David here again. SO when we last saw our intrepid heroes, we were driving through Hayden Valley buzzing off of bison adrenaline and fear of falling into the center of the earth. The day continued with many points of interest, including a ranger with a scope in Hayden Valley who showed us what were apparently the "ears of a wolf" about 600 yds away. Doesn't count as a wolf sighting in my book, but it was cool to know for sure that we were in the same area as one. After that we took a bypass to get some views of Yellowstone's Grand Canyon and the upper and lower falls of Yellowstone River. Allow me to get all Ken Burns' PBS special on you for a moment and say that the view from Artist's Point of the lower falls is truly one of the most awesome sights in this country. If you've never been to Yellowstone, it's the one thing you absolutely have to go see. It's off the loop a bit, but do not deprive yourself. See it with someone you love and you'll never forget it.
But enough with all these emotions. You want to know if we got eaten by a bear or not.
Our next stretch was boring, but significant, taking us through across the loop through a large section of the park that had been taken out by forest fires. It was a long 12 miles, but there's something undeniably spooky about all those bare trees and ash for miles and miles. As important to see as the pretty stuff, even if it's long. We stopped by Norris Geyser basin, the oldest geothermals in the park, for more walking out over unstable earthcrust fun, before working our way through some construction. You can either complain about being stuck in construction traffic, or you can enjoy a chance to be sitting in one place in Yellowstone for twenty minutes. We made sandwiches. After the traffic, we hit up the aptly named Artist's Paint Pots. Kate inspired an idea I had for an exhibit that related each of the fumaroles to part of an artist's process. I got to indulge my nerdery, Kate got to overcome some second thoughts about marrying me, it was fun! Plus we saw lots of chipmunks. We continued to work our way down to Old Faithful, stopping at Lower Geyeser basin, where a geyser was erupting, then to Grand Prismatic Spring and Excelsior Geyser Crater which are the best part of the whole earth falling apart thing at Yellowstone, in my opinion, and it is there that we saw Alan Grant's hat floating on top of a hot spring as if he had fallen in and his hat was all that remained. Picture to come. He will be missed. We also saw a geyser going off at Black Sand Basin, which was already making this a banner day for geyser eruptions. Clearly Yellowstone was pulling out all the stops to impress Kate and remind me why I love it.
And then we got to "The Show," Old Faithful and the Upper Geyser Basin. Welcome to nature's wonderland with 2,000 of your closest friends. It was a free day in the park, and this was the only part where it felt like everyone had decided to come to Yellowstone on the same day we did. Fortunately, we arrived right as Old Faithful had finished. I say fortunately because this allowed us to actually find a parking space as everyone sped off the next thing on their very, very busy agendas. (Seriously, people speeding in Yellowstone, why the rush? You're in a national park. Try to slow down and, I don't know, kind of enjoy yourself?) We spent an hour or so ambling through the basin and saw three more geyser eruptions, including a doozy from Gold Geyser which was twenty feet tall! I've never seen more than one of the other geysers going off, MAYBE, while doing the Old Faithful thing so, once again, kudos, Park. Castle Geyser loomed impressively, as always, and then it was time to get some coffee, hit up the gift shop, and arrive at the big guy 10 minutes before the next predicted time. Due to the hideously uncomfortable rainstorm (read, "light drizzle") we were able to walk past the hoards of people hiding under the Old Faithful Lodge's awning and get front row seats. Sure enough, the eruption was quite awesome! We have a video coming that you will all surely enjoy.
Soon the hideously uncomfortable rainstorm actually became hideously uncomfortable and we were of course doubling back along the Yellowstone River and through Hayden Valley to get to the road to Tower Roosevelt. We got through the rain and started traveling up from Canyon Village into the most steep and treacherous roads of the park. Kate was driving and doing an excellent job navigating the twists and turns of a mountain road that was beautiful, but harrowing. There were cars going to fast, people stopped in awkward places to look at things, and cyclists going by at crazy speeds. It's scary. Hey, guess where the Park decided Kate's first ever bear sighting should be?! We turned a sharp corner and ran smack into a bear jam. Very excitedly, I confirmed that there was a grizzly bear at the top of a nearby ridge, Kate pulled in behind a line of cars, and, being far enough behind other humans stupid enough to get close to a wild animal, we hopped out to take a look. We had five seconds to look at the bear before four cyclists hurdled around a corner without slowing down and almost crashed into everyone, swearing at Kate. A ranger came over and yelled at Kate for almost causing an accident. Resisting my urge to punch said ranger in the mouth, I politely asked the ranger where we should go. He told us to drive on. So, our first bear sighting of the trip ended as quickly and as upsetting as it began, and we drove back down the hill, Kate in distress and me silently writing a strongly worded letter to Yellowstone's management in my head. In retrospect, I've never seen too many grizzly's in Yellowstone, so to see one at all was special. Also, we got word that she had two cubs, so you tell me how much longer we should have stuck around a mother grizzly bear with two cubs and not much room to move around. It was just way too much of an adrenaline rush for both of us, and not the ideal way to see your first bear. I felt bad for Kate, so we stopped at Tower Falls for a well deserved breather and one of the parks more serene sights.
At this point, it was getting quite late, and we still had LaMarr Valley and Mammoth Hot Springs to see! We drove into LaMarr Valley, the famous Tull family bear spotting drive of choice for many years. While we didn't see any bears, we had some more impressive bison crossing encounters, much tamer than our earlier one, and a very nice time driving around looking for animals of all kinds. It was now too dark to really spot animals, so we headed out to Mammoth Springs, hoping for a little twilight to catch the terraces at least, and giving up hope on seeing an awesome animals. But Yellowstone had other plans, and soon we saw half a dozen cars pulled over next to a lake, which is the international symbol for "Moose Jam." Yes, after we had called an end to our animal spotting night, we had a last minute surprise guest fulfilling one of Kate's biggest Yellowstone wishes: a male moose wading through the lake at dusk. He was quite the majestic moose, and a worthy finish to a truly awesome day.
We then got to see Mammoth Hot Springs at night. I thought maybe they'd be illuminated like I've seen in pictures, but it was 9:30 when we got there, and well, that's pretty late for the park and it should come as no surprise that there was no light. So we hopped out, looked at the terraces, which were flowing quite well in the dark, and hopped into the car to try desperately to catch a little blue, post-sunset light for our ride out. Fortunately, the area around Mammoth Springs is perfectly charming and wonderful in the daylight, requiring the better part of a whole other day to actually see, so I'm glad we didn't try to cram it into this trip. I can't think of anything I'd like to replace it with, and now we have something special with which to start the next Yellowstone trip, because we're coming BACK to this place!
So, Dad, that thing you do when you drive all of us straight to Kalispell in the middle of the night while we sleep off a day at Yellowstone? I never appreciated how truly insane that feat is until riding for only one hour to Livingston, Montana where our hotel was north of the park. We saved a lot of money by not staying in a hotel right next to the park, but good lord it was a terrifying drive! There's no light! Plus it was a new moon, so really, no light!
Anyway, we got to Livingstone, crashed hard, caved in and bought McDonald's, then laid out on the bed to enjoy our awful food with some Rolling Rock and The Wild Bunch on TV.
Whew! Gah! That was an awesome day, and it was, what, four days ago?! Yeah, we'll keep getting you caught up, but Yellowstone left us exhausted, thrilled, awestruck and also exhausted. We proved we could experience the park in one day if necessary, but we're looking forward to going back someday with more time to spare. You know, when we're rich and stuff.
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