Wild wild west, a real cliffhanger! Trip report

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 14th, continued

It had taken a while at the front desk because there were a couple of women checking in and having a hard time because this girl was insisting they only had one night booked, while they had the paperwork that said they had paid for 2. The girl looked a little...vacant. She was slow to respond and didn't really give off an air of competence. She did look really young...you could have told me she was 17 and I'd believe you, but I don't think that would be legal for a 17 year old to work the night shift, so I don't know. But she didn't exude efficiency. My encounter with her asking for ice left me underwhelmed. No ice to be had, we returned to our room and I started looking into possible medical intervention, should it be necessary.

Did I mention that Pinedale is a small town in the middle of nowhere Wyoming? From what I could find online, it appears that Pinedale shares an emergency response team with Jackson and Lander, both of which are a couple of hours away. It doesn't look like they have their own ambulance, and they definitely don't have a hospital. If E broke the finger and needed to get an x-ray, we were going to be in for a LONG night....and my husband was still down with the stomach bug, so it was going to be me driving her a couple of hours to the nearest hospital in the middle of the night, while we were still all jetlagged.

I asked E how she was doing...did she need to see a doctor? But the thing about E is that she doesn't like to cause problems. She doesn't like attention focused on her. She could be impaled and have an object protruding from her abdomen and she'd probably say "I think I'll be ok. Don't worry about it. Can you get me a towel so I don't bleed on the furniture?" I know I can't necessarily trust her response because she's not going to want me to have to drive her to a hospital, because she knows I HATE driving. And she's not going to want my husband to drive her, because he's not feeling well. But, she can still move the finger, and while the very tip of her finger has a spot under the fingernail, she seems otherwise unaffected other than pain, so we decide to play it by ear. If the pain becomes unbearable, or she can't move the finger, we'll take her to the hospital in the morning....we are headed to Dubois and have to go through Jackson to get there anyway.

July 15th

We went back to the Wrangler for breakfast. One of the things my husband loves that we don't have here is a breakfast burrito. But only if it has red chili, not green. They had both here. They also had cinnamon rolls, which E and I love and can't get here. And they have pancakes and french toast, both of which are A approved foods! I also miss biscuits and gravy. It was a tough choice for me...so many things I wanted to eat!! E and I both opted for the eggs and toast, and we shared the cinnamon roll. So good, and that bacon was PERFECT. Now....don't kill me, but I am not a bacon fanatic. I like it, but I can usually take it or leave it, knowing it's not health food and it's just not always worth the calories for me. This was! It was nice and crispy without being burnt at all. That cook was part magician, I'm convinced! The cinnamon roll was warm and buttery, my husband was loving his burrito and wishing we had come here for breakfast the day before. The hotel free breakfast was not great.



You can thank E for reminding me of food pictures!

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No pictures of the pancakes because....well, pancakes are pancakes, and we were already digging in.

We had some free entertainment while we ate. The Wrangler has several different dining spaces and we were in a little room in the back where they must put the people they are ashamed of. It was just a small little room with only a couple of tables, but at the other table was a group of...I want to say 8 or 9? men. They were very obviously locals. Some were wearing camouflage, most were wearing caps....3 of them were for a local shooting range. And several had American flag pins or other items identifying them as patriotic Americans. To me, this is absolutely 100% normal. But the Dutch are not known for being ostentatiously patriotic. You won't find them wearing a Dutch flag pin, or items with say, windmills or tulips on them unless it is Kings day, or they are at some festival celebrating Dutch culture. It's just not a thing here. My husband and I got married right after September 11th, and my husband was really confused by the flags everywhere and "God bless the USA" playing constantly on the radio while we were on our honeymoon. The Dutch are quietly proud of their heritage, but they wouldn't broadcast it through their clothing. Another very European thing, or maybe just Dutch, but I don't think so, is not being obviously religious. Most people who attend church here are older. When we would go to church, it was us and a bunch of elderly people. Religion isn't as large a part of the culture here as it is in the US. So here's this group of middle-aged men in hunting gear and patriotic clothing, having a Bible study in the restaurant. My family found it very amusing. I think E said "Tell me you're American without telling me you're American." It's definitely foreign to them.

We went back to check out of the hotel. There had been a shift change and daft girl was gone. I explained the chair incident from the night before. The gal immediately asked me to show her which chair, and she put it to the side so it wouldn't be used. When I told her about daft girl's response, she asked "She didn't tell you there's another ice machine on the third floor?" I repeated the girl's response that she thought they were all broken. She said she'd talk to this girl. She said she tries to be there when this girl is scheduled, because we aren't the first to experience her lack of....helpfulness.


While she was dealing with the chair, another woman came up to check out and when she heard the story of daft girl, she told me that their room door didn't even latch and daft girl had the same response....a half-hearted "Sorry". No effort to try to find a different room or someone to fix the door. This woman's party had to stay in a room all night that didn't close. I think I'd have gone to a different hotel, but it's possible there weren't any vacancies....how many hotel rooms are available in a town with only 2000 residents? In any case, that's really unacceptable. You can't make people pay for a room that doesn't even close! It's such a liability. Out-of-order laundry facilities are one thing, but broken chairs and doors that won't close are lawsuits waiting to happen. Our room seemed clean, and everything worked fine....they even had a little printout by the shower showing how to work it. So WE didn't notice anything on our end with our room, but obviously they have some issues.

We met up with Cousin Jim and Ginger to say goodbye before heading out. They were heading back to Tennessee and we were heading to Dubois. It was so good to see them, even if only for a couple of days. I was sad that the rest of the family hadn't made it out as planned, but I understood with school schedules and custody arrangements, it just didn't work out this time. Who knows, maybe in a couple of years. And I hadn't seen Rick and Sue for decades, so that was good to catch up with them. Their girls are grown and don't live there anymore, so we didn't get to see them, either, but I don't really know them well. Last time I saw them, they were like...4 and 7 or something. Just little littles. It would have been nice to see them all " growed up", but maybe some other time.

Ginger advised me to check my bill because they had tried to charge her 20 extra bucks for their 2nd night, saying they had only booked for 1 night. She was very unhappy, especially since she said the furniture in the room was old and ripped and worn out and I want to say the bedding maybe had holes in it? I guess we were really lucky with our room, and from the outside, it looks absolutely fine. It's a cute little place, nice view of the mountains, and the lobby and everything LOOKED nice. It was the stuff behind the obvious that was iffy. It looked great on the surface, but there are things that need attention and apparently aren't getting it.

We got in the car.....riiiiiiiiiip. There went my jeans. Guess we were going to have to make an unscheduled stop at Target in Jackson! I also wanted to look for a new camera battery because I only had the one, and for some reason, my charger cord was not working. I was glad I brought along the battery charger for it, not just the cord for a power bank. I could charge the battery, but only when I had access to an outlet and adaptor, not while we were out site seeing. I thought Target probably had camera batteries....they sell cameras right? They were out of batteries. It looked like a brand new store or something....half the shelves were empty. The guy in electronics said there was a camera store that might have one in the center of town. I got my jeans first thing and changed in the bathroom, tossed the ripped ones in the trash, and we grabbed some lunch. We'd be back through tomorrow and I could get my battery then. The McDonald's was closed for indoor dining due to shortages of employees, so we had to go through the drive through. On to Dubois!

Dubois is a little out of the way. If you thought that Pinedale was a little podunk town in the middle of nowhere, welcome to Dubois! Population 739. To get from Pinedale to Yellowstone, you go through Jackson, but not Dubois....Dubois is kind of on the other side of a mountain. You wouldn't normally go through Dubois on your way to Yellowstone. But remember I mentioned A LOVES sheep? Dubois is home to The National Bighorn Sheep Center. A museum solely dedicated to learning about Bighorn Sheep, and getting information on where to potentially spot them in the wild, as there is a herd in the area. We couldn't really get so close to it and NOT stop so A could get his fix.

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He was in heaven. There's a video all about the local herd and the experts who track them and keep them healthy and where the best spots are to see them. And the gal at the counter gave us a map and highlighted the areas they had been spotted this day so we could go look. I remember the signage cracked me up in the bathroom....I think they had the doors marked with "rams" and "ewes" and there was something about the soap dispenser....I wish I had written it in my notes. I want to say it was a pun about sheep. Maybe E will remember. We got A a new plush to add to his sheep collection. He named him Felix.

We drove out to the road to look for Bighorn sheep. They prefer rocky terrain, where they are safe from predators who don't have hooves designed for clinging to steep inclines, and they avoid areas with thick foliage where predators could be waiting. Armed with our binoculars and our map, we were prepared to scan the rocks. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful. I thought A would be disappointed, but he knew there were herds in Yellowstone and in Custer State park, too. There would be more opportunities.

We went and checked into our room really quickly before going in search of food.
Dubois thrives on the tourist trade! There's not much here other than hotels and restaurants. Whatever industry was here before, it's been abandoned....I want to say I was told it was maybe a sawmill? In any case, there's not much here, but it's close to Yellowstone, by Wyoming standards at least. So the main source of income is tourists coming through on their way to Jackson and Yellowstone. It's another one-street town. Everything is within walking distance. This little shopping center was right across the street from our hotel and had a live ragtime piano player. It was fun.
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Our hotel room overlooked a stream.
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beauty and the beast gaston GIF


I use antlers in all of my decorating....
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And I thought my magician friends would appreciate the landscaping in back

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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
That just gave me deja vu. Sam used to react to mosquito bites like that. I've heard to referred to as Skeeter Syndrome. She outgrew it, but it was just a miserable situation whenever she was bitten. She also would react pretty strongly to fire ant bites. We already had allergy stuff on hand for K's food allergies, but had to also keep it on hand for Sam in case she was bitten. I'm sorry E had to endure that, especially during vacation!
It's miserable, isn't it? And there was nothing I could do to help her. We have this stuff called Azaron, and it's like a little tube of chapstick for insect bites, but it just wasn't helping at all! The ice did give her some relief, but only while she was holding it on there, and she had so many bites she couldn't have ice on all of them at once, and it's not conducive to touring museums and such. She used the ice through lunch, then we did the museum, then she put it back on when we got back in the car. But we also had no way of replenishing the ice because the stupid machines were broken. I had never heard of people having such severe reactions to mosquito bites, and here, she didn't have that. Well, there was one instance in the test week. She went with her friends to this park to hang out and destress after the tests and she got bit and it swelled up like that and we scoured the internet looking for what kind of bug could have caused that kind of bite, because she had never reacted to mosquitoes like that before. So we assumed it was like a spider bite or something, but we couldn't find anything. Now we're thinking it probably WAS a mosquito, but we don't know why she suddenly reacts like this to bites!
 

cgersic

Well-Known Member
I love Bighorn Sheep too!!! It was always a favorite game of ours as kids to see who could spot them first. Enjoying the ride along and also sorry about the bite situation. I have a friend here in Florida that is soooo allergic to no-see-ums that they become huge blisters. Like the size of a dime huge when the little buggers are so small.
 

HouCuseChickie

Well-Known Member
It's miserable, isn't it? And there was nothing I could do to help her. We have this stuff called Azaron, and it's like a little tube of chapstick for insect bites, but it just wasn't helping at all! The ice did give her some relief, but only while she was holding it on there, and she had so many bites she couldn't have ice on all of them at once, and it's not conducive to touring museums and such. She used the ice through lunch, then we did the museum, then she put it back on when we got back in the car. But we also had no way of replenishing the ice because the stupid machines were broken. I had never heard of people having such severe reactions to mosquito bites, and here, she didn't have that. Well, there was one instance in the test week. She went with her friends to this park to hang out and destress after the tests and she got bit and it swelled up like that and we scoured the internet looking for what kind of bug could have caused that kind of bite, because she had never reacted to mosquitoes like that before. So we assumed it was like a spider bite or something, but we couldn't find anything. Now we're thinking it probably WAS a mosquito, but we don't know why she suddenly reacts like this to bites!

We usually found a combined regimen of oral and topical meds were the most effective approach. Benadryl or Zyrtec orally and then either Benadryl spray or cream on the bite sites. Dr always said treat internally first and topically second since it's a histamine related reaction. I'm not sure what's available for you at home, but it may be good to start keeping a small med kit handy with something like this. It usually had to be administered right away and sometimes continued for a day or two, but it helped tremendously when Sam was little. Bites and stings, in general, are scary. Sounds like you figured out the park bite from this too.
 

Swissmiss

Premium Member
I did look at the hotel websites to check photos and make sure it didn't look like a dump, but usually they don't have free cancellation. Since covid numbers were rising, I was worried they'd lockdown overseas travel again and it would be canceled. Plus, my MIL had JUST had a stroke and I wasn't even sure we'd be able to go, so I needed to have everything cancelable. It was good that I did that, because Yellowstone flooded a few weeks before our trip and I had booked us in Gardiner, but the road was washed out, so I had to switch it to West Yellowstone instead. If I hadn't done free cancellation, I'd have had problems!!

I completely understand the cancellation issue - I don’t book any hotels I can’t cancel so I have once or twice needed to use booking.com instead of the hotel’s website, but very rarely.

And poor E with the mosquito bites - that looked really uncomfortable. I take it since you haven’t mentioned it again, in the end her finger was ok?
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We usually found a combined regimen of oral and topical meds were the most effective approach. Benadryl or Zyrtec orally and then either Benadryl spray or cream on the bite sites. Dr always said treat internally first and topically second since it's a histamine related reaction. I'm not sure what's available for you at home, but it may be good to start keeping a small med kit handy with something like this. It usually had to be administered right away and sometimes continued for a day or two, but it helped tremendously when Sam was little. Bites and stings, in general, are scary. Sounds like you figured out the park bite from this too.
Yeah we went and bought benadryl, which we don't have here, and she took that every day, but we didn't notice much improvement. Do you know what the active ingredient is in benadryl? We have allergy meds here, but they seem different. It's more for hay fever type stuff.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I completely understand the cancellation issue - I don’t book any hotels I can’t cancel so I have once or twice needed to use booking.com instead of the hotel’s website, but very rarely.

And poor E with the mosquito bites - that looked really uncomfortable. I take it since you haven’t mentioned it again, in the end her finger was ok?
It seems to be...she just pinched it. Thank goodness, because I really didn't want to have to drive 85 miles in the middle of the night for an xray. It was sore for a few days, but that's it.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
There's not much more to tell about that day. We went to dinner at a little place just down the street from the hotel called the Cowboy Cafe. Another small town diner....M got ribs, I got my corndog fix, and E had french dip. A ordered chicken strips, but didn't like the breading, so he just ate the fries. And they had a whole list of pies. I know we got something with blueberries, but it had something else in it, too. And then we got another one that I don't remember. We got 2 and shared. E says she thinks it was blueberry almond crunch, and cherry.

E also says the signage on the soap dispenser at the bighorn sheep center was like "Please wash your hooves. Thank ewe!"

July 16th

We woke up pretty early and went to breakfast. Today was going to be a long one because we had to drive to Jackson, see the tetons, and then head up through the South Entrance to Yellowstone, and see Old Faithful and as much of the stuff between there and the west entrance as possible.

We went back to the Cowboy Cafe for breakfast. It was so close, and there aren't a lot of places to choose from, and we could just walk there. It had been good the night before, and it seemed popular with the locals. M had a breakfast burrito, A had pancakes, E had french toast, and I had biscuits and gravy. Nothing fancy, but it was good and we got a good start to the day.

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One of the issues with traveling through Wyoming is that with the distances being so long between towns, there are often no bathrooms available when you need one. We always go before we leave, but sometimes that just isn't enough. We got about 20 miles down the road or so and I needed to go. It wasn't dire, but I was definitely not going to make it all the way to Jackson, which was still 60 miles or more away, and there is nothing in between. Except campgrounds. We WERE in the mountains after all. We saw a sign for a "recreational area" and my husband turned off. The sign said 5 miles now....wow, that's a ways back in there, but I had to go. It wasn't well marked, but we found it, and a good thing because by that time, my bladder was singing "Anchors away" as my mom would say. It was just a little outhouse, but the campsite manager had decorated it. There was a table with a tablecloth and some doilies and little knick-knacks, there was a fuzzy toilet seat cover, some little pictures on the wall. I had never seen such a thing with an outhouse, but it was cute. It was the Pinnacles campsite in the Shoshone National forest. If you are ever in the area camping, it looked like a great little place.

Along the drive up to the campground area
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This is the campground area. I took this picture in between 2 campsites. People were literally parked right alongside the lake.
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Now, when we had pulled in, the GPS had said "Recalculating". I personally would have just gone back the way we came....I have no sense of direction, and the new route added more than an hour to our travel time. My husband starts following the new route. I asked him,"Does this go through Jackson though? We need to go through Jackson." He snaps that he doesn't know. But he zooms in and says yes it does. It's a much longer route, but I'm not going to comment on his driving, because I hate it when he does that to me.

This is where we pulled over to look at the GPS.
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So, the GPS sends us here:
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On the right is the Brooks Lake Lodge. The sign warns not to travel when wet. It's dry. I didn't have time to read the entire sign, but the road looks decent....it's a typical rural road. It's unpaved, but in good shape and wide enough for 2 vehicles. Until we got up higher. There is a big pickup coming from the other direction just as there's a little pull off section. He pulls off to let us through, because by this point it is too narrow for 2 cars.

And from that point it is BAD. There are really deep ruts in the road, and they are full of water. I'm starting to worry. There's no place to turn around, but the sign said not to use this road when wet, and it's wet here. We are bouncing like a pogo stick and sliding a bit, and I'm scared we are going to get high-centered in one of these big ruts or bottom out the car. I comment about how bad this is and my husband says "Well there's a reason the sign said only high clearance 4 by 4 vehicles should use this road." I'm thinking....well, then why did you take this road?? Why didn't we turn around and go back the way we came?? And I ask him "But do we qualify as a high clearance 4X4 vehicle?" He hesitates and says "Mwah.....yeah." like probably not, but we're going with it. It's a Subaru Outback with all wheel drive, which I don't think is the same as 4 wheel drive, but I don't really know, and it is definitely a lot higher up than our car here. And in any case, it's a bit too late now for second thoughts. Were I driving, we wouldn't be here, but he's the one driving, so I'm just going to let him do it.

As we're bumping through, my son is in the back whimpering. He says "I don't like this!" Neither do I, kid....neither do I. We come to the last of the big ruts in this section and my husband gives it gas, I suppose to propel us out of the rut and onto the more flat bit, but the tires slip in the mud and we head for the drop off. M swerves as best he can and the back tires whip around so now we're heading backwards down the hill and he's gunning the engine trying to get us back up onto the road. I do not remember what came out of my mouth in that moment....I normally don't swear, but I can not be positive that the words were clean now. I know I was THINKING "Sh !t sh !t sh !t!" And I was TERRIFIED. Poor A in the back is crying and obviously thinking he's going to die. And we are stuck.
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erstwo

Well-Known Member
Oh my gosh! That is terrifying!
I can tell you - out west (and I’ve only been a few places out west) I never, ever mess with rural roads/ off roads.
I had a friend, of a friend, of a friend - who decided to visit the north side of the Grand Canyon while they were in Vegas. They followed the GPS onto this gravel road for ‘locals’. They got so lost, it was snowing, long story short - they didn’t make it. So sad and it keeps me from ever driving on roads like that, no matter what the GPS says. They really are for those who know them well (locals) only.
So sorry about your experience!
 

HouCuseChickie

Well-Known Member
Yeah we went and bought benadryl, which we don't have here, and she took that every day, but we didn't notice much improvement. Do you know what the active ingredient is in benadryl? We have allergy meds here, but they seem different. It's more for hay fever type stuff.

From what I recall, timing was really critical. If I got the meds into Sam within a few minutes of the bites, it was really effective. Anything beyond that had mixed results. From what I can see, the generic name for Benadryl is Diphenhydramine and contains several active ingredients. I think pseudoephedrine is probably the big one, but acrivastine and cetirizine are also listed. I know cetirizine is one of the big ingredients in Zyrtec, which is what our allergist prefers for K's food allergies. I was reading that a med called Semprex may be the closest alternative for you, but it may also be a prescription based med for you.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
If ever there was a time for profanity, surely this is it. Forgive me for my candor above. It's ok....stuck is better than careening down a hill, but how are we going to get out of this? This is a mountain road, there's probably no cell reception here. We're hanging precariously off the side of a mountain and at any moment the ground under the tires could give way and we could be plummeting a hundred feet below against a tree to our deaths. All the luggage is in the back, weighing it down. I refrained from chewing my husband out, since that wasn't going to get us out of the situation. It wasn't really his fault that the road wasn't just blocked off, but I had asked more than once if he was sure we should go this way, so I knew in my heart that had I been driving, we would NOT be in this situation. And I kept thinking of how much it was going to cost if the car was totalled, even if we lived through it, and at that point, I questioned whether we would. A starts yelling "I WANT TO GET OUT OF THIS CAR!!!" and my husband says "Go ahead." I'm panicking, because I'm thinking it's not good to take any weight out of the front end. What if him crawling out causes the car to fall further, and the door swipes him on the way down? And I know the way we are angled, I can not climb out of my side. A and M both climb out, and unable to close the doors, they clambor up the side of the mountain back up onto the road, just leaving everything behind. E quickly grabs the hand luggage that was between her and A before it can fall out of the open door. Neither of us can climb out...as soon as we open our doors, gravity slams them shut again. My mind is racing as fast as my heart. Ok....IF we make it out without the car falling and taking us with it, what am I going to need...bare necessities. We need a phone so we can find a place with reception and call 911. I will need my wallet that has my ID and credit card in it. Ok....take the purse....I can reach it at my feet. Camera is not necessary, especially since I have my phone which has a camera in it. Leave the camera bag. Oh...M left his phone, so I grabbed it and put it in my purse and I begin the climb over the middle console to the driver's seat. The car doesn't budge. Whew. E starts to climb across the seat and sets the carry-ons on the other side of her and wedges them in. She asks me if she should get A's stuffed sheep. YES!! I had her give them to me to put in my purse (Thank goodness I like big purses where I can carry EVERYTHING) and also his phone, which he might need to distract him.

We are both out of the car, but it's steep and the mud makes it slippery in places where the boys already stepped. I dig my toes in as far as I can, but I start to slide. I need to hold onto the car door to pull myself up. Please, God, do not let this make the car fall....if it does, E and I are both goners, and my husband does not have his phone or his wallet with him. I pull myself up a bit and my husband reaches out to pull me up the rest of the way and then we get E, too. We're safe. Whatever else happens, we will live through it.

I get A's plushes and ask if he wants them, and he practically dives on me to get them and hugs them close. He's sobbing. I give him his phone so he can play games, and give my husband his phone as well. We both try calling 911, but there is no reception here. The only thing to do is to walk back down the mountain road and go to the lodge at the bottom and ask for help. It's a couple of miles, but we are uninjured and have nothing but time now.

We start walking. About a quarter of a mile or so up the road, there's a clearing where there are no trees. I decide to try again. I get through to a dispacher. I'm still a bit panicked from the ordeal and very shaky and my mind is not working. I don't know the name of the road we're on, and I'm terrible at judging distances. I give the phone to my husband to talk to her. He describes that our car is perched above a hundred foot drop, but we are all out and safe, no injuries, just stuck. He doesn't know the name of the road either. E thinks fast and finds our coordinates on my husband's phone somehow, and we give them to the dispatcher. She says she'll send a deputy up to get us. We walk back toward the car. We didn't know from which side the deputy would come, and we figured we should be in sight of the car. It's a really sunny day and the kids and I are both really pale. Good thing I had sunscreen in my purse. We smear ourselves with sunscreen and find a place in the shade of the trees on the opposite side of the road from the drop off. And we wait.


And we wait.




And we wait.



Several cyclists have come up on our car and muttered expletives before seeing us and asking if we're ok. We tell them that we are uninjured and have called 911 and are awaiting rescue. One really nice couple of guys on their way to Mexico by bicycle offer us whatever provisions they have....candy bars, etc. We politely decline because we had a big breakfast and I don't think any of us felt like eating at that moment. We were still a little in shock and worried about being rescued. Poor E got a mosquito bite on her hand. She had put on her sweatshirt even though it was hot just to protect against mosquitoes. But her face and her hands were exposed. This was taken a couple of days later, when she could actually make a fist again, but you still can't see her knuckles on that hand. She was also bitten on her eyelid and her lip and they both swelled up, but she did not want a picture of that! The cyclists give her their bug spray. They are sorry they can't help more, but they don't need the bugspray, they say....the mosquitoes don't like them. We are grateful. They say they will let anyone they see know we are still up here waiting for rescue, and they head off.

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It's been about 2 hours and we're still waiting. My husband walks back down the road to find reception to call 911 back and ask if they are still looking for us. Yes, there is a deputy in the area looking for us. OK....so we wait. And then we hear a motor. Up drives a guy in a dune buggy. These dune buggies are EVERYWHERE in this area....they do tours in them because they are great all terrain vehicles. And they are small, so they have more room to navigate these rutty roads. M says there's supposedly a deputy looking for us, has he seen anyone? Yes, the deputy sent him because this road is so bad, she's not even allowed up here. WHAT? The deputy isn't allowed on this road, but it's not blocked off?? How can this be? He says "The next problem we have is the wreckers won't come up here anymore. It's too dangerous." Great. I was already wondering how a tow truck would get up here. He says he's going to go back down and see what he can do.

And so we wait.

And we wait.


And we wait.
A is saying he wants to go home. He does not want to continue on this trip. I don't know if we're going to get off this mountain with the car and all our luggage. All of our passports are in the luggage at the moment. And I don't want this to be the end of the trip. This is not a good ending. I don't know how many of you have experience with kids with autism, but one thing you DON'T do, is lie to them. They will not trust you if they catch you in a lie. This was impressed on us in our parenting class when A was diagnosed. My husband was always telling him what he wanted to hear, or hiding things, to keep him from melting down. The problem is that in the longrun, when he finds out you lied, it's going to be worse, and next time there's a situation, he won't believe you. So I tried to be honest and tell him that I understood he had been scared and this was not fun, but we were all ok, and once we were down off the mountain, we'd be doing a lot of fun things that he wouldn't want to miss. My husband tells him we'll see what we can do. :banghead::banghead::banghead: I'm NOT canceling this trip. We still have 3 weeks to go and there's no need to cancel it because of this. Of COURSE he's freaked out right now, but I knew that once it was over, as soon as we did something fun, he'd be ok. Another technique we learned was to relate to him....explain other similar circumstances where something went wrong and turned out ok. So I'm trying to tell him about the time my brother and I were going to go to the movies and wanted to stop at my dad's ranch to get gas first when our car died and we were stuck on the side of the road for a couple of hours before one of his neighbors came along and picked us up. We had to leave the car, but we got home safely. My husband kept interrupting me every time I tried to continue my story and finally gave me a stern look and mouthed for me to shut up. He didn't know the story, and he must have thought that it was scary or something, so he wouldn't let me tell it. I was getting really frustrated with him. He was telling A what he wanted to hear rather than being honest with him, and he wasn't letting me make parenting decisions myself. He was treating me like I didn't know what I was doing when I was just trying to let him know that everything was going to be ok regardless.

It's been over an hour since the dune buggy guy went in search of help.

A minivan comes up from the other side with a man and a woman. The woman's face as she takes in the car is horrified. She looks around and I wave to her and shout that we're fine and help is on the way. (if nothing else, the guy can bring us down one by one to the base of the mountain.) They get out of the van and we walk towards each other. They are asking which direction we came from. I told them they did NOT want to go this way. They asked if Brooks Lake Lodge was down that way...that's where they were headed. I had no idea at that time that we had seem Brooks Lake Lodge, but I knew the name of the lake was Brooks Lake, so I assumed it was. Just as I was advising them to see if they could turn around, we heard motors. The Dune buggy was back and he had a tow truck with him. He had somehow convinced the Wreckers to come up and help us. Joe Burns, manager of the Pinnacle Campground was the guy in the dune buggy. Seriously fantastic guy. If you like to camp, I want to throw business his way, because we would have been in deep doodoo without his help. He had brought with him Mike (father) and Matthew (son) Codevilla of Bulls Service and Towing in Dubois.
That's Mike in the 2nd picture
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The first thing they did was help the couple in the minivan get turned around so they didn't have TWO cars to tow to safety. Then they got our car strapped up and pulled it up to the road.....without damaging it at all. There was no way either of us were driving the car on this road to get back down. So Mike drove our car down with M and A in it, Joe took E down in the dune buggy, and Matt drove me down in his pickup. Then Matt drove Mike back up to get the tow truck and they came back down and we followed them back towards Dubois where there was reception so we could pay them for their services. It took about 4 hours from the time we slid off the road until we were off the mountain.

I talked to Joe while Mike and Matt were getting the car back up onto the road. He said they've been trying to get this road taken off GPS for YEARS and have been unsuccessful. He said this happens 5 or 6 times a year where the GPS sends someone up this road, and they don't know how bad it is until they get up there. The sign is not a strong enough deterrent. We are lucky that our situation wasn't too bad, all things considered. But, if anyone has connections with GPS makers, PLEASE help us get this road removed from the map! It should NOT be on there. There isn't even a NAME for the road. I asked Joe and he said he didn't think it had a name.

Mike and Matt are total heroes and they know what they were doing. They managed to get all those vehicles turned around on that road somehow. Matt and I chatted as we drove down the mountain and he said this was about the best he had ever seen this road. We went off the road after bouncing out of the last set of ruts, and we went several meters before going over the edge, so you can't see the ruts that did the damage. These pictures do not show how bad it is. In hindsight, I should have taken pictures of them, but I was not thinking clearly. But the kids spent part of the time stuck up there trying to skip stones in the puddles and seeing how big of a splash they could make with larger stones or clumps of mud. This is the best one I have that show ruts and it's not great.
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Bulls service and towing....if you are in need of car repairs or towing in the Dubois area, they are your guys!
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Oh my gosh! That is terrifying!
I can tell you - out west (and I’ve only been a few places out west) I never, ever mess with rural roads/ off roads.
I had a friend, of a friend, of a friend - who decided to visit the north side of the Grand Canyon while they were in Vegas. They followed the GPS onto this gravel road for ‘locals’. They got so lost, it was snowing, long story short - they didn’t make it. So sad and it keeps me from ever driving on roads like that, no matter what the GPS says. They really are for those who know them well (locals) only.
So sorry about your experience!
We were extremely lucky. Mike told my husband and A as they were driving back down that a good rule of thumb is if the gravel stops, YOU stop. Don't continue on the road after the gravel stops.

He also said that we were lucky the side of the mountain was wet, because the thick clay-like mud acted like glue and kept the tires from slipping. If it hadn't been wet, we probably would have stayed on the road, but if we had gone over, the car wouldn't have stuck there the way it did.
 

Swissmiss

Premium Member
We were extremely lucky. Mike told my husband and A as they were driving back down that a good rule of thumb is if the gravel stops, YOU stop. Don't continue on the road after the gravel stops.

He also said that we were lucky the side of the mountain was wet, because the thick clay-like mud acted like glue and kept the tires from slipping. If it hadn't been wet, we probably would have stayed on the road, but if we had gone over, the car wouldn't have stuck there the way it did.

I’m glad it was an all’s well that ends well story, but WOW! What a way to start a vacation!

And of course in a few years you will probably even be able to laugh at how scary it was 😉
 

HouCuseChickie

Well-Known Member
I talked to Joe while Mike and Matt were getting the car back up onto the road. He said they've been trying to get this road taken off GPS for YEARS and have been unsuccessful. He said this happens 5 or 6 times a year where the GPS sends someone up this road, and they don't know how bad it is until they get up there. The sign is not a strong enough deterrent. We are lucky that our situation wasn't too bad, all things considered. But, if anyone has connections with GPS makers, PLEASE help us get this road removed from the map! It should NOT be on there. There isn't even a NAME for the road. I asked Joe and he said he didn't think it had a name.

I've been trying to use Google Maps to figure out where this occurred. Looks like it was westbound 515, which appears to dip south and then west of Brooks Lake Lodge and Pinnacle Campground. Assuming it's the same road, I found a website that addresses vehicle limits for the road as of June 24th. It says limited to ATV and UTV traffic, so clearly they failed to post signage properly conveying these limitations. This is also one of my fears using my onboard NAV vs one of the map apps. No matter how well it's updated, straight up GPS navigation never takes things like this into account since they are not routinely updated like a cell phone map app. Vehicle NAV usually only gets updated once or twice a year whenever the maker offers an update, it depends on the owner to run the update, and it won't account for these kinds of seasonal things, temporary changes, etc. And of course this is really dangerous in remote places like this with no cell signals that get seasonal hits from tourists. We had something like this happen to us in Glacier. It just said it was a rough road, but it was really rough and I was so afraid of losing a tire. I like to download or print route maps prior to travel "just in case," but you're not kidding about the bathroom situation in these parts and being stuck for options if you really need to go. The towns are tiny and often few and far between. I remember driving to Cody one time and it was about 70 miles for us to find a bathroom. Well, I'm glad you were all safe and they were able to get the car out.

 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I've been trying to use Google Maps to figure out where this occurred. Looks like it was westbound 515, which appears to dip south and then west of Brooks Lake Lodge and Pinnacle Campground. Assuming it's the same road, I found a website that addresses vehicle limits for the road as of June 24th. It says limited to ATV and UTV traffic, so clearly they failed to post signage properly conveying these limitations. This is also one of my fears using my onboard NAV vs one of the map apps. No matter how well it's updated, straight up GPS navigation never takes things like this into account since they are not routinely updated like a cell phone map app. Vehicle NAV usually only gets updated once or twice a year whenever the maker offers an update, it depends on the owner to run the update, and it won't account for these kinds of seasonal things, temporary changes, etc. And of course this is really dangerous in remote places like this with no cell signals that get seasonal hits from tourists. We had something like this happen to us in Glacier. It just said it was a rough road, but it was really rough and I was so afraid of losing a tire. I like to download or print route maps prior to travel "just in case," but you're not kidding about the bathroom situation in these parts and being stuck for options if you really need to go. The towns are tiny and often few and far between. I remember driving to Cody one time and it was about 70 miles for us to find a bathroom. Well, I'm glad you were all safe and they were able to get the car out.

Yep, that's the one. But the sign doesn't indicate it's closed to normal traffic. They need to just block it off with some cones or something. Or a more explicit sign.
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We left off having just been rescued off the side of a mountain. (I wasn't kidding about it being a real cliffhanger!) Since it took about 4 hours for our rescue, our schedule was WAY off. We still had to drive to Jackson, and it was way past the lunch hour. By the time we got to Jackson, it was nearly 5, and since the camera store closed at 5, we needed to hustle to get there. We found a place to park and used Google maps to walk to the camera store. And they were out of the batteries I needed. But he mentioned a camera store in West Yellowstone, where we were staying this night. He thought they were mostly Nikon, but thought they might have something.

We had intended to be in Yellowstone touring by this time, but it was dinner time and there was nothing between Jackson and West Yellowstone, so we had to eat here before going on. None of us were in the mood for a crowd, or for waiting ages to be served. We grabbed some chicken nuggets at the McDonald's drive thru and parked the car and had a picnic in the grass in the shade of a big tree. It wasn't fancy, but we were exhausted and hungry and just not wanting to put effort into finding anything else.

Then we got back in the car. I didn't realize it until we were well on our way, but our car didn't send us on the shortest route, because that meant entering, and paying the fee for Yellowstone. If I would have known, we would have gone ahead and done that because our entrance would be good for a week anyway. Instead, we took a really long way, through Idaho. We got checked in and I went in search of laundry facilities. Spoiler alert: There were none! Well, it wasn't the ritz carlton, but at least there were no stairs to climb with our luggage after our exhausting adventure. We crashed.

July 17th

Since we effectively missed a day of Yellowstone, we needed to see more on the days we had left, so we were up bright and early for breakfast. We had looked up restaurants months in advance and there were 2 that had good breakfast offerings. Both had breakfast burritos and cinnamon rolls. This morning we chose the Timberline. It was really cute. It seemed like a family owned business. Not sure where the family was from but our waitress had an accent, so they must be foreign. And man can the father cook! It was so good! I had the banana bread french toast, and I ordered hashbrowns, too, because I love them and they don't really exist here, but I should have just done the french toast. E had steak and eggs, A had pancakes, and M had a burrito with red chili. Everything was really good. I really wasn't feeling well, so I didn't eat as much as I normally would have.

As we walked along the boardwalk around the restaurant, there was a store with some hats. After our adventure, I realized I should have a hat because I burned a bit on the top of my head. So we went in and I found a bucket hat and some tshirts. I love my "Do not take selfies with the fluffy cows" tshirt! I got lots of compliments on it!!

Poor E had gotten more mosquito bites before the nice guys gave her the repellent. She had blobby bobby ankles. 293513732_368092301954068_6426574272251057337_n.jpg


They were all swollen and achy, so while they went back to the hotel, I walked to the camera store and to the pharmacy that was supposed to be right next to it to get some benadryll for her and Ibuprofen for my headache. The camera store was also out of the batteries I needed, and the pharmacy was closed. It was actually really confusing, because it was in this breezeway with other stores, and there was a big sign that said "PHARMACY" right over a blank spot that was being renovated, but the actual pharmacy was across from the sign. But since it was closed, I was going to have to find an alternative. I walked back toward the hotel and there was a grocery store on the way, so I popped in and found the meds and headed to the hotel.

We drove to the West Entrance of the park and then stopped at Gibbon Falls. It was super crowded, but it was beautiful.
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We drove further in and stopped at roaring mountain. It wasn't very spectacular today.

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Now it was time for my favorite part of Yellowstone!!
 

Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 17th, continued...

You might remember that shortly before our trip, there was massive flooding in Yellowstone that tore out entire bits of road, and that I was really upset because they announced that the Northern loop would be closed for the remainder of the summer. The Nothern loop is the one that includes Mammoth, which is my favorite part of Yellowstone. It's fascinating to me how uniquely formed this area of the park is....the little pools and layers of plateaus. It's just incredibly beautiful. I was looking forward to taking pictures. And then it was going to be closed. We had already had to rearrange hotel stays because the road between Gardiner and Yellowstone was washed away and not going to be open any time soon. So I had booked us in West Yellowstone for 2 nights instead.

Then, just as we were leaving for our trip, they announced that the Northern loop would be open, up to Mammoth. YAY!! Now of course, since we had lost a day to explore, I wasn't sure how much time we'd need, but in the 3 times my mother took us to Yellowstone, I only remembered the area near the village, where there was no hiking involved. I did not realize there was a boardwalk that led up to higher pools and plateaus. We decided to explore pretty thoroughly! It's actually a pretty huge area!

These first pictures were taken with my phone, because I can zoom in and still get a clear picture, unlike with my camera...I can't figure out how to manually focus the camera and it does not do a good job of focusing when it's zoomed in. So I took pictures with both the camera and the phone, and these are the ones that are from the phone.

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This is the first pool on the lowest plateau, overlooking the village there.
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This is one of the dried up beds.
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You can see from the boardwalks down below how far up we've climbed at this point. For any of you who might travel to Yellowstone in the future, you do not have to climb! There is an overlook up above where you can just drive up and look down over all this. To see it up close, though, there are many stairs involved. And keep in mind that the altitude is pretty high, so the air is thinner. It IS a bit harder to breathe as you are climbing higher. If you have respiratory issues, I'd advise not doing this!
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I thought this part looked cool, like that painting of the Scream, but captured in stone. Or something you would expect to see in the Haunted Mansion....
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I loved how each different part of the area had a different color and texture to the rocks. Everywhere you look, there's something different to see.
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I also loved all the knarled old trees dotting the landscape. It was amazing to me how in one place, the grass is green and there are lush evergreens growing, and right next to it is this barren grey patch with an ancient-looking tree. It's a complete contrast.
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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 17th continued...

More pictures, because this area is just so photogenic. These are the ones taken with my camera.IMG_1582.JPG

This must be near the bottom, because my camera actually puts the pictures in order.
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You can see the parking lot at the base of the hill there on the left. This is the very beginning of the boardwalk going up. You can walk up either side. It makes a big loop, but we decided to go up on the right, because it was more like a ramp, where the left was all stairs, and we would rather go DOWN the stairs than up them. It's already a beautiful view back to the mountains in the background.
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For contrast, here is that same pool on the lowest plateau, overlooking the village, as in the previous post, only this one was taken with the camera and thus, not zoomed in.
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Here's that same bit with the tree, but a little further up, so you can see more of the horizon and the surrounding landscape.
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Back to phone pictures again
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I loved the texture of the rock here. This is a section where you can get up really close....you could probably reach out and touch it if you wanted to, but not knowing the water temps, and just because it might damage the features, I wouldn't advise it.
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I think this is a different pool, a bit higher up, if I remember correctly.
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Songbird76

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
July 17th, continued...

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Some of the places were hard to get pictures without other people in them. This one, I tried to get one where I cut out the other people by leaning over the rail a bit, but the picture wasn't quite as clear, so you can see the features better in this one.
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