Here are some varied shots of cool stuff we saw at the park.
This was a beautiful falls we could see from the road. I saw it out the window and yelled for Scott to stop so we could get out and hike up closer.
Bye, bye, Yellowstone. That was our last stop before exiting the park to Grand Tetons National Park.
Scott and I went to the Upper Geyser Basin on our way out of the park and hiked the basin. We walked around the back of Old Faithful and huddled under a tree to keep out of the rain while we waited for it to go off. It did not disappoint and was spectacular.
The basin around Old Faithful has a boardwalk over the fragile thermal crust so you can walk around and get pretty close to fumaroles, pools, and geysers. We were amused at the sign in many languages meant to scare you silly so you don’t walk onto the hot ground.
It was fascinating to see how many people were NOT deterred by the scary sign, even though it was obvious just by looking that the crust is VERY thin in many places and you would be boiled like a frog if you fell in. Whatever.
We were obedient tourists who stayed on the boardwalk. Also Scott, the geologist, has a healthy respect for geothermal features.
There were some fascinating geysers that pumped, bubbled, spouted, and gurgled. Because it was cool and overcast there was a fair amount of steam all over the place and it really looked amazing and otherworldly.
We were halfway to Morning Glory Pool when the rain started up again. Since we were in the middle of the basin, there was nowhere to go but onward, so we pressed on and made it, albeit totally drenched. Because of the cloud cover our picture isn’t too impressive and doesn’t show the great colors. It’s really a pretty blue in the deep part.
On the trail back to the car we were pretty much alone, came around a curve, and found a bison just standing by the trail next to a warm geyser. We approached quietly and I couldn’t resist the photo op. Scott says I was closer than the requisite 25 yards, but I never left the trail, so I felt justified. He kept his eye on it the whole time and was giving instructions for where I was supposed to run if it charged me. (See previous post on how out of shape I am and you’ll laugh yourself silly at the thought of me racing for the trees in front of a charging bison). Anyway, we got a good shot on my phone and I posted immediately to Facebook because the Old Faithful area has cell coverage. The wonders of technology!
We quietly headed off down the trail with the bison not deigning to acknowledge us, and farther on we were herded off the trail by rangers who were cordoning an area where a bison was eating. Scott tried to tell one of them that we had just passed a bison much closer to the trail than this one they were protecting, but he was being harassed by non-cooperative tourists and didn’t really get it, so we moved on. Hope nobody was trampled later.
Since it’s nigh unto impossible to see grizzlies or wolves in the park, (although various Playmill actors have seen both this summer), we took a little trip to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana. It’s actually an impressive facility where injured animals or animals that can’t survive in the wild are able to live out their lives. One of the programs there reads like this:
Keeper Kids – Join us for an exciting activity especially designed for kids ages 5-12. In this unique program, kids first learn about grizzly bear eating habits and then accompany the naturalist and animal keeper into the bear habitat to hide food for some of our resident bears. After the food is hidden, kids get to learn how bears use their sense of smell to search out food.
So the kids go in the enclosure, hide the food, then watch the bears digging all over to find their food. It was fun to watch the bears turning over rocks and logs and fun to watch the kids exclaim when a bear found the food they had hidden. I should mention that at no time were there grizzlies and children in the enclosure at the same time. In case you were wondering.
The center has two wolf packs with different Alpha wolves and the walkways are quite close to the enclosures so we got some great close-up views.
Brian took our picture on the bear couch in the gift shop. Evidently it’s the thing to do because everyone was getting their picture taken there.
Mammoth Hot Springs is a far drive north from the west entrance to the park at West Yellowstone, Montana. We drove and drove and got stuck in traffic jams and by the time we got there, we didn’t have much time to see it. Mammoth has a thriving community of hotels, restaurants, and shops as well as a resident elk herd that beds down in the middle of the intersection, along with its own signs and rangers to watch over it.
The springs were huge, so I guess that’s why their name is Mammoth, and there are boardwalks all over the place. We walked around a little of it and climbed to the top of one plateau, but there’s a lot to see there. All the thermal stuff is so interesting in Yellowstone.
While we were visiting Yellowstone, we went into the park each day, but had to get Brian back early for his theater call times. There is more driving from place to place in YNP than we anticipated, so we spent a lot of time traveling each day and then didn’t have much time to see stuff once we got there. Especially when there were daily traffic jams due to bison near the road. So we did a “power tour” and tried to see the high points, or what we could get to easily.
It was an overcast day but still warm and quite windy when we walked around the basin. We saw the mud pots and some geysers going off. Scott and I walked this area on May 1 during our quick jaunt after dropping off Brian and the pots were more liquid and bubbling like crazy. The sign said they are more active in spring than the rest of the year and it was true. They were much thicker and more like bubbling mud in July. Interesting. Also there were more people.
We hiked straight down on the North Rim to the Brink of the Lower Falls. The trail takes you right to where the water rushes over and it was awesome and powerful!
Scott took a picture of me gazing into the water because I love all things water and moving water is the best! I suggested we take a US tour of all the famous waterfalls in the country so I could bask in the views, but Scott didn’t take the bait. (I was organizing photos recently and found that we actually have quite a few photos of me that look similar to this. 😉 )
After all this awesome viewing we had to climb the trail straight back up. It’s a higher elevation than our mountain home. Brian was breathing normally, Scott was huffing some, and I had to keep stopping because I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest. No, I am not in as good a shape as when Scott and I did all that hiking three years ago. Pity, because that was a steep trail!