Holy Burning Buffalo Chips, Batman!

Our whirlwind pace and the fact that we spent the last 4 nights in Yellowstone, where there’s not even cell phone signal, much less wifi, accounts for the gap in posts here.

We had an absolutely divine 2 nights at the palatial Grahn Estate, overlooking, (or should I say looking down on?) the twinkling lights of Salt Lake City, from the lofty heights of Mount Olympus. (No joke there… that’s the actual name! I guess they must have named the place in Greece after it!) Anyway, it was a good chance to catch our breath, take showers, do several metric tons of laundry, stock up on food, and most importantly, visit with Carroll’s sister Jo and husband Allen. We highly recommend planning a stop there any time you’re west of the Mississippi; the spacious accommodations, and sumptuous cuisine complemented by a variety of delicious home made wines, will make almost any amount of detour worthwhile. As an additional incentive, if your long drive has resulted in a windshield covered with particularly tenacious, dried-on bug smears, they have some 6-year-old home made banana wine that is guaranteed to (dis)solve your problem! Just be careful not to spill any on the painted portion of your vehicle!

From there we headed for the Tetons and Yellowstone, stopping on the way at the Oregon Trail Museum in… Montpelier…Idaho! Turns out it's not a coincidence: Brigham Young named it to commemorate his hometown in Vermont. Anyway, we learned at the museum that kids on the Oregon Trail would have had to collect a bushel and a half of buffalo chips every day, for their mother to burn as fuel for cooking. So of course, we HAD to try burning buffalo chips at the earliest possible opportunity!

This came on our 2^nd night in Yellowstone. We had discovered an area of the campground along the river that seemed to be the preferred hangout of the local bison herd; we had no trouble collecting our bushel-and-a-half! Back at our campsite, we set to work, striving for authenticity by using the barest minimum number of twigs and tinder necessary to get the “chips” to reluctantly ignite. Then followed frantic, vigorous blowing and fanning to keep the “fire” “burning”. I use these words with some hesitation, because “fire” implies flame, and “burning” implies heat, neither of which were in any way evident. Smoke, however, was a different matter altogether! Huge, copious, billowing clouds of pungent, (OK, acrid), smoke blanketed the area downwind, obscuring even our nearest neighbors from view. After an hour or so of continuous feverish effort, our clothing was thoroughly saturated with the distinctive aroma, and we had a whole new respect, not to mention sympathy, for the pioneers!

At about this time, we noticed our downwind neighbor staggering through the cloud toward us, eyes red and cheeks tear-stained. He held out a store-bought firestarter log and a cardboard box. Stricken with guilt and remorse, I apologized profusely, and promised we would put out the “fire” right away. To his tremendous credit, he remained utterly gracious, and even went so far as to claim (between coughing fits) that they hadn’t been bothered at all. He did, however, insist that we keep the firestarter log, just in case, saying “It’s just better if you have a flame!”