Travel Update Leaving Yellowstone

Sunday August 21, 2011

We left Cody this morning on our way to Yellowstone!  This is a place we have always wanted to visit and now were on our way there.  It’s about 50 miles to the entrance and another 25 or so to Fishing Bridge, our home for the next 7 days. The road was beautiful, the scenery was spectacular.

After entering the Park we passed through some areas devastated by fire.  Not a pretty site, in fact you could actually smell the burned wood.  They have had many fires here, the big one was in 1988, but they have had other fires, the last in 2007.  All caused by lightning.  The Park position is it is a natural occurrence, no big deal!

After getting set up we went over to the Visitor Center to get maps and tips on where to go.  We then attended a 2 hour ranger program at the Mud Volcano.  This was our first glimpse at thermal features.  Very strange, other worldly, and they stink!  The gas is CO2 from bacteria laced with sulfur (oxides).  It was very weird to walk by and get blasted with this smelly steam.  A couple of pictures follow.

After dinner we attended a ranger program, “Hikes for the tennis shoe hiker”.  It looked to be right down our alley.  We leaned some valuable stuff.  When asked about having Bear Pepper Spray, it was explained the down sides of having it.  Like if you discharge into the wind.  It must contain skunk odorant, because you can’t get it off and is really bad stuff.  Seems as though the best solution is noise.

Monday August 22, 2011

This morning we took a Ranger led boat ride around one end of Yellowstone Lake.  She explained the historic buildings and things about the lake. 

They have a problem with Lake Trout, which were planted in rivers above the lake but have migrated into Yellowstone Lake and raising havoc with Cut Throat Trout the preferred food of bears, heron, pelicans and other animals.  Problem is Lake Trout get too big for these critters, live in deep water and eat up Cut Throat fry.  Their solution, gill net the Lakers, kill them and dump them back in the lake.  I debated the issue with the ranger over how stupid that solution was.  Returning the dead fish will screw up the lake eventually.  They should be removed, in my opinion.

Onto look at some geysers!  First stop West Thumb Geyser Basin.  This place was like another planet.  Using my infrared thermometer, I measured 164 F in some of the geysers.  A couple of pictures follow. 

Next stop Old Faithful.  Watched it erupt with about 500 fellow tourists.  In many cases this is the only stop these folks make to Yellowstone.  To be truthful, we weren’t that impressed.  It shoots steam and hot water maybe 30 feet high for about 5 minutes.  Can’t figure out what draws people.  A picture follows.

We then took about a 2 mile walk along the Upper Geyser Basin.  There are many thermal features (“ranger jargon”) some were erupting, some just bubbling.  These guys are boiling.  It’s not CO2 like at Volcano Pots.  I picked a couple of the more interesting ones to show you.

Well we were pretty pooped out.  Although we “trained” for this, I think the 7700 ft elevation got to us.  So home to rest up for tomorrow!

Tuesday August 23, 2011

We’ve been on the road two weeks now.  Time has flown by.  Today we decided to travel up to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  A large canyon sliced by the Yellowstone River.  First however we passed through Hayden Valley.  This is where the buffalo roam!  There was a very large herd meandering back and forth across the road, which tended to mess up the traffic.  They are approaching mating season, so lots of butt sniffing, and grunting mainly by the bulls hoping to get lucky.

In case you haven’t seen a buffalo, a picture follows.

This canyon, in our opinion, is the most beautiful feature of Yellowstone.  There are two waterfalls, Upper and Lower, with a 1000 foot total drop.  To get an up close view of the Lower falls we hiked Uncle Tom’s Trail, which descends into the canyon via 300 steps, with inclines and switchbacks.  Some pictures follow, but they don’t really capture the beauty here.  The South Rim and North Rim are quite different.  The cliff faces are all different colors, yellow, red, black, tan from the different minerals.  By the way, this whole thing sits on top of a volcano, which rumbles about every day.  In 1974 an earthquake knocked off one of the overlooks and underlying rock on the North Rim.



Upper Falls



Uncle Tom's Trail

Lower Falls

Grand Canyon

We then went over to Norris Geyser Basin.  We didn’t spend a lot of time here as most of the geysers are dormant or are “burpers”.  These geyser basins though are so bizarre.  If you could not see the surrounding area you would think you’re on another planet.  Just like the others these also stink, Mother Earth really has bad breath.  The smell is not just from sulfur, it also has a metallic character, really like nothing else, but quite unforgettable.  Some pictures follow.

It was getting late and we were again tired, so home we went.

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Wednesday August 24, 2011

Today we headed north toward Mammoth, which is the original entrance from Gardiner, MT.  There were several things to see here, Fort Yellowstone, the original gateway arch, and hot springs.  The fort was built to protect the park from destruction of the thermal features and stop the poaching of buffalo.  It is not a fort as you might envision it since there were no battles.  It is a collection of buildings used by the cavalry between 1886 and 1918.  Today, the buildings are used by the Park Service as residences for employees or administrative offices.

When you look at today’s US Park Ranger uniform, it is a throw back to the cavalry uniform.  Most US Park rangers were former cavalry when the service began in 1916 as part of the Department of Interior.  Since Yellowstone was the first national park, they were the first to have rangers.  The pictures that follow show the arch and one of the buildings of the Fort.

The pictures that follow show the hot springs around Mammoth.  The were very unique so there are several.

From Mammoth we traveled across the top of the north loop road to Tower.  Saw the Roosevelt Lodge built in 1906.  Teddy had it built as a center for fishing and adventure trips.  Same use as today. 

We saw another deep canyon cut by the Yellowstone River, and Tower Falls, a narrow but steep waterfall.  A bit of confusion for me, it appears the Yellowstone River is flowing north toward Montana.  I think I need to ask a ranger.  In the meantime enjoy the views, we sure are!  I’ll update you on the ranger’s answer tomorrow

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Thursday August 25, 2011

We asked a ranger our river flow question, and were told that Yellowstone Lake is 2000+ feet higher than the Yellowstone River is at the north end.  So its just a matter of gravity.  The same holds true for the Firehole and Gibbons Rivers which converge in the west side of the park.  The Continental Divide passes through the park, so some of the rivers flow east, some west.  The Yellowstone flows east eventually ending up in the Missouri River in North Dakota.  OK class dismissed!

Today we visited a bunch of the thermal features, geysers, pools, mud pots, fumaroles, and springs that we did not get to earlier in the week north of the Upper Basin.  Catching a geyser eruption is tricky as some are random.  An eruption occurs when the steam pressure builds sufficiently underground to shoot a stream of hot water.  The steam coming from those geysers is nasty.  If the wind carries it to you downwind, it screws up glasses and camera lenses, and smells pretty bad.

Springs and pools have crystal clear water.  Many hot springs feed the Firehole Lake and River.  No fish here, if there were, they’d be already cooked when you catch them.  Only thermophiles live in this water at 150F plus.  Different species  produce different colors depending on the water temperatures, red, yellow, orange, black, brown, and green.  All normal plant matter, trees, flowers, grass are all dead and mineralized, so this creates a very unique landscape as you can see in the following pictures.

The ranger identified some bike trails for us, so planning to give it a go tomorrow.

Friday August 26, 2011

It was threatening rain this morning, and actually did rain a little bit.  So we decided to try a couple bike trails nearby.  Well, that’s not the only reason, we haven’t ridden them much as we should have preparing for this trip.  Fortunately, eventhough they took a beating getting here, they worked OK.

Most of these trails are old service roads.  The surface is a combination of blacktop and dirt.  One of today’s trails followed Yellowstone Lake shoreline, while the other traveled to Natural Bridge, a rock arch.  One of my favorite things is shooting flowers and bugs, so one is below.  At the Natural Bridge, the trail pretty much was a climb all the way, so Lynn decided she wasn’t climbing the last steep 200 feet or so to see the Bridge close up, but I did  The last picture is proof I made it.

On the trail

Yellowstone Lake

Natural Bridge

We may venture to another trail tomorrow, provided we can get out of bed! 

Saturday August 27, 2011

Guess we’re getting used to it, not too sore at all.  So feeling all renewed, we took the bikes over to the Lone Star Geyser trail, geographically, about 3 miles south of Old Faithful.  This geyser erupts every 3 hours for about 30 minutes.  We didn’t hit it, so we waited about 1½ hours.  It was worth the wait!  The show was way better than OF.  You have to work for it though.  Its 2 miles each way, and the seats are logs and rocks.  Oh yeah, no restrooms either.

Lone Star Geyser

We speculate the road was originally open back when, but closed because it couldn’t handle large volumes of people or vehicles.  We were also surprised, no barriers or boardwalks.

This was our last day in Yellowstone.  Reflecting back on things we like and disliked:

Likes:

Colorful pools and canyons; the park shows something different at every turn.  We loved the chromatic pools, huge canyons and waterfalls, and the uniqueness of the thermal features.  The NPS has done an outstanding job with all the boardwalks.  There must be 500 miles of them!

Dislikes:

Too many people, rip-off prices from Xanterra (the concessionaire), and people gawking at buffalo.

On to our next adventure. Grand Teton National Park