Road Trip Diaries Days 5 & 6: Yellowstone National Park

Good morning! (well, morning for me. I have no idea what time you're reading). I don't know how well I will write about Yellowstone, seeing as I'm now in very gritty, very urban Chicago, but it was absolutely spectacular so I certainly must try. Caitlin and I camped two nights there, so this blog is covering both days 5 and 6.

In A Nutshell: Overview of Days 5 & 6

A little poetry with breakfast was just right. 

Route: Bozeman, MT to Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park, WY.
Miles Traveled: 161 these days, 1,668 total.
Hours in Car: 3.5ish these days, 29.5 total.
Coffee Consumed: Caitlin: 2 today, 9 cups total. Cortney: 1 today, 3 cups total. Combined: 12 cups.

Food highlight of the day(s): A breakfast of hot instant oatmeal and hot cider, consumed on a freezing cold morning while sitting on a little stump amid the pine trees that just happened to be perfectly in the sun's path as it rose.



Quote of the day: A couple of little girls looking at a waterfall: "Look! There's a rainbow! A real rainbow! It must be rainbow dust." "Oh, look, there's green in the water too!" "I see it! The dust must be in the water!" "Yes, the rainbow dust is in the water, then it goes out the waterfall and explodes, and then it goes around the whole world!"

 

Our route from Bozeman to the Indian Creek Campground where we stayed.

A closer look at where we drove around in the park.

Yellowstone: Exceeded even my high expectations. 

     After Caitlin and I set up camp, we drove out to Canyon Village on a ranger's recommendation to see some waterfalls in what is known as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. There is both a North Rim Road and a South Rim Road, and we took the South one. The North Rim Road is a one-way that takes you back to one of the main thoroughfares, and it is a place where a lot of people drive, park, snap a photo, and drive some more. I would have liked to make it out there, because that is how one gets to Inspiration Point, but the South Rim offered us a full dose of hiking through awe-inspiring, "Oh my God" inducing scenery. We parked near the Wapiti Bridge and took the trail to Artists' Point.

There's some of that rainbow dust at Upper Falls.

    Upper Falls is the first waterfall we encountered, named because it is upstream of *wait for it* Lower Falls. The names are somewhat uninspiring, but the falls themselves are probably just too amazing for a name anyway.

Lower Falls is over 300 feet tall. We could not even see the bottom of it.

Notice how the mist spray is enough to encourage moss growth way up the walls of the canyon. 

    The waterfalls were truly sublime - a word I use only occasionally because I am a humanities nerd referring to a particular concept in art, emphasizing the aweful, overwhelming but beautiful power of nature.     

    For quite a different experience, though, that evening I headed out to Mammoth Hot Springs, just north of our campsite at Indian Creek. It is a place where boiling water trickles and bubbles out of the ground, depositing bright white travertine in beautiful, crystal-like patterns while also killing the trees by choking their veins with calcium carbonate. Instead the landscape is decorated by extreme temperature-loving bacteria and other such life forms of various bright colors and slimy consistencies. 

     There are a lot of thermal features in Yellowstone. After driving around there for two days, I came to expect steam and geysers and brightly colored pools to surround every body of water, and the sight of them nonchalantly doing their dramatic geological thing in the middle of the woods became quite commonplace.

Travertine deposits form a multi-level waterfall at Canary Spring in Mammoth.

     We started off our second day with a visit to the Artists' Paint Pots, more thermal features that honestly seem to be from another planet. Bright blue water bubbles up in red and white mineralized soil, while thick white mud gurgles and boils like something out of Star Wars.

Like other thermal areas, the mineral crust formed by the springs is thin and brittle, and sometimes we can see holes where it caved in. According to the informational signs at Yellowstone, dozens of people have boiled to death since the area was first explored by Westerners. 

     Anyway, there was no way I could make my first ever Yellowstone trip and not see Old Faithful. We made the pilgrimage out there, ate lunch, and then 20 minutes before the predicted eruption I went out and sat with a few hundred other expectant people. Sometimes the geyser spits up a little water, just a preemptory warm-up exercise perhaps, and I thoroughly enjoyed hearing all the oohs and camera clicks followed by disappointed aws. But, when it finally did erupt the show was totally worth it- and the sound of the people watching matches the geyser comically well. 

   Old Faithful is certainly the most famous geyser, but I was impressed with how many other really beautiful ones there are. The Info Center at Old Faithful lists all the predicted times for nearby geysers, so one could easily make a day of geyser chasing and have a lot to show for it. I even just stumbled upon a large erupting geyser accidentally, and got a beautiful show along with a face full of sulfur-smelling steam. 

     We spent our last evening in Yellowstone hanging out around a campfire with a couple of guys two campsites down. They could actually afford firewood. And alcohol. What excellent neighbors to have. 

     Leaving Yellowstone marked the beginning of a very long trek across Montana and South Dakota, but the smoky air made for a beautiful sunrise, and since it was early the Mammoth elk herd was out. We drove past a whole group of females with their babies. 

   

 I was driving on about 3 hours of sleep, so we stopped for coffee in the little town of Gardiner and made our way back to I-90, where we would spend much of the next three days. I don't even know which photos to pick to end out this blog, so I will just show all of them. Yellowstone is a hard place to leave.

Perhaps the most scenic coffee stop I have ever made- Gardiner, Montana.