Thursday, October 4, 2007

XC_text_5: Yellowstone

XC_text_5_Yellowstone_926.doc

Wednesday Sep 26

For our first day in Yellowstone, we started with a ranger orientation talk.
The park loop road is 142 miles, with a crossover making it a figure-8
so you can do the south half one day, and the north half another day.
The south half includes the most famous geyser sites
including Old Faithful. The ranger explained there are
different forms of water, mud or steam releases and the
chemical composition can vary form and color. He also
told us about Grand Geyser which he thought was due to
blow at 12 noon. In fairness to the ranger he did say
Geysers are unpredictable except for Old Faithful which
blows every 65 to 90 minutes.
We spent almost three hours in Geyser Basin, hoping to see Grand Geyser erupt;
we could see that it was building towards an eruption but we decided to move on
before it actually blew. We did see three eruptions of Old Faithful
and saw some smaller ones erupting as well.

Our next stop was Yellowstone Lake.
This is the largest glacier lake.
It was interesting to see hot springs right on the shore line.
There was one steam pot right in the lake. They say
fishermen caught trout from the lake and steamed it immediately
by swinging the pole around and lowering the fish into the hot spring.
Naturally the park service does not allow this anymore.

On our way to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,we looked at some bubbling mud pots.
It reminded me of making pudding.
Of course it didn’t smell as good.
We hit the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone at sunset so the
colors reflected off the canyon walls.
As is true of all the places we visited the pictures really don’t reflect the full
beauty of the place.
Our ride back to our motel (A small motel called
One Horse Motel in West Yellowstone, which we would highly recommend, very clean but small) was filled with wonderful sunset views.
Driving in the park after dusk is not highly recommended
because the animals wander on the roads and are difficult to see.
So far we have seen elk, bison and a wolf on the road.


136 miles today (south loop).
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Yellowstone_927

Thursday Sep 27

Highlight for today was a hike to Mount Washburn
(some other Washburn, not “our” Brad Washburn).
After some pretty edgy mountain driving up the
east side of the park loop road, we turned onto an
even-edgier steep winding gravel road, to a
parking lot in the sky at about 8600 feet.
Most of the terrain up here is treeless so the views are magnificent,
And there is *nothing* around. No 60-cycle hum here.
From there we hiked six miles round trip to the summit at 10243 feet,
for about 1650 feet vertical gain.
Excellent cell phone service up there, because on the summit is a
fire lookout tower / hiker wind shelter / antenna farm.
The trail up is actually a service access road for the antenna farm;
I wouldn’t want to drive *anything* on it, but on our way down
we were passed by a SUV-type car going up (then down, VERY slowly!)
which I presume was comm. equipment service because it wasn’t
Park Service, and the gate is securely locked.

We finished driving the upper loop which had some
steam holes but especially around Mammoth Springs there
were more mountains and cliffs and canyons.
Extremely picturesque again!

The “town” of Mammoth Hot Springs was invaded by a herd of elk;
they were EVERYWHERE, on lawns, crossing roads and walkways,
seeming almost to go into the buildings.
Needless to say this caused quite a disruption in traffic flow,
what with people taking pictures and park rangers
trying to keep the people and animals separated.

126 miles today (north loop).

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Yellowstone_928

Friday Sep 28

Another beautiful day.
Started out driving with top down, T-shirt weather;

Drove up the west side (which we drove down in late dusk last night).
More stunning and varied scenery;
made many small stops at scenic outlooks and picnic areas.
Attempted to do a hike to Bunsen Peak but the trail directions were sketchy. '
We walked down a dirt road we believed would take us to the peak.
We saw Bison grazing in the meadow we were winding
through so I was a little nervous. Everytime we came to
pine groves I would ask Dan to blow his whistle just to assure
that if there were any bears around they would know
we were there and leave.
After a respectable time and our intended mountain seeming
to be farther away rather than closer, we returned to the car
and moved on.
Got very windy and cold as we got to higher elevation.
Lots of stuff happening in the sky at different altitudes.
As we stopped at the top of Golden Gate Canyon the wind
was so strong I had difficulty holding the car door.

After coming down an incredibly scary road we stopped at
Mammoth Springs. The most impressive thing about this was
how the Spring sits high on a plateau and the base is bleached.
It looks like a mountain of dry ice with occasional streaks of color.

57 miles today (west side to north entrance).
Total 319 miles inside Yellowstone National Park

Started making miles, stopped before dark in Bozeman MT.
Weather report is a snow storm front moving through the
mountains and passes west of here with snow warnings
until 6PM tomorrow (Sat 9/29), so we’re holing up
here another night to let the storm front pass.
I like snow, but I’m not real eager to drive through
mountain passes during a snow storm, and, since we’re
only going this way once, we want to see the scenery.

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Bozeman_929

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