We woke up pretty grumpy the next morning mostly due to the cold night. The weather hadn’t been too cold during the day but that night it really dropped and kind of pushed us to our limit. We were lacking our enthusiasm that we had in Devils Tower and Glacier. Things were starting to feel the same. This after camping in a gigantic ancient volcanic caldera. Ho-hum.
Jayne and I weren’t feeling Yellowstone like we did Glacier. Some of it is the accessibility of Yellowstone (you can drive to see a lot of the park) and the amount of other people. But we did plenty of driving in Glacier and there were plenty of people there too. The bubbling pools do lose their novelty after you see a field of them. But every waterfall is different, every mountain you wind around still holds its majesty. But Yellowstone has majesty too. I really think the main culprit is we’ve been doing this for two and a half weeks now. We just drove across Washington, Idaho and Montana to get here and now what? Drive some more.
Promises of towering geysers and waterfalls couldn’t cure the stiff back caused by shivering all night. We decided to put in our time and bid Yellowstone adieu. Salt Lake City was next on our list and would be a good turning point to decide how much further we wanted to take this wagon.
We had slept at the edge of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone but had not seen it yet in daylight. That was first on our to-do list. You like how I’ve made America’s first national park in to some sort of chore?
We drove the one way loop along the canyon. Occasionally we stopped to get out and marvel. We looked down in to the yellow-stained canyon and on one of the stops there was a dude with a telescope. He had it trained on some sort of nest. I think he said “osprey”. They certainly weren’t robins. You couldn’t see little ones but there was definitely a big one tending to the nest.
Another sighting I had was “Gunther”. Gunther is this kid that Jayne and I saw the previous day at Sheep Eaters Cliff. We decided to make our “car sandwiches” and eat chips at a picnic table by the cliff and for a while it was just us and the port-o-potties. Then I heard a sound I was very familiar with. That “toosh” sound a little boy makes when he is imagining he is powering over some huge mountain or firing a rocket at an enemy. I say little boy but let’s be honest, I still do that when I’m “doing karate” after getting something right in my programming.
Among the rocks at the cliffside was the source of the noise. We named him “Gunther” because he looked totally German. He was like a dirtier version of Augustus Gloop. I should have named him “Augustus” but I was blanking on the comparison. He was stomping over the boulders and fake fighting someone. Probably Indians who used to live around here. If they ate sheep who’s to say they wouldn’t eat a fat little boy. He had to protect himself.
He was tightly wearing a long sleeve red Bugle Boy shirt and some man-pris and most astonishingly he was barefoot. Even more interesting to me was, besides another empty car, I saw no sign of parents.
I was relieved to see he was reunited with his family when we ran in to the same family at Mammoth Hot Springs. Here the family stood out because we learned that despite the fashion sense of a visiting German family they were grumpy Americans. The daughter, Amelia (real name), refused to hike any further to see more boiling water and threw a teenager tantrum in front of everyone with the dad so classically ignoring and the mom having NONE of it.
And now today at Canyon we vacationed with them again as their truck pulled in to the parking lot near us and the truck bed topper popped open and the three kids climbed out. Even though he was wearing shoes, I spotted Gunther immediately because he exited the truck bed with a “toosh” clad in his same Bugle Boy armor.
We skipped Yellowstone Lake and headed to Old Faithful because we had Salt Lake City as a destination for the night and that’s a good piece away. But everybody has to see Old Faithful while she’s still faithful right?
The road between Canyon and Old Faithful was lined with bison. We really hadn’t seen a ton of bison in Yellowstone. Our first run-in was as soon as we started driving the first morning here. We came up behind one lone bison just walking down the road staying between the lines. I kept my distance until there was a good passing opportunity. As we drove past he had wild eyes that reminded us of the naked man on PCP who just strolls down the street like it’s where he belongs. Later that night we came across another one doing the exact same thing along the climb up to Dunraven Pass. We decided it was the same dude making the loop.
This morning we saw one just standing at the crest of a hill on the edge of the road. It was a tall enough hill that from far away we saw his silhouette and I assumed it was some sort of sign for a portion of the park. It stood so perfectly still. Bending around that hill though, he must have been a sign saying, “Holy crap! Bison!” because there were a ton of them. In the road, on the side of the road, in the river valley, across the river plain. The ones by the road were getting a lot of attention because of their proximity but also because there were babies!
We observed from the pull off for a while with several other cars. An older couple talked to us about different ones and we exchanged thoughts on which ones were our favorites. Then I unholstered my camera and started to walk to frame a shot. The lady freaked out telling me I better not go any closer or I’ll get gored. After I found a new mom, I was now tempted to push it. Not that I had really planned on it, I was really just stepping more to the side so more bison faces could be in the frame. Besides, there were two ditches and a two lane highway between us, Mom!
Arriving at Old Faithful felt like an amusement park. Remember kids, we’re parked in the Bear lot. The road to Old Faithful actually turned in to a highway with cloverleaf exits and everything. The parking lot was sprawling and there were lots of redirections due to road and building construction. We could find Old Faithful Lodge but struggled to find Old Faithful.
I was just saying as we walked in the lodge that they have a “clock” letting you know when the next expected eruption would be. Jayne said “Like this one?” and we saw it predicted the next eruption at 2:13pm. Which was…right now! We briskly walked toward the geyser. Wouldn’t want to be uncool running to see a natural wonder!
We got there right around 2:14 and thought, “Uh-oh we missed it.” But the hundreds of other people in clothes with multiple pockets staring in the geyser’s direction told us otherwise. Just then, steam came from the hole in the ground, water started to appear, a murmur went over the crowd. A larger splash, the murmur got louder. Cameras were readied, children were corraled. This happened for 30 minutes every time water crested out of the hole. Nothing like what you’ve seen in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon though. People kept their faith though and were rewarded for their patience with an eruption, probably very similar to what the people saw an hour before and the next group would see an hour later. Still, boiling water from the ground, man. You don’t see that at your shopping mall.
After the spectacle we were hungry. We went back in to the Old Faithful Lodge and saw they were serving lunch until 3pm. It was 2:58. Welp, somewhere else then. But, “no,” they told us, “as long as we got in the door by 3pm they would serve us.” We had a private lunch in the lodge. For most of the lunch it was us, the tall ceilings, antler chandelier and our very nervous waitress from Arizona. I had more buffalo in the form of a cheese steak.
It was after 3 and we were nowhere near Salt Lake City. We loaded up the Forester and headed west out of Yellowstone. Our trip out went along the Madison River and the weather and light was perfect. The Madison River on the western part of Yellowstone is gorgeous. There were some mountains and falls further up river but as we exited the terrain flattened out and the river began to meander more. At one big sandbar island, there was a huge collection of elk and a lot of people pulled off to view. It was too awesome to pass up and so we took some of our hurried time to stand at the edge of the road and just watch the elk go about their business.
But now Zion awaits.