenous as fondue (except for the black folk, but they didn't count back then, did they?).

So I would say that Trump's actions on immigration are a failure; though I will give partial credit for the ending of "temporary protected status" for some groups. The formalist in me thinks that, if we're going to allow people to come to the US on a temporary basis because of humanitarian concerns, that protection shouldn't last a lifetime. If those people who came here 30 years ago want to stay on, let them apply for green cards or citizenship, or go back home. (I admit to not knowing what's involved in applying for either green cards or citizenship, but when you get right down to it, it doesn't matter. They were allowed in temporarily, and then they should leave just like a guest who comes for a visit.)

His trade policies are a failure, too. His trade war with China has produced nothing but bills for American taxpayers. His modifications to NAFTA have produced nothing but hot air and semantics. 

Trump's murky dealings with Russia have produced nothing for the US as a nation, though it sure seems to be doing something for Trump, personally. Who knows what. 

Trump's threats to abandon NATO have caused unrest among our best friends in the world, and have produced only a grudging increase in defense spending by some of those friends, and a whole lot of ill will. I won't deny the propriety of his insistence that they live up to their commitment to spend two per cent of their GDP on defense, but I sure think that result could easily have been accomplished without all the fuss and bother that his hack-handed methods produced. Partial credit, then.

He gets no credit for his handling of the ongoing morass in Afghanistan. I know my own views on how to handle that situation; he has, apparently, none of his own. Another failure.

He promised to "drain the swamp," an idea he got from Mussolini. (Trump probably doesn't know who Mussolini was, but somebody he talked to during the campaign must have once read about Mussolini's promises to drain actual swamps.) Look at the people he's brought into government -- the "best people, the very best", according to him. They are quacks and dilletantes, self-serving hacks and antisocial zealots. The decent ones, though few in number, were mainly in and out in a few months, hired and fired more or less on a whim. Many of them were outright criminals. Trump's vaunted judgment of people -- vaunted, that is, by him -- gets a failing grade from me. I believe he could have picked better people at random from a list provided by the DMV of any state.

Somebody (Steve Bannon, I bet) convinced Trump early on that Iran was getting away with something because of the 6-nation agreement they entered into. So Trump pulled the US out. Okay, he's in charge, he gets to make that decision, even though everyone else involved thought there was no problem with it. But then he tries to use the agreement's enforcement mechanism to re-impose sanctions against Iran. Hey, fool: you aren't a party to the agreement anyore, you can't invoke its remedies any more than, say, Cambodia or Bhutan can. Amateurish move. 

North Korea makes wild threats against the US and its ally, Japan. Trump conducts his personal diplomacy, promising either a non-nuclear Korea or war. Which do we have now? Kim ran circles around our dealmaker-in-chief.

The economy was doing alright until the pandemic hit. He gets a little credit for letting Obama's methods of promoting recovery from Bush's recession play out. But take back some of that credit because of Trump's self-serving lies about what he's done. He campaigned on the promise of 3% growth; he's failed to attain that, and in fact the economic recovery, the long, slow economic recovery from Bush's recession a decade ago is less impressive under Trump's aegis than what Obama accomplished in the latter part of his administration. 

And then there's the handling of the pandemic. Trump didn't create the virus, of course, but he saw it coming and did nothing to prevent disaster. It was a conscious choice, to eschew national health-protection policies in favour of a "states' rights" checkerboard of more or less effective responses.  It was a conscious choice to not stockpile the equipment that would be needed -- a choice determined by Scrooge-like attention to cost and not much else. When he flipped on that decision, it was a conscious (and un-American) choice to prefer giving aid to "red" states over "blue" states. It was a conscious choice to disparage the opinions of those people who should -- and do -- know best how to prevent the wide spread of disease. It was a conscious choice to press for relaxation of protective measures despite the advice of people who understand disease. It was a conscious choice to muddle the population's understanding with talk of medicine-show cures, to politicize basic protective measures like masking-up; to question with no factual basis the epidemiology; to broadcast claims, based on ignorance and hopeful assumptions, that kids don't get sick, that warm weather will solve the problem, that it's safe to go back to school and back to work and back to normal. And it was a conscious choice to do all of this just in the hope that miracles would occur and he would look good when the election came around. Trump's handling of the pandemic is a total and most abject failure, epitomising the most repulsive consequences of his unfortunate personality: arrogance, self-importance, lack of empathy, ignorance, willful stupidity, incompetence, laziness and poor judgment.

When you add up Trump's accomplishments and failures, they don't add up to much. When you then take into account his sleaziness, his inability to focus, his loucheness, his incompetence at administration, his frauds, his lies, his nepotism, his disrespect for -- well, everyone, his inappropriate and autocratic insistence on loyalty to himself instead of to the Constitution .... I mean, the man even cheats at golf.

Trump famously said that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it; his supporters wouldn't care.  Based on the unwavering support of that third of the population who seem to think the man walks on water, despite everything he is and everything he's done or not done, I'd go even further. If Donald Trump hosted snuff porn films on television, his supporters would first call it fake news, then they would blame the victims' parents for not having raised them better, and then they would say, Hey, Trump's just trying to make a buck; What's wrong with that?

What Russia Has on Trump

rawstory.com

On a recent show, Rachel Maddow asked Michael Cohen about a time when Trump flipped a house in Palm Beach, Florida, and made a profit of about fifity million dollars. What Trump said, according to Cohen, was that the purchase of the house by a Russian oligarch, presumably one of the criminal coterie surrounding Vladimir Putin, was a means for Putin to launder his personal fortune. (“‘The oligarchs are just fronts for Putin,’ Trump told me. 'He puts them into wealth to invest his money….'”) Putin, in Trump’s mind, controls substantially all the money in Russia.

Like many people, I’ve often wondered what vile secret Russia holds over our 45th President. There have been rumors of the most salacious sorts, involving sex and prostitutes and lies and cover-ups. Imagination has run wild, there being nothing in Trump’s life story to restrain it; indeed, since a man is known by the company he keeps, and Trump keeps the worst sort of morally-challenged company, imaginings can take on a life of their own, and become a sort of entertainment. No form of corruption seems implausible for Donald Trump.

But it occurred to me, while listening to Cohen talk about his former boss, that imagining all those tittilating perversions are, in Trump’s case, unnecessary. His lust for power, and its surrogate, money, is so great as to  suffice to explain Trump’s obsequious fawning over Russia; and all it would take for that particular spectacularly venal upscale grifter to sell out his country, to expose its secrets, to betray its interests in favor of his own, is the lure of future payment on a scale worthy of the Romanovs. I now think that Trump is kowtowing to Putin because Putin has enough money — who knows from where — to keep Trump rolling in gilded luxury for the rest of his life after he leaves office.

That belief, that it’s just pure greed keeping Trump in Putin’s corner, got another boost when I heard Peter Strzok promoting his book on the same program a day or two later. Near the end, as Strzok talked about his conviction that Russia “has something on Trump”, Strzok said Trump was compromised by the lies he’s told. But Strzok referenced the shame, the embarrassment, that an ordinary person would feel when caught in a blatant lie; that shame is why liars can be coöpted by a foreign power.

Trump, though, is no such ordinary person: he has no shame whatsoever. Truth is irrelevant unless useful. Being caught in a lie is an inconvenience to Trump, not a moral stain. In other words, Trump isn’t being blackmailed into betraying his country; I now think he’s doing it as an investment.

This discussion between Maddow and Strzok took place on the day after Trump’s recorded interviews with Bob Woodward first surfaced, and on the very day that saw Trump insisting, falsely of course, that he hadn’t lied to the American people about corona virus when he’d called it a hoax, and the day he claimed that he had brought “so many car plants” to Michigan — he brought one, at the most; and just a few days after he started denying, despite independent confirmation, reports that he’d called our war dead and wounded “losers” and “suckers”.

When Trump gets caught in a lie, he doubles down. We’ve all seen it, ever since he glided down the fools-gold escalator. He denies saying what he said, and lies bigger, and if that doesn’t work, he just walks away from it like from a debt in a bankruptcy, knowing that soon we will all have forgotten about the lie he told and the lie he told about the lie, and we will have moved on to some other ludicrously false bauble sprinkled on the public consciousness.

Risk Assessment

In response to my last post, Meaningful Numbers, I got this link from a reader. It will take you to a map that shows, on a county-by-county basis (and we all know how I feel about counties) what your chances are of coming into contact to a corona virus carrier at large in your community.

https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/

In using this tool, you should note the slide bar at the lower left, allowing you to view risk scaled to the size of the gathering you are contemplating attending. You should also note that the data assumes there are ten times as many infected people than are reported in official figures. I wouldn't have doubted that figure a few months ago, before widespread testing became available. Even now, the public's indifference to getting tested, even here in San Antonio, where testing is free and easy, leads me to think that ten times the reported figure probably isn't off by much; and it's best to err on the side of caution in this case.

If you're thinking of going where there'll be a number of other people, a place where social distancing will be difficult, unlikely or impossible, that web site will help you make an informed decision as to the risk it entails. But you should also remember that, if you go, and you're exposed, there is still the After-Time to think about: a time when you will return to the company of your loved ones, when you may yourself be the infected one, when you will be the source of illness and death for everyone around you.

Meaningful Numbers

 You see it all the time, on all the news channels: brightly coloured maps showing how many cases each state has. New York, California, Texas and Florida are dark red, because they have so many cases.

But that's not a particularly meaningful bit of information. Of course those states have the most cases: they have the most people. 

A better map would show the infestation of corona virus as a percentage of population. On that map, the dark-red states would be Louisiana, Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, New York, New Jersey, Alabama and Georgia; each of those states has more than 2,000 cases per 100,000 people. 

Close behind would be South Carolina, Rhode Island, DC, Nevada, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Texas, Arkanss, Delaware, Maryland, Iowa, and Illinois, each with more than 1,500 cases per 100,000 people.

California would be in the middle group, along with Nebraska, Connecticut, Idaho, Utah, North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma, Indiana, South Dakota, Minnesota, New Mexico, Kansas and Wisconsin, each with 1,000 to 1,499 cases per 100,000.

All this shouldn't make the authorities, or the people, in Texas and California feel much better about the whole thing, but it would give a more meaningful sense of how bad things are in various states.

If you want to know where your state stands, go to https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-us-maps-and-cases/ and click the column heading "...per 100,000 people." Bear in mind, too, that the great majority of cases in the northeast -- New England, New York and New Jersey -- are cases that came up in the early stages of the pandemic, before we knew as much about how to stop the spread. 

An even more useful map would be one that showed the states' relationship based on positivity rates. Positivity rates are the best indicator of how fast the virus is spreading in an area. The worst places on that map would be Mississippi (21%), Texas (19%), Florida (17.5%), Alabama (17%) and Nevada (16%), Washington (15%) and Idaho (also 15%). You can find these statistics at https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/testing/testing-positivity, but I don't know where you can find an actual map to illustrate these statistics in a quickly-understandable way.

Condo Week 2020 Blog Posts

To read all the blog posts from our trip up to Jackson Hole, in order from first to last, click here, then at the bottom of each, click on the "newer post" link.

Condo Week 2.0: In the Books

This is part six, the final part, of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

Thursday night in Denver (or some suburb thereof) our hotel had some technical problem, so no TV and no Internet. Somehow we didn't care. We talked half-heartedly about where to get dinner from the many take-out and delivery places nearby, but none of them interested us ... so we skipped dinner. Yeah, that happens all the time. I think I had an apple from our little stash of food.

We were up pretty early on Friday morning and out of there. I noticed that only about half the people around the hotel, staff and guests, were wearing masks. In the rest of the state that we saw, it was more like 80%. But people were keeping their distance from each other, even in the elevator. So that's something.

We got off the interstate south of Springs

Hines Creek Valley

and headed west, to Custer and Archuleta counties. In between we had a very nice lunch at the Three Barrel Brewery (with tables outside under a shade, so Carly could join us), and enjoyed the beautiful views off US 160 in the Rio Grande National Forest. But the main thing is that now I've been to all the counties in Colorado.

After that, we came down into New Mexico and went through Santa Fe, where I picked up a Subway sandwich. We stopped a couple of hours later in a little village south of I-40 and ate dinner at the city park as the last of the sunlight faded. Then we drove into Vaughn, about 20 miles further on, and got an inexpensive ($49, plus $10 for the dog) room at the Desert Motel, just the kind of place I always like to find: clean, cheap, no frills. This one comes without air conditioning, but apparently one doesn't need A/C in central New Mexico at the end of July. It was plenty comfortable.

Breakfast was at a Denny's in Roswell. On their "patio." They closed off the parking lot on one side -- the west side -- and lined up half a dozen tables in the shade of the building. Presumably in the afternoon they move the arrangement to the other side. I don't know what they do for lunch, when there wouldn't be any shade.

The audio books we've listened to on this trip were Reasonable Doubt, by Charles Todd -- a whodunit set in England in the 1920s; Murder in Mayfair, by D.M Quincy, a disposable mystery set in London in 1814, most remarkable for making almost no mention of any historical figures or events (I believe the name Napoleon came up once, but that's pretty much it; what's the point of "historical fiction" if you're not going to tie it into anything that makes a time unique or interesting?); Blue Moon, by Lee Child, an entertaining action story set in some unnamed American city, and featuring his crime-fighting hero Jack Reacher (I couldn't believe my luck when I found there was a Reacher novel I'd never read or listened to); The Evil Men Do, by John McMahon, another present-day crime thriller set in Georgia -- these novels make me wonder: when did fictional detectives quit being idiosyncratic, like Poirot and Marple and Queen and Stout, and instead all become flawed? Is anybody else tired of hearing about how the detective has to not only solve the crime but overcome alcoholism and the demons in their past all at the same time? That's not to say McMahon's book wasn't interesting -- it was -- but after a few of these novels they all start to feel formulaic. (On the other hand, there's Jack Heath's detective Timothy Blake, a cannibal who savors his flaws.) We also started Alan Furst's novel Under Occupation, a spy thriller set in occupied France, but didn't finish it. Usually we just abandon whatever we were listening to when we get home, but this one's not very long and I'm enjoying it, so I'm going to listen to the rest of it on my own.

And here, once again, is a link to the picture album for this trip.

And again: if you're reading this in your email, please click on the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make a certain someone happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit the blog; though I think it's always worth reading again....

2020 Condo Week 2.0: Nearing the End

This is part five of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

The weather on Tuesday was perfect for a day spent indoors. This was fine, as we had planned to spend the morning at the National Museum of Wildlife Art, a little way north of town. We got there just after opening at 10AM on a cool, rainy day. I did not melt, nor did I clump. I only got a little wet on the walk from the car to the entry.

The museum started off some years ago as a collection of landscapes featuring local scenes and fauna. As it grew, its ambit grew to include all of North America, then all fauna everywhere. I'll let you speculate as to why this happened.

Outside the museum are a number of monumental bronzes: buffalo, of course, and elk, and other local critters, all quite beautifully done. Inside are more bronzes, but also a good-sized collection of paintings, mostly of mountain creatures but including big game from Africa, Europe and Asia. For me, though, the main draw was the landscapes. A moose statue is nice but it's nothing compared to the real thing; a painting of beautiful scenery, on the other hand, is almost as good as the actual thing. A painting of antelope on the scrub of southern Wyoming takes me back, not because of the antelope but because of the scenery. Elk in snow before a range of mountains does the same thing, again not because of the elk but because of the mountains. It's places I remember.

(On East Gros Ventre Butte, which looms over Jackson from the front of our condo, there is a single tree growing near the top, away from all the other trees, and situated exactly on the crest so that it stands against the horizon. I found myself staring at that one tree and thinking about a single tree similarly situated on a rise in Kenya

Kenya, evoked daily

; I had taken a picture of it that, to me, evokes the isolation of that bit of the world: there is the tree, and nothing else. You can slap as many animals down in front of it as you like, but it's the tree that takes me back to that time and place.)

I decided to cook that night -- one can only do takeout so often -- so we went to the supermarket and bought ingredients for conchiglie in salsa russo, and since we were there we also bought bread and cheese and had cheese sandwiches for lunch. After we got back to the condo I realized I'd forgotten an indispensable ingredient, tomato sauce, so I walked over to the fru-fru little market a block over for an 8-ounce can. It would've almost been cheaper to take an Uber back to Albertson's; I couldn't believe what they charge: $1.99 for a little can of sauce that's no better than what I can get back home for 34 cents. Well, at least it gives me something to bitch about.

Sherry knitted the evening away and we once again watched some old movies on TV (The Apartment, and something else I don't remember). This being the Year of the Pandemic, I guess I can't mind too much spending so much of our trip indoors like that, but I hope it isn't going to feature on future condo weeks. It'd hardly be worth leaving home; after all, we get all those same channels and more on our own televisions.

Cache Creek

On Wednesday we took a walk across town, then up into Bridger-Teton National Forest, up one side of Cache Creek and back down on the other. It was cool and dry, and we got started really early, when the fog was still in the valleys around us. There were very few people about until the very end of the hike, when we started to encounter a number of people on mountain bikes. 

After our first hike last week, up the side of Snow King Mountain, I felt like I'd stepped hard on a sharp rock with my left foot. It bothered me that day but was fine the next day. Then when we hiked up Cascade Canyon, I made it a point to wear hiking boots instead of tennis shoes. When I put the boots on I felt much better in them, so I figured it was just because the soles of my sneakers are pretty soft, compared to the boots, and the boots' insoles are much thicker. Still, after the hike my left foot kind of hurt again. I didn't think much of it. But yesterday, after hiking across Jackson and up the creek and back down, when we reached about six miles I just couldn't go any farther. Sherry walked the last 2 miles back to the condo and got the car to come pick me up. When I got home and took my boots off ... Oh. My. God. I could not walk at all. It feels like I have a stress fracture in my left heel. (That's just a guess; I can't think of what else it could be.) This morning when we were loading the car I put my shoes on, and found that I could at least walk with a limp. I have an appointment with the podiatrist Monday. Meanwhile, I'm afraid to take off my shoes.

Carly & Aspen
we still can't tell them apart

Today, Thursday, we got an early start leaving Jackson, and reached Golden to pick up Carly around 5pm. Now we're in a hotel just south of Denver. Tomorrow we'll get off the main roads and go through the two remaining unvisited counties of Colorado, then drive across New Mexico towards home. I figure we'll be there by Saturday night, but maybe not. We'll see. Not going to rush it.

Here, once again, is a link to the picture album for this trip.

And again: if you're reading this in your email, please click on the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make a certain someone happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit the blog; though I think it's always worth reading again....

2020 Condo Week 2.0: Two Good Days

This is part four of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

Yesterday, Sunday, was a day of rest. We had leftover pizza for breakfast (the true breakfast of champions). It was the last day of the English Premier League season, and there were 10 matches being played all at the same time. We had a choice of four shown on channels available to us in this condo, plus five on my cellphone, on a new NBC service called Peacock. One match was on a channel we couldn't get.

But we got to watch the matches that mattered the most to us. Since Liverpool had already won the title, and their opponent, Newcastle United, had nothing at stake, we didn't watch that. (Well, I did watch the first minute on my phone, just enough to see Newcastle score the fastest goal it's ever scored in a Premier League match (but Liverpool won, 3:1)); but then we switched to the TV, and watched (mostly) Chelsea beat Wolverhampton, 2:0, largely thanks to our favourite player, American sensation Christian Pulisic.

Christian Pulisic

We also flipped over to the Leicester City -- Manchester United match, but Leicester was in poor form and the result there wasn't really in much doubt. These two matches pretty much settled the question of who would play Champions League football next season. (Wolverhamption is still in the Europa League, and if they win that competition -- slight chance -- they they also will be in the Champions League.)

As soon as the English soccer was done, we found the final of the National Women's Soccer League tournament on TV, and watched the Houston Dash, which I guess is "our" team, win over the Chicago Red Stars in a very good match. So, Yay!

Then we took our dirty clothes for a walk down to a laundromat about a mile away and washed them. Sherry wasn't hungry; she sat in the laundromat and knitted, while I went next door for lunch. The Chinese restaurant was closed so I forced myself to go to the Mexican restaurant in the same strip-center. At least I got to use the remnants of Spanish that I retain. And it wasn't bad, although they got my order slightly wrong. (Flour tortilla instead of corn.)

We lazed around the apartment the rest of the day, watching old movies on TV. That evening we went over to the supermarket and picked up food for today's breakfast, and while we were there we got a chicken pot pie that we split for Sunday dinner. It was enough.

This morning we loaded our car up and were out the door early; we stopped for coffee and drove up to the Park, and had a nice breakfast picnic of sourdough bread, Gouda cheese, grapes and coffee, then drove on to Jenny Lake, where we took the shuttle-boat across and hiked up to Hidden Falls, which was very pretty. We continued up the steep trail to

Hidden Falls

Inspiration Point, which was also very pretty though not so much as the name would imply. We had intended to turn back at that point, but the guy at the boat dock had said that after Inspiration Point, the path levelled out a lot and continued up Cascade Canyon to a junction with another trail about four miles further on. We had time, and no heart attacks, so we went on for at least a couple of miles, to a meadow where people had reported seeing moose. We didn't see any, and after watching the meadow for maybe 20 minutes we started back. The whole hike ended up being about 5 miles, which is a lot for me, especially at these altitudes.

That was, basically, the whole day. When we got back to town, we walked over to the Town Square and did a little shopping, and found a cafe for a light lunch (I had Cajun Eggs Benedict: eggs and boudin on toasted slices of French bread, topped with a good hollandaise and some interesting hash-brown-like potato accompaniment). Came back to the apartment and vegged out for the rest of the day.

Here, once again, is a link to the picture album for this trip.

And again: if you're reading this in your email, please click on the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make a certain someone happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit the blog; though I think it's always worth reading again....

2020 Condo Week 2.0: Saturday

This is part three of the posts for this year's Condo Trip. You really should read them in order. Here's a link to take you to Part One; then click on "Newer Post" at the bottom left when you get to the end.

We took a driving tour of the top photo spots in the park that we found on the Grand Teton National Park App. Well, we didn't quite make it there for sunrise, but we were close: We stopped for coffee at a convenience store on the highway, technically after sunrise, but before the sun got above the low mountain to the east. We watched fog rising from the bogs of Flat Creek across the road, then headed up into the park.

The first stop was along the Snake River, near where it passes in front of the Grand Teton (which is the name of the tallest mountain in the range, 13,770 feet high, and the prettiest). We were definitely not the first people out there this morning, but it wasn't too crowded. The small parking lot was full, and a few cars parked along the entry road. We made the easy hike out about a quarter of a mile along the riverbank -- supposedly to "a large beaver dam," but I never saw that. It was still in the high 30s; I had a windbreaker on but was wishing then that I'd also worn long sleeves

Grand Teton & the Snake River

underneath. We saw a couple of sandhill cranes in the distance, too far for a decent picture (though Sherry got a recording of their calls), and other birds, and the gorgeous mountains in the near distance. We stayed there a lot longer than we needed to, just taking one picture after another.

It's hard to decide which picture to post here.

the Ansel Adams shot

Next we drove up the road a ways to a place called the Snake River Overlook. This is the spot where Ansel Adams took his most famous picture of the park, back in 1942. I took the same picture. Mine is probably never going to be as famous as his, but the subject matter is as good.

Mt Moran

After that came the Oxbow Bend turnout, where a change in the course of the river left a segment stranded. As a result, it tends to be glassy-smooth and gives a nice reflection of Mount Moran.

Then we made the longish drive, not quite 20 miles (with a stop for breakfast at another convenience store) to the Jackson Lake overlook. This, I realized, is a place I've been twice before, once 15 years ago when we were here with Nancy & Jeff, and once on the way to Washington for another condo week. That second time I just stopped to take a picture of the fall foliage, but it still counts. It's a beautiful view (of course), but a pretty long drive, and it's right on the way to Yellowstone; so I was thinking, we should've skipped that particular stop on the Photo Trail, since we could stop there next time we passed.

Jackson Lake

Still, it's an iconic shot, the same one I took 15 years ago. But this time the weather was better.

Jenny Lake

After that, following the Photo Trail guide, we re-traced our route south until we reached Moran Junction, where another road branches off and runs through the park a little to the west of the highway. By this time it was getting warm and crowded. We stopped at the Jenny Lake Overlook, which gives a nice view of the glacial cut on the opposite side of the lake, and hiked along the lakeshore until we decided the path wasn't going to take us down to the water's edge. (We later learned that it just goes all the way around the lake, about 8 miles.)

The next place on our tour was Inspiration Point, which, it turns out, is on the other side of the lake. The road doesn't go there: you either hike 6 miles, or take the shuttle-boat and hike 4 miles. By this time, the Jenny Lake Visitors' Center, where the boat-dock is, was jammed with several thousand people. The parking lot was full and cars lined the road in. There were posses of children, and groups of people lined up (socially distant) for the ranger station and the park shop. We decided we would go to the Point, but not today. So I wanted to know (a) how much the boat costs, and (b) what their operating hours are. This is information you would expect to find easily, on conveniently placed signs like the ones directing you to the boat-dock. But no. It is, apparently, something of a secret.

So we hiked down to the boat dock, which is about a quarter of a mile down. When we got there, there was a long line of people blocking the way to the desk; they already had their tickets, I assume, or were waiting to buy them. I just went on down past them to a point where I couldn't get by safely; there was a bridge to the dock, divided into In and Out sides. The In side was full of people waiting; the Out side was full of people coming off an arriving boat. Once they were gone, I stood studying the layout, and finally decided that, yes, I could get to a person at the counter to ask. So I started down the Out side of the bridge. At that point, a girl who was just standing at the end of the bridge -- I'd assumed she was just waiting for someone -- asked if I had any questions she could answer (with a tone of voice like she was going to call security). Well, damn, girl, why didn't you ask me when I was standing there next to you for two minutes? Waste my time....

Anyway, so now we know how much the boat is, and that they start at 7:30 in the morning every day. So we'll be back, probably Monday or Tuesday, after the weekend crowds are gone (we hope). And at this point, we decided that we're not going to go to Yellowstone at all on this trip. We could change our minds again, but it's so far to that park that we'd have to leave at 5:30 AM just to get some early-morning pictures; and there are so many people ... and we've been there before anyway; it just doesn't seem worth going again. But, like I say, we might change our minds again. Maybe if the crowds in Grand Teton on Monday are vastly lessened, we might re-think the decision.

Chapel of the Transfiguration

Our last stop was at the Chapel of the Transfiguration and Menor Ferry. Everything in this area was closed because of the pandemic, but we walked around it, looking at the old buildings. The ferry is from the 19th Century, a double-hulled boat that was dragged back and forth across the river by the force of water, guided by traveller-gears on a cable. The captain would angle the hulls slightly so that the pressure from the river's flow was greater on one side than the other, which would push the boat toward the far side of the river, with the cable holding it in line for the opposite dock. As it approached the dock, he'd point the bows of the hulls directly into the flow, equalizing the pressure, and that would cause the boat to straighten in the river and nestle in against the dock. Very clever.

Here, once again, is a link to the picture album for this trip.

And again: if you're reading this in your email, please click on the link to the actual blog before you delete it, so it'll register as having been seen. My blog visitor numbers are pathetic, and you have it in your power to do something completely altruistic that will make a certain someone happy. You don't have to actually read it again when you visit the blog; though I think it's always worth reading again....