Friday, August 19, 2005
Smarter Than The Average Bear
Current Location: Idaho Falls, ID, N 43 29.862', W 112 03.373', elev. 4753 ft.
On Wednesday, after my oil change, I left Bozeman and drove west on I-90 until I reached Livingston, MT, where I then headed south on US 89. Before I leave Montana, I just wanted to point out that virtually every little town and big city in Montana has its own casino, an odd site. This was also true in Washington. Usually the casinos were extremely small little shack buildings with probably a few slot machines inside, maybe horse racing. I never went in to investigate though.
Driving south, I soon reached the town of Gardiner, MT, and the gateway to Yellowstone National Park. It was quite literally a gateway, there was a huge arch commemorating the original park entrance, something that I have not seen at any other park.
Yellowstone was the first national park, not just in the United States, but the world. It was founded in 1872, before the surrounding territories (Montana, Wyoming and Idaho) even became states. The park, about the size of three Rhode Islands, is one of the largest, and lies almost entirely in Wyoming, but has small portions in Montana and Idaho.
Once inside the park, I quickly came upon a sign marking the 45th parallel, the 6th time I have crossed on this trip.
I do want to say though, not to stereotype, but I am finding European tourists to be very rude. One woman was in my way for the photo of the 45th parallel sign, and she actually just stood in the way, staring at me, while talking to a family member (they had already taken their photo of it about 3 minutes prior). She had no sense to get out of the way, after her family took their photos. I finally had to ask her to move, and she got all indignant. The rest of the road in was very cool and afforded many sights, so I took a few photos.
The first attraction in the park when traveling south is Mammoth Hot Springs, but I skipped this area for the time being and headed to the eastern end of the park, to the Tower Falls area. I got a few photos of the falls before the rain rolled in.
Shortly thereafter, the rain began to come down. Hard. I was actually pretty glad to see the rain, I hadn't seen any since Louisiana! At this point, I was heading back west to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and caught two rainbows in an area where the rain clouds had cleared up a bit. In the first photo below, one rainbow is difficult to see, but it is there, to the left of the main rainbow.
I got back to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and waited out the rain a bit before getting a campsite and setting up camp. It rained most of the night so I didn't sleep well, and when I packed up my tent in the morning, it was very wet and muddy. Ick. On the plus side, I did get up very early, probably the earliest so far on the trip, which gave me plenty of time to explore the rest of the park on thursday. I was up early enough to see some huge deer (or maybe elk?) just wandering around the parking lot, a whole herd of them. And these animals were huge, at their shoulder, they were taller than me.
The first area I explored was the Mammoth Hot Springs area, an area where hot spring water is just bubbling up out of the ground and creating lots and lots of salt and mineral deposits. It is pretty, and according to the park rangers, the formations have noticeable changes from day to day. One problem though, Yellowstone is a very active geological area (the whole plateau), and many of the spots have hydrogen sulfide gas pouring out of the ground. The smell is awful.
From there, it was south on US 89 down to a place in the park called Norris Geyser, and at Norris, they have a museum dedicated to the history of the park ranger, which was pretty interesting. I drove further south, and came across some wildlife (no bears though; I had my pic-a-nic basket all ready for Yogi). I came to an area and there were about 20 cars pulled over to the side of the road. Before even seeing what it was, I hopped out of the car with the camera, hoping it wasn't just some lousy deer. (I have seen enough deer on this trip, I probably won't be stopping for them anymore). Luckily for me, the people were gawking at a huge elk. Huge, a 12 pointer, it must have been over 8 feet tall.
While taking my photos, I was very lucky to see to my right a bison! In my opinion, even better than the elk, since bison only exist in the wild in western Wyoming.
Then, to everyone's surprise, the elk walked behind the bison, and I was able to get a shot of them both together.
Very cool. As I was walking away from the bison to head back to my car, I heard a shout and turned around to see a bunch of people running from the bison. Some asshole had gotten way to close, and the bison looked up and took a little charge at the guy, and almost gored him. I sort of wish the guy had been caught by the bison, since the very first thing you learn when entering the park (all parks actually) is to keep the wildlife wild. In Yellowstone, it is illegal to be more than 25 yards (75 feet!) from the animals, and 100 yards for a bear. This guy got way too close. Don't go near the animals jerkface!
From there, I headed south to Old Faithful. I had always assumed that Old Faithful (N 44 25.659', W 110 38.448', elev. 8351 ft) goes off at regular intervals, and you could simply find a schedule and be there at that time, but actually, Old Faithful's eruption can only be predicted after the previous eruption, because the height and volume of the geyser plume dictates when the next eruption will occur. The park rangers only "predict" the eruptions, they don't schedule them. I got there about an hour and a half prior to the next eruption, so I had some lunch and walked around a bit. I believe I read some where that there are about 17,000 geysers in the world, and over half, about 10,000 are in Yellowstone. About 20 minutes before the predicted time, I found my way over to the viewpoint. A boardwalk encircles the geyser, and crowds of people were gathered around, there must have been 8 to 10 thousand people, it felt like a sporting event. I was astounded. We waited and waited, watching the geyser. When not erupting, it is actually letting off a steady flow of steam and hydrogen sulfide gas. At precisely 3:44, the time the park rangers had predicted, the geyser went off, shooting steam and liquid water hundreds of feet into the air. The crowd cheered and clapped, and of course took photos and videos. It was a great time.
You can see the rest of my Yellowstone photos here. I continued on south from Old Faithful on US 89, exiting the park close to 5 PM, and very quickly entering Grand Teton National Park, about 10 miles south of Yellowstone. Grand Teton was very beautiful in its own right, and to me, was very reminiscent of Glacier National Park. There were huge mountains and huge lakes, all pristine and incredible. Unfortunately, it was still over cast, so I didn't get many clear photos, but I still took lots. You can view the photos of Grand Teton here.
I drove south from Grand Teton, through Jackson Hole, into Jackson, Wyoming, where I finally had some cell phone service, where I called a few people since I was out of contact for a few days. I got in touch with my friend Keith, who I will be meeting up with on saturday in Colorado. Form Jackson, I drove south and west on US 89 / US 26, until I reached Idaho, where it became just US 26. I took that road west into the town of Idaho Falls, where I stopped for the night. I just want to say, Montana and Wyoming are some of the most beautiful country I have yet seen (though still a little behind Oregon and Northern California).
On Wednesday, after my oil change, I left Bozeman and drove west on I-90 until I reached Livingston, MT, where I then headed south on US 89. Before I leave Montana, I just wanted to point out that virtually every little town and big city in Montana has its own casino, an odd site. This was also true in Washington. Usually the casinos were extremely small little shack buildings with probably a few slot machines inside, maybe horse racing. I never went in to investigate though.
Driving south, I soon reached the town of Gardiner, MT, and the gateway to Yellowstone National Park. It was quite literally a gateway, there was a huge arch commemorating the original park entrance, something that I have not seen at any other park.
Yellowstone was the first national park, not just in the United States, but the world. It was founded in 1872, before the surrounding territories (Montana, Wyoming and Idaho) even became states. The park, about the size of three Rhode Islands, is one of the largest, and lies almost entirely in Wyoming, but has small portions in Montana and Idaho.
Once inside the park, I quickly came upon a sign marking the 45th parallel, the 6th time I have crossed on this trip.
I do want to say though, not to stereotype, but I am finding European tourists to be very rude. One woman was in my way for the photo of the 45th parallel sign, and she actually just stood in the way, staring at me, while talking to a family member (they had already taken their photo of it about 3 minutes prior). She had no sense to get out of the way, after her family took their photos. I finally had to ask her to move, and she got all indignant. The rest of the road in was very cool and afforded many sights, so I took a few photos.
The first attraction in the park when traveling south is Mammoth Hot Springs, but I skipped this area for the time being and headed to the eastern end of the park, to the Tower Falls area. I got a few photos of the falls before the rain rolled in.
Shortly thereafter, the rain began to come down. Hard. I was actually pretty glad to see the rain, I hadn't seen any since Louisiana! At this point, I was heading back west to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and caught two rainbows in an area where the rain clouds had cleared up a bit. In the first photo below, one rainbow is difficult to see, but it is there, to the left of the main rainbow.
I got back to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, and waited out the rain a bit before getting a campsite and setting up camp. It rained most of the night so I didn't sleep well, and when I packed up my tent in the morning, it was very wet and muddy. Ick. On the plus side, I did get up very early, probably the earliest so far on the trip, which gave me plenty of time to explore the rest of the park on thursday. I was up early enough to see some huge deer (or maybe elk?) just wandering around the parking lot, a whole herd of them. And these animals were huge, at their shoulder, they were taller than me.
The first area I explored was the Mammoth Hot Springs area, an area where hot spring water is just bubbling up out of the ground and creating lots and lots of salt and mineral deposits. It is pretty, and according to the park rangers, the formations have noticeable changes from day to day. One problem though, Yellowstone is a very active geological area (the whole plateau), and many of the spots have hydrogen sulfide gas pouring out of the ground. The smell is awful.
From there, it was south on US 89 down to a place in the park called Norris Geyser, and at Norris, they have a museum dedicated to the history of the park ranger, which was pretty interesting. I drove further south, and came across some wildlife (no bears though; I had my pic-a-nic basket all ready for Yogi). I came to an area and there were about 20 cars pulled over to the side of the road. Before even seeing what it was, I hopped out of the car with the camera, hoping it wasn't just some lousy deer. (I have seen enough deer on this trip, I probably won't be stopping for them anymore). Luckily for me, the people were gawking at a huge elk. Huge, a 12 pointer, it must have been over 8 feet tall.
While taking my photos, I was very lucky to see to my right a bison! In my opinion, even better than the elk, since bison only exist in the wild in western Wyoming.
Then, to everyone's surprise, the elk walked behind the bison, and I was able to get a shot of them both together.
Very cool. As I was walking away from the bison to head back to my car, I heard a shout and turned around to see a bunch of people running from the bison. Some asshole had gotten way to close, and the bison looked up and took a little charge at the guy, and almost gored him. I sort of wish the guy had been caught by the bison, since the very first thing you learn when entering the park (all parks actually) is to keep the wildlife wild. In Yellowstone, it is illegal to be more than 25 yards (75 feet!) from the animals, and 100 yards for a bear. This guy got way too close. Don't go near the animals jerkface!
From there, I headed south to Old Faithful. I had always assumed that Old Faithful (N 44 25.659', W 110 38.448', elev. 8351 ft) goes off at regular intervals, and you could simply find a schedule and be there at that time, but actually, Old Faithful's eruption can only be predicted after the previous eruption, because the height and volume of the geyser plume dictates when the next eruption will occur. The park rangers only "predict" the eruptions, they don't schedule them. I got there about an hour and a half prior to the next eruption, so I had some lunch and walked around a bit. I believe I read some where that there are about 17,000 geysers in the world, and over half, about 10,000 are in Yellowstone. About 20 minutes before the predicted time, I found my way over to the viewpoint. A boardwalk encircles the geyser, and crowds of people were gathered around, there must have been 8 to 10 thousand people, it felt like a sporting event. I was astounded. We waited and waited, watching the geyser. When not erupting, it is actually letting off a steady flow of steam and hydrogen sulfide gas. At precisely 3:44, the time the park rangers had predicted, the geyser went off, shooting steam and liquid water hundreds of feet into the air. The crowd cheered and clapped, and of course took photos and videos. It was a great time.
You can see the rest of my Yellowstone photos here. I continued on south from Old Faithful on US 89, exiting the park close to 5 PM, and very quickly entering Grand Teton National Park, about 10 miles south of Yellowstone. Grand Teton was very beautiful in its own right, and to me, was very reminiscent of Glacier National Park. There were huge mountains and huge lakes, all pristine and incredible. Unfortunately, it was still over cast, so I didn't get many clear photos, but I still took lots. You can view the photos of Grand Teton here.
I drove south from Grand Teton, through Jackson Hole, into Jackson, Wyoming, where I finally had some cell phone service, where I called a few people since I was out of contact for a few days. I got in touch with my friend Keith, who I will be meeting up with on saturday in Colorado. Form Jackson, I drove south and west on US 89 / US 26, until I reached Idaho, where it became just US 26. I took that road west into the town of Idaho Falls, where I stopped for the night. I just want to say, Montana and Wyoming are some of the most beautiful country I have yet seen (though still a little behind Oregon and Northern California).