Bozeman to Denver travelog
As I was sitting in traffic on Sunday afternoon on I-70 getting into Denver and I called my parents. My mom asked me to make a Facebook album of my trip. Listening to Guy Raz’s Digital Manipulation Ted Radio Hour podcast convinced me that I didn’t want to breathe more life into facebook. Anyway medium has a better medium for travelogs.
My trip started in Bozeman. After eating going out for a bison burger, ice cream, and playing monster connect four I headed back to my airbnb. I spoke to two people from Property and Environmental Research Center and got to talk up Nori and think about ways that we can work together in the future. Assuming this all works, we’ll be able to involve them in future pilots for forestry projects that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. I then turned off all work notifications and headed east to Lake Bighorn.
I eventually got to Rod’s camp. Rod is someone who is salt of the earth. He lives about 60 miles outside of Yellowstone park. It didn’t surprise me that he’s friends with Wes Jackson (who I got to visit with Ross in his library in Kansas earlier this year). Rod’s thinks about blockchain, a lot, and if he has his druthers, he’ll be involved with making a currency that’s somehow tied to calories. He’s got a brand called Old Faithful Organics, the most delicious organic meat, but he’s completely sold out online. I got to sleep a teepee for the first time.
The next morning Rod gave me good advice to climb up the butte in his back yard also known as Heart Mountain.
It’s a great view, with 360 degree panoramas. I swung by Rod’s on the way out. It was the sort of memorable visit where now I know a place in Wyoming where I’ll always be welcome and have a bug in my ear for smart people who I think should know and meet Rod. I then headed into Yellowstone. Yellowstone has been hit hard by the mountain pine beetle.
Carbon geek digression:
The pine beetle is an example of a feedback loop from climate change and why the world needs to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Warmer winters means the mountain pine beetle migrates north, killing more trees, and reversing the the photosynthesis and carbon storage trend. We can’t count on trees to maintain the carbon cycle the way we used to. No one is counting these emissions as their responsibility so when we focus on “decarbonization” it’s important to realize that along with needing to reduce emissions from things we have control over, we’ll need to recapture the carbon that escaped from a natural feedback loop that humans are responsible for.
Along with dying trees, Yellowstone is one of those places where animals have the right of way.
It’s also a place where you can find over one quarter of all the geothermal hot springs that exist in the world.
I took a hike to Angel Falls, on a really cool trail and then kept going up a much less traveled path. I made it to a geyser that was much more active than Old Faithful and had it all to myself.
The next day I was on the road early headed through the Tetons. It was one of those days where the mountains just pulled me in.
I got 10 miles of hiking in, but it was also a day with serious driving. Off the interstate and up desolate state roads, through Carbon County, speckled with fracking installations.
Eventually I got to a campground in Rouitt National Forest in Colorado that I had all to myself.
Then I kept on through Colorado. Doing my best to avoid busy roads, and still giving myself time for 12 miles of hiking — and skinny dipping in this lake at the foot of Mount Powell, Colorado’s tallest peak.
All told it’s been an incredibly regenerative trip. One that brings my love of nature to the fore and ingrains a desire for more adventures and finding beautiful things in the world.
