Yellowstone

As most of you know, we went to Yellowstone this last weekend. The following is our tale…(rather ominous beginning, eh?!)

We woke up Saturday morning, had breakfast at The Dive Bakery (that’s its real name, honestly!) and then hit the road for the 3 hour drive to Yellowstone. The drive itself was pretty nice. We stopped in West Yellowstone for lunch at this 50’s lunch café thing with sandwiches named stuff like “Betty Boop” like they had in Pulp Fiction. Anyway, it was a nice lunch before our adventure began.

The first thing you’ll notice as you drive up to the west entrance for Yellowstone is the people. There are people all over the place in RV’s, cars, vans…and the ever-present Subaru Outback. We sat in line for a while and ended up in the wrong line (through no fault of our own) and we got chastised by a rangerette with a bad attitude. Personally, I almost cried because I felt so bad about being in the wrong line, but I got over it.

We finally got into the park after paying $25 for a carload of people. After driving for a bit, we saw a large crowd off in the distance and a bunch of cars parked along the road. As we were new to the Yellowstone experience, we stopped and got out to see what the big deal was. As it turns out, there aren’t enough animals in the park anymore due to forest fires, poaching and smog, so they’ve resorted to putting animatronic animals all over the place to give the impression that Yellowstone is still “untouched”. This was the best animatronic Elk I have ever seen. It was laying on the ground, strategically placed such that nobody could get close (it was on the other side of a creek) and see that it was fake. It even moved an ear! I’m telling you, Disney World has nothing on the animatronics at Yellowstone.

We piled back in the car, slightly upset at being swindled by good robotics, and drove for a while before we got to this place called Paint Pot. It looked, seriously, like someone had poured several truckloads of paint into this hole and allowed water to bubble up through it. Granted, it was a) not paint and b) not just air…but that’s what it looked like. We walked around for a bit and saw several other cool geysers and pools with amazing colors (I think Industrial Light and Magic has a hand in that place…animatronics, brilliant colors, evil-looking steam from vents…yeah, ILM invested TONS in that place).

After a bit more of driving about, walking and seeing Buffalo which, I think, is Indian for “big cow”, we got to Old Faithful. There was only one minor problem…we got there right after it had gone off! So, we walked about, saw a moving documentary about “the ever-changing landscape that is Yellowstone”, fought tons of people and generally just let time pass. At one point, we sat down on a log next to this lady and we talked with her for a bit. Nice lady, but I think she was ready to go home or something. She sounded tired.

Time passed, as it tends to do with that monotonous regularity for which it has become famous, and it was finally 5:30…time for blastoff. We, as a crowd, waited anxiously for what promised to be a moving event. A hush came over the crowd as we all held our breath in anticipation. Finally, just as many faces were beginning to look that sickly shade of blue that only means “I haven’t taken a breath in a while”, there was a bubbling from Old Faithful. Now, I’m going to be perfectly honest here…I was let down. I was expecting some 300 foot tall geyser of water to shoot up into the air with steam and music. Cherubs were supposed to sing, dang it! Unfortunately, the water only went 50-60 feet up in the air, it seemed. Some steam, but definitely no cherubs. It was a rather anti-climactic event following the years of hype. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t go see it…but I was let down.

We went back to where we were staying that night and rested. The next morning, we got up and went back into the park for day 2 of the Yellowstone adventure!

We stopped off at Steamboat Geyser which, as it turns out, happened to be my favorite of the geysers (by the way, this is pronounced “guy-zer” and not “gee-zer” (as in “old man”) like I heard someone say…hehe). It hadn’t actually had a full eruption since 2005 at which time water was shot 200-300 feet in the air. We weren’t privy to anything like that, but the 40 foot sprays of water and steam more than made up for it. Also, that area is surrounded by more colorful pools of water.

Yellowstone is also home of “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” (lucky for them they purchased it years ago and had it delivered there or else the name would have had to be changed…how embarrassing would THAT be?). Honestly, it was really quite spectacular. I mean, it’s amazing to think that water could carve something that deep through rock (water being soft and rock being…well…rock). There were some awesome waterfalls here too that, had it not been for the tourists (damn them!) we could have spent more time looking at.

Next, we went to Yellowstone Lake (please see above joke about Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone...apparently they got a package deal) and were really only one of two sets of people on the top of this hill looking down on the lake. You could see the Grand Tetons from where we were standing. We also got to see this boiling mud pot that was just freaky. I mean, mud isn’t supposed to boil (I’m sure I’ve thought about trying this at home at one point or another)…but there it was…hot and smelling of sulfur. Yum!

I am happy to report that at this point, I only had 2 more animals that I wanted to see (the list was slightly longer than 2 before we got there): a bear and a moose. Now, as it turns out, I wanted to see 2 of the more reclusive animals in Yellowstone and I had made up my mind that if I saw one of them, I would just write off the other one. Well, we were driving along and a LARGE crowd of people (so many that it was hard to drive) had stopped along the road. We asked what the deal was and someone said, “There’s a bear along the ridge.” We all jumped out and started looking. We saw not one, but 4 black bears that day. Black bears, while bears, aren’t as ill-tempered as their brown (Grizzly) cousins…so that was a good thing. Then, as we left there and drove a bit further, the car in front of us stopped along the road and they got out, so we got out too and, wouldn’t you know it, there was a moose about 400 yards away. It was chewing on the top of this lodgepole pine tree (moose are big!...well, ok, it was a baby tree) and mucking about in the marshy areas. My list was complete! Then, just because we rocked, we also saw some young bighorn sheep just munching grass along the side of the road.

Day 3 was fairly short. We went to Mammoth Springs and saw some of the more interesting rock formations/deposits that we had seen the whole time we were there. And the colors…they were just unreal! I wish cameras would capture the essence of a place more than just the picture…the smells, the feelings, the colors. Photos don’t do it justice. We ended up leaving Yellowstone and drove through the north gate. From there all the way back to Helena, we drove through smoke as there were several large fires.

I know it sounds like I had a horrible time, but aside from a nice sunburned scalp and forehead, I had a great time.