Posts Tagged “montana”

The point of driving the past few days hasn’t been to cover ground really, but to experience Yellowstone and Grand Tetons national parks. That being said, the parks are quite large, so I thought I would post the path that we took to see and get through them. The route log is below.

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We had another amazing day in Yellowstone. Yesterday was all about the elk and bison; today was a giant geyserfest (and thermal-feature-fest). We saw lots of hot springs:

Many of the hot springs are surrounded by thermophiles (microorganisms that thrive in hot temperatures). The thermophiles have different colors depending on their temperature requirements. Orange and yellow ones are very hot:

We also saw some mudpots, which are like hot springs with mud instead of water. Well, okay, actually they are really different in how they function, etc., but they look like mud hot springs:

We also saw geysers!!!

This geyser is really interesting because it’s right on the shoreline of Yellowstone Lake:

There are several geysers on the shore of the lake near West Thumb. Apparently sometimes they are even underwater bubbling away! We learned that fishermen used to catch fish in the lake and then throw them immediately into a boiling geyser to cook right then and there.

Of course, we made sure to visit the park’s most famous geyser, Old Faithful. They have a huge area with benches all around the geyser for people to sit and watch the eruption. We happened to be standing over near this guy a few minutes beforehand:

He gave a very interesting little talk in which he explained how geysers are like coffee percolators. And then we got to see this:

Hooray!!

We finally bid goodbye to Yellowstone and drove south through Grand Teton National Park as the sun was setting.

We’re now in a Motel 6 in Jackson, Wyo., and we’re planning on staying here two nights so we can relax a bit, do laundry, and go see the Grand Tetons in the daylight. Whew!

Cooke City was really cute in the daylight!

It was really cold, though. There was even snow on Pearl (and a lot of it had melted off by the time we took the photo):

Anyway, we drove straight into Yellowstone National Park from Cooke City!

We were barely in the park before we saw our first bison:

Hooray! We saw SO many wild bison today. We went to Antelope Island (near Salt Lake City) last spring and saw a ton of bison there — at least we thought so at the time. After that first group today, we saw herds and herds of them everywhere. We saw a lot of calves, too. One of the most interesting bison incidents we observed was when we were on the road from Tower-Roosevelt to Mammoth Hot Springs. We saw a large herd of bison traveling along the road. One of the bison was rolling around in the dirt!

He loved it!! And as soon as he was done, another bison came up for his turn in the dirt bath. I think we saw three or four of them take turns. It was amazing!!

We saw our first waterfall (Undine Falls) early in the day too!

Then we arrived in Mammoth Hot Springs Historic District, which is overrun with the other star animal of our day, elk!

Now, you may remember from our previous Bear Country USA post that it’s breeding season for elk. Therefore, they will kill you. Brian and I watched an entire safety film about elks chasing people down and stabbing their antlers into cars at the Yellowstone General Store this afternoon. So it’s kind of weird that they just live among people in the Mammoth Hot Springs area. Check out this guy here:

Well, he owns all these lady elks:

He was keeping them all between a couple of buildings in Mammoth Hot Springs, and whenever one of them left the circle, he would freak out and go round them up. Meanwhile, park rangers in reflective vests were herding all the visitors around making sure they weren’t in the path of any angry elk. It was crazy. And so are Mammoth Hot Springs themselves!

After we saw that, we drove around on a falls-finding adventure. We went to Tower Fall:

Tower Fall is 132 feet. Check out those volcanic pinnacles!

Then we went down to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which is home to two major waterfalls in the park, Upper & Lower Falls. Upper Falls (109 feet) is pretty easy to see:

But Lower Falls is a little more work. We elected to take a very intense trail down so we could see it. It’s called Uncle Tom’s Trail and it involves this:

It’s 328 steps and 500 feet down (and back up), so it’s a strenuous trail, but the craziest part for me was that the steps are all made out of this metal grate material, and they are built right next to a canyon obviously, so you can see right through the bottom of the steps to where you are clearly about to plummet to your death. I was completely terrified but managed to make it the whole way down so I could enjoy the 308 feet of Lower Falls:

The Statue of Liberty (with the base and everything) is three feet shorter than those falls. Nicely done, Yellowstone Park.

The hike down to Lower Falls took quite a while (in general, it takes a long time to get places in Yellowstone), so we got to catch the sunset on our way out of the park:

Now we’re at the Days Inn in West Yellowstone, Mont., and we’re trying to figure out what all is going to happen tomorrow. I hear there may be a geyser we need to see, but beyond that, I’m not sure what to expect! Brian and I are hoping for a moose.

What an interesting day! To be honest, we weren’t expecting much out of today. We thought it was going to be a ‘tweener day (where we cover a lot of ground, but not much happens). Instead, we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves on one of the most beautiful drives of the trip, thus far. We were on (not one, but…) two scenic byways, saw the first snow of the season, encountered rock formations that made our jaws drop, and we captured nearly 500 images of it on film. Here’s the path we took:

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We had a big day today full of some exciting surprises! We woke up in Sheridan and took a quick drive through the historic downtown area where there are some cute shops and restaurants (in original buildings from the 1910s and 1920s). There are also a bunch of sculptures downtown as part of a public art project they have going on:

After that, we headed out. Today was supposed to be about getting distance behind us and moving on to our next location, so we weren’t bothered by the fact that it was a bit cloudy and rainy, at least in the beginning of the day. Our route took us through the Big Horn Mountains!

This was a beautiful drive. Somewhere in the middle of it, we saw our first snow of the trip!

It was weird because it was quite warm in Sheridan this morning. It was just a light dusting in most places, but we did manage to engage in a mini–snowball fight. I’m hoping the snow doesn’t get much crazier than this, though, because we totally do not have appropriate outerwear. (Foreshadowing!)

We passed right by Shell Falls, but unfortunately they are doing construction there and we couldn’t actually walk along the path where you can see the falls well. Right after Shell Falls, we found ourselves in this crazy canyon area with really beautiful and unusual rock formations all around:

Right outside of the Big Horn Mountains, we saw this thing (which we later discovered is called Chimney Rock):

As we continued west, we also saw some wild horses (in a protected area):

Our next stop was the town of Cody, founded by Buffalo Bill. Cody boasts a h-u-u-u-g-e Buffalo Bill museum and cultural center, a charming downtown, etc., but we went for this:

Old Trail Town consists of a bunch of structures that had been in Wyoming and Montana ghost towns; they were moved to Cody and reassembled. It’s kind of like a cross between 1880 Town and an actual ghost town. It was pretty good!

Our route out of Cody sent us into more scenic routes and through the Shoshone National Forest.

Look at all those switchbacks. I can’t even tell you how totally over switchbacks we are right now. And eventually, we saw something I personally thought I would probably never see:

We decided just last night to come into this tiny corner of Montana so we could go into Yellowstone through the Northeast Entrance. So now we’re at a hostel-y feeling Super 8 in Cooke City, Mont. It’s very exciting! Oh, except for the fact that it was totally snowing when we arrived!! The snow began pretty much right after we crossed into Montana. It was kind of a sleety snow and very cold (remember our lack of appropriate outerwear). I scrapped my big plans to do laundry at the motel this evening in favor of a relaxing and very delicious dinner down the street at the Beartooth Cafe. Cooke City looks adorable in the dark, so I can’t wait to see it in the daylight tomorrow!