Being Tourists on Another Trip Out West

Our kids are scattered about, out west, so from time to time we go see them.  So this time, when it was time to get started on the trip, we hopped in the car and saw something we'd never seen from this car before. Since the car won't start without a working remote, this was something we had to address right away.

We already had a spare battery but we needed to get it installed. Fortunately, we have a son who works at an auto parts store and knows all about changing batteries in fobs. It only took a minute for him to make the change and we were on our way 

Anyway, sometimes we slip in a little sight-seeing while we're on these trips out west.  Or on the way to or from.  Anyway, we did some of that this time. When we originally talked to our kids out there about coming out for a visit, we learned that the time we had in mind fell right on a break in the school schedule and Moosbeere's family invited us to go with them on vacation.  They had been thinking of going up to Yellowstone Park and we hadn't been there since 1988, the year to whole place nearly burned down, so we decided to tag along. We went in with them on a rental place a bit outside the park and spent two days exploring and seeing what there was to see. 

Yellowstone is a big national park, almost 3,500 square miles. That's around 2.2 million acres. It's the oldest national park in the United States. It contains about 290 waterfalls and over 10,000 hydrothermal features (geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles). There are over 500 active geysers, which is more than half the active geysers in the world. Old Faithful is the most famous. It is also home to the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states. And there are about 1,000 miles of hiking tails in the park.  We, of course, did not hike all those trails but we did do some hiking just in the course of seeing all the amazing stuff there is to see there. There's also lots of mountains in the park, the highest if which is Eagle Peak, at 11,372 feet.  We also did not climb to that, or any other peak.  The average elevation within the park is about 8,000 feet. That's about 7,000 feet higher than where we live so we felt it, especially as we hiked around the park. The geothermal activity currently active in and around Yellowstone National Park is all part of the same system of activity that has been moving in an arc over the past several millennia, moving from Nevada, through Idaho (forming what is now the Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho), and is currently in the northwest corner of Wyoming. As a result, it's a very seismically active area; Yellowstone experiences an average of around 1,500 to 2,000 earthquakes a year, most of which are too small to be noticed by humans. Yeah, I find this kind of stuff very interesting.

Anyway, we stayed in a cabin Moosbeere found that was a ways outside of the park, like an hour away because anything closer was pretty expensive and most of the lodging within the park had already closed down for the season.  

But it was a very nice place, all the comforts of home.  Way better than the last accommodations we stayed at while vacationing. It was big enough for all of us and it came with a fully equipped kitchen so all we had to do was bring our food. It was a good, comfortable place to stay.  We arrived the first afternoon of the trip so we just settled in, had some dinner there at the cabin, and just relaxed that first day.  

The park is divided into two "loops" that allow you to travel to the easiest sights within the park, the North Loop and the South Loop.  The first day we decided to do the North Loop. And we decided to begin with a waterfall, Gibbon Falls to be specific.

This water fall is on the Gibbon River and is located in the central area of the park.  I liked it because it was an easy walk from the parking area.  It wasn't the biggest waterfall in the park but it was still a really beautiful little waterfall. 

The next stop was just a little ways up the road, at Beryl Spring, a "hot pot". It is one of the hottest springs in the park and creates some spectacular frost formations on the trees and rocks around it in the winter as the hot steam rises off the water and hits the cold, winter air.  Alas, we were there when it was too warm for that kind of stuff.  But it was still quite a sight.

The next stop was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Not only does this one have a nice waterfall but it is also set in a real beautiful canyon the water has carved out of the mountains. 

There is actually an upper falls and a lower falls to this canyon.  The lower falls is a bit farther way from the viewing area but still a very impressive waterfall.

Our next stop, a little father away from the things we had stopped to see so far, was Tower Falls. There was a short hike down to a viewing area but there was also a trail down to see the falls from the bottom.  We opted not to take that hike.  It was getting late in the day and we wanted to make our last stop before it got dark.

We wanted to end the first day looking for wildlife so we had planned the trip to end at a place called Lamar Valley, on the North Loop.  We saw more buffalo than anything else in the two days we were in the park. We also saw a few deer, much scruffier looking than the deer we see all the time at home.  And we saw several antelope.  Alas, no bear or moose.  But it was still fun to see all the critters we did see.

Some of the animals were quite comfortable around people, as long as you kept a healthy distance.  We made two pit stops during the afternoon and evening.  At the first some buffalo wandered into the area while we were there so we took the a different way out.

Later, on our way out of the park, we made another stop and had to run between the elk that were grazing all round the place we stopped. They seemed totally unconcerned with the people walking around the same area.

The buffalo pretty much took no notice of the people and cars.  If they were grazing along and came to a road, the cars waited while the buffalo crossed.  It's not wise to try to work your way through a group of buffalo crossing the road, even if they crossed one at a time.  They come and go as they please.

The next morning the plan was to check out a few sights along the South Loop.  We had spent the whole first day on the North Loop but there were some things on the South Loop we also wanted to see.

As we were headed to our first stop we saw the iconic Yellowstone picture, a buffalo in front of some steaming hot springs so we had to stop for yet another buffalo picture.  But it was a good one.

The intended first stop of the morning was a feature called Fountain Paint Pot.  This was a large field of pools and steam vents, an area the wildlife like to hang out near in the winter because it stays a little warmer than the rest of the park.

The next stop around the loop was the Grand Prismatic Spring, a very big spring of steaming water bubbling up from underground.

No trip to Yellowstone would be complete without a stop at the Old Faithful geyser.  So we did.  It's predictable to the point that in the big lodge they post the time of the next eruption.  We got there with about a half an hour to go so we joined the growing crowd waiting for the eruption. It was good.  Old Faithful was one of the main things I remember from our visit in 1988.  All the development around the geyser burned down the day we were there, with the exception of the main lodge, but it had all been replaced in the 35 years since then. But what was there now was better than what I remember from 35 years ago, less commercial and more informative.  It was a good stop.

By this time it was getting into the afternoon and was time to start thinking about heading back to the cabin.  But we wanted to make one more stop.  So we drove back into the North Loop and stopped at the Black Hermit Cauldron, a mud pot. That was an interesting spot to stop and see.  Then it was time to go.

The drive out of the park took an hour and then it was another hour back to the cabin.  We did  make one more stop on the way, in West Yellowstone, a little community right outside the west gate to the park.  Since much of the shops inside the park had already closed for the summer season we stopped at a little store in West Yellowstone for some ice cream and a few souvenirs. Then it was back to the cabin and, the next day, back on the trip home.

This trip out we also played the license plate game (we always do), where you keep track of how many states you see license plates from.  We got the most we've ever gotten on this trip, a total of 47 states.  I think spending two days in Yellowstone helped a lot with that.  We saw all but Rhode Island, Massecuites, and New Hampshire. Those are pretty hard states to get, I guess maybe being among the smaller states has something to do with that.

Miles and miles later, we pulled into our own driveway and the trip was done. Once again, we put a lot of miles on our little car.  It is definitely what would be considered a "high mileage" vehicle.

It was a good time, some happy memories made.  This is certainly something we will want to do again.  It was a good time.