Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"When you know you're the biggest dog on the block ..."}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Smile: Sunday, March 30, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When you know you're the biggest dog on the block ...

Daily Smile: Sunday, March 30, 2025

 When you know you're the biggest dog on the block ...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Outdoors

Public Lands

Waterfalls shoot straight out of volcanic cliffsides, flinging themselves into canyons almost no one ever visits. 

Far from the boardwalks and pullouts, meanwhile, something that looks very much like a starfish seems to nap where no starfish should even be, sunning itself in a crystal-clear thermal pool in Yellowstone National Park. 

It’s all part of a hidden Yellowstone that most people never get to see — the Yellowstone that Bozeman filmmaker Stephen Quayle has spent five decades chasing with a camera and has finally stitched into a new film, 

“Only 5% of Yellowstone is visible by the roads or by the boardwalks around the geysers,” Quayle told Cowboy State Daily. 

Another thin, 10% slice belongs to the hardy few willing to trek for miles into grizzly bear and wolf territory. 

But from a helicopter, “the most gorgeous” waterfalls and the most intriguing geothermal pools can be seen in stunning aerial views. 

Photographing from the air takes a million-dollar camera lens, Quayle said, one that can take high-resolution images from at least 2,000 feet away. 

That’s the minimum height recommended by the FAA for flying over places like national parks. Any lower could violate federal laws if an aircraft disturbs wildlife or park visitors.

“That way we can present to people the Yellowstone that really is,” he said. “And it’s breathtakingly wonderful. It is not just a wonder of the world, it is 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Fateful Party Weekend"}]

Quayle’s relationship with Yellowstone began when he was a college student with time on his hands and weekends to burn in glorious summer road trips. 

Yellowstone was perfect for that when you’re a young man from Bozeman, Quayle said. 

“I went there because that’s where everybody used to go and party,” he admitted. “And from Bozeman, they drive down to the inner West Yellowstone, but I would take a diversion. That doesn’t mean I didn’t partake of some of the wild stuff in those days. 

"But the bottom line is that it was so close, and in those days you could go from one feature to the next and never see another car,” Quayle added.

The more he photographed Yellowstone, the more he wanted to go back. It felt like becoming lost in another world, one that seemed to rearrange itself every time he visited.

At first, Quayle stuck to closeups. Think bacterial mats, colorful mineral formations, tiny, iridescent insects — all reflecting his interest at the time in abstract art.

“Most photographers would take a leaf,” he said. “I would take the veins in the leaf.”

But over time, Quayle saw that Yellowstone was like this gigantic living creature, breathing, pulsing, moving around. 

That could never be captured with microshots of leaf veins and abstract rock patterns. 

For the real Yellowstone, Quayle realized he had to do something to widen his scope. 

On a map, Yellowstone National Park looks vast, but knowable. 

You can drive in and easily hit the biggest, most popular features — Old Faithful, Grand Prismatic, the Canyon — and drive back out with a phone full of photos and a comfortable sense that you’ve now seen Yellowstone.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"It’s a beautiful illusion. "}]

For one thing, Yellowstone is among the most dynamic landscapes on earth. Fire and water are shaping and reshaping its landscapes all the time. 

The park is also vast —  3,500 square miles — and the majority is too dangerous and too inaccessible for most people’s hiking abilities. 

“It’s a matter of practicality,” Quayle said. “Because some of these waterfalls come out of the side of a mountain and you’ve got wolves in the park and you’ve got grizzlies in the park … and the wolves are not, ‘oh they’re so cute,’ and it’s not Yogi Bear time.”

Some areas are even untouchable when it comes to horseback, Quayle added, and the park also has rules on where people can go by horseback, which helps protect fragile areas. 

Quayle himself didn’t even realize at first just how much he’d been missing. Until one day he got the idea to take a helicopter ride and look down on this creation. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Yellowstone became a whole new world. "}]

Geyser basins became vast, veined paintings. Rivers resolved into networks tying distant waterfalls together. Thermal scars appeared in forest clearings that had no signs, no names, no crowds.

“It’s like a whole different world,” he said. “You literally wouldn’t know you were on planet Earth.”

The view from 2,000 feet is ultimately the one that captured and held Quayle’s attention the best. 

Waterfalls spilling over volcanic rocks like crystal threads of light into dark and lonely slot canyons and broad amphitheaters that had been carved by wind and water and time. 

There were blue-and-white ribbons twisting over black volcanic rock, framed by forests and meadows that melted into the mists of morning. Scenes like this often felt less like sightseeing, and more like eavesdropping on a secret earth, as if he, himself, was an alien. 

One time he saw what looked like a perfect, starfish-like form sunning itself in a crystal clear thermal pool.

“Imagine a starfish, a perfect starfish, in water that’s too hot to have any life,” he said. “How do you get that kind of design in geothermal pools?”

Quayle said he’s shared the images with researchers, who are still evaluating them.

Quayle has combined the footage taken from the air with snapshots he’s taken at Yellowstone National Park over a 50-year period, creating a feature-length film he calls “Yellowstone: Above & Below.” 

His goal with the film is to help people access even the most inaccessible places in the park, as well as raise funds to help support the park. 

Ten percent of the film’s proceeds will be donated to the park’s official nonprofit, Yellowstone Forever, to help fund conservation, education and stewardship of the park.

“Yellowstone is alive,” the film’s narrator says over sweeping aerial shots. “Every breath of steam, every shifting terrace is part of an ancient story written in stone and fire.”

Creating the film has taken Quayle a lifetime, including about four or five years worth of helicopter rides.

“We were in a helicopter for sometimes six and eight hours a day,” he said, a ride that was paid for by the hour. “I mean, it’s a lot of time in the air, but there’s no other way to see it all, to reference it.”

To capture the views, Quayle rented a gyro-stabilized camera system with a long-range lens once used for military surveillance. He also hired Hollywood cameraman Nel Boshoff to operate it.

The camera is so precise, Quayle said, it can focus on an elk 2 miles ahead and then zoom in on its eyelashes. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Where Science Meets Spirit"}]

Ask Quayle why he keeps coming back to Yellowstone after 50 years, and his answer lies somewhere between science and spirit.

From above, the branching runoff channels remind him of blood vessels in a human body, and everywhere he sees beauty born from volcanic violence.

“It’s a place of wonder and warning,” he says in the film. “It is fragile, and yet holds the strength of worlds beneath its surface.”

For most visitors, Yellowstone will always mean the 5% everyone else sees — Old Faithful, the canyon, a glimpse of bison in the valley. 

The remaining 95% — Quayle’s waterfalls in hidden canyons, starfish patterns at the bottom of a boiling pool, and backcountry geysers with no signs or names — are like something from a dream, revealed by one man’s uncommon obsession. 

If the images leave viewers feeling like they’ve gotten as close to the edge of creation as they ever will from a living-room couch, that’s fine with Quayle. That feeling is everything about Yellowstone that he’s ever wanted to say.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

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<title>The Yellowstone You’ll Never See: Filmmaker Spends 50 Years Capturing Its Secrets | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Most tourists see just 5% of Yellowstone from roads and boardwalks. Bozeman filmmaker Stephen Quayle has spent 50 years filming the places most never reach. “It’s like a whole different world,” he said. “You literally wouldn’t know you’re on planet Earth.”

The Yellowstone You’ll Never See: Filmmaker Spends 50 Years Capturing Its Secrets

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

A stoned Vietnam War lieutenant’s inside joke slipped right past Army brass and straight into history. 

The lieutenant, Joe McCarthy, slyly christened his improvised gun truck “Uncle Meat,” his favorite track on the 1969 rock album by Mothers of Invention.

“He used to listen to that while he was stoned,” National Museum of Military Vehicles owner Dan Starks told Cowboy State Daily. “It was his little secret act of rebellion to name his gun truck after a stoner album, and the Army didn’t pick up on it and never objected to the name.”

Today, the lieutenant’s inside joke lives on in a serious place. 

A replica of the gun truck is the latest new artifact at the National Museum of Military Vehicles near Dubois, which boasts the world’s largest private collection of military vehicles, with more than 500 that are fully restored or operational. 

“To be clear, the truck is a reproduction,” Starks said. “Gun trucks were all unauthorized weapons, improvised in Vietnam. None of them came from the United States and only one of them was ever brought back.”

The one surviving original gun truck is called "Eve of Destruction." It’s displayed at the Army Transportation Museum in Fort Eustis, Virginia. 

The rest of the gun trucks were all destroyed or left in Vietnam. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"The Road Called Ambush Alley"}]

Gun trucks tell a particularly poignant story about Vietnam.

At the time, there was essentially one road between the deep-water port of Qhi Nhon and the strategically important Central Highlands — Highway 19. 

It might have been called a highway, but it was more like a rough two-track. Just picture 110 miles of unpaved, mountain-hugging, jungle-choked dirt road with no shoulders, hairpin curves and 1-foot-deep potholes. 

This was the only route available to supply American combat forces in the Highlands.

“There was a lot of strategic significance to our being able to maintain a presence in the Central Highlands and keep the enemy from using it as a safe haven to launch attacks into other parts of Vietnam,” Starks said. “So, what the enemy figured out is, here we (had) all these combat troops (in the) Central Highlands and they realized, ‘Hey, we don’t need to fight all these combat troops. All we’ve got to do is cut the road.”

America’s convoys, meanwhile, were not set up to face intense combat, which made them sitting ducks.

“We’re sending 19- and 20-year-old truck drivers down Ambush Alley literally every day, and sometimes twice a day, on a 220-mile round trip,” Starks said. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Gun Truck Is Born"}]

One day, the enemy decided to close the route. That day was Sept. 2, 1967. In a particularly brutal attack, Vietnamese fighters waylaid a 39-truck convoy, destroying 34

“The colonel in charge of convoys had to send trucks right back down that same road the next day, and the next day, and the next day,” Starks said. “The Army doctrine was the security for truck convoys is a matter for military police.”

There weren’t enough military police, however, which meant the truck drivers were usually on their own. 

So the colonel took it upon himself to defy army protocols. He ordered some of the truck drivers to turn their convoy trucks into weapons. 

“He went to truck drivers and said, ‘Hey, truck driver, you are now a machine gunner',” Starks said. “They had no training. He just said you are now a machine gunner.”

But saying it wasn’t enough to make it happen.

“The Army wouldn’t issue him any machine guns, because it was outside of regulations,” Starks said. “So they had to steal them. They had to trade whiskey for them. They had to take them off of downed helicopters. And they had to make them out of spare parts.”

They also had to figure out how to create gun boxes on the trucks to protect those machine gunners, who would now become prime targets.

“They took these gun trucks and sprinkled them through the length of the convoy,” Starks said. 

When the enemy next ambushed the convoy, it was they who were surprised. 

The new strategy had gun trucks racing into the heart of the ambush as fast as they could go

to drive the enemy away. Everyone else was to drive out of the killing zone and get away.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Built By A Survivor"}]

The museum’s replica was built by a Vietnam veteran who was among the 19- to 20-year-old men who served on the original Uncle Meat. Werth’s service was in 1970/71. For Werth, building the replica was a way to remember his buddies and make sure their story didn’t disappear.

“Logan lost a bunch of buddies in the truck ambushes back there in Vietnam,” Starks said. “And he was lucky to survive himself. 

"He came back to the United States 100% disabled and in the years he was working to recover from his Vietnam War experience he decided to create this reproduction of the truck he served in.”

Three friends were killed in ambushes that Werth survived, so he put their names on the truck. They were Michael Hunter, Richard Frazier and Robert Thorne.

“He used the truck to keep alive the story of these teenagers, making up their own weapons to try and stay alive,” Starks said. “And he wanted it preserved forever.”

Werth was approached many times by people who wanted to buy Uncle Meat, but he was never willing to sell it —  not for any amount of money.

After his death, he charged a friend with finding someone who would preserve it, and that’s how it has come to Dubois.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"A Rolling Fortress"}]

Werth’s attention to detail and the story behind it he worked so meticulously to preserve make the reproduction one of the best in existence, Starks said. 

“This shows you exactly what a gun truck looked like back then,” Starks said. “And I’ve got a lot of history on this from people who were there and commented to him about how perfect this reproduction was and giving him little tidbits of information to make sure he would get it exactly right.”

Uncle Meat was outfitted with four M2 .50-caliber machine guns — one on each side and a twin-.50 setup mounted at the rear. 

There were additional hand-held machine guns so that the gunners could hit targets that were too close or too low for the M2s to hit.

The gun box was double-steel armor, with a space between the plates that could be filled with sandbags. The cab was double-armored, too, and included ballistic glass windshields.

The driver had an M79 grenade launcher, with his own set of rounds, which included smoke to mark positions for support. The truck also carried rations, extra tires, tools and stretchers — because Uncle Meat doubled as both gun truck and rolling service truck for the convoys it protected.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Not Just A Relic"}]

Uncle Meat won’t be part of the museum’s regular display. It will be a rolling exhibit instead, for parades and touch-a-tank events where people are invited to climb into military vehicles or take rides. 

“We’ll keep it in our parade building so it will be well-protected,” Starks said. “And we’re going to drive it in the Fourth of July parade this year.”

The day before July 4 will also be an America 250 celebration at the museum, with free vehicle rides, as well as tank demonstrations, speakers, and other activities.

Telling the story of Uncle Meat has never been more important than it is now, Starks added. Vietnam veterans are in their 70s and 80s. They came home to a country where many did not honor their service. They were spat upon and called names such as "baby killer." 

“I know a lot of these truck drivers and a bunch of them ended up dying of Agent Orange and nobody knows their story,” he said. “They lived through all of this and it’s still haunting them.”

Starks wants as many of them as possible to know before they die what they did has not only been seen, it’s going to be remembered and honored.

What began as a stoned lieutenant’s inside joke has outlived the war — and many of the young men who rode in it — and found a lasting place in history.

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<title>Legend Of Vietnam War Gun Truck ‘Uncle Meat’ Lives On At Wyoming Museum | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The "Uncle Meat" gun truck is the latest important artifact at the National Museum of Military Vehicles in Dubois. “I know a lot of these truck drivers and a bunch of them ended up dying of Agent Orange and nobody knows their story,” the museum's owner said.

Legend Of Vietnam War Gun Truck ‘Uncle Meat’ Lives On At Wyoming Museum

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

A Casper man says he's being forced to part ways with his beloved Bigfoot-hunting rig at his wife's behest, blaming the vehicle's irresistible appeal to the opposite sex.

"I knew this day would come, but that doesn't make it hurt any less," Austin Griess wrote in a tongue-in-cheek Facebook post advertising his lifted 1984 AMC Eagle wagon for sale. "My wife is making me sell my lifted AMC Eagle because of all the attention it brings. 

"I only have eyes for her, yet this car seems to draw in way too many female lookers for my comfort."

Austin Griess found the 1984 AMC Eagle 4X4 Wagon on Facebook Marketplace during the dead of winter.

During the cold months he worked on it, installing a lift kit, tuning it up and making it reliable enough to serve as a daily driver. Then he said he turned it into a true “chick magnet” by added a modern stereo.

The goal was to debut the finished wagon with 150,000 original miles on it at a Memorial Day car show.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"We didn't make it in time for entry,\" Griess said."}]

"The payment is due here in June," he joked. "No trophy making a payment."

After months of wrenching and modifying the Oldsmobile, he said that his wife has had enough of competing with the AMC for attention.

[{"type":"text","text":"“The wife just kind of had enough of me at that point,” he said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"So, the Eagle is now looking for its next owner."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Finding Bigfoot"}]

Along with making whoever drives it irresistible, "This would be a perfect Bigfoot hunting rig,” said Griess, adding that his day job is in sales.

[{"type":"text","text":"The four-door Eagle is rugged, practical, and weird. "}]

"That's the ideal car to take your wife and two kids and throw all your crap in the back, go to the mountains for a picnic, and go fishing" says mechanical philosopher Ron Gordon. 

The Eagle is powered by a 4.2-liter inline-six engine shared with old Jeeps.

The original muffler is still hanging on, although Griess admits it's become a little rough around the edges.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's a little bit raspy,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Perfect For Wyoming"}]

Long before crossovers filled dealership lots, vehicles like the AMC Eagle were doing much of the same work.

Ron Gordon owned an auto shop in Big Piney for 15 years and has spent nearly 70 years around cars. When shown photos of Griess’ golden Eagle, his first reaction was blunt.

"One of the Lee brothers made it: Ug Lee or Home Lee," Gordon said with a laugh.

[{"type":"text","text":"But beneath the humor was genuine admiration."}]

"It was a pretty unique car in its day," he said. "It was the first real sport utility vehicle on the market."

[{"type":"text","text":"The Eagle debuted years before today's crossover craze."}]

It combined station wagon practicality with four-wheel-drive capability, making it particularly appealing in places where winter weather and rough roads were facts of life.

"It'd be good for anything from going fishing or to sheep ranch," Gordon said.

That versatility made vehicles like the Eagle a natural fit in the Cowboy State. 

Griess agrees, calling it "the perfect Wyoming car — great for snow, inclement weather and getting off the paved roads."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Before SUVs"}]

To understand why people get nostalgic about station wagons, Gordon said you have to remember what Wyoming life looked like decades ago.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then, a trip to town wasn't a quick errand."}]

"It was 60 miles to go buy groceries," Gordon recalled. "When you got in the car to go someplace, it was an event."

Station wagons weren't fashion statements, he added, "They were tools. They hauled groceries, hauled kids, and camping gear." 

Gordon remembers one summer when his family traveled to Idaho, where his father was working in the mountains.

The family camped, and he and his brothers slept in the back of a station wagon.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"There was a bear come in one night,\" Gordon said."}]

The animal poked holes in juice cans before dogs chased it away and up a tree. Looking back, Gordon laughs at the memory.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I guess the station wagon was a safe haven for me,” he said."}]

For families throughout the West, station wagons were simply part of life before minivans hit the scene.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Everybody that had a big family had a station wagon,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Time Machine "}]

Griess was born in 1988, but said he grew up surrounded by remnants of the decade. 

His parents were older. His uncles still wore the giant mustaches that survived long after the 1980s were over. 

"Life was simpler back then," says Griess. "If you wanted to do something, you just did it." 

[{"type":"text","text":"The AMC Eagle was meant to embody that mindset. "}]

"It just screams going out and camping with just the necessities," he said.

Music helps complete the vision. The Eagle has speakers — of course. Its soundtrack, according to Griess, has plenty of Molly Hatchet, Ted Nugent, and old-school rock.

It’s the kind of music that sounds best with the windows down and a dirt road ahead.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Let The Eagle Fly'"}]

Selling a lifted 1984 AMC Eagle won't be easy. Building it was part of the fun, said Griess, and bringing it to life was the reward. 

"It's hard to part with,” he added. "But when you have limited space, you've got to let go sometimes. Let the Eagle fly free."

Its next owner will get a lifted station wagon, a conversation starter, a piece of nostalgia, and a camper.

Or, as Gordon puts it, they'll get exactly what station wagons were always meant to be, "a helluva good car." 

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<title>Casper Man Selling His 1984 AMC Eagle 'Chick Magnet' Because Wife Wants It Gone | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Casper man says his wife is making him sell his beloved Bigfoot-hunting rig — a lifted 1984 AMC Eagle wagon with 150,000 miles he says attracts too much female attention. "I knew this day would come, but that doesn't make it hurt any less,” he said.

Casper Man Selling His 1984 AMC Eagle 'Chick Magnet' Because Wife Wants It Gone

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Wildlife

A few weeks ago, tourists chuckled as a young grizzly named Storm was chased off by an angry sandhill crane, but nobody was laughing Thursday when Storm devoured an elk calf alive in front of about 100 people.

The calf was alive for roughly 15 minutes as it was being eaten by the 3-year-old female, wildlife researcher John Winnie Jr. told Cowboy State Daily.

Winnie was there with students from his Yellowstone National Park wildlife ecology field class.

“We were kind of awed at watching a bear take prey," said Winnie, an associate teaching professor in the Department of Ecology at Montana State University.

“But we were shocked and surprised at a calf staying alive that long,” he added.

“There were mixed comments from the crowd,” as 

 near the shore of Yellowstone Lake, Cody resident Vince Vanata told Cowboy State Daily.

“Some people had empathy for the elk calf, and some people were thinking it was just nature taking its course,” he said.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Good Find For A Bear"}]

Similar to deer fawns, elk calves have little to no natural scent, Winnie said.

Tourists in Yellowstone got a brutal taste of reality Thursday when a grizzly went after a live elk calf and devoured it. John Winnie, an ecology professor at Montana State who was there, said most people don't "grasp just how high elk calf mortality is."

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