Highway 90 got us back to Livingston, Montana where 12 days earlier we turned north toward Glacier. This was the center of our gigantic figure 8 across North America. This time we headed south to Yellowstone. The smaller highway south of Livingston wasn’t actually too bad and the speed limit was reasonable. We ended up rolling in to the northern entrance of Yellowstone sometime around 9pm. This is the entrance with the badass Teddy Roosevelt arch that is inscribed with what makes America rock: “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people.” Eat your hearts out, libertarians.
With Yellowstone being a popular park and it still being before Labor Day, I expected some trouble finding a campsite especially showing up after dark. To try to counteract this we planned an arrival in to Yellowstone in the middle of the week but still weren’t holding out too much hope. North of Yellowstone we were taking inventory of private campgrounds and hotels and felt pretty comfortable with those options in case we needed to turn back to them. My last experience with this was when my family rolled in to West Yellowstone expecting velvet rope service only to find that plenty of other families with bored teenagers and little brothers taking pictures of every other geyser on 110 film had arrived before us. We spent the night on the shoulder of the highway leading in to Yellowstone. We had a camper then.
When we arrived at the gate, the ranger and the campsite status sign told us there was space available in Mammoth campground which was the closest. We drove through the dark through the little village of Mammoth and in to the campground which now had a full sign. Other campgrounds were listed as available so we just went on to the next one. The next one south was Indian Creek which had a pit toilet only which Jayne was a little wary of. We pulled in and mostly everyone was down for the night. When we pulled up to the registration station, the elderly campground host couple wheeled up in their silent electric golf cart. Sneaky. We’ve been writing checks for National Park Service campgrounds since they seemed to accept them and it was an easy way to not deal with cash. These campground hosts informed me that they didn’t accept checks here. Apparently people have been driving to northwest Wyoming specifically to ripoff a campground with a pit toilet for $10. These folks decided I had a face that could be trusted and let me write them a check. My money is good somewhere. I’ve made it!
We are quite familiar with the tent by now so putting it up by moonlight wasn’t a problem at all. We did a quick kick check to make sure we weren’t laying the tent on top of any jagged rocks and got it up and checked out the toilet amenities right across the street. As we settled in to the air mattress, we heard some howling/barking. At first it was minimal but soon was joined by tens of tens more. It was pretty close sounding and was most definitely wolves. It was an eerie sound that I have never heard before. Pretty awesome. Far enough away to be safe (feeling at least) and close enough to be bone-chilling. The Eagle Scout in the tent next to us thought he would impress his girlfriend with his ability to judge distance of wolf howls (I think that’s a merit badge). “Do you know how close they are? Sounds like less than a quarter of a mile or so.”
The next morning there wasn’t much at Indian Creek to marvel at so we moved on to the Norris Geyser Basin. This was the site of young Zach running around with his 110 camera taking pictures of steam while his adventurous brothers ran ahead. Leaving my mother nervously imagining a reenactment of the warning signs that are all around the park. You can see one in the slideshow below but it basically features a nerdy German child falling in to a hot sulfuric geyser while his helpless sister, DJ Tanner points at him. It’s pretty frightening.
This time around I wasn’t as fascinated by the steam so we did a quick hike along the boardwalk looking at colored pool after colored pool. After procuring a campsite in Canyon, we went back north to visit the Mammoth Hot Springs area of the park. We had driven through this area last night but it was dark so we missed it all. You can get pretty jaded from the nonstop majesty so things like ancient volcanic formations and colored hot water coming out of the ground gets to be like another episode of Two And A Half Men. We didn’t spend a ton of time looking at this next pile of sulfur either. We did get some awesome ice cream in the little village of Mammoth.
That’s something else in national parks. They have all these little areas and buildings that were built back in the heyday of public funding for national parks. So along with preserving natural wonders, these old Yogi Bear type buildings complete with signs made of carved brown wood and huckleberry ice cream are kept up. Not a new Gehry building in sight.
The road east of Mammoth had a one-way trail that split off from the main drag. Because we were headed the right way and I like to think of the Forester (Rihanna) as an offroad beast we decided to take it. It was really fun at first. I was driving it fast enough to get a little of that racing feeling. Then I came up behind a rental Kia and had to slow down. Like way down. The car was moving slow enough that I couldn’t read my speedometer. They certainly weren’t driving it like it was a rental.
We’d been in one-way slow driving situations in national parks and the standard procedure is to pull to the side when able. Most roads including this one had plenty of spots set aside to pull off. Unfortunately these folks didn’t follow this procedure and we were stuck behind them and the, eventually, many more families for the majority of the remainder of the trip. At one point the caravan came to a complete stop. This was for legit reasons because there was just a moose chilling to the left of the trail. The Methuselah family were all out with their cameras and kids taking pictures which I certainly had no beef with because, dude, it’s a moose. In fact, the mother of the family called attention to this while filming the moose. Everyone was sitting silently just kinda taking in this moose gnawing on some brush. The mother was filming for several minutes and then all of a sudden decided to “David McCullough” it and whispered in to the microphone, “This…is a moose.”
No one even pulled off for the moose jam so after the caravan started up again we were still behind three or so cars. I was really looking forward to pretending I was in the Baja 1000 but instead I guess I had to enjoy the scenery or at least enjoy flashing my lights everytime a pull off opportunity came up. Eventually they pulled off and when we drove by them they looked at us like we were crazy. Maybe they had heard about that urban legend with the flashing lights or read the Scary Story To Tell In The Dark about the “High Beams”.
After they turned off, I resumed my rally car speeds (25-30 mph maybe tops) for the next two tenths of a mile until we hit the main road. We turned off soon after to check out Petrified Tree and Tower Falls. Petrified Tree is definitely one of those things that is worth reading about but I don’t think you get much more out of seeing it. It looks like that stump that my mom has been bugging my dad about removing for years now.
To complete the loop back to our campsite in Canyon, we went across the continental divide and down the valley to the canyon. In the Canyon campground area, we stopped at the lodge and got a bite to eat. The lodge after the sun goes down definitely has a cool, nerdy feel to it. Everyone is settling in for the night and is coming back from their day in the sun with stories about how many moose they saw or how many miles they hiked.
We then drove in to our campsite and inflated our bed for the night. Jayne was cold and tired but I heard there was a ranger campfire talk so I abandoned Jayne and went to the amphitheater. There an older ranger gave a talk on the history of the park. I watched the first half of it and from what I could gather the theme was people have always sucked. From throwing rocks in clogged geysers to spreading trash out to purposely attract bears for viewing. It was interesting to hear my suspicions backed up by a government official but I was starting to feel guilty for leaving Jayne alone so I wandered back to the site.
After I got under the covers, I felt like it was a good decision to be with her because the wolves started howling again.