Rolling through national park; hanging with a rhino; no smoking near animals
- Updated
Odd and interesting news from the West.
- By ERIKA DAHLBY Jackson Hole News and Guide
- Updated
JACKSON, Wyo. β Late on a Saturday afternoon in early April, the Taggart Lake parking lot in Grand Teton National Park was full with kids playing, people loading and unloading bicycles and one group in a full-blown snowball fight.
A section of Teton Park Road is now open to nonmotorized recreational use until May 1. That means there's a 15-mile segment of tempting pavement stretching from the Taggart lot northward to Signal Mountain Lodge.
All kinds of bikes could be seen on the path, as well as people just walking. Some people brought their dogs along on leashes, and others rolled on inline skates while pushing strollers.
Bryan Lords was supposed to longboard while his wife, Jessica Lords, walked, but their son Atticus had other plans. The plan was for the 3-year-old to pedal his own tiny bike, but he decided the most fun would be riding with his dad on the skateboard.
"It's one of our favorite things about early spring," Jessica Lords said.
They went only about a mile down the road, but they usually get farther and try to make it out to the road as often as possible. In past years the couple has ridden bikes, but Jessica, being six and a half months pregnant, wasn't keen on the idea this time.
"I am not going to ride my bike pregnant," she said.
Just down the road Roxy Boyle, of Idaho Falls, was handing out homemade peanut butter granola bars to fellow cyclists taking a break halfway from the Taggart Lake parking lot to the Jenny Lake pullout.
Boyle was joined by a group of friends who had also traveled from Idaho Falls to enjoy the sunshine and exercise under the Tetons. The women planned a multisport day that involved cross-country skiing near Taggart Lake and then joining with others to bike past Jenny Lake.
Boyle's friend Curt Karg has a goal to come out and bike on the road four times in April, which for locals doesn't seem like much but is a bigger commitment when it requires driving the two hours from Idaho Falls.
"We first heard about it last year," said his wife, Margie Karg. "So we called again this year to see if it was open."
They were able to use their Senior Pass to drive into the park up to the parking area. Fees or park passes are still required at entrance gates.
As the group from Idaho Falls hopped on bikes and rode away, Brandon Smith pedaled by with a fishing pole and skis strapped to his back. Following suit, his friends behind him had bike trailers filled with an auger, more fishing supplies and cross-country skis.
The trio had spent the day ice fishing on Leigh Lake after driving to the park, biking to String Lake and then skiing to Leigh Lake.
Along with the more springtime activities, you may still catch the glimpse of people cross-country skiing along the sides of the road or heading into the mountains on a long alpine tour.
At times the air will be so peacefully quiet that it feels like you're the only one in the park. And other times you hear children laughing, bike wheels spinning and friends chattering.
Eliyah Howard, 3, wore a princess helmet and cuddled up with her Olaf doll behind her dad, Adam Howard, in a covered yellow-and-white trailer.
"We're having fun!" she yelled from inside behind the mesh.
It was the first time the Rafter J family had been on the road because Eliyah's brother Titus, 5, was able to ride his bike all by himself. Howard is hoping to come back to the park road with his wife, whom they were waiting to pick up at the airport after their ride.
"It's nice not having to worry about getting hit by a car," Howard said.
Cars won't be able to use the road until May 1, when it opens to public vehicle travel. There may be park vehicles and road crews on the roads, and it is advised to keep a safe distance when you see them.
Dogs are allowed to be walked on the road but must have a leash no longer than 6 feet. Owners are also required to use waste disposal bags, which are located at the Taggart Lake parking area.
Along with the sunshine and warm weather comes the emergence of bears, so park officials remind visitors to be alert, to bring bear spray and to use their common sense and good judgment. If you see a bear, officials request that you report it to the nearest visitor center or ranger station.
- By LEW FREEDMAN Cody Enterprise
- Updated
CODY, Wyo. β The colored lights were dim and the voice was deep but twangy as the dinner crowd at Cassie's listened between salads and steaks to the craggy-faced, mustached crooner with a well-worn cowboy hat pulled low over his face.
Uncle Val gave them the usual stuff. He sang a mix of cowboy songs, recited a cowboy poem and paused between strokes of guitar strings to send shout-outs to those he recognized.
Mostly he spent nearly two hours delivering unvarnished Val Geissler.
Val has a standing arrangement with Cassie's Supper Club owners and operators Melody and Steve Singer. If he is in the neighborhood and feels like clearing his throat Friday nights he stops in and performs for tips before the regularly-scheduled band at 7 p.m.
His appearances are not advertised and he comes in irregularly, so don't hang your cowboy hat on any schedule.
Val showed up one recent night and announced, "Okey-dokey, another great Friday night at Cassie's."
Val radiates the vibe pretty much 24/7 that it's a great night any day of the week anywhere, that life couldn't be better right then and there unless you were riding a horse on the back 40 - which he is likely to be doing on his South Fork ranch other days.
"The music business bought the ranch," Val said.
At Cassie's Val was dressed for both riding and singing with blue jeans, cowboy boots and work shirt. He is mostly bald with leftover white tufts of hair, but unless you have X-ray vision you can't see that through the brown felt hat.
"You want to hear me yodel?" Val asked the crowd.
. . .
In recent months, Val Geissler yodeled his songs all over the Cody entertainment scene because of his voice-of-reason, old-wise-man role in the frequently honored western documentary "Unbranded."
Val wrote and sang the "Border to Border" theme song and viewers have made the story of a 3,000-mile Mexico-to-Canada horseback ride plugging the plight of the wild mustang the darling of the film festival circuit.
Audience choice awards have piled up like freshly chopped wood. To see "Unbranded" is to stoke the urge for adventure and provoke digging into the wallet for a donation so the Bureau of Land Management can find homes for thousands of horses no longer home on the range.
The riders were young men from Texas A&M, but somehow the guy who never expected to be seen on camera grabs those watchers by coming off as the trip's glue.
"They all like the old guy," said Val, to whom the phrase "a twinkle in his eye" easily applies.
Val likes to say one appeal of "Unbranded" is it was unscripted. The more you know about him, the word could apply equally to his life.
It's not as if Val, now 76, was born yesterday or when "Unbranded" was released in 2015. Val was born in 1939 in San Francisco into what he calls a society family. The song "Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" was not recorded until 1975 so Val's mom had no advance warning when her tyke was swept up by cowboy culture.
There was no ready explanation for a 5-year-old falling for Cottonseed Clark's "Hollywood Barn Dance" radio show.
"I just always wanted to be a cowboy," Val said.
So he became one, riding bucking horses, working ranches in California and Montana, writing cowboy songs and mouthing cowboy poetry.
He aspired to rodeo with the Cal Poly San Luis-Obispo team, but didn't compete. In 1959, after obtaining his pro card, but before joining the circuit, Val was working on the KO Ranch in Missoula, Montana, and suffered a head injury. That KO'd his rodeo career.
"I was just another jock with a lot of potential," he said.
In the early 1970s, Val managed Grizzly Peak Stables in Orinda, California.
Val said some people compared Orinda with Mayberry R.F.D., the spinoff of "The Andy Griffith Show."
Val has written an equine training book, learned how to parachute at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he attended Officer Candidate School and emerged as a lieutenant, been married four times, had one son who died and has one daughter with two grandchildren.
But he has unofficially adopted many young people by helping them along the way and that's how the Uncle Val nickname stuck.
"He'll do anything for anybody," Steve Singer said.
Val may strike some as a gadabout and he wouldn't deny that, but the cover of the book is not the whole story.
"He is a beloved character," Melody Singer said, "but Val is very professional on certain things. Over the years he's given us business advice. He's financially smart."
. . .
Although Val sang in a choir in Northern California as a youngster he said, "I wasn't born with a guitar in my hand. Sometimes I listen to myself singing and I don't really like it. But some people say I have a very nice voice."
By the time Val settled in Cody in 1984 he was well-established doing all of the things he still does, from singing to horse training.
He had offers to go to Nashville full-time and sing country. After a stretch befriended by an influential Los Angeles newspaperman with entertainment business contacts, Val said he was told, "You've got your foot in the door."
He talked to, played for, made an impression on everyone from Walter Cronkite to Henry Mancini. On one wall at the ranch Val shares with Cindy, his wife of 18 years, there is an autographed picture of President Ronald Reagan.
But Los Angeles was a big city, not an open prairie, and something about show business, perhaps the word "business," alienated him.
"I'll go back to who I am," Val said he decided.
Val being Val is the crux of it all, from the rotating broken-in cowboy hat choices, to the tunes like "Night Riders Lament" and sure enough, that one about mommas, babies and cowboys.
. . .
It might be said "Unbranded" has become a brand.
In 2010, Ben Masters was on a backcountry horseback ride that took him to remote Hawks Rest, where Val and Cindy were caretakers of a federal land retreat cabin.
They hit it off and a couple of years later Val helped Masters' group train wild mustangs for the journey and became the riders' hay and water supplier on part of the route.
Fast forward and the hundreds of hours of film turned into an award-winning documentary and companion book last year. From Telluride to Toronto, "Unbranded" was the people's choice.
Val has recently sung and talked at the Park County Library and introduced a one-night charity showing of "Unbranded" at Big Horn Cinemas. He was scheduled to kick off an April 15 dinner-and-movie event at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
Masters was going to come to Cody for that, but had to be in Oklahoma City at the same time to pick up another award.
"Val was incredibly helpful," Masters said long distance of Geissler's contributions to the ride and film. "He was crucial. He helped in so many ways."
As Val said, he was only ever going to be in the background, but some interaction with "my boys" as he calls the participants, made the final cut. He is the sage advice-giver when tension or an unexpected problem arose.
Two viewers who became fans of Val's limited screen time are former President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara. The Bush Presidential Library is on the Texas A&M campus in College Station, Texas, and the ex-president had Val flown in first class for a special event.
Masters joked Val has gotten so big "he's stopped answering our phone calls."
Not exactly. Still, widespread approval of "Unbranded" has drawn film-world attention to Val. A few offers to make more movie appearances have come his way, but he has turned them down.
Steve Singer said Val should ride the wave.
"Uncle Val," he told Geissler, "this is another chapter in your life. Live it to the fullest."
Cindy, who prefers not to venture on distant trips with Val, isn't sure.
"No, he doesn't want to go to Hollywood," she said. "He's having fun. Val is an entertainer. He does like hanging out with people. It's another way to make friends."
The impact of "Unbranded" has expanded the circle as only otherwise Facebook can. Since the film is being translated for showings in other countries, Val says what do you know, he now speaks German, Japanese, French and Mandarin.
Just watch his lips.
. . .
When Val recently sang and recited poems for about 25 people at the library, it seemed as if the entire audience was filled with friends.
He routinely interrupted songs to welcome latecomers by name and even stood up, walked over and shook hands with some.
Shelly Waidelich, who arranged the performance, had never seen Val in folksy action like this βΒ he really calls his reading glasses "cheaters" βΒ but has known him at least four years from church.
"I absolutely loved it," she said of the library show. "His show is fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants. People call and thank us for having him."
The same happens at Cassie's when Val plays.
"He shows up when he can," Melody Singer said. "We love having him. When he's playing it's like having a campfire in the middle of the dance floor."
Steve Singer supervises weekly jam sessions at Cassie's and one day a new face, a young woman showed up. When he asked how she heard about the group she said Val.
Singer Justine May said she was a camp cook for an outfitter and Val rode up on horseback carrying his guitar like some ghost out of the forest. He entertained the guests, ate, serenaded her on bended knee and vanished.
"He was singing in the tent," May said.
Besides being busy with his 25 or so horses, and taking time to ride them for enjoyment, Val said another reason he doesn't play Cassie's too often is the only money he makes is that dropped in the glass tip container.
Steve Singer, who has known Val many years, periodically plays with him at Cassie's and was the engineer on two Val CDs recorded in Garland some time ago.
Val was extremely professional and punctual. Appointments for 8 a.m. were made with road musicians awake till 4 a.m.
"If you weren't on time you were in trouble," Steve Singer said.
The Val he knows has been consistent.
"He's authentic," Steve Singer said. "He loves the cowboy way and he lives it."
Val has his horses, his ranch, a collection of old bridles, one dating at least to 1895, hanging on the kitchen wall. Framed photographs representing life chapters and western art decorate other walls. One is a Val portrait painted by Cody artist Pat Kuper and presented to him one night this year as a surprise at Cassie's.
"He said, 'Oh, Patty,'" Kuper said. "He's a sweet fellow."
. . .
Val Geissler rested his guitar across his knees. Other musicians, the late show, were drifting into Cassie's.
"Thank you, boys and girls," he told applauding listeners at Cassie's. "I'm Uncle Val."
- The Associated Press
- Updated
CODY, Wyo. β Wyoming wildlife officials have euthanized a 2-year-old grizzly bear that repeatedly roamed into populated areas.
The Cody Enterprise reports that Wyoming Game and Fish officials relocated the bear several times but it kept returning to the Cody area. It was captured for the fourth time on Thursday.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had to weigh in on the problem because Yellowstone-area grizzlies are listened as a threatened species.
Game and Fish educational specialist Tara Hodges says the state and federal officials decided the bear should be euthanized because it had become used to humans and was spending time in developed areas.
Large carnivore expert Luke Ellsbury says it's rare that the agency encounters a bear that has to be captured four times.
- By ERIKA DAHLBY Jackson Hole News and Guide
JACKSON, Wyo. β Late on a Saturday afternoon in early April, the Taggart Lake parking lot in Grand Teton National Park was full with kids playing, people loading and unloading bicycles and one group in a full-blown snowball fight.
A section of Teton Park Road is now open to nonmotorized recreational use until May 1. That means there's a 15-mile segment of tempting pavement stretching from the Taggart lot northward to Signal Mountain Lodge.
All kinds of bikes could be seen on the path, as well as people just walking. Some people brought their dogs along on leashes, and others rolled on inline skates while pushing strollers.
Bryan Lords was supposed to longboard while his wife, Jessica Lords, walked, but their son Atticus had other plans. The plan was for the 3-year-old to pedal his own tiny bike, but he decided the most fun would be riding with his dad on the skateboard.
"It's one of our favorite things about early spring," Jessica Lords said.
They went only about a mile down the road, but they usually get farther and try to make it out to the road as often as possible. In past years the couple has ridden bikes, but Jessica, being six and a half months pregnant, wasn't keen on the idea this time.
"I am not going to ride my bike pregnant," she said.
Just down the road Roxy Boyle, of Idaho Falls, was handing out homemade peanut butter granola bars to fellow cyclists taking a break halfway from the Taggart Lake parking lot to the Jenny Lake pullout.
Boyle was joined by a group of friends who had also traveled from Idaho Falls to enjoy the sunshine and exercise under the Tetons. The women planned a multisport day that involved cross-country skiing near Taggart Lake and then joining with others to bike past Jenny Lake.
Boyle's friend Curt Karg has a goal to come out and bike on the road four times in April, which for locals doesn't seem like much but is a bigger commitment when it requires driving the two hours from Idaho Falls.
"We first heard about it last year," said his wife, Margie Karg. "So we called again this year to see if it was open."
They were able to use their Senior Pass to drive into the park up to the parking area. Fees or park passes are still required at entrance gates.
As the group from Idaho Falls hopped on bikes and rode away, Brandon Smith pedaled by with a fishing pole and skis strapped to his back. Following suit, his friends behind him had bike trailers filled with an auger, more fishing supplies and cross-country skis.
The trio had spent the day ice fishing on Leigh Lake after driving to the park, biking to String Lake and then skiing to Leigh Lake.
Along with the more springtime activities, you may still catch the glimpse of people cross-country skiing along the sides of the road or heading into the mountains on a long alpine tour.
At times the air will be so peacefully quiet that it feels like you're the only one in the park. And other times you hear children laughing, bike wheels spinning and friends chattering.
Eliyah Howard, 3, wore a princess helmet and cuddled up with her Olaf doll behind her dad, Adam Howard, in a covered yellow-and-white trailer.
"We're having fun!" she yelled from inside behind the mesh.
It was the first time the Rafter J family had been on the road because Eliyah's brother Titus, 5, was able to ride his bike all by himself. Howard is hoping to come back to the park road with his wife, whom they were waiting to pick up at the airport after their ride.
"It's nice not having to worry about getting hit by a car," Howard said.
Cars won't be able to use the road until May 1, when it opens to public vehicle travel. There may be park vehicles and road crews on the roads, and it is advised to keep a safe distance when you see them.
Dogs are allowed to be walked on the road but must have a leash no longer than 6 feet. Owners are also required to use waste disposal bags, which are located at the Taggart Lake parking area.
Along with the sunshine and warm weather comes the emergence of bears, so park officials remind visitors to be alert, to bring bear spray and to use their common sense and good judgment. If you see a bear, officials request that you report it to the nearest visitor center or ranger station.
- By LEW FREEDMAN Cody Enterprise
CODY, Wyo. β The colored lights were dim and the voice was deep but twangy as the dinner crowd at Cassie's listened between salads and steaks to the craggy-faced, mustached crooner with a well-worn cowboy hat pulled low over his face.
Uncle Val gave them the usual stuff. He sang a mix of cowboy songs, recited a cowboy poem and paused between strokes of guitar strings to send shout-outs to those he recognized.
Mostly he spent nearly two hours delivering unvarnished Val Geissler.
Val has a standing arrangement with Cassie's Supper Club owners and operators Melody and Steve Singer. If he is in the neighborhood and feels like clearing his throat Friday nights he stops in and performs for tips before the regularly-scheduled band at 7 p.m.
His appearances are not advertised and he comes in irregularly, so don't hang your cowboy hat on any schedule.
Val showed up one recent night and announced, "Okey-dokey, another great Friday night at Cassie's."
Val radiates the vibe pretty much 24/7 that it's a great night any day of the week anywhere, that life couldn't be better right then and there unless you were riding a horse on the back 40 - which he is likely to be doing on his South Fork ranch other days.
"The music business bought the ranch," Val said.
At Cassie's Val was dressed for both riding and singing with blue jeans, cowboy boots and work shirt. He is mostly bald with leftover white tufts of hair, but unless you have X-ray vision you can't see that through the brown felt hat.
"You want to hear me yodel?" Val asked the crowd.
. . .
In recent months, Val Geissler yodeled his songs all over the Cody entertainment scene because of his voice-of-reason, old-wise-man role in the frequently honored western documentary "Unbranded."
Val wrote and sang the "Border to Border" theme song and viewers have made the story of a 3,000-mile Mexico-to-Canada horseback ride plugging the plight of the wild mustang the darling of the film festival circuit.
Audience choice awards have piled up like freshly chopped wood. To see "Unbranded" is to stoke the urge for adventure and provoke digging into the wallet for a donation so the Bureau of Land Management can find homes for thousands of horses no longer home on the range.
The riders were young men from Texas A&M, but somehow the guy who never expected to be seen on camera grabs those watchers by coming off as the trip's glue.
"They all like the old guy," said Val, to whom the phrase "a twinkle in his eye" easily applies.
Val likes to say one appeal of "Unbranded" is it was unscripted. The more you know about him, the word could apply equally to his life.
It's not as if Val, now 76, was born yesterday or when "Unbranded" was released in 2015. Val was born in 1939 in San Francisco into what he calls a society family. The song "Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys" was not recorded until 1975 so Val's mom had no advance warning when her tyke was swept up by cowboy culture.
There was no ready explanation for a 5-year-old falling for Cottonseed Clark's "Hollywood Barn Dance" radio show.
"I just always wanted to be a cowboy," Val said.
So he became one, riding bucking horses, working ranches in California and Montana, writing cowboy songs and mouthing cowboy poetry.
He aspired to rodeo with the Cal Poly San Luis-Obispo team, but didn't compete. In 1959, after obtaining his pro card, but before joining the circuit, Val was working on the KO Ranch in Missoula, Montana, and suffered a head injury. That KO'd his rodeo career.
"I was just another jock with a lot of potential," he said.
In the early 1970s, Val managed Grizzly Peak Stables in Orinda, California.
Val said some people compared Orinda with Mayberry R.F.D., the spinoff of "The Andy Griffith Show."
Val has written an equine training book, learned how to parachute at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he attended Officer Candidate School and emerged as a lieutenant, been married four times, had one son who died and has one daughter with two grandchildren.
But he has unofficially adopted many young people by helping them along the way and that's how the Uncle Val nickname stuck.
"He'll do anything for anybody," Steve Singer said.
Val may strike some as a gadabout and he wouldn't deny that, but the cover of the book is not the whole story.
"He is a beloved character," Melody Singer said, "but Val is very professional on certain things. Over the years he's given us business advice. He's financially smart."
. . .
Although Val sang in a choir in Northern California as a youngster he said, "I wasn't born with a guitar in my hand. Sometimes I listen to myself singing and I don't really like it. But some people say I have a very nice voice."
By the time Val settled in Cody in 1984 he was well-established doing all of the things he still does, from singing to horse training.
He had offers to go to Nashville full-time and sing country. After a stretch befriended by an influential Los Angeles newspaperman with entertainment business contacts, Val said he was told, "You've got your foot in the door."
He talked to, played for, made an impression on everyone from Walter Cronkite to Henry Mancini. On one wall at the ranch Val shares with Cindy, his wife of 18 years, there is an autographed picture of President Ronald Reagan.
But Los Angeles was a big city, not an open prairie, and something about show business, perhaps the word "business," alienated him.
"I'll go back to who I am," Val said he decided.
Val being Val is the crux of it all, from the rotating broken-in cowboy hat choices, to the tunes like "Night Riders Lament" and sure enough, that one about mommas, babies and cowboys.
. . .
It might be said "Unbranded" has become a brand.
In 2010, Ben Masters was on a backcountry horseback ride that took him to remote Hawks Rest, where Val and Cindy were caretakers of a federal land retreat cabin.
They hit it off and a couple of years later Val helped Masters' group train wild mustangs for the journey and became the riders' hay and water supplier on part of the route.
Fast forward and the hundreds of hours of film turned into an award-winning documentary and companion book last year. From Telluride to Toronto, "Unbranded" was the people's choice.
Val has recently sung and talked at the Park County Library and introduced a one-night charity showing of "Unbranded" at Big Horn Cinemas. He was scheduled to kick off an April 15 dinner-and-movie event at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.
Masters was going to come to Cody for that, but had to be in Oklahoma City at the same time to pick up another award.
"Val was incredibly helpful," Masters said long distance of Geissler's contributions to the ride and film. "He was crucial. He helped in so many ways."
As Val said, he was only ever going to be in the background, but some interaction with "my boys" as he calls the participants, made the final cut. He is the sage advice-giver when tension or an unexpected problem arose.
Two viewers who became fans of Val's limited screen time are former President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara. The Bush Presidential Library is on the Texas A&M campus in College Station, Texas, and the ex-president had Val flown in first class for a special event.
Masters joked Val has gotten so big "he's stopped answering our phone calls."
Not exactly. Still, widespread approval of "Unbranded" has drawn film-world attention to Val. A few offers to make more movie appearances have come his way, but he has turned them down.
Steve Singer said Val should ride the wave.
"Uncle Val," he told Geissler, "this is another chapter in your life. Live it to the fullest."
Cindy, who prefers not to venture on distant trips with Val, isn't sure.
"No, he doesn't want to go to Hollywood," she said. "He's having fun. Val is an entertainer. He does like hanging out with people. It's another way to make friends."
The impact of "Unbranded" has expanded the circle as only otherwise Facebook can. Since the film is being translated for showings in other countries, Val says what do you know, he now speaks German, Japanese, French and Mandarin.
Just watch his lips.
. . .
When Val recently sang and recited poems for about 25 people at the library, it seemed as if the entire audience was filled with friends.
He routinely interrupted songs to welcome latecomers by name and even stood up, walked over and shook hands with some.
Shelly Waidelich, who arranged the performance, had never seen Val in folksy action like this βΒ he really calls his reading glasses "cheaters" βΒ but has known him at least four years from church.
"I absolutely loved it," she said of the library show. "His show is fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants. People call and thank us for having him."
The same happens at Cassie's when Val plays.
"He shows up when he can," Melody Singer said. "We love having him. When he's playing it's like having a campfire in the middle of the dance floor."
Steve Singer supervises weekly jam sessions at Cassie's and one day a new face, a young woman showed up. When he asked how she heard about the group she said Val.
Singer Justine May said she was a camp cook for an outfitter and Val rode up on horseback carrying his guitar like some ghost out of the forest. He entertained the guests, ate, serenaded her on bended knee and vanished.
"He was singing in the tent," May said.
Besides being busy with his 25 or so horses, and taking time to ride them for enjoyment, Val said another reason he doesn't play Cassie's too often is the only money he makes is that dropped in the glass tip container.
Steve Singer, who has known Val many years, periodically plays with him at Cassie's and was the engineer on two Val CDs recorded in Garland some time ago.
Val was extremely professional and punctual. Appointments for 8 a.m. were made with road musicians awake till 4 a.m.
"If you weren't on time you were in trouble," Steve Singer said.
The Val he knows has been consistent.
"He's authentic," Steve Singer said. "He loves the cowboy way and he lives it."
Val has his horses, his ranch, a collection of old bridles, one dating at least to 1895, hanging on the kitchen wall. Framed photographs representing life chapters and western art decorate other walls. One is a Val portrait painted by Cody artist Pat Kuper and presented to him one night this year as a surprise at Cassie's.
"He said, 'Oh, Patty,'" Kuper said. "He's a sweet fellow."
. . .
Val Geissler rested his guitar across his knees. Other musicians, the late show, were drifting into Cassie's.
"Thank you, boys and girls," he told applauding listeners at Cassie's. "I'm Uncle Val."
- The Associated Press
CODY, Wyo. β Wyoming wildlife officials have euthanized a 2-year-old grizzly bear that repeatedly roamed into populated areas.
The Cody Enterprise reports that Wyoming Game and Fish officials relocated the bear several times but it kept returning to the Cody area. It was captured for the fourth time on Thursday.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had to weigh in on the problem because Yellowstone-area grizzlies are listened as a threatened species.
Game and Fish educational specialist Tara Hodges says the state and federal officials decided the bear should be euthanized because it had become used to humans and was spending time in developed areas.
Large carnivore expert Luke Ellsbury says it's rare that the agency encounters a bear that has to be captured four times.
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