Montana Vacation - Day 2 - Yellowstone National Park

When we roused and breakfasted, we piled everyone into 2 vehicles and made our way south for a 40 minute drive to the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park.  This was the first time that any of us had been to a National Park, except for Dad who had been here visiting a friend in 1989, a year after the major wildfires that ravaged much of the park in 1988.  The remnants of the fires were still visible as we entered the park - both dead and burnt pine trunks and new lodgepole pines that had been reseeded naturally by the trees' firecones that only open after intense forest fire heat melt the resin that seals them.

We turned south around the major loop that runs around the center of the park and stopped for a break at a picnic spot near the Nez Perce Creek.  We waded in the cold shallows there and got the only group picture of the trip thanks to a friendly tourist that Dad found.  The kids are wearing matching Disney/Yellowstone shirts that Becky (Aaron actually) stumbled across on sale at the Disney Store before we left.

 Our next stop was a collection of thermal features accessible only by boardwalk trails.  Yellowstone sits atop a massive supervolcano that lets off steam through these.  There were hot springs with colorful extremophile bacteria cultures decorating them, hot air vents that sound like small jet engines, hot mud pits bubbling away, and a few smaller geysers, like the one the kids posed by above.

Then we made our way to the Old Faithful area.  This predictable geyser draws millions to the park every year.  We ate lunch at a nearby burger cafe and settled in near the  predicted eruption time.  It erupts every 60 or 92 minutes, predicted based on the duration of the eruption (if it erupts for less than 2.5 minutes, it'll erupt again in an hour; longer than 2.5 minutes and it'll be 92 minutes - give or take a few fudge points).  The eruption was preceded by another nearby geyser that was visible nearby.  Our afternoon eruption was awesome and worth the trip.  It's neat to see things like these thermal features that are unique in the world. Afterwards, we toured the nearby Old Faithful Lodge, constructed from massive logs with wooden staircases throughout.  Mark, Leslie, the kids and I tried to climb up to the Eagle's Nest room visible at the top of the lodge, but a key staircase was locked because it was unsafe after an earthquake several years ago.

We kept heading around the loop, turning east and then north. We stopped for a few minutes to get a look at the enormous Yellowstone Lake that we'd been driving along.  We noticed a small wildfire that the rangers were letting burn on the opposite shore.

After a bathroom break, we drove north up through Hayden Valley.  The Yellowstone River meandered through and this is typically a hangout spot for wildlife.  Today we caught a brief glimpse of a black bear loping through the nearby woods and herds of bison in the valley.

Several bison wanted to share the road with us.  One of them was ambling up our lane on the 2 lane road on the side of a small mountain.  As we realized it had nowhere to go, we kept signalling the cars in the other lane to move on up so that we could change lanes and get around him, but most of them were too busy taking pictures of the bison.  Finally someone let us around.  The one in the picture above literally jumped out from the woods on the left to cross in front of us and we quickly learned that bison always get the right-of-way.


We worked our way past the valley to the mouth of the the Yellowstone Grand Canyon.  The Yellowstone river cascades through some amazing waterfalls around here.  Today we made our way down a trail to the brink of the Upper Falls, the smaller of the 2 at "only" 109 feet tall.  It was still impressive because you get to stand right next to where it pours over the edge.  Click on the link to see a picture of where we were standing in relation to the Falls when I took that picture.

On our way out, we finally saw our first elk.  There were 2 cows grazing to the left of the road and 2 bulls grazing to the right.  We didn't see any moose or wolves, but we'll stray on the lookout this week and try to come back later for a few of the sights that we didn't see this go around.