Memorable stops, sights along the way

Everyone has memories and favorite places. Here are a few of mine.

We were vacationing in Wyoming and had our oldest son, Paul, with us. Our plan was to stay overnight and travel to the Tetons the next day.

We stopped at the Irma Hotel to get rooms and learned that we could get the Buffalo Bill suite that had two bedrooms for a very reasonable amount, so we took it.

We learn that Bill Cody stayed there when he wasn’t traveling with his Wild West show.

The suite was well worn and very plain. A large picture of Cody was on the wall, the only apparent sign of the popular westerner in the suite.

Today, the place has had a facelift and the suite is the attraction, which goes for top dollar.

The Tetons and Jackson, Wyoming have always been one of our favorite places. You could drive around and see a lot of wild animals.

Moose were abundant. In one meadow, we saw 13 moose. In Jackson, we hit the art allergies. There were supposedly 62 in the city.

A short distance from the Tetons is Yellowstone Park. On one of many visits there, we saw a buffalo calf being born.  On another occasion, I was walking on a sidewalk and heard something behind me. I turned and there was a huge grizzly bear keeping pace with me. I quickly stepped off the sidewalk and the bear moved on.

A white-water float trip on the Salmon River (the “river of no return”) was one I will always remember. It was late spring with an unusual runoff and the river was very rough. A trip I never would do again. It was a two-day trip and ended in the Snake River.

When I traveled in the Far East, I spent some time in Siem Reap, the ancient capital of Cambodia. I stopped there to see Angkor Wat, the old ruins in the jungle that were found by a French butterfly collector in the middle of the 19th century.

I was able to wander around the ruins by myself. Now it has become a favorite stopping-off place for tourists, and you are not allowed in the ruins without a guide.

I had a consulting job in Kodiak, Alaska and made a number of trips there. On one of the weekends, I went on a charter boat for halibut. The skipper said we were going about 60 miles out to a place where we could catch halibut. Sure enough, we did.

I caught 13 and shared them with others on the boat. My arms were so tired that I became hopeful that they would leave my line alone. I kept the 176-pond halibut. The captain took two halibut, each around 35 pounds. I found out later that the 5-pound size is the best halibut. Pulling them up from the bottom is like lifting a barn door through the water.

On a different weekend, we visited a woman who now lived in Anchorage. She had lived on our block in Bothell. 

We went somewhere to see a glacier up close and I was able to stand against the leading edge of the glacier.

The next day we stopped to see a friend of hers who was entering the Iditarod sled race. 

As luck would have it, he was preparing a training run and agreed to let me ride along.

The dogs were as excited as I was. It was a quick and rough experience and worth the trip. Later we went on to Denali National Park where we saw a few caribou.

That’s just a few of my memorable experiences.