Trip: Day Nine

Laundry Day!

The building housing the bar also housed on the back side the restrooms and showers, and a central laundromat, coin operated. When I left the RV, I took not only my towel and toiletries but a folding lawn chair and book, a sack of dirty clothes, soap and quarters. Not enough quarters, however. I'd peeked inside very briefly the day before, noticing every machine was front-loading - just like home - and some required $1 and other $.50. What I didn't notice was that they were all dryers, and the washers were on the other side, hiding behind the door. Not to mention requiring $1.75 a load. Dang! Another trip!

To top it off, the dryers saying they charged $.50 actually needed three quarters. Apparently somebody pulled a newer sign off from an older sign. Very funny.

I'd announced to the others that I was going to stay there and watch/cycle laundry for everybody who was washing their dirty clothes that morning. After my shower, I set up the chair in the sun, where I had the choice of freezing and burning simultaneously, or just freezing if I moved it into the shade. I settled for changing my mind frequently. Eventually my hair dried, Paul brought over my jacket, and I could sit in the shade comfortably. While I watched laundry, he cooked breakfast and brought my plate (pancakes, fried eggs and bacon) and mug of mocha over for me!

Afternoon plans for Paul and Maria included whitewater rafting on the Snake River. Alta drove them over to Jackson Hole, in hopes of an opening so she could join them. (I found out later that Max had offered her a choice: either go rafting, something she really wanted to do, or take care of all four kids for the afternoon while the rest of us went fishing. She made the smart choice, and was rewarded with a spot on the raft.)

Max, Steve and I, four kids, cameras and fishing gear were loaded into the van and we headed first out for lunch, heading down Star Valley to "the cheese place" that we all remembered from long-ago previous visits. There was a very nice restaurant that had a corner booth where we adults could take the outside seats and trap the kids on the inside seats. That mostly worked. We were very lucky that the staff and fellow patrons were in a tolerant mood that day.

I think my most neutral description of those kids is "high spirited." Steve has a few other adjectives. Suffice it to say all four were vying for Daddy's attention every minute, and he was trying to catch up on what was going on with his brother, keep the kids in line, order food they'd all tolerate, find his own menu choice, keep the crayons on the paper (shirts were decorated), and just maybe keep the noise level within safe limits. It didn't help that our food was delayed, that Ashley and Daniel each tried to monopolize all the crayons, or that when Ryan's mini corn dogs finally arrived they were so hot that he tried to cool them by putting them in his glass of ice water.

The food, however, was delicious.

Star Valley is absolutely beautiful, at least this time of year, with everything being lushly green, from the valley floor to the rounded mountains rising on either side. Behind them an occasional snow-covered peak was visible, though the snow was limited to narrow ribbons draped over the tops. Max informed us that the middle of the valley is the border between Wyoming and Idaho, and spoke of a job opportunity in Idaho he was hopeful about. Among other things, it could make this area more accessible for vacations.

The mountains on our east were the Greys, and after lunch we headed back into Alpine to catch the Greys River road, heading up through them to a fishing spot. Steve's and Max's dad loved this area, bringing the boys here on fishing trips - individually, with their great difference in ages, and Steve more than Max.

Max had gone up with the family the day before and spotted a likely spot to pull off where everybody with good legs could stretch them and those with fishing poles and licenses could drop a line in from a very shallow bank. Having brought everything but a chair, I proceeded to find a stump to sit on and film from while everybody else did their thing. Unfortunately, the stump had been chainsawed in a beaver imitation, and the resulting point was not only full of tall jagged ends but the angle left to perch against was quickly very uncomfortable, like after about three seconds.

Steve found his spot and parked himself there in his camping chair for the duration. Hayden grabbed a pole and hiked down near me and the stump, making this spot the center of recording activity. By this time I had developed a sincere lack of sympathy for his instigation/complain-to-the-parent pattern, which alternated with his instigation/step-in-himself-like-the-parent pattern. Instigation is his case meant tormenting a sibling - usually Daniel, always good for rising to the bait, and stepping in himself usually meant roughing up said sibling. For a while there I thought my new mantra was, "You're not the parent," spoken in stern tones to Hayden. I figured if Max wanted to step in when one of the kids leashed out when provoked, he was perfectly capable of doing so. I was content to play lieutenant, reminding the kids of Max's spoken rules and of my observations of their breaking them. I wasn't above tattling when he was busy, and also reminded the kids of this fact.

When the opportunity came to tape Harden attempting to cast when his lure wouldn't travel more than a foot from his pole because something has hanging it up, I availed myself of it, for about the full five minutes it took him of repeated failed castings before he marched down to where the others were fishing to find a fix for the problem. I must add that normally he was a very good caster. Capturing the fluke of bad luck tickled my funnybone.

Ashley stayed very close to Daddy for the afternoon, Hayden stayed down by my end of the pullout, and Daniel and Ryan wandered back and forth. Ryan occasionally got the pole himself to try his luck, but usually, like Hayden, "caught" rocks or snags. Daniel - well, Daniel was just being Daniel. Of the four kids, he is the one who is absolutely driven to mischief at every opportunity. While I didn't see any maliciousness in it, there was certainly something inside constantly pushing it out. He'd been given the net, in the overly-optimistic hope that someone might catch something that needed bringing to shore.. He took a moment to bring it over to where I was sitting, after having gotten it dripping wet, and took a big swing with it that missed me by inches. The water still attached to it, however, didn't miss, me or the camera. I was unappreciative.

Go figure.

Once I finally gave up on my backside and decided to make my knees miserable instead for a bit, I wandered down to where Steve, Max, and Ashley had staked their territories. Just after I arrived, so did the game warden. I displayed my camera, saying I'd been shooting, not fishing that day. He checked everybody else that day for fishing licenses. Luckily, they'd all gone to the local store earlier and taken advantage of Wyoming's $14 a day license policy. He was friendly, staying around a bit to chat, mentioning that the Greys River was still flowing a bit too heavily to be good for trout, suggesting the Little Greys for fishing instead. We'd passed on the way up the spot where the two joined.

I headed for the van for comfortable seating, still able to get a few shots off from there. My favorite, etched in my memory the way some shots are from the moment you take them, are of Ashley and her dad, sitting back-to-back on the river bank, poles pointing in opposite directions. Both are wearing white or near-white, and lush greens surround them, all drenched in sunlight.

Ryan came over to the van after a bit, taking out his dad's camera and taking his own pictures with it. He took a few of me, but since it was a Nikon, I knew exactly how to delete them. I suggested instead that he use the camera to get shots of the rest of his family, which he did. Ryan actually managed to impress me as being the thoughtful one of the kids, at least as he interacted with me.

A bit later Hayden came over to the van, pulled out the camera, and started shooting anything and everything. Click-click-click, click-click-click-click-click. And on and on, until finally Max had had enough! I'm not sure Hayden was doing anything but getting attention. Ryan's pictures, on the other hand, were few and captured his subjects well.

Pretty soon the group gave up on this site and decided to take the game warden's advice. The drive up along the Little Greys was beautiful, even more so than what we'd already traveled that day. There were numerous sightings down to the river where deep blue pools waited along bends in the river, no doubt harboring dozens of hungry trout.

Each.

There was just one problem. Not only was there nowhere to safely pull off the road to stop, but the road uniformly ran along a 6 to 12 foot bank - or worse - above the river. It was definitely not a place for someone with bad knees to climb down to, nor safe for young children. We contented ourselves with some serious daydreaming and drooling over possibilities, eventually turning around to head back to our camp for supper.

Max had promised to cook for us, in a dutch oven over a campfire, a blend of potatoes, carrots, onions, chicken, mushrooms, and green peppers, all simmering in a can each of cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soups. His estimate of an hour cooking time proved very optimistic, and while tasty, it could have used, say, some powdered onion soup for some zip. But that's just my taste buds talking.

The center of the campground had a large green, an area used for tents, picnics, and bonfires. This is where supper happened that night. The fire was built back up before being allowed to die back down for s'mores for the kids - of all ages. Alta and Max had to run food and dishes back to their RV, leaving the kids around the fire. Luckily they had lots of adult supervision. Everybody wanted to throw some kind of fuel in to the fire to feed it, but there was a limited supply both of fuel and adult patience. As the parents left, they warned that if they heard that anybody at all put anything more in the fire, it would mean being sent to bed immediately without s'mores! Now I'd heard plenty of threats of consequences the last couple days, with almost none being imposed. At this point I had no hesitation whatsoever in stepping in with the comment leveled at all the kids in my firmest tone, "And you all know that I'll have no problem tattling on you!"

It worked. It also helped that we found them a new activity. The firewood was doing a lot of popping, kicking out lighted sparks in all directions around it. The boys had been doing a good job of stamping them out, as we pointed sparks out to them. Now Ashley wanted to participate too, so I announced the next spark was hers. We still had to hold two of the boys back from "helping", but she did get to stamp out her spark. We then announced the next one was ______'s, and then ______'s, etc., and enforced it. After all, we outnumbered them five to four, even with their parents gone. Luckily for peace, there were four sparks left in that fire so each got a turn.

By s'mores end it was time to turn in. Even if it hadn't been time for sleep, it was time for a break.