Across the Great Divide

“It’s
a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the
road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you
might be swept off to.”  ~J.R.R. Tolkien

For those folks who have been wondering why it’s been quiet for so long at Mountain Hearth, I am happy to report that this mountain woman has been off on grand adventures. I spent a good part of June hiking far off mountain ranges, listening to amazing live bluegrass music, sampling local craft beers on the Rocky Mountain region, backpacking with family, touring geothermal hot spots, meeting old friends and new friends including buffalo and marmots, and zig-zagging back and forth across the Great Divide. It’s been a fun road trip, but it feels good to be back on the homestead with my mountain man and chickens.

It all began last fall with my partner winning the Town Park Camping lottery for the 40th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival and inviting me to go along with him. I had listened to plenty of live recordings from Telluride, never imagining it was someplace I would ever go in person, so this was a much anticipated event all winter and spring. I had been wanting to take my kids to Yellowstone National Park when school got out, so we decided to make a really big road trip out of it and rendezvous with my kids on their annual Grandma and Grandpa vacation after Telluride for some Yellowstone backpacking and fun.

 

Just as soon as school got out, we hit the road for the beautiful high-mountain town of Telluride. We arrived a few days before the festival so we could enjoy hiking the trails right out of the edge of town, and experience the happenings of Town Park camping, including late night bluegrass jams in tents and a homebrew exchange one afternoon. One of our favorite things to do was riding the free gondola up to the top of the mountain peaks to the town of Mountain Village, and back down again at sunset. We made an evening ritual out of it.

On some of our hikes we enjoyed seeing waterfalls, Rocky Mountain wildflowers of all kinds, marmots, old goldrush town ruins, and the most amazing rugged mountain peaks as far as you could see. It was an amazing outdoor wonderland to camp in the midst of for 9 days.

Once the festival started, there was more amazing bluegrass music to take in than I could even absorb. Friends showed up, tarps were thrown down, and we listened to some fine, fine string music all day long and late into the night for 4 days.

I couldn’t even begin to recount all my favorites, but Bela Fleck’s morning banjo performance was way up there along with seeing Greensky Bluegrass twice in one day.

Then we hit the road again to go from one big adventure to the next, meeting up with my folks and my kids in Yellowstone to spend a couple of days showing Corey and the kids the park for the first time, and doing a backpacking trip along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

It was a breathtaking trek along the canyon rim to our campsite at Ribbon Lake with the Yellowstone River raging down below.

We saw plenty of geothermal hot spots.

And we roamed where the buffalo roam.

After making one last geothermal stop at Wild Rose hotsprings, an old favorite near the Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho, we figured it was time to head for home with all of our tales to tell.

And while all those adventures were grand, the music was fine, and
the craft beer was tasty in the Rocky Mountain states, there was nothing quite as good
as being back home. From the Great Basin, to the Colorado Rockies, across the Great Divide, to the open range of Wyoming, and the geothermal wonderland of Yellowstone, we were still sure that there was no place we would rather be than out here in Oregon on our little piece of land up the McKenzie
River.