On the road: Yellowstone

Maybe Sergio and I are starting a trend of visiting national or state parks.  To be honest, it's something that we occasionally did while growing up, but we were never a camping or motorhoming family (thanks, Mom and Dad.  no, really.  I'm very glad).  That being said, as I'm exploring this new identify, "Hiker Sarah," it does seem worthwhile to get out in the world a little bit and see some spectacular scenery (see my Sedona entry for the last trip of this sort we took).  Anyway, I visited Yellowstone ten years ago with my family, and because tickets into Bozeman, MT were pretty cheap, we decided to take the long Fourth of July weekend (four days) and spend it in Montana and Wyoming in Yellowstone National Park.  Bring on the bison.  And the bears.

Barry and I in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, 2003

It's funny.  I don't think I really appreciated Yellowstone as much as I should have the last time around. I was in college and my family did a ten-day road trip from Ridgefield through Boise to Jackson Hole, then through Yellowstone and on to Helena, and Coeur d'Alene.  It was epic.  But despite seeing some of the most beautiful scenery in the country, it didn't quite captivate me the way it does now. Perhaps like wine, national parks are better appreciated with age -- of both you and it, I suppose...

We landed in Bozeman, picked up our brand-new Buick (with two whole miles on the odometer!), and started a nice drive down to West Yellowstone.  It was the Fourth of July, so traffic was pretty light.  The weather was a bit stormy but the drive, even though it was outside of the park, was beautiful.  There is something nice about Montana -- it's really earned the nickname "The Big Sky State," I do believe -- because it is simultaneously open and framed in, if that makes sense.  When we got into West Yellowstone, most of the town was closed down for a Fourth of July parade, so we parked on the outskirts of town and found dinner until the traffic cleared.  Unfortunately we had no phone service, so finding the hotel was a bit of an adventure.  Most of the lodging in West Yellowstone is the same -- upscale motels -- and ours was fine.

We got up early the next morning and were ready to hit the park.  The challenge with Yellowstone is that there is SO MUCH to see.  The guidebook we purchased was pretty good, though it was a little oddly organized and didn't include distances between attractions.  Time and space is disorienting in the park -- distances were both longer and shorter than we had imagined.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone 

My handsome hiker

Our first day started cold in West Yellowstone, but it warmed up as we started into the park.  Sergio picked a nice six-mile hike on the rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone that went into the canyon at one point (on a set of stairs bolted to the canyon wall, and you can imagine how I felt about that), then wound down the canyon's edge, then skirted inland around a few lakes, one of them sulfurous and a few geothermic vents, then out into a vast, grassy meadow.  What was fascinating to me was that you just had to get a hundred yards away from the main waysides -- like Artist's Point, for example -- and then you were more or less alone.  I had forgotten that Yellowstone is attractive to vacationers who want to simply stay in their cars and drive around.  Now, don't get me wrong -- especially if you are elderly or out of shape, this is a great plan.  But as much as I want to follow a Chinese tour group -- oh wait.  That is the worst idea ever.

We had the trail to ourselves! 

It was a bit warm, so we stopped along the hike a bit.  One of the lakes was teaming with mosquitos, which all proceeded to latch onto my legs.  The bug spray was nowhere to be found (someone left it at the hotel).  The hike was quite lovely, though, and we got to see several of the landscapes in six short miles. We headed to the other side of the canyon for lunch, and then decided to go and look at some geysers -- Old Faithful, to be precise.

I first saw Old Faithful when we visited Yellowstone as a family.
At the time, it seemed pretty impressive.  We waited on a bench for about thirty minutes before it finally erupted.  In the intervening decade, Old Faithful has become, as the guidebook calls it, an example of industrial tourism.  There was a gigantic new visitor's center, ice cream and cafes and postcards everywhere, and more than one stadium-sized parking lot.  This is industrial tourism at its best, and though I enjoyed walking around the geyser park, I didn't enjoy Old Faithful as much as I remembered.  There is something to the peace and beauty of the park... just not when you share it with thousands of other people.  They can be there, don't get me wrong.  But elsewhere, ideally.

We had a nice dinner in town (nothing says Montana! like a gory nature DVD running on loop in a pizza parlor, kids with mouths open in shock, pepperoni and cheese in hand, while a lion kills an antelope) -- sadly we had to run through the heaviest rainstorm, complete with Hollywood-magnitude thunder and lightening to get there.  But it was exciting to sit down and think about what we wanted to do the next day and then ravenously devour small-town pizza.  Why do little towns have such great pizza, pray tell?  And ice cream!  Man -- nary a vacation passes in a small town when I don't find amazing ice cream.  I always pack extra Lactaid tablets for small-town trips.

Geysers!  Hot springs! 

The guidebook detailed lots of horrific deaths in the park, from bison gorings to camp stove explosions, but the saddest, and possibly stupidest, was the story of a young man who dove into a hot spring after his dog.  Both died.  Dog people. The next day, as we were walking along the boardwalks, a few feet above the ground, it was easy to see how a wayward child or pet could be entranced by the bubbling mud pots, the colorful pools, and the powerful geysers and maybe, just maybe, try to step forward for a closer look.  Some of the geysers erupted very powerfully, and if the wind was just right, you could feel the waters and the steam on your face.  We really liked some of the geyser parks (we visited several) -- and we even made it to the Grand Prismatic Spring, which I missed last time.  It was next to a geyser that hadn't erupted in five or seven years, or something like that, and they didn't know when it would erupt again.  Remember those horrific deaths I was just talking about?  There is this huge hole in the ground, and who knows when it will spew again!  Freaky.

Grand Prismatic Spring

Towards the afternoon, we made our way up to Mammoth, where the elk had decamped for the afternoon, forcing park rangers to stand and direct pedestrians and traffic around the grazing herds, but we didn't stop for long.  We drove up the Lamar Valley, which the guidebook says is (supposedly) the "Serengeti of the Americas."  First of all -- no lions?  Don't call it the Serengeti of anything.  Secondly, it was beautiful and there were lots of animals, but they were all dots.  You couldn't get closer.  I bet, if I just started walking around in the bush in Africa, I'd be eaten by a lion.  I'd just come around a corner and boom! tigers and giraffes.  They were here -- just far, far away.  So we enjoyed the drive, then headed back up over the highest points in the park in the biggest hailstorm of my life.  Weather in this park?  INSANE.  Let's just say I'm glad I wasn't driving.

Favorite landscape photo -- one lonely tree.

We had a few more things we wanted to do our on last day -- predictably they were related to animals and photography.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point-of-view) we didn't see any bears wandering around the park.  Eagles and osprey? Check!  Elk and bison? Check.  Lots of crawly things? Check!  But no bears -- or wolves.  There was a sanctuary in West Yellowstone for both, and I appreciated it even more because they animals there were mainly "nuisance" animals -- basically, these were bears that had been orphaned and never learned to fend for themselves, leading them to scavenge and move into human territory to consume -- you guessed it -- garbage.  Even the birds there were seriously wounded, so it was refreshing to learn about the animals as well as know that these animals were safe and happy instead of dead.  Traffic going into the park was awful, which shortened our time at the Mammoth Terraces.

Bison have taken over the road! 

Remember when you went and saw something as a kid on your vacation and then when you saw it years later you were a bit underwhelmed?  Yeah, well that was the Mammoth Terraces.  I remember them being MUCH cooler the first time around -- gushing and steaming and shining white, but they weren't the gleaming white towers I remembered, which was sort of a let-down.  But we had to head out of the part to drive back to Bozeman so we could catch our flight, and it was a bit longer of a drive than we expected.  Our flight home was interesting -- there was a woman and a small child behind me and the small child (maybe 3 or 4) thought it would be fun to kick my seat for two hours.  Early in the flight I asked (very nicely) both the mom and the child if she could stop.  And as it continued, I asked again.  And then I had to tell the mom off, which I don't really enjoy (I believe it ended with something along the lines of, "If you can't get your child to behave, maybe you should consider driving next time."  I believe she tried to say something back, but noise-canceling headphones ftw!).  I don't have kids, so I can't know how challenging it is to get them to behave.  But some parents are so lazy!  They had NOTHING for this child to do.  Nothing.  The mom was ignoring the child completely and the child was trapped in a window seat.  Now, what is there to do?  Kick!  From a child's point of view, this makes perfect sense!  I felt sorry for the child, in some way.  It's one thing if a child is a little fussy or excited.  It's another when a parent is irresponsible and is more interested in reading a magazine than making sure that her child isn't being a pain in the ass.

So.  Anyway.  Yellowstone.  I'm laughing at myself right now because, in some ways, that flight really sums up my frustrations about the trip.  My green side comes out when I travel -- I get frustrated with stupidity, inefficiency, and lack of awareness.  I guess that's just how I grew up -- if you were confused or unsure, step out of the way and figure it out!  And when you're around others, be kind and respectful (or as my mother used to ask us, "Were you born in a barn?!").

My favorite memories, though, will just be the time that we spent together exploring, taking turns reading about different features out of our guidebook, or running through the biggest thunderstorm EVER and trying to synchronize our steps.  Sergio and I have a lot of fun traveling together, and we're on the eve of a three-week adventure to Portugal, Spain, France, and The Netherlands.  Wherever in the world we are together, we're likely to have an adventure...

xo
Sarah

I love my Papito :)