And another thing…

I recently attended two professional events, the Final Cut Pro Supermeet and User Research Friday (URF), a mini-conference for UX practitioners. Both of these events had programmed activities (trade show, talks, etc.) and free food, which is always nice.

And, importantly, both events touted the “networking opportunities” that would be available, and in fact speakers at the events talked about the importance of networking and how that was part of the intent of having the events. It’s also one of the reasons I attended the events - because I wanted to meet more people in both the SF filmmaking and UX communities.

However, I was struck by how few real networking opportunities were made available at either of these events. The only reason I met any new people was because on the Supermeet I volunteered to sit behind the ticket desk for awhile, and at URF I had to wait in a long line for the bathroom and struck up a conversation with someone else waiting in line.

What made these events such poor networking opportunities?

Crowds. Both events were filled to capacity - good for the event, but the result was that conference halls were packed and in all the bustle it was just not conducive to be able to connect with people, join conversations, etc. Also, during breaks the noise level was so high it was difficult to hear yourself talk, let alone anyone else.

Choice of Activities. Supermeet was basically a trade show followed by a series of product demos in a darkened auditorium. While the venue had some areas where people could gather in smaller groups, there were no structured activities to encourage people to actually meet new people. It could have been so easy, such as tables or posters set up for current works-in-progress or upcoming productions.

URF was even worse - the activities were a series of presentations in an auditorium with brief breaks in between each talk. However, during the breaks it was so crowded that you really needed to just get to where you were going (food, bathroom, bar) and get back to your seat. There were no places to have those “water cooler” conversations. After the main event there was a mixer at a nearby bar, but this too was too crowded and noisy.

Again it could have been easy to have networking opportunities clustered around topic tables, sharing of research methodologies, posters, etc.

Clearly everyone appreciates the value of networking. In planning events, the organizers need to actually create time and real opportunities for networking to occur besides free time and opportunities to drink.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here, but I just had such a delightful user experience on epicurious.com that I felt compelled to document it.

Creating an account for a website that has a sign in (also login, although these days “Sign In” is the preferred nomenclature) is such a common process that you’d think there would be good, consistent design patterns out there for it. Yet, frequently when creating an account one is faced with awkward, ugly forms, or flummoxed by arcane and inexplicable password requirements, not to mention having to enter one of those annoying distorted images that are supposed to prevent web-bots from registering but also end up blocking legitimate users.

Anyway, a co-worker had sent me a recipe she used from the site, and I wanted to save it using their “recipe box” so I created an account. The sign up form is very clean and straightforward, but what I particularly liked was the way it provided constant instruction and feedback to the form field you were on or had just completed.

The layout is simple: the field labels and entry areas are on the left, and take up about half the width of the page. On the right side of the page is an empty gutter in which little pop-ups appear cueing you which field you’re on, and what requirements (if any) there are for the field - (Click on the image to see it full size)

The contrast between the form on the left and the empty space with a colored flag on the right, makes it easy to follow the form, and it helps guide you through it in a non-obtrusive way.

The other thing that’s nice about this form is that it alerts you immediately to errors (inline form validation), and the flag changes color to red, and also remains visible, even if you move on to fill in other fields.

The interesting thing about this is that it’s not really rocket science; it’s just good form design. But as common as forms are on the web, it’s amazing how frequently we encounter clunky ugly ones that don’t help us through the process.

So I just wanted to recognize a really nice design and a good experience. Clearly the folks over at epicurious have some good UX people working on the site.

Last weekend I attended InfoCamp in Seattle, an unconference for people in the field of information architecture, usability, library science, and information management in general. I was interested in going because first, it’s nice to go to conferences in your field and our conference budget has been nil for the past two years due to the crappy economy; and second, I wanted to see what an “unconference” would be like in practice. Having studied Open Space Technology a bit, which I facilitated for a CMG gathering a few years back, I wanted to see how others applied this methodology.

The conference itself was pretty good. Considering it only cost $50, I found the general quality of the presentations to be comparable to what I’ve seen at other, much more expensive, conferences. The opening keynote by Axel Roseler traced the history of design back to the Bauhaus, and tried to approach the question - what is design, and what are the challenges people who call ourselves designers face? One interesting perspective from that talk was that “design is not neutral” - meaning that a designer is always creating a better or worse experience. I appreciated the intellectual bent of the talk.

There were a few dud sessions, and a few that were engaging. Probably the one that resonated the most for me was a panel discussion titled “Are Static Wireframes Dead?” As wireframes are artifacts I produce all the time in my work, and we’re now exploring using more dynamic methods of creating prototypes, I could relate well to the discussion. It was good to hear that many IAs are using Axure, the prototyping software we have but don’t use very much.

On the “unconference” front, it worked pretty much as I expected. The basic setup is that there’s an open grid of rooms and times, and participants can spontaneously create topics for discussion or presentation. The availability of wireless access and a wiki to update the schedule helped make the scheduling work better than when I had done it before with just a wall with post-it notes. But some of the same problems occurred here that I encountered at the CMG - you often didn’t really have enough information about the sessions to be able to make an informed decision about what you wanted to go to, and many of the presenters had planned out a presentation with slides, etc. My understanding of “open space” or “unconference” is that it is supposed to be a bit more organic and spontaneous, and not with so many prepared powerpoints. But there were definitely some sessions that appeared that way.

I didn’t really get a chance to meet too many people or do much networking, unfortunately. It was a mostly local crowd, and there were a lot of students. So it was a bit clique-ish. I also realized that I actually know a lot already! There were not any mind-blowing topics that I had never heard of or didn’t really have a lot of experience in. In one session - on Six Thinking Hats - I think I actually knew more than the presenter, having studied it a bit at work and practiced it a few times in our team. I suppose I should think about presenting more when I get to attend these conferences in the future.

Tuesday, September 29

After yesterday’s exertions we had a lazy morning, sleeping in late, and going out for breakfast at Nora’s Fish Creek Inn in Wilson. This was the first day we had a chance to actually go into the town of Jackson and explore it a bit. Dad and Dave weren’t interested in the shops, so Mom, Majie, and I went shopping. Mom was in search of artwork, and I was interested in possibly finding some gifts, or jewelry (though I already bought a fantastic ring in Moose).

Mom managed to find several paintings that captured some of our experience here, as well as being great pieces in their own right. Majie bought a painting a well, and I was also tempted, but I didn’t end up buying any art. I also looked at the cute Zuni fetishes you see everywhere - little animals carved out of stone - but I couldn’t find one that I thought would be appropriate and also reasonably priced. I ended up hanging out in the town square for a bit while Mom and Majie finished up some shopping and struck up a conversation with a guy who was another one of these ski-bunnies, hopping from one town to another as the season changes. He had just gotten a job in Teton Village in preparation for the winter and was planning to work and ski the winter away.

The one purchase I did end up making was a pair of - wait for it… snakeskin boots! Kind of silly I know, but I’ve thought about going to Sundance Saloon on numerous occasions (it’s a very popular gay country/western dance group in San Francisco) but I don’t have any boots, which help with the dancing because your feet have some “slip”. Anyway, now I’ve got the boots. There was a great going out of business sales so they were marked down quite a lot and were only a third of the original price.

We lunched in town at a pleasant cafe, but the wind picked up and we were whacked by flying umbrellas - twice! First, the table umbrella at our table was blown out of its base and thwacked me on the head, not too badly fortunately. This made us somewhat nervous, especially as the wind kept picking up. About 10 minutes later another umbrella from a different table also became dislodged and blew across the patio and this time hit mom on the head. Fortunately it was just the canvas part that hit, but we took it as a sign to move on from the restaurant!

By the time we got home it was after 3pm, and we spent some time figuring out what to do for our final evening, as we wanted to go outside again and do one more little hike. Dad opted to stay home, as he was tired, so we planned to drive out while it was still light then come back for dinner.

We drove to Lupine meadow, which is just south of Jenny Lake. Along the way there were several great photo-op stopping points to catch the late afternoon light illuminating the Teton range. It was almost dusk when we got to the trailhead, so we didn’t really plan to hike too far in, but one objective we had was to see if we could hear any Elks trumpeting. And before we were 5 minutes down the trail - we heard it! It’s the strangest sound, very high pitched and melodic, like a chord. It sounds other-worldly. We heard it three times, so there must have been an Elk relatively nearby.

Driving back, we saw a bunch of cars stopped by the side of the road, so we too pulled over to see what the fuss was about. Turns out there was a momma moose and her calf down in a ravine, with a huge crowd of eager tourists with high-power cameras clicking away. We stopped to get some pictures, but honestly we saw basically the same thing not 20 feet from our car on our first night here!

We decided to take the scenic and winding Moose-Wilson road back, basically because we thought it might be a bit faster, or about the same and more scenic. It was a pretty drive in the evening, but to add to the pleasure we also saw an elk near the side of the road. There was also another big group of people at a turnout, and apparently there was a mother bear with her cub somewhere down the path. For that one, we figured it might be better to skip it. Don’t want to get between a bear and her baby!

Back home for our final dinner, we improvised with the miscellanous foodstuffs we had left and it was actually pretty good. Went to bed early as we all had to get up pretty early for flights out in the morning.

So, off to bed, and another successful family trip. I think the Grand Teton part with the fancy condo was nicer than the nights in Yellowstone, but I’m glad I got to see the geysers and colorful pools there too.

Monday, September 28

Today was our day on our own to explore Grand Teton National Park. We headed to Jenny Lake, which every book says is the favorite recreation area. There are a number of trails there, so it looked like Davy, Majie, and I would be able to do a slightly more strenuous trail while Mom and Dad could do a more gentle one. There was a boat that took us across the lake (Majie decided that was the job she’d like if she ever decides to chuck the hi-tech career), then the two trails went off from the far shore.

We hiked up to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point, about a mile up total, so it didn’t take too long. The falls were pretty impressive, though difficult to capture well in a picture (you couldn’t get very close either). Inspiration point is a great vista, at about 7000 foot elevation, though the trail up to it goes along a somewhat narrow cliff face which was a little scary at points. As long as I kept my hand against the solid wall and didn’t look down I didn’t have any problem.

When we were done we took the boat back across, but Mom and Dad had not arrived yet… we were a little concerned as it took us about an hour and they should have made the two mile walk within that time. Fortunately we had given Dad a cell phone so we called and it turns out the “easy” trail we put them on had more twists and turns than expected. So it took them longer, and they were tired… but they saw a moose!

We lunched at Dornan’s again (since it’s really the only place in the town of Moose to eat) and then embarked on a float trip down the Snake River. The river is very gentle for this 10 mile or so stretch so they drive us north to an access point and then we went out in a rubber raft with another group (there were 12 of us in all). The other group was kind of strange - they apparently all met in “Palestine” (that’s how they referred to it, instead of Israel) - and were reunited for a vacation in Jackson Hole. We couldn’t tell if they were religious zealots or Palestinian nationals or what. Didn’t ask. As long as they didn’t tip the boat it didn’t matter.

Our guide, Sean, was one of those dude-bunnies who hops from ranch job to ski job to gardening job, but he deftly guided the raft down the river, and made pleasant conversation while pointing out various things about the sites and wildlife on the river.

We had hoped to see more wildlife I think than we did on the river itself. There was no sign of moose or bear or elk, but we did see some good birds - Merganser ducks, and an Osprey, perched high on a tree. There was also a lot of evidence of beavers (trees that had been chewed down and beaver dams) but none of the critters themselves made any appearances.

Overall the boat float was very pleasant though I think we all agreed the more fun parts were when the river was a teeny bit faster and the raft moved a bit more. Perhaps we can convince Mom and Dad to try a whitewater rafting trip next year???

In the evening we went into the town of Jackson for the first time really, and walked around a bit, then ate at one of the “hot new places” in town - called Trio. It was a nice meal, though at one point some idiot in a Winnebago parked out front and blocked the light and view. Fortunately the pulled out soon after. Back home at the end of the evening we were all pretty wiped out, but managed to muster enough energy to play Liverpool. It wouldn’t be a Kravitz family vacation without a game of Liverpool. Davy ended up winning, while Majie set a new record for highest score!

Sunday, September 27

This morning the Klars (my cousin Sharon, her husband Matt, and their three very cute kids Hallie, Kathryn, and Logan) came to visit us - they live in Utah and are outdoorsy folks so I guess a four hour (?) drive to Jackson is not a big thing for them! Anyway it was really nice to see them. I think the last time I saw my cousin Sharon was when I went away to college in Michigan (my Aunt and Uncle live there) so she was like 16 or so and I was 18 or 19. Originally we were just going to have brunch together, but last night Zach suggested we go to the Laurance Rockefeller Preserve, a part of the Grand Teton park that has only recently been opened to the public, and where Zach volunteers once a week, and would be able to give us a custom tour.

So that’s what we did - we drove north from our condo up the Moose-Wilson road, a winding, half-paved road through the foothills of the Grand Tetons (gorgeous!!) til we got to the preserve. Actually at first we thought we’d missed it but we just hadn’t gone far enough. It’s an interesting place because Rockefeller was a bit of a mystic toward the end of his life and it’s not your typical visitor center (the more typical visitor center in Moose is brand new and spectacular, too). He was more interested in people experiencing nature, than in learning about it. So in the visitor center there’s a room where you can see and hear a video wall of cool stuff from the park, and then there’s a quiet little “meditation” room that fills with sounds when you sit there for awhile. We were a bit anxious to actually get outside and hike, though, so we shortly moved on.

Zach gave us the “geology” tour he had worked on which was very interesting, talking about how the Tetons and the valley called Jackson Hole were formed. In the process we did a mile and a half hike up to Lake Phelps, a gorgeous lake at the base of one of the mountains. The kids were very cute along the way, though Kathryn was disappointed she couldn’t take her stick instrument with her out of the park (she had picked up some sticks and was clicking them together, and it being a park, you can’t take anything out).

Afterwards, we continued on the road into the “town” of Moose, and had lunch at Dornan’s, which is pretty much the only store in town. It’s just pizza and sandwiches, but boy what a view! The back porch looks right out at the Teton Mountain range. With the exception of occasional annoying yellowjackets (and slow service) it was a lovely stop. Logan had ordered a root beer and the yellowjackets seemed to like that in particular, and kept falling into his drink and drowning.

By the time we got home it was late afternoon, and time for naps! I think the hike was a bit of an exertion for mom and dad, who are not used to doing hikes with some elevation (it wasn’t too difficult, but there was some elevation gain, and the train was rocky in places).

We made a meatloaf for dinner and played Clue. The condo we’re staying at has some board games although I was most vexed that Miss Peacock (the player I *always* use in Clue) was missing. The card was still in the deck, but the blue token was missing. So I ended up playing Mr. Green. I still won!

Saturday, September 26

3am. I wake up to the smell of smoke. Peering out the window I can see the streetlights casting beams of light through the smokey air. I assume if there were fire danger, the staff would have roused us, but I’m concerned about the smoke factor, having driven through the dense clouds twice yesterday. If that kind of smoke is heading this way, we do not want to be in these hotel rooms with its leaky windows. I close my windows. I dress and go downstairs asking the sole worker at the front desk what’s going on with the fire. She assures me that the fire is way off, but the wind has blown the smoke this way. The road south is still open. I go back to bed. Pondering if I should wake Mom and Dad? Have they closed their windows? Should we get the hell out of here? I decide to trust in the Rangers and staff (even though most of the staff are teenagers from Eastern Europe it seems) and try to get some sleep so we can do our drive early tomorrow morning.

We are all up at 6am, so we can eat breakfast in the hotel (they open at 6:30) and head south. Of course the service is slow and since we’re all a little anxious to get out it’s a little nerve wracking. Eventually we are done and hit the road. Deciding to fill the tank first so we don’t run out of gas in the middle of the highway near a forest fire, we drive north 1 mile to the Fishing Bridge area where there’s a gas station. We spot a group of elks by the road!

The road south is still smokey, and there’s not a lot of light yet. At some points along the way it’s like driving through a thick fog with very low visibility, so it’s stressful driving. As we come out near the West Thumb junction we spot a ranger and police officer with “Road Closed” signs and gates - yikes! We squeak past. The rest of the drive out of Yellowstone is pretty smooth. Some areas of smoke still but we are now south of the fire. There is still construction on the road which makes it very slow. After we clear construction, Dad agrees to take over driving (thank you!!).

Even though we’ve only been in Yellowstone a few days, we notice as we drive south into Grand Teton National Park, that the Aspen trees have been turning brilliant yellow. There are some magnificant stands of trees with Mt Owen in the background. Further south we stop at a historic site where there’s an original settler’s cabin. Pretty rustic! And the guy must have been really short. Jackson Hole was not a hospitable place to settle, even with its magnificent mountain backdrop.

We pick up Davy and Majie at the airport with no problems, and head into town to pick up the keys to our rented condo. For the remainder of the trip (through next Wednesday) we will be staying near Jackson in a townhouse. When we arrive we realize we made a good decision - the place is beautiful! Three bedrooms, three and a half baths, mountain view, very swanky and comfortable. Dad is much happier already (the Yellowstone hotel was disappointingly mundane).

There is a nice grocery store at the bottom of the hill so we drive down to stock up. On the way back to our condo, Majie spotted a moose in the stream! There’s a bridge over the stream that we drive over to get to the house, and sure enough there was a baby moose hanging out in the stream. So we stopped and ogled, then something made the moose run out of the water and into the road - right in front of us - it was the momma moose! She is BIG. They don’t appear to notice us (or care). But the momma moose is very deftly stripping the shrubbery in front of our neighbor’s house of all its foliage. It’s pretty amusing. The moose bites over a branch at the base and slides up to the tip, cleaning off all the leaves while leaving the bare branch behind. Eventually we slowly drive by and go inside, elated by our close call with wildlife.

Dad’s colleague Zach has retired to Jackson Hole with his wife Julie and they invited us to dinner tonight, so we drove up to their house - a custom built dream home on a butte in the tiny town of Wilson… about 10 minutes from where we are staying. The house has been built in a staggered fashion so from each third of the home there are strategic viewing windows to the Grand Teton mountain, including in Zach’s office and in the jacuzzi tub! Pretty awesome. We have a great meal and good company, and Julie has a telescope trained on Jupiter so we even get to see three of the moons of Jupiter. Dinner conversation gives me an idea for a new documentary project… which I won’t go into here, but am excited about nonetheless.

We hear that they have closed the road in Yellowstone park, so it’s a good thing we got out when we did! Otherwise we’d have been stuck there, or had to take a several-hundred-mile detour to get to Jackson.

Friday, 9/25

Our plan today was to drive over to Old Faithful and the Upper Geyser Basin in the morning, then maybe take a nap in the heat of the day so we could possibly get out again in the evening when the light is pretty.

First thing was that the fire that we saw way off in the distance yesterday had moved closer, gotten larger, and produced a lot of smoke. The road from our hotel to West Thumb Junction - which then leads on to the geyser area - was carpeted in smoke that was so thick in some areas it was like driving though a dense fog. So this was a little disturbing.

We went onward to the Old Faithful area, and arrived about 15 minutes before it was due to go off. The Upper Geyser basin is a bizarre landscape, parts of it almost like a moonscape, parts like clearings in the woods, with steaming craters and bubbling pools dotting the hillside. Old Faithful is the big centerpiece at the top because it goes off so regularly, and we got a show right away. Unfortunately we were sitting downwind of it so we saw a lot of steam but it was harder to see the water. Fun stuff, anyway.

We wandered into the Old Faithful Inn, which every guidebook says is the most amazing lodge in the entire National Park System, and I must say, the lobby is impressive. It is a huge cavernous hall made of lodgepole pines, that goes three levels up with open walkaround balconies all the way up. There’s also a huge stone fireplace, and it’s quite dim. In some ways it felt reminiscent of Lothlorien, the elven forest city from Lord of the Rings. I have no idea what the rooms are like, but it certainly is pretty special compared to the relatively uninteresting Lake Hotel where we’re staying.

We went out and walked around the geyser basin, taking the hillside loop, and saw the Anemone Geyser go off - it’s not a big one, but it does its thing every 10 minutes or so, and it was fun to see it fill up, spew out water, then see all the water suck back down into the basin, kind of like when a tub drains. Mom and Dad looped back to the hotel, and I wandered on further down the hill to see if I could catch the Grand Geyser or other ones going off.

I got a good display of the Sawmill Geyser, which went for quite awhile - in fact it seemed to me like this was how it normally behaved until later, when I walked back and it was completely quiet and drained out. Went and sat at Grand Geyser for awhile with a bunch of other “geyser gazers” hoping to see it do its thing, but it seemed like it was going to be a while so I continued on.

Aside from the spouting and bubbling geysers, the other amazing feature is the colors in the pools. They make for great abstract pictures and I took a bunch. We’ll see if any of them merit reproduction. I also picked up some shots of the impressive Castle Geyser, which has a huge cone buildup around it (it’s really old).

By the time I’d finished my hike and we had lunch it was that hot time in the early afternoon already, so back to the hotel for nap time. By now the road back was still very smoky, and the fire in the distance was still making a huge plume on the horizon.

Naps. In the late afternoon Mom and I took a stroll along the lakeside path, and there was a herd of bison right in front of the Lake Lodge (the neighboring hotel to ours)! They were right up on the road, blocking cars. It was pretty funny. When we got back to the hotel and found Dad in the sun room reading, we had heard that the road had been closed due to the fire, and people were getting stranded at the hotel. This is the road we need to take to get out of the park and into Jackson tomorrow, so we’re a little nervous now. We ask the hotel guy what options we have to get to Jackson if the road is still closed, and apparently the only real option would be to drive east to the town of Cody, then loop around - several hundred miles and about 6 hours drive!

We go over to the Lake Lodge to have dinner (another crummy meal but inexpensive and in decent environs), and this time the bison have moved down the road to OUR parking lot! They were gathering around the little cabins the hotel rents out (poky little shacks). I can just imagine opening your cabin door to one of these huge hulking beasts! They appear pretty docile though the rangers say they can be fast and dangerous, so we give them a wide berth. After dinner, they’re wandering around the parking lot, munching on the grass.

By now, we’ve heard that the road is open again, but will likely close tomorrow by 10am. So our plan at this point is to get up early, eat breakfast, and clear out by 7am on the morrow.

Thursday, 9/24

Our first full day in Yellowstone and we got to see a number of its spectacular sites. At first, I have to admit I was not all that impressed. Yes, there are lovely lodgepole pines everywhere (though many of the taller ones are standing dead, either killed by fire or blight)… but having hiked a lot in the Angeles National Forest and other parts of California, I’m used to this kind of landscape. So, from the road, at least the south entry road we came in on, it just looked like a foresty area.

We planned out a drive north today. As I am the sole driver (Mom and Dad don’t want to drive on the windy roads, and Davy and Majie don’t get here til Saturday) I didn’t want to drive back down the road we came up last night again quite so soon. We’ll do that when we go to see Old Faithful. But I wanted to see what lay ahead of us, rather than backtracking.

The first stop was the Mud Volcano area. You can tell you’re approaching it from the road from both the visible plums of steam but also from the punguent odor that permeates everything - sulphur! (that’s right, it smells like eggs). Initially we stopped by the roadside and walked down to the water, where there is a bubbling fumarole right there, then we went back up and drove over to the main lot.

The mud volcano area has a number of steaming, bubbling pits of mud right by the parking lot, and a boardwalk that snakes around them and up the hill to further sites. Probably the most striking one at the bottom of the hill is the “Dragon’s Nostril” - which puffs out steam ferociously and makes an eerie grumbling sound as well. The vent called “Mud Volcano” is also an actively bubbling mud mound, but it doesn’t erupt any more apparently. I continued up the hill, though Mom and Dad stayed at the bottom - it was a steep climb, and the altitude (around 8000 feet) does make me huff and puff a bit.

At the top it was much quieter, many fewer people, which I appreciated, especially as I was shooting video and trying to capture the sounds of the volcanic features. There were two more sites up top, an acidic lake and another bubbling pool of water.

Continuing on, we passed through Hayden Valley and spotted a herd of bison. They are very large, and a number of them had baby bison (or “bisonettes”) alongside them.

We stopped for lunch in Canyon Village, then continued on westward to the Norris Geyser Basin. I wanted to cut over this way because one of the connecting roads is closed and this would be our only chance to see this area. It’s home of the Steamboat Geyser, which is apparently the biggest geyser when it actually erupts, but it can be years between major eruptions. It does frequently spray and sputter though, so we got a good view of that. I continued on my own through the rest of the Basin, stopping for some pictures here and there, and peeking in the varous pools and geyster sites. None of the geysers were really erupting in an impressive way, though a few more were gurgling water.

Some of the hot springs pools are also very beautiful. They have a gentle shape and bold blue-green-yellow colors that vary depending on the mineral and microorganism make-up. Looping back up to the museum, I walked a bit down the hill to the Porcelain basin, known more for colors than for “water features”, but there were a few impressive steamers right near the entrance, including an odd little geyser I named “Sputtering Anus”. I would have liked to have taken some more time here, but it was getting hot, and we needed to move on.

On our way back we stopped at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone to see one of the most famous spots, named Artist Point, for a stunning view of the canyon and one of the waterfalls on the Yellowstone river. Wow! This site is startlingly majestic! Most of the park seems quite flat or rolling, but the canyon is a super deep gorge, the walls of which are colorful and full of ruts, erosion, and jagged features. From Artist Point there’s a postcard view of the falls and I got a number of really great pictures here.
 

By now we were all pretty tired. It’s hot out in the sun, and I’d been doing some walking in the middle of the day too. So back to the hotel we went for a nap before dinner. Tonight we ate at the Lake Lodge for a much more reasonable meal. The cafeteria dining hall was much more pleasant, less crowded, and there were good views to be had. The food stinks, but what do you expect from a park?

Off in the distance there is a fire burning. Apparently this time of year it’s common for there to be “proscribed fires” or controlled burns so that the forest can rejuvenate itself naturally. It is producing a large and somewhat scary plume that nevertheless makes for some pretty pictures.

End of our first full day and I’ve been looking at the photos I took and very pleased with how they came out. Sometime when my ankle is better it would be fun to come back and take some of the many trails I keep seeing leading off the road.

Wednesday, 9/23

Today begins another Kravitz family trip. The last couple of years we have been doing these and they’ve been pretty successful. First Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, then Hawaii, now Wyoming! Yellowstone and neighboring Jackson Hole to be precise.

There were some hitch-ups so far. We had trouble scheduling the dates because brother Dave has a lot of singing gigs, and after we had finally settled on the dates he got another one he couldn’t turn down, so we will be without brother and sis-in-law for the first few days (the days we’re in Yellowstone). But I knew that was coming. The other nuisance was my ankle has been acting up, so I went to the doctor before the trip to make sure I wasn’t going to make it worse by going on hikes and stuff. He prescribed a splint, which is uncomfortable and bulky. I can wear shoes over it, but it definitely doesn’t encourage any prolonged hikes or walks even. So the activities I’ll be able to engage in may be limited.

My flight left SFO at 7:30 in the morning and I was to connect to a flight in Denver, which my parents were also going to be on (having flown to Denver from Boston). When I looked at the connecting information, though, I got a bit nervous. There was barely half an hour alloted for the connection, and knowing that flights from SFO are frequently delayed, I was concerned I wouldn’t make the connection. Well, my flight was delayed. About 10 minutes, but when you’re talking about a 25 minute window for connecting every minute is precious. So I landed in Denver, called Dad, and got the gate number. Hooray! The flight is departing from a gate two down from the one I’m arriving at! I had also changed my seat prior to flying to get a crappy middle seat but right near the exit. I was in fact the first person off the plane, and limped across the hallway to the connecting gate with about 7 minutes to spare!

But to no avail. They had closed the gate to the airplane, and started pulling the plane out early. WTF!!??? Even when my parents were on board the flight and had told the ticket agent and stewards that I was trying to make the connection, and my plane was on the ground, they still pulled out. Apparently the policy at this airport is to close the gate 5 minutes before departure. Which, I suppose is okay in principle if they want to get the flights out on time, but if that’s the case then they should publish the departure time as when the doors close, not when the plane pulls out. From the customer perspective, the expectation is that you can get to the gate and through the door up to the departure time. It does no good for me to know some abstract time that has nothing to do with whether I can make the flight or not. I do care about when the flight lands, or is supposed to arrive… but this should be changed.

As a result, I was put on the next flight — three hours later. Which went fine, and I arrived there on time for that flight, but it also meant that we had to drive up to Yellowstone park much later in the day (and since my parents are not really driving much, it meant that *I* had to drive up much later in the day). There is construction on the road to Yellowstone which delays the drive. So it’s about a three hour drive from Jackson until we finally arrived at the Lake Hotel, after dark, with 15 minutes to spare before our dinner reservation.

If you read the guidebooks, you’d think the Lake Hotel is grand old dame of the park, with a “romantic” dining hall, and luxurious accommodations. Next time I will be sure to check the TripAdvisor reviews (and I’ll be adding my own as well). It’s basically a semi-interesting old building that was renovated in the 70s and has not been touched since. The carpets are all dirty and frayed, the rooms are basic and the beds pretty uncomfortable. The dining room, which is supposed to be the best food in the park (which may not be saying much) was so cacaphonous we had to shout to hear each other talk. And there were mice running around the hall.

I don’t mean to complain, but it was just disappointing, as we were expecting a grand old place and it just was not what we expected. In any event, I look forward to exploring the park tomorrow… in the daytime