This is why we visit our National Parks. There’s just no other places on earth like them.
Our first day in the park, we did the ‘north circle’, West Yellowstone, Madison, Norris, Mammoth, Tower, Canyon, then back through Norris and Madison to West Yellowstone. For the first part of our tour, we just followed the map, later in the trip I picked up Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks Road Guide. I recommend this book, I even bought a second copy when I thought I’d lost the first one.
Our first stop was Gibbon Falls. There we were introduced to several local phenomenon. First and most enjoyable was the interplay of natural and geologic forces. The Gibbon River has etched a falls through the volcanic tuff forming the edge of the Yellowstone volcano caldera.
The second and less enjoyable aspect was the crowded parking lots. And finally the least enjoyable part was bus loads of tourists jostling to get the best photos in the least amount of time.
Our next stop was Beryl Hot Spring. This is supposed to be one of the hottest springs in the park. It has a much smaller parking area, so there aren’t any buses and there’s time and space to enjoy the spring. My wife has watched the Yellowstone Super Volcano TV show several times. The premise of the show is that the Yellowstone volcano erupts every 500,000 years or so. It’s been 640,000 years since the last eruption. We’re due for a big one, the dust cloud is supposed to reach all the way to Dallas. She had written it all off to TV hype until she saw and felt the energy in this one spring.
Next up was Artist’s Paint Pots. This is a typical geothermal feature area in the park, there are hot springs, geysers, fumaroles and mudpots. It’s a 1.2 mile lolipop trail, you go out, make a loop at the end and return the way you came. It’s the first hike listed in Best Easy Day Hikes in Yellowstone not sure if it’s because it the best easy day hike or the name begins with an A. The in and out part is flat enough, and there’s a boardwalk over most of the thermal grounds, but half the loop is a
100’ climb up and down the side of the hill in the picture above.
At the top of the hill is a large mud pot, it’s a grayish white color and bubbles keep rising up and popping. Depending on the minerals in the ground below the pots the mud has different colors. Iron oxides will produce red pots. Somehow these reminded the early explores of Yellowstone of artist’s paint pots and the name has stuck.
We saw our first wildlife at this stop, two squirrels that made Rocket J. Squirrel look slow. They leaped out of the trees and scampered across the path much too quickly to be photographed. I was a little disappointed that these were the only woodland creatures that I had seen so far.
Parking was a total mess at this stop, it really could have used a bit of adult supervision. I ended up backing my pickup into a bus/RV slot that had it’s other end blocked by a sedan. When I pulled out, another pickup backed into the spot…
Another note here for burdened travelers. This parking lot held 50-60 cars, 2 restrooms and long lines for each convenience. We skipped the wait, drove down the road a mile or so and found two more restrooms with no lines at all. We learned to rely on this trick. By and large all of the free standing conveniences are vault toilets, no running water. It’s a different story in the villages and junctions.
Believe it or not, we’ve traveled less than 30 miles into the park. Our next stop is the Norris Geyser Basin. It’s home to a number geysers and hot springs including Steamboat Geyser, regarded as the highest geyser in the world (300’) and Crystal Hot Spring, which appears to feed Steamboat Geyser. Unfortunately, Steamboat is not predictable, and it’s last recorded eruption was Sept 3, 2014 almost exactly 2 years before I got there. 8^( There’s also a small bookstore and a ‘museum’ that explains the dynamics of the geysers and hot springs. Another section of the display talks about the changing nature of the park, both as a geothermal feature and as a wildlife preserve. Folks have been throwing stuff into geysers for years, hoping to watch the geyser launch them. Turns out that’s not a good thing as it tends to clog the geyser. People have also been trying to steal bits of the geysers since the 1870’s.
Lacking picnic facilities at Norris, we had lunch in the car and then motored off for Mammoth Hot Springs. I was really excited about the terraces at Mammoth, and I had been a bit disappointed in the lack of erupting geysers at Norris. A short distance outside of Norris, there’s some major road construction going on (the road closed for the season the next week) and we got stuck in a one way convoy through the work. Once free of the convoy, we pulled over for a few moments to let all the cars pass, I for one wasn’t in a hurry. A few miles later we crested a hill to this:
There just plodding up the hill, a real live, no fooling, Bison. Now what am I going to do? Well, I stop, make a mad grab for my camera, it’s too far away. Pull out my cell phone and start taking pictures. Trying to blend into the scenery (right a LARGE blue pickup, on a road, near a yellow cliff and a deep ravine), hoping I do nothing that would make this behemoth charge my truck and topple it into the nearby ravine. He just kept plodding along, large and in charge, knowing no one was gonna bother him.
At that moment, this vacation turned from the largest disaster ever to the best vacation of my 62 years. The entire trailer disaster was forgotten, the looming bills for repairs and hotels were ignored, life was wonderful! I would have a silly grin on my face for the next 3 days.
The adventure so far:
Yellowstone 2016: Getting there is Half the Fun?
