Before leaving  Orlando, we got clobbered with a big rainstorm which dumped 15″ of rain on our tails as we fled north.

Only in Photoshop can you make a big storm cloud look like a nuclear explosion.  It’s time to drive north!

Before we  enter the Parkway, we visit one of our poster sites:  Fort Marion as it was called in the 30s when the WPA poster was created–using the British name.  Today it is  PC correct as Castillo de San Marcos:

Here’s the 30s poster–a beautiful poster design.  There is a shortage of eastern park WPA poster designs so this is indeed a rare poster, yet this park won’t sell it–but Ranger Doug does right here.

Martina with canon–not the camera…..  Incredible history here!

We lumber our way northward stopping at campgrounds on our way up Appalachia.  Here “Ranger Doug” can’t resist playing ranger again–he’s interviewing the modern camper replete with fifth wheel, piggy-backed “Smart Car” towed by a big-rig.

Above is the location of our 75th anniversary Blue Ridge Parkway poster….

….and below is our poster design:

Appalachia….truly a relaxed way of life.

Hiking trail with autumn colors….

Martina models in a neighboring Airstream–art-westeaux.  Never seen such an interior complete with a mounted bull’s head…..

every campground has it’s unique visitors….

This is Mabry Mill–quite a scenic stop and quite functional with a river driven waterwheel.  Essentially, this was the source of power for 200 years, before electricity.  This mill still grinds flour which is for sale.

We drive out the north end of Blue Ridge Parkway shortly after and skirt a storm in Shenandoah arriving in Washington DC for a 1/2 hour meeting with the Director of the National Park Service, Jon Jarvis.  My mission is to host an exhibition of all original WPA national park posters for the 2016 NPS Centennial at the Smithsonian–we have now found 13 of 16 known originals.  And Jon is certainly enthusiastic about my mission.

Since finding one castaway poster in 1973, I’ve republished the historical set of 16 parks plus contemporary designs for those parks that didn’t subscribe to the WPA’s federal poster project.  We now publish over 35 park designs and have  sold over 100,000 reproductions of this fabulous poster collection.  Our goal is to hang a WPA poster in every home in America.

Here Martina and I have finally arrived in Paterson N.J. the location of America’s newest National Park, just signed into law by President Obama–Paterson Falls National Park.   PFNP is located just 17 miles west of New York City at the site of a 77′ high/300′ wide falls that powered America’s first industrial town.

Founded by Alexander Hamilton, Geo. Washington’s Secretary of Treasury, he realized the industrial opportunity here as opposed to relying on the British.  General Washington camped on the fall’s edge during the Revolutionary War….  Quite interesting.

This hydro power allowed the Colt Firearms factory to be located here–also most of the American railroad rolling stock including the engines for the construction of the Panama Canal.

This park will take several years to mature with restoration and interpretation of many buildings and manufacturing plants.

Keep your eye on this place.

We keep driving north to Mystic Seaport, Connecticut.

With about 500-600 restored wooden boats!  Seattle has how many?  Maybe a dozen.  The Wawona was just chainsawed up before risking sinking in South Lake Union….  Shame on the NW Seaport for 40 years of supervised neglect!   Here’s how Mystic restores vessels:

This is a 6 year $8.2M restoration of the last whaling vessel left.  As a former board member of the Virginia Five,  I was proud!

OK–time to store our trailer (near Boston) and jump on an Amtrak train for a relaxed trip to Seattle–just barely beating a huge snowstorm in the NE.  Here we pose beside the modern “Bambi” airstreams and the larger goliaths.  I’ll stick with our 13′ footer….

Enroute across the Northern US, this photo was taken at sunset near Au Claire, Wisconsin where my great grandparents immigrated from Norway–no wonder they later moved to Bellingham!

And this was probably the very same train they rode on….   Minot ND.

Incredibly, we have no photos of our ferry trip from Bellingham to Petersburg–perhaps it’s too mundane for us after dozens of transits.  We arrive late at night to find our home (here, our garden fence) smothered in snow and 41F inside!  Time to fire up our masonry heater and move back in!  Stay tuned.

It’s that time of year when we attend the APPL park trade show–this year in Dallas.  We’ve now motored across from last year’s venue–San Diego and are headed to Key West Florida.  Instead of paying the labor unions hundreds of dollars to roll my Bambi Airstream into the convention center, Brian makes me a miniature…..check this out–complete in every detail including all the stickers/posters.   For two days we field questions about our unique WPA silkscreened historic and contemporary posters.  We’ve now about six others copying our style, and quite frankly the more they publish, the better we look.   Check out my genuine Route 66 necktie….and it comes with a ‘tacky’ trailer tie-tack!

We then drive east into the Bible Belt and are not surprised by the intensity of religiosity (expletive deleted); the radios were even worse….  so we keep driving to Pensacola where we meet with Martina’s brother who is perhaps the best barbeque expert I’ve ever known:

Check out his setup.  Three professional smokers and he cuts up hickory and tosses in a chip or two for flavor.  His steaks are three inches thick….

This is a heart stopper!  After this meal and a 17 lb./24 hour smoked beef brisket the following night, I take on a southern accent and have a great desire to collect guns and knives!

After three days in Pensacola, we turn eastward again but first visit Fort Pickens which was built with slave labor prior to the civil war and guards the harbor entrance here.  There are millions of bricks here–this is a massive fortress and others are even bigger.  The gun you see here was the largest guns of the war–and never fired–kind of like our cold war.  The designer was one of Napolean’s architects who directed construction of many of these around the southern ramparts of our country.

This is what the southerners mean by “walking the dog.”

So we drive all the way out to the end of the road–Key West, Florida.  This place is so tacky!….strewn with single-shot  bars and the typical tourist traps–the perfect cruise ship destination.    Both into Key West and back again, we stop for a night at Key Largo and visit many of the artisan shops in between–the essence of the Keys–quite nice actually.

Driving north, here is our campsite at Everglades National Park–our goal on this trip.

Opps!  wrong upload….here is the actual site–a very spacious campground, and this late in the season was nearly empty due to the increase of summer bugs and….rattlesnakes.   Note the Caribbean Pines that tower above our campsite.  Most of the Everglades and the gulf coast swamplands were populated with this species and have since been drained to raise paper-pulp species of pines (pinus radiata) as you will also find in most of New Zealand.   Lately there has been a big movement to reflood the Everglades back to the “River of Grass” restoring the natural ecosystem including the alligators pictured above.  Hope it works.  Meanwhile….

….we meet with the archivist and settle on a design for another poster in our series–this probably our 40th image.  We’re well on the way to completing our goal of publishing a poster of each park before the 2016 NPS Centennial.  This poster will feature many endemic birds and the alligators.   Are you ready?

This is our last night at Lake Gitch-e-goomie (or some such name) KOA–one of the nicest we found, but guess what……it’s a Christian owned and operated campground.  It took me two days of badgering them before they would let us heathens store our trailer there….   Maybe I didn’t give them the secret sign or perhaps it was our “Rubber Tomahawks” bumper stickers–don’t get me started….

Well, we two Alaskans finally made it to the opposite end of our country; as far from Kupreanof as you can get without getting our feet wet–and how opposite we found it.  We will continue this trip in the fall working up the Appalachian mountains through more parks.  Stay tuned.

After 40 years, almost to the day, I returned to Washington DC to lobby for the Arctic Refuge. This ceremony took place at “the triangle” which is directly outside the US Capitol Building. Attending are Wilderness Society president Bill Meadows, Representative Ed Markey (D-MA), Senators Tom Udall (D-NM) and Mark Udall (D-CO) and, of course……..Ranger Doug.

The Udalls have walked the talk–by hiking the entire Brooks Range and rafting each of the eleven river systems. Mark stated that Udalls are so thick in the SW that you can’t spit without hitting one. Tom’s definition of wilderness is when something is out there that you can’t see but is willing to eat you. Of course, I tell my bear story….

But first, let me explain the 40th anniversary of my first visit here….

I met with Richard Nixon on May 14, 1970 after the Kent State shootings–we were the only student group to access the White House and the President: (“Don’t pay attention to the man behind the curtain!”)

You can read more in the Newsweek May 25, 1970 edition in “Youth Wants to Know” where I’m quoted as the “clean-cut leader of….American youth” This quote appears prominently on my resume, of course.

But, Richard didn’t listen to my sage advice so I had him impeached….but I waited for him to first sign the Wilderness Act–my reason for coming back 40 years later….

About a year ago, the Sierra Club approached me about a poster design to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Arctic Refuge. And here is our design featuring Mardy and Olaus Murie who spent their lives preserving this wonderful place–a considerable effort given that Mardy lived to 101! For more information about the refuge, read Mardy’s book “Two in the Far North.”

Also see our previous post on this area here.

After our “triangle meeting,” our next stop was Joseph Lieberman’s office. Joe called me the “An Alaskan Real McCoy”….another quote I’ll have to include on my resume along with Newsweek’s:

One more stop: The Library of Congress. For years, I’ve been collaborating with the LOC and National Parks to try to rebuild an original set. Imagine my surprise to find five of the nine “Laurent Collection” safely held by the LOC; we had been bidding against each other–they bought five, I, two. Only four posters remain elusive: Yosemite which was sold by the Swann Gallery, NYC to a private buyer and three which have never been found: Wind Cave, Yellowstone Falls and Great Smoky Mountain. Here, Ranger Doug donates his contemporary collection to Brett Carnell of the Prints and Photographs Division:

After all this political stuff, Martina and I train up to NY to the Big Apple. This place is expensive!…but we have a good time visiting Greenwich Village–hear Ranger Doug’s interview here. We also do the museums, visit the WTC site, the Steinway Piano Factory and also King Tut–checking out his personal jewelry. I visited the top of the Twin Towers 25 years ago and here’s what it looks like today:

….and the Steinway Piano Factory–fascinating for anyone nuts about pianos. No cameras allowed here:

OK….one more mention: Gettysburg. We’re doing a poster on this incredible place. In less than three days, there were almost 53,000 casualties–and a large percentage died.

Gettysburg is about 90 miles north of Washington DC–the Union was clearly threatened. I once sat at the very desk upon which Lincoln wrote his Gettysburg Address–Richard Nixon had it installed directly behind the (green) curtain behind his presidential desk. I also sat at Nixon’s oval office desk–but was politely asked not to sit there–only the President could. Just trying it out for size…..OK, OK–here’s a Gettysburg canon:

ELDA is next….but we first stop by Beacon NY on the beautiful Hudson River–beautiful because of one man’s efforts to clean it up. That man is Pete Seeger. Here he’s still strumming the banjo on his 91st birthday party. We were lucky to be able to meet him and have a piece of birthday cake!

and Pete still making music:

Then we proceed to ELDA–which stands for Elizabeth, Lucy, David and Abbott–the four children of David T. Abercrombie, founder of Abercrombie & Fitch and my great uncle. In 1926-8, he built a castle just north of NYC near Ossining–home of Sing Sing Prison. Today ELDA lies open to the elements, vandalized and for sale. I hastily organize a family reunion of the remaining Abercrombies and we tour the castle.

About 5 years ago, I stumbled across original photographs of the castle taken just after it was built….in Wyoming of all places where his son ranched. Here is the “Great Room:”

….and what it looks like today.

In 1944, a paint company was experimenting with camouflage paint and blew out one wing. I don’t believe this story preferring the more exotic tale of the Manhattan Project igniting a nuclear bomb here. This place was built like a proverbial stone outhouse with steel reinforcement, only stronger. David T’s wife was from the Abbott steel family who built the steel cladding for the Monitor (that sunk the Merrimack in the Civil War) and also the steel trusses for the US Capitol Building (see first photo in this post). This wasn’t paint…. But today’s kids still are experimenting with paint; thanks Jeff, class of 2009. It’s good to see that our high schools are still turning out well educated and mature adults.

The ceiling collapsed and the front stone wall was blown out–later turned into a courtyard.

Here’s that north wing intact in another original photo. It would be nice to restore this place and turn it into a music center, library or museum. There are 53 acres with two ponds and a separate guest house (originally a stable for horses). The stone tower is four stories high and from the top you can see the Hudson River.

Hmmm…..another project…..stayed tuned.

Recent add-on alert!….for all you East-Coasters. Our first bears show up right after we return to Alaska–here’ I’m gracefully tip-toeing after our fourth sighting (a big one!) to get a better pic–OK,….not too close…..

In February it’s time to head back down to Palm Springs, pick up our trailer and drive south to San Diego for our annual APPL (Association of Partners for Public Lands) trade show where we preach the good deeds of the WPA-CCC artwork of our National Parks. We use our trailer as a prop. The centennial for the NPS is 2016 so we’re hustling to complete an image of each park by that time. We’re at #32 and here we are presenting our latest eight images. I built a cellophane fire that I could control (a la’ The Amazing Randi) with a rheostat when I fanned it with my fake ranger hat. Now that’s schtick! Shown are Brian, my artist computer guru, Martina and Sharlene in our outback monogrammed shirts. After all this hucksterism, I find a piano…..

I’m a sucker for a grand piano–I can play a little bit of everything but all of nothing. The only positive thing I can say for my playing is you get to hear a different piece every time I play the same work.

It’s then on to Hawaii for 11 days of relaxation despite three rip-offs: United Airlines, Thai Thai restaurant and Dollar Rent a Car:

1. United has totally lost it. They pulled our frequent flier miles when we flew to Antarctica 5 years ago and it took me three years of letter writing to get $1000 worth of replacement vouchers which paid for this trip. We flew a 767 with only two flight attendants and they couldn’t keep up with crowd so it was a long 5 1/2 hour trip. On the return, we flew a wide body 767 completely full with four attendants (two isles on this baby). We sat in seat 40 so were next to last seat and were offered the last stale turkey sandwich. Sensing the dry turkey, I took my dinner in liquid refreshments only to be told they were also out of wine. No such thing, I retort–go rob first class….which they did at a premium price. I rarely fly sober due to a perilous flight back from Vietnam which involved a missing engine, flaming wing, 12,000′ dive, a missing window and a seat partner with a missing leg. On my last trip to Hawaii, I sat next to a Sumo wrestler (honest) who took up two seats. On this flight, across the isle, was a 400 pounder who sucked his thumb the entire trip…you get the idea. If you pay extra for bags, why not for body fat…? And I’m not the only one with a gripe–check out United breaks guitars on You Tube.

Alaska now flies direct to Hawaii and I highly recommend them. The best pilots in of the lot.

2. We rented a car from Dollar Rent a Car. Have you ever gotten a straight answer about car rental prices? Me neither. We were initially told they had no cars, inquired on the internet purchasing a voucher for $236.55 for a 7 day compact car rental. Taking the voucher to Dollar, they gave us a car but the contract stated a lower price of $193.00 which included all taxes, etc. OK, lower is better. It also stated a $32/day extension if we wanted to keep the car another day or two but they told me to extend only if I was sure I needed it because there’s a $50 early return fee. OK, we call them on day 6 and want to extend one day–then realizing we rented at 10am and needed to check in at noon, what would an additional two hours cost. They told me $142.26 for the total cost of eight days, two hours….. Something’s fishy so I asked the attendant again, what the total price for the rental from Dollar and their agents would appear on my credit card bill; $142.26 again. This was neither the $64 I was expecting nor the $193 plus $64 nor the original voucher cost. Turns out my total cost was $378.81 which was the voucher plus the higher amount for the one day, two hours. So I called Dollar and had them explain the extension costs–here they are: Two day extension $64 (no hourly with them), $28.11 airport tax, $2.34 vehicle license, $11.81 excise tax, $6 road tax. Well this adds up to only $112.26–$30 less than their bill–but still no explanations. Plus these taxes are already covered by the initial $193.00 contract. Dollar states if you extend, it’s a separate contract and you have to pay all the taxes a second time…. Dollar Rent a Car are thieves so I’m lodging complaints with the BBB and Attorney General’s office. Boycott Dollar and United…..

Followup: Dollar’s customer service called me back only after I filed a complaint with the BBB and the State Attorney General’s office and refunded me almost $60. In the future, my advice is to get a ‘bottom line’ estimate in writing before taking the keys.

3. Thai Thai Restaurant, Volcano Village, HI: Martina and I decide it’s time for Thai food and are told the food is worth the one hour wait. Again, understaffed we cannot get even a beer during that time. Finally we order dinner and when we ask for the medium hotness–the waiter, David, a self described ‘bad boy of Honolulu’ asks us if we’re sure–no we’re not so we lower it down a notch to Mild-Medium. After much semantic positioning, we finally get our point across we want to enjoy the meal and not raise blisters on our lips. Well, guess what. Blisters so bad I can’t even eat the rice and no water anywhere as the service is poor. Finally to ward off further injury to my mouth, I bring the bowl of soup to the front counter and ask for some water. David turns on me and starts yelling that I will have to pay for everything. I immediately decide dinner is over and offer to pay for the beers (even though we didn’t start on the second round) but they refuse. When Martina doesn’t follow me out, I go back in to find David pestering her and calling her a dumb-ass and that she didn’t listen–well, David, you didn’t listen. Naturally the restaurant by then was absolutely silent except for an occasional fart. We drop $20 off at the Chamber of Commerce the next morning and register our story with the local gendarmes. We highly recommend the Kiawa Kitchen there. We loved the pizza and had live Hawaiian music all night and the friendliest staff. Boycott Thai Thai, Dollar and United….enough of this rant.

On the road again, we drive down to where lava has obliterated the road and discover just how rapid the advance of lava is.

The entire south side of Hawaii is getting daily additions of lava with a new island building to the south. As the continental plate is dragged to the NW, new islands are punched upward and the older line of islands slowly sinks creating multiple island summits (Maui, Molokai, Oahu, and Kauai). Two places to visit in Hilo are the Pacific Tsunami Museum and the Lyman Museum. We learned a lot!

This is the south shore of Hawaii–the southernmost point in the US lies 40 miles distant. A good jeopardy question.

One more rant: Don’t you just hate these needless Handicapped parking spaces?…which are used by tubbies who can’t or won’t walk. OK, I’m a bigot but first you fly, then drive to this remote place and you’ve got to park near what?? There is no advantage to getting out of your car at one end of this parking lot over the other. A waste of taxpayer’s money in my opinion. Even REI has preferred parking–so tubbies can buy their climbing equipment with less effort?! I try to take up two, even three of these when I find them.

This is Akaka Falls–a state park and very beautiful–located just north of Hilo.

OK–vacation is over. Time to turn in the rental car, paying double, and board a United jet and be starved and insulted in the process….. We need more natural selection on this planet, handicapped parking should be relocated the farthest from the store and fliers should pay by the pound (we had to chip in another $14 for our single bag). Next time we’re taking a Tramp Steamer. Check out Martina’s version here.

We start with a drive across the North Cascades. I cut my teeth climbing these towers in the 1960s with Fred Beckey. We pushed a very nice route up the center of the South Early Winter Spire (left tower) over the summer of 1968.

The North Cascades highway was under construction that summer and Fred and I decided to climb a few of these classic faces before the hordes descended. Just before the road opened to the public in 1973, I skied this route from Western to Eastern Washington in a three day push across the last of this virgin wilderness. I forgot to pack my foodbag and subsisted the entire trip on about a dozen frozen hamburgers that I picked up at the last burger stand in Marblemount….but I digress….

Speaking of cold hamburgers, next stop is Chico Hotsprings enroute to the Yellowstone Plateau and Jackson Hole Wyoming.

In addition to it’s Olympic-sized naturally heated hot pool, this place has a Hamburg Steinway in the front lobby. After about twenty years of staying here, when I ask for the key, they hand me the one for the piano, not the room key. Boasting a 5 star wild game restaurant (try the Hutterite Duck or Elk Medallions) and a wine cellar that would make most Frenchmen weep, it’s a must-stay if you happen to drive between Livingston and Gardiner Montana.

On to Jackson Hole where we find a moose with her twin calves in our front yard. We’re there only three days hosting a Jenny Lake Ranger reunion commemorating one of the finest people I’ve known and worked with, Pete Hart who died of cancer last Christmas.

In the early 70′s only 7 of us worked on the mountain rescue team at the Jenny Lake Ranger Station; today the team numbers 25 with jet powered helicopters. We flew a Bell Turbocharged 280 (the glass bubble with an erector set tailpiece) with a ceiling of 11,000 feet on a good day; still 3000′ short of the tallest Teton summits. Here’s the team:

On to Southern Utah….the best kept secret when it comes to red rock. We are now hauling our Bambi behind our Toyota as we near Capitol Reef National Park in Torrey Utah. Decked out with Navaho Sandstone overlaying Kayenta Sandstone, white domes greet us with every turn of the road.

Downtown Torrey Utah….

A flute shop stop…. (say this three times fast)

In the center of Capitol Reef National Park winds the Fremont River which attracted ten Mormon families in the late 1800s and who occupied the town of Fruita until about 1960. You can still buy fresh baked pies (perfect for a campers breakfast!) just a short walk from the campground in the old cottonwood groves.

On to Bryce Canyon–we’re working our way south and ‘digging’ our way down through geology to the Grand Canyon below.

Bryce Canyon is the typical eroded uplift that practically dissolves in front of your eyes but it was 20F degrees with 40 mph winds so we move south to Zion in search of warmer hikes.

Zion is equally beautiful, especially to the geologist and rock climber. Great chasms of red rock and green slot canyons lure visitors. Here I’m walking out on a chained trail to Hidden Canyon–one of the park’s best hikes (time 2 hours)

We finally drive south past Lake Mead (dry, dusty and desolate) onto the salt flats of the Mojave Desert to Palm Springs. Enroute we encounter Amboy, now nearly abandoned on the old Route 66.

I wonder if our Bambi Airstream has ever been here before…. Even Palm Springs has some good hikes although after hearing of 120F temperatures, I began to doubt it. East about one hour’s drive through wonderfully kept irrigation farming, we wind our way up into the Mecca Hills to Ladder Canyon.

After a week in Palm Springs (where I attended a three day conference of the American Institute of Oral Biology), we fly north to Seattle, then Bellingham where we catch the Malaspina Ferry to Alaska.

It’s a stormy passage north as the November storms sweep into Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon Entrance. Here an AML barge/Western Towboat combination works it’s way south with half of the containers obscured by a wave trough–note the 50′+ waves ahead of the barge–about 5 miles distant…. It’s a heck of a ride–all our household items were shipped on AML when we moved north, including the grand piano.

We’re back in Kupreanof now and have already shoveled a foot of snow. We will remember our last campground in Zion:

We’ve a diesel 6kw Northern Lights generator in our well house. These are great machines–I’ve got four of them–two on our tug Katahdin and two here on land. Besides producing 110 VAC, it heats the three story insulated structure above preventing freezing of the 1000 gallon tank in winter. The 110VAC electricity is stored in 16 huge storage batteries set up in series/parallel to 48 volts and then inverted back to 110VAC. That’s so the generator runs minimally–usually 3 hours a day which eats up about 1 gallon ($3.90) of diesel. The inverter is real smart–we have a dashboard 100 feet away in the house and can monitor everything from there. Here’s the battery bank:

I’m building a box around them to vent off the hydrogen gas which is a byproduct of lead/acid battery charging–it’s also very explosive so out it goes. I’ve spent all fall rewiring the well house, installing insulation around all pipes with heat tape, etc. And I built stairs up to the top–the old vertical ladders would have challenged the Ringling Brothers aerialists.

Speaking of aerialists, below is an aerial photo of Petersburg showing our property and muskeg on the left, Petersburg Creek at 11 o’clock (Coho Creek between us and P’burg Creek) and the north entrance to the Wrangell Narrows about 2 o’clock–north is up. To add another energy dimension, we’re thinking micro or pico-hydro electrical generation now:

Here’s a zoom in:

Our goal is to capture water from the two horizontal ‘arms’ of forested creeks that merge together 23 vertical feet above our proposed hydro system. Twenty three feet of head pressure is considered low but with high volume flow we can generate power with one of these Kaplan turbines:

But it’s still 300 feet to transport water through a 6′ pipe which equals 463 gallons per minute to this puppy. To measure the potential flow, I’ve built a weir which is 48″ across and 8″ deep which measures out to 3250 gallons per minute when full–lots of water. Here’s the weir running at nearly capacity of 3200 gallons per minute:

I’ve put a gauge 4 feet behind the aperature which can be read from my dining chair–300 feet away–pretty slick! I only need this to fill to about 2″ X 48″ to get the flow to run this Kaplan turbine. There are other systems available if the water runs lower–which it undoubtedly will in winter. Here is a great website with several types of micro-hydro turbines. The stream engine is at the bottom of the page.

To learn about Mercury outboard engines and lemons (that’s Lemons and Mercury Marine, lemon, lemon, mercury…scroll down)

Dear Terry:

I just got a nice email from your former partner, Sam Ware, who wants to buy me a beer in Dallas.  I thought I would offer to buy you a beer in Jackson and we can settle this road thing in about an hour.

In spite of what you have heard about me, I am a reasonable person.  In fact, I’m the only reasonable person on Saddle Butte at this time.  As you know, I was the only one of 20 landowners to give you a piece of my property, absolutely free.  I did this because Matt Ostdiek told me I would get a better road.  Well, the road is a disaster and Matt Ostdiek is a goddam liar. 

In fact, you and I are on the same side of this issue.  We both got a bad road.  This is because Seaton Construction couldn’t follow plans, and Matt Ostdiek of Rendezvous Engineering designed a one lane road past my house to appease my pit-bull neighbors, the Fergusons, who have sued you for the past two years, and whose utility service boxes still sit 5 feet into your road easement.  Finally, your attorneys forgot to record my easement to you, which has now expired, limiting you to a one lane road to a multi-million dollar development.   If any of these people worked for me, I would fire them instantly. 

In short, you have to deal with me and you are lucky because I’m going to give you that easement back if we can agree on a few simple points: returning the road back into it’s original easement.  As I told Sam Ware, I have no problem with development, per se.,  only bad neighbors.   Looking forward to hearing from you. 

Doug Leen, 907.209.1691 or mail@dougleen.com

How would you like this right in front of your view?  Phase III kicked in today, Monday, with more signs, a visit to the local sheriff, newspapers, a land-use attorney and best of all–an 11 foot helium blimp.  It’s tethered on the top of my house and I’ve set it so it’s right in front of the Ferguson’s view.  The development in the distance is another example of ridgelining done by the Amangani corporation of Singapore.  Jackson Hole is being raped by developers–this view used to be Senator Hansen’s land; he gave it to his son who immediately sold it to the highest bidder–what do you expect?  I look at this every day–but then again, they look at us and my red blimp!!! 

The Fergusons spent two years and about $25,000 of our Association money sueing Amangani to limit the size of their outdoor lightbulbs; yes, lightbulbs!  Amangani’s attorney, Mike Hammer is no fan of my next door neighbor, and neither am I.  After all of Jean’s lawsuits, I managed to get these developers and several other owners of large properties (Mike Halpern, Mike Hammer to name a few) on the butte together to open their road to us so we could take our ugly road out. (the ugly road NW of the town of Jackson); only to have the Fergusons kill it.  You can google Saddle Butte or my name and find the public hearings.  On top of this, Jean Ferguson wanted to know what color of roof I was going to put on my house–well, now she’s got a red blimp! 

Here’s a close-up of it with the banner still attached.  It was too heavy making my precious blimp flounder, so I’ve pasted it up between two trees in front of their driveway.  I’m making lighter weight banners–perhaps a Ronald McDonald face and a couple of golden arches??  Any ideas, send me a suggestion below.  Here’s the banner:

“BAD FENCES MAKE BAD NEIGHBORS”  Kind of has a nice ring to it, huh?  See those boulders to the left?  Guess where they came from? 

From here.  These idiots from Seaton Construction dumped these four huge 3 foot diameter boulders right against my trees–and this was after I confronted them last season in the presence of the county sheriff.  I again called the sheriff and he’s going to try to get criminal charges filed.  So far we’ve lost about 39 trees although I’m losing count.  We found three more complete buried on Saturday.  Be sure to read the press release and initial excavation report below.;   Stay tuned….

Take a look here–the left arm of the yellow symbol is our property corner and the right one is where the road footing starts–a full 10 feet!  Plus the road was built 3 feet higher which necessitated a 60′ fill into my drive and the steepness increased from 10% grade to 20%.   We were denied access all winter which is bull***t!  And it gets better–my uphill neighbor with the steep poorly designed driveway (a park ranger buddy whom I introduced to Saddle Butte) engineered this by putting their electrical service box 7 feet into the easement forcing the road into my property.  The road engineer bought this tripe and built the road over my property instead.    And my neighbors being on the uphill side got the better deal and driveway–they signed no easement–why should they?  It’s easier to steal!  Who paid for this?  I did through my landowners dues of which THEY ARE THE PRESIDENT!!!  Well, here’s how Doug handles these situations:

I hire a couple of good old local boys who instantly understand the problem (there was no shortage of backhoe drivers willing to do this chore).  At 3am I had these two expert excavators ripping this road up so I could gain access to my property.  This was after seven months of letters and stonewalling from their lawyers.  Who are these people?  Big Texas Oil money?  No, it’s Ware and Worrell developers who are ridge-lining the summit of Saddle Butte in the south-center of Jackson Hole.  This is like fighting Haliburton (maybe it is??).  The county attorney, who visited the site last year just shook his head and repeated “unbelievable” over and over when his road specialist informed us that it is easier and therefore cheaper to dump the spoils downhill on road construction–that is…..my property. 

Well, I look at this as an opportunity.  This has been more fun than when my brothers and I blew the pitchers mound off the little league field with some purloined dynamite in the early 1960s.  (It was attributed in the newspapers to flying saucers).  Take a look at what two backhoes can do in just three hours–here it is 6am:

This is beautiful!  And since there is all this easement space on the other side of the road, well it’s a natural place to stuff all this dirt.  Can you imagine what idiots would design and dare to build a road like this? Answer:  Rendezvous Engineering and Seaton Construction of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  A one lane road to a multi million dollar development—truely unbelievable!  

We removed approximately 200 cubic yards of earth that was illegially dumped on our property.  And after asking them to remove it last October, they dumped four additional large boulders up against some aspen trees as a retaining wall.  All in all, they killed or buried 39 trees–we discovered today three more buried stumps!  This is a treble damage state, I believe and at $2000 per tree X 3 X 39, this is amounting into a battleground for us.  But this is Jackson Hole, which has the highest per capita income in the United States, where billionaires are running out the millionaires and you can find a house with 27 fireplaces or a $10M spec house above my house.  Opps, without a road, it won’t be worth $10 million.  Now would you piss off the person who lived in front of your view?? 

I launch the helium blimp on Monday….stay tuned….. 

Our mission is to proceed to Mesa Verde National Park, whose Centennial is next year, to design a poster for the event. We are granted permission to visit Square Tower, shown above from the road, which has been closed to the public since 1940. Our descent from the plateau rim begins down an aluminum ladder where we can see steps that the Ancestral Puebloans carved into the rock–no sissy ladders for them! They would farm beans, corn and squash above and live below in these alcoves. These “cliff dwellings” were built and occupied only for about 150 years from 1150 to about 1300 AD and marked the culmination of this society here in the high plateaus of Colorado. Today they live on as Zunis, Hopis and many other Indian tribes further south.

After the treacherous ladder business, we then had to squeeze through a very narrow slot which reminded me how long it has been since I was a svelt and trim ranger.

Here we are at the ruins, opps, not supposed to use that word–it might upset the Anasazis, er, I mean Ancestral Puebloans…..cliff dwellings would be more descriptive. In just 20 years since I visited this Park, many of the terms and theories have changed radically to describe these peoples and their lives. It’s hard to keep up with the new PC terms. Here the square tower is obvious but look at the tiny “crows nest” at the upper right above Martina’s head–this is a full 50 feet above the floor below–what craftsmen and what a view!

Here’s a look up inside the Square Tower at the many levels. In the lower left corner (inset) is a cob of corn left over 700 years ago!

Here is a Kiva, a ceremonial place where they built fires. They are very cleverly built with draft flues to feed the fires, baffles to direct the flow and very clever roof designs. This is the only complete Kiva in the Park and was used to reconstruct many others. We can only peer inside as they are very fragile structures today.

Well, it’s been an exhausting day and we’ve taken many photos that we will use for the project. We squeeze back through the rocks and reclimb the ladders to our car. It isn’t easy being a Ranger of the Lost Art! Stay tuned….