Yellowstone!
Trip Start
Aug 12, 2008
1
7
9
Trip End
Aug 21, 2008
Gardiner,
Montana,
United States
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Yesterday we walked 380+ feet up and around (and another 380 feet down) Mammoth Hot Springs, witnessed the sporadic and phenomenal eruptions of Steamboat Geyser, looked down on the other-wordly effect of Porcelain Basin, and photographed a dozen different "Danger: Do Not Approach Elk" signs. Having a professional driver do all the work while we did all the looking was fantastic.
My camera battery died at Artists Point, so Ron ran back to the bus to get his film camera. Our tour friends took pictures of the Yellowstone River, the upper falls and cliffs, and of us, and promised to email them to us.
We ended our day in a little hotel overlooking the Yellowstone River, and our rooms opened out to a grassy knoll above the river. All of us on the ground floor of our building, plus a few others in our tour group got out our iced bottles of pre-mixed Margaritas, white wine or Jack Daniels
Yellowstone Arch
. Alcohol is sold in grocery stores in Montana, and our hotel was just up the street from the Gardiner Food Mart, so it seemed everyone had made a stop. We had quite a party watching the sun set over Yellowstone. By 9 pm, we all retired to our rooms for our 6 am wakeup. Fun, fun!Today we took a different route through the northern part of the Park, where we again saw lots of elk near the Adminstration Buildings (tasty grass, I guess), pronghorns (antelope) and a couple of herds of bison. The bison are beyond anything I expected. A zoo just can't mimic hundreds of these creatures in the Lamar Valley. We were able to watch for a half hour or more. Bison have a thunderous, rumbling bellow/growl. Who knew? We saw multiple generations of them hanging around, rolling in the dirt, running, head-butting and splashing in the river. It's an image I'll have for the rest of my life.
Our afternoon was spent on the Beartooth Highway - surely the most impressive road in the United States. Our historian Ed Bearrs travelled it in 1935, and his stories are hilarious and incredible.
We had lunch at a remote ranch near the northeast entrance to the Park where I was able to wade in the Clarks Fork of the icy Yellowstone for almost an hour - thank goodness for sandals! Everyone else had shoes, and the river bottom was too slippery for bare feet.
After a quick stop at Beartooth Lake overlooking the Butte (with slightly warmer water than the River), our bus climbed to 10,900+ feet - glorious Rocky Mountain views at every turn
Elk
. We got out at the top and stood at what seemed like the top of the world. Snow had not melted in many places. Coming down was a thrilling and terrifying all at once. Again, thank God for Eric, our very professional driver. I never believed that a huge tour bus could make it down those sharp curves. We were a quite raucous group as we stared down the switchbacks to drop offs thousands of feet below, cracking jokes at every turn. Ron's take on the huge nets that catch sliding rocks were that they were bus catchers. Everyone liked that.My favorite signs, in order and about 30 feet apart, near the top of the Beartooth Pass:
"Welcome to Montana" (we had been in Wyoming)
"Speed limit 75" (the state speed limit)
"White markers indicate highway deaths"
"Speed limit 65" (I guess because we were on a 5000 foot drop with switchbacks and people have died?)
Fortunately, Eric kept his speed down and his brakes cool.
We are now in Billings after a stop in the cute and newly trendy town of Red Lodge. Billings is a shock after the last few days. Montana's natural places are as spectacular as the developed places are ugly.
Tomorrow we head out from the city and get back into Lewis and Clark and Custer!
