Yellowstone NP --- Lamar Valley

The photo above was taken in the Lamar Valley, on the northeast side of the park.  The tiny black dots are actually bison – there were so many!  

Today was our last full day in Yellowstone.  We woke up to find that it had snowed overnight, and the temperature at 9:30 am was a chilly 35 degrees.  There were icicles hanging from the front bumper of the van, and our site’s picnic table was blanketed with a fluffy white layer of snow.

We made a quick stop at the Canyon Lodge to use the internet.  There isn’t any free wi-fi here in Yellowstone ($5 for an hour – ouch!).  So we took the opportunity to update the blog with a few new posts (thanks for your patience, dear readers!).  We also managed to re-arrange our reservations for Denali National Park in Alaska, based on some advice from one of our neighbors (a wildlife photographer who’s been going there for 50 years and advised us to change our campground choice from Riley Creek to Teklanika.  Which we were able to do – we got the last RV site available, too -- yay!)  We still don’t have a cell phone signal anywhere in the park even though we’ve seen folks with Verizon and AT&T yakking away on their phones.  Thanks a lot, T-Mobile.

Once we got all that business out of the way, the sun finally decided to come out and we headed off for the Lamar Valley.  But first we had to cross Dunraven Pass, the highest road in the park.  Not for the faint of heart, it climbs to an elevation of 8,859 feet with sheer drop-offs and no guard rails in some sections.  Of course it was my day to drive (why I always get stuck with the hair-raising drives, I don’t know).  I would rather have been driving anyway, since most of the scary-steep drop-offs were on Kevin’s side of the car.  At the top of the pass, we were rewarded with a gorgeous view of snow-capped mountain peaks.

We knew we were arriving at the Lamar Valley at the wrong time of day to see big predators like wolves and grizzlies – most of the activity takes place in the early morning hours or in the late evening.  In the afternoon you mostly get plenty of pronghorns, one or two elk, and bison as far as the eye can see.  We enjoyed just doing the drive very much, though.  The scenery was incredible and I especially liked seeing all the adorable baby buffaloes tagging along after their less cuddly-looking moms.

We’ve had a great time here in Yellowstone, and I think we’ve managed to see everything that was on our list, and then some.  We took a risk coming here in early June (at this time last year the place was still covered in four feet of snow, one ranger said).  But I think it paid off – the weather was pretty great, the crowds weren’t too bad, and traffic wasn’t a problem at all.  Seeing Yellowstone in all its glory sure makes me appreciate our country’s fantastic national parks system – we’ve loved the ones we’ve been to so far on the trip, but it was really something special to have a chance to fully explore the park that started it all.

Yellowstone NP --- Grand Canyon

For the next few nights we are staying in the Canyon campground, which is on the east side of the park.  The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is an impressive sight.  Unlike the Grand Canyon in Arizona, the walls of this canyon are made of volcanic rock, not sedimentary layers.  Over time, geyser activity and the Yellowstone River have carved out a beautiful canyon with some spectacular waterfalls.  The photo above was taken at Artist’s Point, on the south rim of the canyon – the Lower Falls are visible in the photo (they cascade 308 feet down into the canyon – nearly twice as high as Niagara Falls).  The Upper Falls is 109 feet, and if you look closely at the photo below there is an overlook right at the brink of the falls.  Look how tiny the people are!

There was a ranger discussion at one of the overlooks that gave an overview of how the canyon was created.  Because the volcanic rock was weakened by geyser activity, it was carved much more quickly than the Grand Canyon in Arizona – the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone took less than 640,000 years to create.  The Yellowstone River runs through it and then on to the Missouri River, which then feeds into the mighty Mississippi.  Here’s a view downriver of the rest of the canyon, taken from Inspiration Point on the canyon’s north rim:

Today was also an incredible day for seeing wildlife.  Of course we saw the ubiquitous bison – they are truly everywhere in the park.  But we also saw an osprey nesting in the Grand Canyon, and what we have confirmed as a wolf running across the road on the south rim.  (We asked a ranger, who wasn’t sure.  But another lady at the laundromat happened to be a volunteer with the wolf awareness program – she took a look at our photo and said it was probably a wolf).

We’ve seen lots of elk without antlers (they look like deer to me) but today was the first time we saw an elk with antlers.  And while having a picnic lunch beside the river we saw not one – but two otters swimming in the Yellowstone River, just north of the LeHardys rapids.

Further upstream we saw a Harlequin Duck swimming in the rapids.  And as we drove through the Hayden Valley we saw this coyote who seemed to be just standing stock-still at the roadside.  Then, in one quick movement – she pounced!  I guess she was patiently waiting for her dinner…too bad she missed.

Once she realized she had spectators, she ran away empty-handed.  But comparing her to the other wolf/coyote we saw earlier, she definitely looked smaller and had a different facial profile. 

We are hoping to head to Lamar Valley tomorrow to see some bona-fide guaranteed wolves.  I say hoping because the weather has taken a turn and is supposed to snow tonight and be an extra chilly 56 degrees tomorrow.  Brrrr!

Yellowstone NP --- Fairy Falls Hike

Today we backtracked down near the Midway Geyser Basin.  Just south of the basin is the turnout for the Fairy Falls trail, which leads right past the Grand Prismatic Spring.  But in order to see a bird’s-eye view, you have to hike off trail up a hillside. 

It’s pretty steep and not for small children or anyone who has trouble with their balance.  But the view of the Grand Prismatic Spring is pretty spectacular.  It’s the largest of Yellowstone’s hot springs – 330 feet across and 120 feet deep.

A couple miles further down the trail, we arrived at Fairy Falls.  The spray from the waterfall felt good on a hot day.  While we were sitting admiring the falls, a woman came up and told us that if we hiked a little further down the trail, we’d see an impressive geyser.

We took her advice and followed the trail to a fork in the road.  We came upon a “steaming hole” (as Kevin likes to call them) but it wasn’t very impressive.  We wondered if maybe we’d taken a wrong turn or something.  This didn’t look much like a geyser to us.  Yellowstone has four types of thermal features:

• mudpots - which look like boiling mud
• fumaroles - which is a steam vent, that hisses and sometimes fumes as the groundwater turns to steam
• hot springs - superheated pools of water; the colors vary based on mineral content and heat-tolerant micro-organisms living in the water
• geysers – a hot spring that has a constriction somewhere in the chamber below the earth.  Pressure builds up and eventually the water and steam shoot out into the air.  Only some geysers are predictable (Old Faithful is one, but there are several others in the park).

Anyway, we saw a nearby stream of hot water that smelled of sulphur, so we followed the trail alongside it to see whether it lead to a geyser of some sort.

Jackpot!  We had found Imperial Geyser.  It seems to erupt continuously, so there was a steady fountain of water spraying into the air.  All four of the thermal features were on display nearby, and the cool thing was that you could walk right up to them (if you wanted).  There were no boardwalks here, and no other people.  (The seven-mile round-trip hike is a deterrent to crowds, I guess). 

We were glad someone had told us to keep going – it was only about a half-mile past Fairy Falls,  On the walk back, we paid it forward and told another group of hikers who was unaware of the geyser that it was definitely worth going the extra mile.

Yellowstone NP–The Bear Count Increases!

Hoo-boy, we had a busy day today.  But the most important thing is that we no longer have to put a big goose-egg on the board as far as bear count.  Today we finally saw bears – and grizzlies, no less.  But first, the second bison stampede:

As we were (unintentionally, I navigated us a wrong turn) driving to the west park exit, we came across our first “wildlife traffic jam”.  Note how the bison politely stick to the correct side of the road.

Once we (I) got our bearings, we drove ourselves to the Norris geyser basin.  Yellowstone is a hotbed of hydrothermic activity – it sits on top of a supervolcano, created eons ago – the caldera is more than 40 miles wide and encompasses a large portion of the park.  The Norris geyser basin is home to the world’s tallest geyser – the Steamboat geyser, which shoots water and steam up to 400 feet in the air.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t erupting today (it’s unpredictable).  The rest of the basin was pretty cool, but not as spectacular as the Upper and Lower Geyser Basins we saw yesterday.

We continued our drive all the way up to Mammoth Springs, at the north end of the park.  The terraces here are created by moisture seeping into the ground and becoming superheated by a chamber of magma.  A weak acidic solution is created and as it comes into contact with air at the surface, it precipitates calcium carbonate so that the rest of the solution solidifies into the travertine terraces.  Mammoth Springs is divided into the Upper, Lower, and Minerva Terrace as well as the Palette Spring area.  These photos were taken at the Palette Springs area.

We actually drove a few hundred yards into Montana today, and were straddling the 45th Parallel – we are halfway to the North Pole!  We turned around before we got to the North Entrance to the Park (we will eventually go out of the park this way as we continue to Glacier National Park next week).  But what we were really in search of on this section of the road were the hot springs that you can swim in – it’s called the Boiling River.  The lady who worked at the wine shop in Jackson told us how to get there – it’s just 2 miles north of Mammoth on the right.  Unfortunately, the turn off was closed due to hazardous high water.  But that didn’t stop us; we parked across the street at a picnic area and hiked to Boiling River anyway to see how dangerous it was.

Okay – we could see why they had closed the area down.  The Boiling River is a stream of scalding hot water that runs into the Gardiner River.  At the intersection of the stream and the river, the Park Service has built a series of steps so that you can swim in the Gardiner where the hot water intermingles with it.  In the photo below, the Gardiner River is the larger river on the upper left; the Boiling River is the darker one on the bottom right.  Note the yellow police tape (“Do Not Cross”) barricading the entrance steps to the Gardiner river.

The water in the Gardiner was flowing rapidly downstream.  A few hundred feet downstream from the hot springs bathing area we saw this rapid – a wall of skull-crushing rocks.  One false step upstream and you are in concussion territory.

I’m sure at low water, this is a great place to swim.  But not today.  So we chickened out on the Boiling River.  At first I was disappointed because it took about an hour to find it, hike to it, and decide not to swim.  But it just may have led to perfect timing to see our first grizzly bears – an hour earlier and they wouldn’t have been there.  As we were driving back to the Madison Campground we saw a traffic jam just south of Old Bunsen Peak Road.  Sure enough, it was a mama grizzly and her two cubs.  Both Kevin and I have seen several black bears before, but this was our first grizzly sighting.  One of the main differences is that grizzlies have a large muscular shoulder hump that allows them to dig up plants for food.  They also have elongated snouts and larger claws than a black bear.  Luckily we were a safe distance away from this group.  But from a distance, the cubs looked so cuddly!

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Well, we are here – at the crown jewel of our nation’s park system – Yellowstone.  We came in through the south entrance (along the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Parkway) and spent the entire day exploring the Lower and Upper Geyser Basins.  In the photo of Old Faithful above, take note of the hordes of people to the left.  This is nothing; by July it will be a total madhouse here.  We are glad to be here on a slow weekend.

In fact, it just snowed here last weekend, so I think that may have kept some of the visitors away.  On the road in, especially in the higher elevations, there were enormous snowdrifts (plough remnants) bordering both sides of the road.  Yellowstone gets something like 400 inches of snow per year (might be more, I wasn’t paying full attention during the visitor center film) but that’s a LOT of snow.  Also interesting to note, just today we crossed the Continental Divide three times (the park road criss-crosses it).  The Continental Divide is the high point of North America – all rivers to the east flow towards the Atlantic Ocean; all rivers to the west flow towards the Pacific.

Yellowstone National Park is so enormous, it takes several days just to drive through and see everything; let alone do any hiking or other activities.  We’ve decided to take it by sections.  Most of the big-name attractions of Yellowstone were on the route we took today – from the South Entrance to the Madison Campground.  We took so many photos, I am just going to list them with captions.

The boardwalk along the Lower Basin – we saw one kid walking along the side rail like a balance beam (no parents in sight).  Yikes!  The water below can scald you.

The Old Faithful Inn is a National Historic Landmark.  The interior is all rustic wood décor – the enormous fireplace was unfortunately under repair while we were there.

At the Black Sand Basin, the runoff from the hydrothermal features runs right into the nearby creek.

Here’s Kevin at one of the springs at the Black Sand Basin.  Various minerals, algae, and microbacteria cause the rainbow of bright colors.

The Sapphire Pool, in Biscuit Basin, is one of the park’s deepest-hued pools.  Note the storm clouds on the horizon.  We had a few great hours of sunshine, then the weather deteriorated.

Clouds reflected in the Midway Geyser Basin

One of the last geysers we saw before heading to the campground

Just across the main highway from the Madison Campground was this enormous herd of bison – this was our first introduction to the herd.  We would later get to know them better when they trampled through our campground en masse.

But I get ahead of myself.  We checked in to our reserved site at Madison.  We were glad to have a reservation because the campground was surprisingly pretty full.  Since I did all the driving today, Kevin made us a delicious dinner of smoked four-cheese mac & cheese and chili.  Just as he was boiling the water (using the stove’s grate, of course), it started to rain.  Within minutes we were hearing some very loud “ping!”s on the roof and hood.  That’s right – hail.  Coming down in cringe-inducing, golfball-sized chunks.  Luckily the van didn’t sustain any damage.  If we’d still been out on the road, it probably would have.

We thought that was the worst that could happen.  But as we were finishing our meal, Kevin looked up and spotted the herd – and I mean the entire herd – of buffalo we saw earlier migrating through the campground.  Half a dozen of them moseyed right through the campsite next door.

The guy next to us was so oblivious he stood stock still taking photos from a distance of about 10 feet.  Until one of the more ornery members of the herd decided to charge him.  It wasn’t a halfhearted attempt, either – this bison meant to kill, or at least maim.  Luckily the guy ran behind the bathroom building and kept it between them.  I guess this is why they include this handout when they give you the maps to the park.

Great Alaskan Road Trip: Week 3 Roundup

Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we are overall:

• Total miles driven: 1906
• Total days on the road: 18
• Total miles hiked: 31.7

Here are some interesting stats for this week:

• Fuel stops: 2 (diesel: $3.82 / gallon in Orem, UT; $3.93 in Afton, WY)
• Technical issues: 1 (The door latch leading to the bathroom broke, locking us out.  Unable to uninstall it from the outside, we had to break it off to get the door open.  I kind of knew from the get-go that the flimsy handle with its push-button mechanism wouldn’t last very long. It’s not a problem when we are parked, because the door usually holds itself closed. But when we are moving, it’ll swing open and block the view from the driver’s rearview mirror.  We are now using a sophisticated system of painter’s tape and a heavy toolbox to hold it closed while driving.)
• National Park Service sites visited: 1 (Grand Teton)
• Sunrise Wake-up Calls: 1 (see photo above, taken from the shore of Jackson Lake.  The lengths we will go to for a good photo op!)
• Moose sighted: 7 (including 2 calves)
• Marmots sighted: 3 (they are adorable; I want to take one home)
• Bison sighted: too many to count (I stopped counting at 38, but we saw a herd of 150 or more on the Antelope Flats road)
• Bears sighted: 0 (still hoping)

Momma moose and very young calf; herd of bison roaming Antelope Flats

So, the bear count is still at zero (thanks a lot, bear bell), but I am optimistic that we’ll see a few next week while we are in Yellowstone.

Life in the van is still pretty good.  I had thought we might need a break from it and want to stay some nights in a hotel, but so far we have really enjoyed it.  It is nice to basically have your entire house at your disposal in case you want a snack, or to change clothes for hiking, etc.  Of course we are only three weeks in; I am sure at some point it might feel a little confining, especially in bad weather.

One thing that we have come across about living in the van vs. living on the boat is that in certain campgrounds, you end up really getting to know your neighbors because the sites are so close together.  So far, we’ve mostly been lucky; we’ve met some friendly older folks who’ve had good tips about where to go and what to do, we’ve camped next to a couple of nice families with young kids – after 7 or 8pm you wouldn’t know they were even there, bedtime rules apply even in the wilderness, I guess.  But last night, we had probably the most bizarre neighbor ever.

Our site at Signal Mountain campground had a pretty view of the mountains and water, but it was awfully close to the site next to us.  We’d deliberately picked a spot in the generator-free zone because we weren’t planning on running ours at all.  The site next door was occupied by a single small tent, but the car was gone so we figured we’d be next to a quiet solitary hiker-type or something like that.

In the early evening, just as I was getting dinner together, we heard a weird groaning sound.  We weren’t sure but it sounded like a person.  A few seconds later, we could hear some faint guitar strumming and the guy began to really wail it out, grunting and groaning along to songs I didn’t recognize.  Now, I’m a big fan of acoustic music (lots of very talented musicians in my family), but this was just awkward because it was so incredibly loud and gutteral.  Plus, he was sitting on his picnic table, just 8 feet or so from ours – where we had planned to eat dinner. 

That’s our table top in the lower right corner, and his campsite and “stage” just a few feet away

What to do?  It was silly to eat inside the van; the weather was so gorgeous.  But it felt very strange setting up dinner on the picnic table right next to the one-man show.  (I can’t explain – you really had to see and hear him to realize the weirdness of it.  It was one of those situations where you get embarrassed for someone else, you know what I mean?)  We noticed the other campers in nearby sites were just ignoring him.  So we went outside and proceeded to have our dinner, talking quietly, so as not to disturb him.  I noticed he was knocking back pint-sized cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, and every so often he would get up to take a pee break in the woods (the bathroom was just one campsite over, but whatever). 

During one of his “set breaks”, I invited him to come sit and chat with us (and stop wailing).  He was a real nice kid, and didn’t seem mentally disturbed or anything, but definitely something was a little off.  We chatted for an hour or so, but it was getting dark and we’d been up since before sunrise so we politely told him we had an early start and were going to sleep. 

Once we were inside, his party really started.  Even with all the vents and windows closed we could hear him singing loudly until well after quiet hours (10pm).  He had a little radio with him and even when he wasn’t playing he’d sing along and every so often get up and do a little dance by himself around his campsite.  Just.  Really. Weird.

So we’ve learned an important lesson about choosing a campsite if the neighboring site is already taken.  The thing is, with a motorhome, the people spend most of their time inside.  Even if they’re running a generator it isn’t too bad, you can tune out the monotone rumble.  But with campers in tents, they are outside pretty much right up until bedtime – there’s nowhere else for them to go.  So far we’ve been choosing our sites based on scenery, whether it’s level, proximity to the bathroom, etc.  We’ve just added one more criteria to the list – proximity to neighbors, specifically those in small blue tents with a case of PBR and a guitar case.

Grand Teton --- The Tell-Tale Bell

So after yesterday’s run-in with the moose, Kevin prudently decided to invest in some professional-grade bear spray.  He also bought a bear bell, which is just an oversized jingle bell that you attach to yourself while hiking.  It is supposed to let the bears know that you are coming so that you don’t startle them and, you know, get mauled.

At the trailhead for Leigh Lake, Kevin gave me the bell and told me to tie it to my shoe (supposedly it makes the most noise that way – I can vouch for this).  I did as requested, and for the next 20 minutes I slowly descended into madness as I heard an unnervingly loud jangle with each footstep.  Unable to take it any more, I stopped short, untied the bell, and handed it to Kevin with a gruff, “Here, you wear it.” 

I thought I would be free of the jingling, but I had another thing coming.  I was hiking in the lead, and the rest of the way along the trail was like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.  I sped up – the bell sped up right along with me.  I slowed down – and I could hear its relentless ting-a-ling-a-ling coming ever closer.  I couldn’t hear myself think; let alone hear any of the relaxing forest sounds usually associated with a hike in the woods – no soft brush of the wind through the pines, no lapping of waves on the lakeshore, no birds chirping.  Just the jingling.  Forevermore.

When the time came for us to turn back for the van, I let Kevin lead.  Trying to avoid a “The Shining” moment, I purposefully dawdled behind…emptying imaginary rocks from my shoe and taking out of focus photos…anything to let him get out of earshot so that the maddening roar would dull to a faint tinkle.  Honestly, I’m not sure how these bells can actually function as bear deterrents – I wouldn’t be surprised to see some irate bear come crashing through the woods just to take a swat at you out of sheer annoyance.

At any rate, the thing worked.  At no point on the hike were we attacked by bears, trampled by moose, or pecked at by deadly ravens.  In fact, in six miles we didn’t see a shred of wildlife – not a marmot, not a squirrel, not even a chipmunk!  We saw plenty of butterflies, but I’m certain that’s simply because butterflies don’t have ears. 

But once we were back at the van and the bear bell was safely stowed in a sock drawer, we saw plenty of wildlife.  An antelope playing in the field, a mule deer grazing near our campsite – all of Creation came out to enjoy the blessed silence.

 

Over dinner (delicious bison cheeseburgers), we had a discussion about the vile bear bell and whether or not we should continue to use it.  We came to what I like to call “a philosophical difference of opinion” on the matter.  So stay tuned.  There may be more bear bell in our future.