Cycling America Virtually: Yellowstone National Park

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200 miles into Yellowstone National Park Today I reached Yellowstone National Park where the temperature this morning was 1 degree Fahrenheit; for my virtual tour, I remained in virtual comfort.

My memories of our family trip to Yellowstone in 1967 teach me something about the child brain. I do recall a little that Dad the Geologist wanted me to remember about hot springs, the formation of mountains and the continental divide. I remember a hike with Dad and my sister Kim, cut short when we ran across a mother bear and cubs, about fifteen trees away.

But as my inner world was all witches, vampires, and Batman (10/2017), I recall the Yellowstone "cauldron" more than any other sight. I can recall specific colors and frames from witch-related comic books that I re-read incessantly during the trip -- Wendy the Good Witch and a Bewitched knock-off. And I was most impressed when Dad showed me a bat hanging upside down from the sign of a general store.

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Cycling America Virtually: Smoot, Wyoming

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Riding on weekends has been welcome relief from the intensity of hybrid COVIDucation. 520 miles on trails around Atlanta have brought me virtually to Smoot, Wyoming.

Named for my great-uncle Reed Smoot of the neighboring state of Utah, first Mormon senator and member of the Senate's postal service committee, the town in Wyoming promised to take his name if he'd get them a post office.  Except for the notorious Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act that spread America's Great Depression world-wide, his name has not endured in history.

But the town stands just as it did during our family road trip to Yellowstone in the summer of 1967. My dad Tom Smoot arranged for his dad Dewey Smoot and his mom Harriet Radcliffe Smoot to come east from San Francisco to meet us. We posed pictures in front of that post office, which doubles as Walton's Store, the only business in town. My little brother Todd and I stand with our grandfather Dewey Smoot in one, and then with our sister Kim Ann Smoot, later Kim Carter.

Fifty years later, Nancy Calhoun visited the town on a tour of the West during the first summer of her retirement. With her late husband Ed, an avid photographer, she put together a mini-Michelin guide. "The four city blocks of downtown Smoot contain approximately 100 hardy souls," she wrote, "but Greater Metropolitan Smoot proudly claims almost 300 residents." Many photos follow in her guidebook, including pictures of the two churches, the cemetery, horses, and the one I used for my virtual visit.

I hope you'll check out posts of related interest. These are people and memories that I love.

• I delivered a tribute to Nancy Calhoun, founder of the Walker School's Middle School, on the occasion of her retirement.
• One of Ed Calhoun's most striking photographs features in Framing Memories of Ed Calhoun.
• My childhood memories of our car trip blend with appreciation for James Agee's universal evocation of childhood memories, and of Samuel Barber's musical setting of Agee's words, in my post Summer, Knoxville, 1915 and Wyoming, in a car, 1967.

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