Bachelor and Sons

Last fall, while cleaning out the garage, I found a box containing many of the old 35mm slides that I had taken back in the 1970 and 80s. I picked a few out and had them digitized at the local photo shop. One of them, I didn't remember that I even had, is the photo currently in the website heading (or here). I wrote about the location in this photo back in September of 2009. The story is here.
The photograph was taken above timberline on the Beartooth Plateau in Montana (Latitude: 45.055399 Longitude: -109.628137) . The distant peaks are to the southwest in Wyoming, bordering on Yellowstone National Park. You can see a little haze in the distance, which was caused by smoke from the forest fires that had just begun in Yellowstone. The year was 1988, famous for the fires that burned large areas of the park.
I am not in the photo, but my yellow Jansport backpack is there leaning against the rock near Tim Smith, a friend from Mt. Morris, Illinois. He, Teresa (eventually to become Tim's wife) and Mark and Phyllis were from Minneapolis. We had stopped for a lunch break, before carefully negotiating the scree slope heading down to the valley seen in shadow on the lower right of the photo. We camped by the first small lake you can see in the shadows. You can wear your arms out there, catching Cutthroat trout. There is a price to pay though, as it is need easy to get there. Watch out for Griz!

My son Zach and I went to see the movie "2012" last Friday evening. It had a lot of good special effects, mostly of California falling apart and sliding into the ocean. The scenes of Yellowstone exploding were unimpressive though. This may mostly be due to the fact that I knew immediately that it wasn't filmed anywhere near Yellowstone. The actors drove into the park on a road I know doesn’t exist there. Also, they were hiking through an evergreen forest that had a lot of moss hanging from the limbs. It looked more like one of the coastal forests of California.

As in all disaster films, most of the characters in the film miraculously survive in the end. Mostly, the movie was good mindless entertainment.

In a couple of weeks, another "disaster" movie will be out. It is called "The Road", and is based on a book written by Cormack McCarthy. Back in 2008, we were headed to a baseball tournament in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. As we were driving, I decided to download a couple of audio books from iTunes. I have found that the miles pass by much faster when listening to a book. Zach and Tyler mostly watched DVDs in the back seat, or listened to their iPods. I am glad, as this was about the darkest story I have come across. It is about a father and son traveling cross country in a post apocalyptic world. If the movie stays faithful to the book, I think most people will come out of the theater with a little different mood than that of "2012". Thoughts of the latter, might be along the lines of "what neat special effects", or "there's no way that would ever happen". "The Road" will be different. You might leave the theater not wanting to think about it at all. Most likely, you will think about it in the middle of the night when you wake up in a cold sweat.

I saw an article today about the potential for snow in Yellowstone National Park over the next few days. It reminded me of the trip we took in February of 1988 to ski in Yellowstone.