This is a sample of the book i'm writing for my Grandpa Johnson.
Travel and tourism was a rare occurrence during the war, so in the summer of 1944 my Grandpa and three friends set off to Yellowstone National Park, to enjoy America’s best idea. His friends who accompanied were Dean Blaylock, Don Forbush, and Leavitt Grover; they had all acquired bicycles and were ready to tour the park at their leisure. My Grandfather found his bike at the house of his Uncle Carl in a scrap/junk pile. He fixed the bicycle up and got it ready for the trip around the park. It was painted green and yellow, after a John Deere tractor. He also painted his safari style helmet the same colors to match the bike.
My brothers and I have always been under the impression that my Grandpa and his companions rode their bicycles all the way from Idaho Falls to the park itself. I was corrected, and even though this didn’t happen, it still didn’t take away from the story in my opinion. The boys had known the owners of Harts Bakery in Idaho Falls and had made arrangements to hitch a ride with the driver who delivered to West Yellowstone Montana. They got a ride all the way to Lairds Ranch just outside of West Yellowstone. From the ranch they rode the bicycles into the town, where they purchased a large amount of groceries for the trip ahead. When they came out of the store the realization came that the items would have to be carried into the park somehow. With some empty flour sacks they had created saddle bags for the bicycles which were then filled with the groceries.
The boys had entered an empty park, a chance that very few would ever have. Due to the issues of the time, mostly gas rationing, the park had been empty save it were a few rangers left to manage it. The park rangers had monitored the boys’ movements and kept an eye on them. But the boys were Idahoans, and did not need assistance when surviving in the wilderness. Boys that are raised or partly raised in the backcountry of Idaho are raised to be tough. I was always taught to reason before making a decision, and learn through my experiences but mostly the experiences of others. In this sense I can relate to my grandpa and the other boys he grew up with.
While camping here in the Rocky Mountains there are things a person must do while camping. First, find a place away from other people because a group of people from the city or California can altogether ruin a camping trip. Second, camp near a good fly fishing river, so dinner can be caught and cooked in good time. Third and probably most important is to bear proof your camp. Black bear and grizzly bear inhabit the Rocky Mountains. A black bear is a somewhat of a pushover and can be easily scared off by a show of aggression from a person. The most dangerous thing to do when facing a black bear or any other predator, even a dog, is to turn and run, because that movement activates the natural predator mode that these animals posses. A grizzly bear is a different story. When a grizzly bear comes around you have two options for survival, play dead and risk getting your face ripped off, or climb the nearest large tree and go up it as far as you can go. People say that it would be hard to do so, but the human body can do amazing things when adrenaline is pumping through it. I would choose the tree option if I was faced with the situation. Moose are also one of the dangerous animals to look out for; they will raid a camp just a bear will, only a moose is much larger. The bonus of dealing with animals such as moose, bison, and elk is that they will give you warning signs and grunts letting you know that you are not welcome in their pressure zone making them predictable. Animals have three zones, pressure, flight, and fight. The zones are notices when working with or around animals, wild animals have the same zones but they are more pronounced. When a person enters the flight and fight zones of an animal then they are in a bad position and could be seconds away from death or injury, but nonetheless memorable.
My Grandfather and the other boys were some of the only people in the park. This was a time when the Yellowstone bear population was fed a smattering of different foods by the park visitors. With the absence of people, the bears would use their amazing senses to seek out the boys for handouts. People would often toss food to bears, but when the bears didn’t get food, they would try to find it and get it out by force, making them very dangerous and bold. Pressure zones had shrunk in order to procure food; they would approach the boys around dinner time in hopes of some sort of meal or snack. Most of them were black bear, making the threat slight. One of the boys had tied all of the pots and pans to a string and would shake them any time the bears got too close. It worked well and would send the bears running in fear.
One morning they woke up to a grizzly bear napping on the picnic table. The bear was probably curious to see who was still left in the park and was probably hoping for some Californians, who were normally less than savvy when it came to camping knowledge. Nowadays it is suggested to never stand up to a grizzly bear or attempt to scare him off. The boys did just that, but luckily for them he was a lazy and forgiving bear. He probably realized that he had bargained for more than he hoped for and knew the boys would put up a decent fight. So the grizzly slowly sat up and moseyed back out into the vast forest.
They had mostly camped out, but were lucky enough to stay in the Old Faithful cabin. It is located near the center of the park, nearly thirty miles inward from the town of West Yellowstone. The Old Faithful cabin is huge, and at that time would have been relatively new. In its heyday brass bands would play high above in the crow’s nest, while dances and great socials would be held. Old Faithful is the most famous geyser, shooting up to 160 feet at times, and was named so because it could be timed in half hour intervals. It is not so faithful anymore, and now, one has to wait forty five minutes (give or take five to ten minutes) to see it erupt. Also, today there will be crowds of thousands of people watching a single eruption sometimes, most of them being foreign. When my Grandpa was there in the empty park, they were often the only people watching Old Faithful erupt high into the big blue hole in the sky.
Later they rode on to more parts of the large national park. Yellowstone Lake is a very large lake, when trappers first saw it they thought it was an inland sea. They weren’t wrong altogether in thinking so, because it acts like a sea. The waves are pounding and the water is rough and cold. There is a place just off the lake called Fishing Bridge, aptly named because people would often fish off of it. I have been to the park many times and have not seen a single soul fishing from that bridge. But back in the day there would be people lined up and down the length of it with their lines out, and of course they were bait fisherman. My Grandpa and the boys brought their fly rods and caught fish the respectable way. Fly fishing is an art, for only an artist catches a fish with a fly rod. They ate fish often, because fishing in Yellowstone is permitted but hunting is not, in fact guns aren’t even allowed in the park for most. It made me especially excited to know that they fly fished, because I am a fly fisherman myself, so is my brother Spencer.
The boys stayed in the park for a week, seeing some of Gods greatest creative expressions in nature like the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, with the lower and upper falls completing the experience. On the last day in the park, they rode sixty five miles on bicycle from the Norris Geyser basin to West Yellowstone Montana then they headed back out to Lairds Ranch, where they stayed for a week and waited for the bakery truck to return. There was a young girl there at the ranch that he fancied, she was 14 and he was 15, so it was fairly innocent. I don’t the exact story but I believe Norman Laird owned an open cockpit plane, in which he took the girl and my grandpa on a ride over the park. They also rode horses, fished and did other outdoor activities in the company of the beautiful Gallatin Forest. Soon the bakery truck came and the boys returned home with priceless memories that they and their families will never forget.
