(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This week on "Wild Travels," we'll cross America's highest bridge, nearly 1,000 feet above the Royal Gorge, admire the frozen artistry at the National Snow Sculpture competition, gaze at the gallery of paintings on velvet at the Velveteria, wander the world's only spear-hunting museum, and then meet the true Bigfoot believers at the Sasquatch Outpost.

"Wild Travels" is made possible in part by Alaska Railroad, providing year-round transportation to many Alaska destinations, traversing nearly 500 miles of wild landscapes, between Anchorage, Fairbanks, Denali National Park, and more.

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(uptempo instrumental music) - If you look hard enough, go off the beaten track far enough, you'll find an America teaming with the unusual, the odd, the downright strange.

I'm Will Clinger and I'm your guide on a package tour we like to call "Wild Travels."

(uptempo instrumental music) (light instrumental music) The competitive snow sculptor must endure an awful lot for his or her art, bitterly cold temperatures, sleepless nights, and a relentlessly ticking time clock.

But as we discovered at the US National Snow Sculpting Competition, the finished product makes it all worthwhile.

Joe Tominaro, here we are surrounded by snow sculptures.

- We are, isn't it beautiful?

- [Will] Here in Riviera Plaza, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

- Teams come from all over the United States.

We have teams here from Alaska to Maine.

- [Will] How many competitors today?

- So there's 15 teams.

There's three people to a team.

They got here on Tuesday and they were randomly selected a snow mound, which was 10 feet tall, eight feet wide.

- How do they make those big cylinders for these guys to work on?

- So the snow is made and then it's bobcat in little buckets at a time.

But inside these big cylinders, we have snow stompers, and they'll dump in a bucket.

They have to stomp it, flatten it out, pack it down.

That's a whole 'nother art form, I don't know.

I guess so.

The actual snow sculpture's been around for 30 plus years.

We've had it, it's been here in Lake Geneva for 23 years.

They can only use hand tools, no power.

- No blowtorch?

- No blowtorch, no chainsaw.

They have about a hundred hours.

- [Will] So they start Wednesday, and they gotta be done by Saturday morning.

- Saturday at 11 o'clock, we actually yell through the speakers, "tools down," and they have to put their tools down.

(upbeat jazz music) - [Will] You got the little ruler there.

That's because it's gotta be exactly to scale, tight?

- Right, whatever I measure here, I go up to the snow block and measure with PVC pipe, with our little hash marks of inches.

And it goes all the way up to the nine feet mark.

- You're a troubled genius.

- I'm a troubled genius, I suppose so.

(chuckling) - [Will] Very mathematical.

- If you want to get everything proportional, then after a while you throw all your tools away, and just use your eyes and just go after it, The detail and everything.

You can see the arms, we're attaching those and we'll carve away the posts underneath and get 'em all nice.

- I could see if you made one wrong carving that arm could fall off.

- Yes, it already has.

The head fell off and it hit the arm and that came down, so.

- We decided to do an octopus playing chess against some crabs.

So very, very intricate work here on the suction cups underneath the tentacles.

There's way too much going on here.

- [Will] You gonna be working all night?

- Oh yeah, we're pulling an all nighter.

- [Will] You know all the work you're doing on this.

Isn't it kind of sad that it's gonna end up as a large puddle?

- Yeah that's kind of the, it's kind of the beauty and the tragedy of it together.

It's like you work on this thing, you put all your time and effort into it and then it's gone.

- This is a piece of ice from Lake Geneva here.

We went out and harvested it.

We sculpted it into a round sphere.

- Is that legal, 'cause it's not technically snow?

- It's absolutely legal.

Any ice and or snow on the premise you can use.

But there's a reason right now it isn't up in our crab's claw right now.

If you put your hand down here in the sunlight, it actually is like really hot.

- [Will] So you can't put it up there in case somebody burns their face on your thing.

- What'll happen is it'll start melting that arm and then it'll fall down and then you got a ice bowling ball hitting somebody in the head.

Nobody wants that.

- You don't want that.

- [Sculptor] It's a physical manifestation of his Twitter feed.

- [Will] Just his lips and his hair basically.

And I hear these bricks around here are gonna be the wall.

- [Sculptor] That's right, we're building a wall.

- Here's your original sculpture.

I'm thinking that's some sort of animal.

- [Sculptor 2] No, it's actually a candle.

It's a melting candle.

- That was my second guess.

- [Sculptor] We don't have the flame on top of that yet.

We'll put it in probably tonight.

- This elephant was no longer a circus elephant.

So he's broken that bond.

He's sitting back on a deflated circus ball, and he's just kicking back and relaxing.

He's looking up at that butterfly, which symbolizes inherent freedom all these animals should have.

I don't think they should be locking these creatures up that live as long as we do.

You don't wanna live your entire life in prison, do you?

- I'm with you on that.

- Yeah.

(light jazz music) - [Will] As day turn to night, very few teams headed to the hotel, and at around 10:00 p.m. we checked in to see how the sculptures were progressing.

I can tell you for a fact that the windchill is gonna be below zero tonight.

- Yep.

- I'm gonna suggest you go home.

It looks fine.

You're finished, you're finished.

- We wish.

- Nope.

- [Will] I don't know if I ever asked you, is there a title for this piece?

- Yes, it's called Two Souls One Heart.

I'll do the best I can at night here, and then in the morning when the sun comes out, I'll really be able to make it pop.

- [Will] It looks like this guy is wearing BVDs.

- He's wearing BVDs, yes, exactly.

If you look at the tag on the back, you'll see it.

(light jazz music) - [Will] So the wall's going in.

- Yeah.

- [Will] Looks pretty good.

- You know, this morning we had my speakers out.

We were pumping "The Wall" from Pink Floyd and it was magical.

There were a lot of tears.

- Any mishaps during the night?

- Nope.

None so far.

- [Will] And the glass ball, the curl is there.

- [Ball Sculptor] It's gonna stay there, too.

- Do you think you have enough time to finish this thing?

You're laughing.

- Always.

Yeah, we'll do another one.

We'll do a second one in an hour and five minutes.

(Will laughing) - [Will] I think you're delirious.

Not enough sleep.

- I think so, too.

(laughing) (light jazz music) - You have 15 minutes, 15 minutes tools down.

- [Will] Is it done?

- [Sculptor] It's done.

- Yeah, so you're just standing guard to make sure nothing falls off.

- No, I'm just standing still so I don't fall over and sleep right there on the ground.

- [Announcer] All tools down.

Carvers, all tools down.

(talking at once) - So let's go vote.

Let's go vote.

- They cannot vote for themselves, but they vote for first, second, and third best, overall.

- You're filling out your ballot here.

- Yeah, right now I'm just getting started looking around at all the finished pieces.

The things that I'm looking for and the things that I really like seeing are like a lot of negative space, good movement and good balance, but also something that you're watching and thinking like, is it gonna fall over, or is it gonna stay up?

- [Will] Have you been around to see what the competition looks like?

- [Sculptor] I have, I have.

It's very, very impressive.

- Have you got a choice for first, second?

- Not yet.

Not yet.

- Vote for the really crappy ones and then you have a chance to win.

- No that's pretty bad sportsmanship.

(laughing) - [Will] When all the votes were counted, Team Wisconsin's, "Your Move" was declared the winner, with Alaska's "Upstream" taking second, and Nebraska's "Crab Grab" a close third.

In related news, they all melted.

(no audio) (traffic passing) (wind blowing) (uptempo instrumental music) It's about a thousand feet up, and over four football fields long.

And did we mention that it survived gale-forced winds, fire, and an actual war?

(uptempo instrumental music) Peggy Gair, that is the Royal Gorge Bridge, which would make this the Royal Gorge.

- Yes it is.

The bridge was built in 1929, so it's been here for eight decades.

- [Will] The highest bridge in America.

- [Peggy] Well it was the highest suspension bridge in the world for about seven decades.

- [Will] What happened?

- [Peggy] China built one that was taller than ours.

- The Chinese.

- [Peggy] And it was built as an attraction.

It wasn't built as part of a highway or anything like that.

- [Will] Now, it looks like a metal bridge, but there's a lot of wood in that darn thing.

- [Peggy] The floor of the bridge is wood.

- It makes it flexible though, doesn't it?

- [Peggy] It does.

So it rolls a little bit and it sways a little bit.

- [Will] You had a fire, what year was that?

- [Peggy] We had a fire June, 2013, and 90% of the park was destroyed.

So where we're standing now was not here, it was rubble.

- [Will] But the bridge survived?

- [Peggy] The bridge survived.

- [Will] Driving across the Royal Gorge Bridge turned out to be a bumpy ride, so we soon decided to continue our interview on foot.

It's a heck of a view from up here, you gotta admit it.

- [Peggy] We call this our 360 degree view of pure Colorado.

- [Will] It's not very busy right now.

What are the most people that'll allow on the bridge at one time?

- [Peggy] We can have several hundred on the bridge at one time.

- [Will] Can you actually feel it swaying when it's really windy?

- [Peggy] You can, you can kind of feel the motion of up and down and side to side a little bit.

Some people get really freaked out and other people really like it.

- [Will] This is a special kind of rock we're surrounded by, isn't it?

- We have amazing geology here.

The very bottom of the gorge is actually pre-Cambrian rock.

And those are the rocks that were from the beginning of the world.

So they have the same rocks in Brazil.

- China doesn't have that.

- I bet they do.

- [Will] Looks like there's a railroad track right down by that river.

- [Peggy] There is a railroad track down there.

It was built in the late 1800s.

They discovered silver in Leadville.

- [Will] Did they discover lead in Silverville?

- They had to have a way to get it across country, and they had to come through the gorge.

So there was the Santa Fe and Rio Grande railroad war down there, where they would actually build railway during the day and then the other company would come in and blow it up.

- [Will] And what is that thing right there, that big arch thing?

- [Peggy] The Royal Rush Skycoaster.

You're in a harness, they pull you up and then you go flying out about 50 miles an hour, out and over the gorge.

- [Will] And there's also zip lining too, right?

- [Peggy] We have America's highest zip line right now.

(upbeat western music) - [Will] You got a gondola over here too, huh?

- This is the best way to get across the gorge.

It's a very nice smooth ride, and to get all the scenery.

(upbeat western music) As you can see, we're a thousand feet over the river.

And you get this awesome view of the bridge from here, all sides of the gorge.

We go year round except for weather.

We have class four, class five rapids down there.

And actually you can hear people in their rafts screaming when they go through there on the bridge.

- In terror or joy?

- I'm hoping in joy.

Little known fact about this area is very rich in dinosaur fossils.

Complete dinosaurs.

- Now the Chinese don't have those.

- They might.

- Oh come on.

Peggy, if somebody wants to walk across the bridge, take a gondola ride, or even zip line across the gorge.

Where do they go?

- [Peggy] We are about an hour south of Colorado Springs, Colorado.

- [Will] Thanks for the tour.

- [Peggy] Thank you.

- Next to Jesus, Elvis is number one on velvet.

(soft jazz music) Welcome to Velveteria, the Museum of velvet paintings.

With black velvet, you're adding light to the darkness.

Velvet painting is very difficult to do because you can't cover it up and do it again.

His cigar there is totally the black velvet.

You can smell the smoke and you might just have to say, hey, no smoking in here, Bob.

I'm doing a Michael Jackson exhibit.

From Botox to Detox, The Surgical Evolution of Michael Jackson.

Down here we have a very young Michael.

Here's Michael from "Thriller," a very handsome Michael with the People Choice Awards.

And there's the final Michael, and all the plastic surgeons of Beverly Hills.

(soft jazz music) So this is Cheng and Ang, the Siamese twins from the last century, the wealthiest people in the world, they were.

This painting I think is extraordinary, 'cause I put it online and people think it's a photograph.

Here we have Liberace, the greatest piano player who ever lived, all aglitter, and he's eyeballing Elvis at the end of the Hall of Elvis.

TCB.

(rock music) One of the best things about the black light room is flashbacks are free.

(rock music) And here we have what Margaret Keane never dreamt of, The Triple Poodle.

Velveteria is in the Chinatown section of Los Angeles, two blocks north of city hall.

(rock music) (soft music) (soft music continues) - [Will] We found a museum in Alabama with an extremely specific and highly unusual subject matter, spear hunting.

But the first thing we had to hunt down was the museum's curator.

We're looking for Larry.

- He is not here right now.

(giggling) - Larry, we found you.

- Yes, sir.

- Tell us where we are.

- Summerdale, Alabama.

The Spear Hunting Museum.

- [Will] The Gene Morris Spear Hunting Museum.

- [Larry] Yes sir.

- Would it be safe to say that this is the only spear hunting museum in the world?

- The only one that I'm aware of.

- Let's go out on a limb.

- Yes sir.

- [Will] And Gene Morris, tell us a little bit about this guy.

- Spear hunting was his life, passion.

- [Will] And he killed 592 big game animals.

- Spear hunting, yes sir.

And he was a very unique individual and beat to his own drum.

- So this is signing off from the greatest living spear hunter in the world.

Sasha Siemel's number one, but really number one, but he's dead, I'm still living.

- Custom made these spears, didn't he?

- He designed and made that spear himself.

The one he called the Black Death.

- [Will] It's specifically deadly.

- [Larry] He'd get up high and let gravity.

- In a tree?

- Yes sir.

- You know that's kind of unfair.

Those animals were sitting ducks.

- [Larry] Well, I wouldn't say unfair, no sir.

- Yeah, that looks deadly.

- Yes, they're very deadly.

- Yeah.

Unless you used the wrong end.

- Yes sir.

- Think about that, that would be a huge mistake.

(upbeat music) Every one of these things on the wall, he killed with a spear.

- [Larry] That is correct, yes sir.

And this was his thing and, he wanted to leave it behind to share for the future, so here it is.

- [Will] Well, he's killing that snake.

- [Larry] Yes, sir.

That's rattlesnake.

- [Will] Did he always hunt in a Hawaiian shirt?

- Apparently he was on the way home one day and saw the rattlesnake cross the road, and he got out and, because we always carried a spear with him, just got out.

- Apparently always had a photographer with him.

(laughing in the background) - Apparently.

- Two dead pigs!

Love live spear hunting!

- I've heard that sometimes Gene would use two spears and simultaneously kill multiple animals.

- Yeah, he has one of his walls in the museum dedicated for multiple kills at the same time.

- [Will] It's a very simple diagram.

- [Larry] Yeah, I mean he, he drew that picture himself.

But I mean, it just kind of simply shows what he did and how he did it.

- He spent a lot more time drawing the pigs than he did the human.

- [Larry] Yeah.

- Here we are in Boar Hall.

All of these are wild boars that he killed.

Here we are in Gator alley.

- Yes sir, Gene did a lot of alligator hunting down in South Florida.

And this is a hall full of different alligators that he harvested.

- This will be a good one for our Christmas card to send around.

- [Will] A lot of deer, he's got.

Oh, come on, he killed a lobster with a spear.

- Well, I don't know.

- So those are Gene's ashes?

- Yes, sir.

- Was there any thought to actually having him taxidermied and put on the wall?

- No sir, no thought for that.

(upbeat music) - [Will] Coming soon on "Wild Travels."

Netherland, Colorado's Frozen Dead Guy Days, a festival So bizarre, we gave it an entire episode.

We'll witness a parade of hearses, the polar plunge, the frozen T-shirt contest, and teen coffin races.

(soft music) Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti, whatever you call it, it's a creature to be reckoned with.

And at the Sasquatch Outpost, you'll meet some true believers who seem to have reckoned with it on a semi-regular basis.

Hey, are you Jim Myers?

- I am, I am.

- And this is the Sasquatch Outpost.

- It is.

- You talk about Sasquatch, you go searching for Sasquatch, correct?

- [Jim] And we sell anything and everything related to Sasquatch that you can possibly imagine.

- Is this kind of an odd place for a Sasquatch Outpost?

Because I thought his stomping grounds were in the Pacific Northwest?

- Well, you're wrong.

He's very much in Colorado.

I'll take you in our museum and show you our map to prove that.

We're very serious about the museum.

We have a lot of fun with the merchandise, but this is to give people an education and hopefully turn some skeptics into believers.

- Is Sasquatch Indian for Bigfoot?

- It's one of the Indian names.

- [Will] There's a lot of different names for this creature.

- There are, Skookum, Yeti, Bigfoot, Timber Giant.

- I like this one, Wild Man.

- Yep.

Boggy Creek Monster.

This is an actual casting from Grays Harbor, Washington.

- What are the dimensions of Sasquatch?

How tall is he usually?

- Let me show you.

If he's nine feet tall, you can imagine running into someone like this in the woods at night.

That would be quite an experience.

Well, this is the map I was talking about.

This is the Colorado Sasquatch sightings.

We have well over 200 pins on our map.

- If this map is true, Bailey is almost Sasquatch ground zero.

- [Jim] It is.

- [Will] Have you had any personal sightings yourself?

- I've had one sighting a couple of years ago.

It was quite a distance away, but I've had quite a few close encounters.

We've probably interviewed 60 or 70 eyewitnesses.

- It was in September of 2015.

I was with my wife and we were not looking for Sasquatch.

We were just driving through the woods as we do from time to time.

And we pulled over to park the car.

I got out and I was just breathing the mountain air, when I saw.

- [Will] Something like this, maybe?

- Much bigger than that.

- Much bigger?

- Much bigger.

It was horrifying.

Suddenly I could smell it.

And then I saw this beast just running through the forest on two legs.

Huge, moving like a ghost.

- [Will] What was the smell like?

- It's sort of like a combination of wet dog and dead wild animal.

- [Will] Okay.

- Once the thing ran down the valley and I couldn't see it anymore, I made a couple of whooping sounds, and after a few attempts it screamed at me.

And that was, that was the worst.

- What kind of sound did it make?

Can you I, you couldn't imitate it for us now?

- No, no.

- [Will] Would you like me to try?

- No.

(Will screaming) - Nothing like that.

- Not even close.

- Okay.

How many Sasquatches do you think exist in the world?

Do you have an estimate?

- There have to be thousands of them.

- I gotta tell you, we drove up from Hooper this morning and I didn't even see a squirrel.

(Jim laughing) No wildlife at all.

And do you consider Sasquatch wildlife, by the way?

- No, we consider them a hominid.

They're like us, but they're different than us.

They're not an ape.

- [Will] What would you do if you ran into Sasquatch?

- Run.

- [Will] Run?

- Yeah, run.

- [Will] You wouldn't try and fight it obviously.

- No, no.

- [Will] That sound itself scares the snot outta me.

I don't know about you.

- Yeah, me too.

- Sasquatch enthusiasts frequently attempt to engage with the reclusive beasts by leaving gifts for them in the woods.

If the Yeti absconds with the gifted objects, it proves they exist.

Right?

John, you're sort of like a partner with Jim in some of these gifting sites, right?

- Yes.

We've had two gifting sites since early in the summer.

We've had amazing success.

They've taken more than 60 gifts from us over that period.

I've left just a wide range of gifts, poker chips, rubber balls, marbles, beads, washers, golf tees, you name it, because there's no primer for gifting Sasquatch.

- [Will] Is there any other possible explanation for something like this happening?

- Humans.

I've eliminated that as a possibility.

- Who else knew about this site?

- Jim.

- Jim, admit it.

You moved this stuff around.

- No.

- Our two gifting sites are about a half mile apart.

I get about halfway from one site to the other.

I hear a bark, bark.

I look down the trail and there's something that looks like a six foot, six and a half foot tall, four foot wide burned tree stump standing in the trail.

I go, what the heck is that?

1001, 1002, it glides into the bushes.

That was not a hiker.

- [Will] Did you you think gorilla for just a second?

- No, just a big broad black blob.

(dramatic music) - We are headed into the woods outside of Bailey.

- We're hunting Sasquatch.

- We're hunting Sasquatch, yes we are.

(dramatic orchestral music) - Jim, we're at the foot of the trail up to Mount Evans.

What are some of the secrets to tracking a Bigfoot?

- [Jim] Tracks.

- Tracks.

- Yeah.

- Broken trees.

- Broken trees.

- Do you ever soak yourself in Yeti urine?

- No, but that's something we should try.

- Count me out.

(dramatic orchestral music) - Now what we try to figure out is, could there be another explanation to how this tree was bent over and twisted?

You or I could not do that.

That's about how high up would you say?

Standing at the bottom, 10 feet?

- [Will] Easily.

- And people say, well it's just the weather.

Then why aren't there trees like that all around us, knocked down?

(dramatic orchestral music) - Sasquatches aren't eternal, they must die at some point.

Why have there never discovered remains, do you think?

- That's a great question.

I get asked it all the time.

I don't have a definite answer.

My suspicion is that they bury their dead.

- So these darn Sasquatches are resourceful.

- Yeah, they're very intelligent.

I know that, I know they're intelligent.

- And where do they, where do they live?

We never see their lairs.

You got a theory?

- I have a theory that they may be living in caves.

- [Will] But why can't we find their caves and search them out there?

Well, when you're talking about a creature that's got shoulders four feet across, you're talking about a heck of a lot of upper body strength.

They're certainly capable of lifting boulders that you and I can't pick up.

- [Will] And covering themselves inside the cave?

- It's a theory.

- [Will] What are they trying to tell us with this grouping of trees?

- I don't know.

It's more than likely if it was a Sasquatch, and it may not be, that they do this between themselves.

- [Will] Are we anywhere near where your sighting took place?

- No.

No.

It's closed, you can't even get back there in a car.

They've got the roads closed this time of year.

- What are you hiding, Scott?

- Nothing.

Nothing.

- No?

Okay.

- This is where John had the sighting he told you about earlier.

When I reenacted it with him and stood there, and he said, "okay, now turn and walk in."

- Did you do the full reenactment in a full body suit?

In the full suit?

- I did not, no.

- If you want to increase your chances of seeing a Sasquatch when you're in the woods, every once in a while look over your shoulder and check the trail behind you, 'cause that's what they do, is they step out onto the trail and observe you, and then step back into the woods real quick.

If you happen to turn around at the right moment, you might catch one.

- Scott, you got a real Clint Eastwood vibe right now.

Why is that?

Regrettably, we never found Sasquatch, but we did see some bear tracks, and then encountered some rocky mountain sheep on the drive back to town.

Jim, if somebody wants to join you at the Sasquatch Outpost, where do they go?

- Main Street in Bailey, Colorado.

- Scott, you're creeping me out.

- You told me to stand here.

(upbeat western music) (upbeat western music continues) - [Will] We're always looking for new destinations, the wilder the better.

So if you've got an idea for our show, let us know.

And thanks for watching.

(upbeat western music) - Wild Travels is made possible in part by Alaska Railroad, providing year-round transportation to many Alaska destinations, traversing nearly 500 miles of wild landscapes between Anchorage, Fairbanks, Denali National Park and more.

AlaskaRailroad.com.

By "American Road Magazine," get your kicks on Route 66 and everywhere else a two-lane highway can take you.

"American Road Magazine" fuels your road trip dreams.

And by.

- [Announcer] It's a wild world, take care out there.

Wear a life jacket, paddling or boating.

Learn more you otter do to keep you and the planet safe at mounthoodterritory.com/otterdo.

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