Yellowstone Trip Part One

Saturday, the 6th, we set out for Yellowstone National Park.  I had never been there, and Gail had only seen it when she was around nine, except for a brief drive through when it was very cold, rainy, and foggy.  We had an unforgettable journey with highs that brought us to tears, and a couple snafus that almost brought us to tears, too, such as the lost bag of camera gear, and the bear spray incident.  More on that later.

 We brought our Schwinns along.  Here we are in Barstow for a pit stop.  We had planned to take three days to get to West Yellowstone, but did it in two days - about 1,050 miles.

 West Yellowstone, Montana, is a tourist town and western gateway to the park.  Gail startled everyone, including all the foreign tourists, when she set off the alarm on this Pawparazzi vehicle.  The sign said, "Don't Touch!"

 Unlike the other motels, the Ho-Hum was rather empty -  hmmmm.  Our motel, the Evergreen Motel, was a great little place run by a very professional and friendly young couple, Logan and Sara.

 Apparently, the Japanese like to let loose when coming to the wild west!

 Another non-chain motel.

 There were a number of painted bison around town.  They disappeared the next day.  The next morning, we drove into the park along the Madison River and saw our first elk.

 Monday morning I made the terrifying discovery that we had somehow lost a bag containing my "good" camera, lenses, binoculars, and laptop computer. I phoned the motel we stayed at Saturday night in Cedar City, Utah, and they indeed had the bag.  They mailed it to our motel in West Yellowstone, and it arrived Wednesday afternoon.  I think we had left it on the ground behind the car while we were loading up.  Whew!!!  In the meantime, Gail and I had our pocket cameras, but every time we saw wildlife, I was wishing for my telephoto.

 It wasn't long before we saw our first bison.  A big bull was rolling around raising dust, which they do to impress the females.  Notice the burned dead trees.  The fires in 1988 burned over one third of the park.

 We decided to make Monday our geothermal exploration day.  It seems like most everywhere you go there is some kind of steam visible if you look around.  Yellowstone sits over a 60 mile diameter  caldera of molten magma close to the surface of the earth.  600,000 years ago the whole thing blew, in an explosion the size of 1,000 Mt. St. Helens explosions.

 Bubbling mud pots.

 A small geyser and fumaroles.

 A selfie at Cone Geyser.

 The Firehole River is actually warmed by hot springs runoff.

 Some of the boiling pools of water were immense, deep, and colored by various thermophiles that flourish at particular temperatures.

 Our favorite, by far, was the Grand Prismatic Pool which covers several acres, and its colors are other worldly.  We climbed up that mountain in the background to get the pictures below.

 For some reason, Old Faithful gets a lot of attention.  It is next to The Old Faithful Lodge, and there are rows of seating extending for hundreds of yards.

 We were glad to have seen the geothermal sights, but what we were really looking forward to was  hiking away from crowds and seeing wildlife like grizzly bears, wolves, big horn sheep, and moose.

 The inside of the Old Faithful Lodge is unbelievable.  It is immense, made of logs, and was built in a year.

 This is the view into the dining room from above.

 We walked through this geothermal area to get to a hiking trail in the late afternoon.

 All these areas smell of rotten eggs due to the hydrogen sulfide gas emitted.

 Our hike led us up a mountain with an overview of the area.  We had heard so many bear warnings, particularly for grizzly bears, that we were a bit nervous.  We carried the highly recommended bear spray, but weren't too confident, though, as grizzlies can run at you at 35 m.p.h. - not much time to unholster the spray, aim, and fire.

 The trail led to Mystic Falls - very magical in the evening light.

This was to become an everyday event, that is cars stopped in the road for elk, bison, and other wildlife, with people getting out and running towards the animals  One thing very nice about Yellowstone is that most of the park has no roads and therefore very few people more than a few hundred yards from their cars. Also, getting up and out at dawn was a great time to see wildlife with very few other people.  Well, it was time to get back to the motel just outside the park and rest up for another day.