Sat, Jan 22

01.27.05

We arrived at Old Faithful Snowmobile Tours at 7:00am dressed in our rented snowmobile garments ready to go. We had breakfast at the Virginian Restaurant with the other 6 members of our tour. The drive to Yellowstone took about 60 minutes. We drove through the Grand Teton National Park to get there. It was foggy part of the way so we didn’t get to see all the Tetons until we were well past them. We then got a short introduction on how to operate a snowmobile, strapped our luggage on the back and headed to the east side of the park. We saw our first buffalo close to lunch time. It was alone on the road and was still. We crossed the continental divide and stopped for a bag lunch at West Thumb. We continued north and east, crossing Sylvan Pass in the afternoon, and it was probably around there when one of the screws fell out of Harlan’s glasses and one of the lenses fell out. He drove using his “desk” glasses, which were almost useful.

That night we stayed in Pahaska, at the Pahaska Teepee motel. We got a tour of Buffalo Bill’s lodge, and Harlan got some nice sunset pictures on his digital camera. Our group was talking in the bar, but that was too smoky for us so we visited with the other group on our tour, the Willox family. While there, Mike, the motel’s caretaker came over and repaired Harlan’s glasses, and talked about some of the things he likes to do (like repair old transistor radios and some of the watches and clocks he collects). A bit later he brought over an old train conductor’s watch he found while walking along a railroad track. It was made under government contract for the railroads by the Hamilton watch company, and had 24 hours on the dial, and ran in “GCT”. Very interesting timepiece! He also told us about a lead-encased clock he picked up at an auction in Seattle that came off a decommissioned Soviet submarine. The clock was effectively silent, and was waterproof to something like 2000 feet. Just before dinner Harlan was able to take some nice sunset pictures (at least we think so) on the digital camera. Dinner that night was pretty good – Brenda had “Trout, married with almonds” in some pleasant sauce, and Harlan had tournedos of beef with mushrooms in marsala wine. For dessert Harlan had a brownie and ice cream. The group chatted a lot, and when they heard the plans of our trip Diane suggested we see Devils Tower on the way to Mt. Rushmore. The room was pretty simple – no TV or telephone, and not much in the way of lights. That night, Brenda was chilled and didn’t get much sleep. Harlan was way too hot most of the night and didn’t get much sleep, either. The shower was really good, though.

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