DAY ELEVEN - Yellowstone N.P.
This is our big Yellowstone sightseeing day. The park is huge, so we decided to take one day to drive the loop of roads around the park, which is about 100 miles. Since we can’t run the generator until 8 a.m., we left camp early. We woke up around 7, I think, moved the kids from their beds to their carseats, and drove to the area around Old Faithful. We got there about 8:15. I ran up to the visitor center to check the next geyser eruption and the sign said 8:58. So we had bagels and leftover omelet-bake in the parking lot and walked over to see the glorious spray into the air. It was still cold this morning, so there was a LOT of steam, so much so that it was difficult to see the spray of water or figure out how high it was going. We told Nora it was like a shower, with hot water and steam. So for the rest of day she kept saying, “Old Faithful. Shower. Take off clothes.” In the afternoon she told me once, “Old Faithful. Soap, Mama! Soap!” There is a fascinating looking inn at the Old Faithful area, and they have free tours. We were going to go, but missed it due to the timing of a diaper change. We plan to go back tomorrow.
Our next stop was the West Thumb geyser basin, which is an area that has a lot of small ponds and puddles with steam and bubbles from the heat coming up from deep in the earth. The last large cauldron of bubbles we walked past (on a wooden boardwalk, because the ground is so unpredictable) was blue. We could feel the heat on our faces, and it was like walking into a steam room. It felt nice in the cold weather.
We drove through the Grant Village campground, which was where we had planned to stay until we learned it closes for the winter during our stay. We drove north from there, past the east entrance where we came in on our first day. Along the Yellowstone River, cars were pulled off the road every which way, but all I could see was a single animal out in the field. No big deal here. So I pulled out the binoculars and saw it was a grizzly bear lumbering around in the meadow. About 100 yards from where we pulled off to see the bear was a buffalo, but no one really cared about that. They were all straining to see the bear that you could hardly make out with your naked eye.
We stopped at Sulfur Cauldron, where I got out to read the sign about the boiling puddles of mud below me. Apparently almost the entire, gigantic park of Yellowstone is the top of an enormous, ancient volcano. I felt kind of dumb that I didn’t know that before. It is hard to imagine such a huge volcano, that would require a 100-mile drive to go around its rim. But that explains all the stuff bubbling up from underground. The churning in the pits in the earth here were so loud you could hear them from the road. One was churning so furiously it looked like some sort of muddy beast was about to emerge.
We continued driving and saw huge herds of buffalo/bison on both sides of the road. There are either a whole lot of professional photographers here right now, or a whole lot of amateur photographers with $25,000 cameras. I have seen more 400mm and 500mm lenses in the last three days than in my whole life.
We pulled into the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone area, and in the parking lot was a rental RV with a picture of Mount Rushmore on the side. Nora caught sight of it out the window and said, “Hi Big Faces!” We wanted to hike to see the upper and lower falls at the canyon. When Nora saw the upper falls, she said, “Slide!” which, when you really think about it, is just what a waterfall is. I tried to explain that it was a slide that only water is allowed to go down. Still she started in about her swimming suit and swimming pools. She doesn’t care that it is 45 degrees out. The path to the lower falls proved too treacherous for us, so we went back to the parking lot. We headed for our campground but messed up on a turn and started into the northern loop we had not intended to explore. We were about 10 miles into it before we realized it and turned around. It was interesting to see it, but not so interesting we wanted to drive until dark. On the way back, the road was blocked by four enormous buffalo, taking their sweet time. It was really cool to see them up close, though. Nora was unimpressed and demanded more crackers.
We returned to camp to find we had new campsite neighbors. It is three families from Butte, MT. (Well, one of the families has moved to Billings, but still makes the annual campout.) They are super nice and made me a drink and invited us to their campfire. One of the couples has one of their kids, the spouse and a 5-month-old grandchild along, so that was good, too. We ate dinner separately, then after Nora went to bed we all talked around the fire for awhile.