Yellowstone (Day 1)

Friday, July 6, 2012 

We got up early for our first day at Yellowstone.  We made some awesome lamb sandwiches from the dinner leftovers, and filled up the backpack with water, sunscreen and bear spray, and hit the road.  It was under 50 degrees when we left Big Sky, and very cloudy.  It did not look like a good start to the day. 

As we drove south to West Yellowstone entrance, it got a little better, but remained chilly until early afternoon.  We finally got smart, and bought the annual park pass, which we forgot to do in Badland.  We missed the West Yellowstone Visitor Center on way into the park so we stopped at Madison Junction to get some info to figure out our plan of attack.  We learned there are two main loops in the park – the North Loop and South Loop.  The north loop includes Norris Geyser Basin, Canyon Village (Grand Canyon of Yellowstone) and Mammoth Hot Springs, and the South Loop, which included Biscuit Basin, Midway Geyser Basin, Old Faithful area, Yellowstone Lake area (Grant Village/West Thumb), and Hayden Valley. 




Artist Paint Pot

We decided to do the north loop the first day.  Our first stop - after our first 30 minute animal traffic jam (Bison on side of road) – was Artists Paint Pot, en route to Norris Geyser Basin.  It was very cool…bubbling mud with frequent spurts that would go 10+ feet in the air.  Pretty neat.  Then we went to Norris Geyser area and walked 1.5 mile loop of cool geysers and hot springs. 

Uncle Tom's Trail

Then we went on to our next stop, which was our favorite of the day – Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  The Canyon Village Visitor Center had a nice store and great exhibits, including a 20’ x 20’ relief of the whole park.  Not sure our pics did that justice, but it was cool to get the lay of the land and the topography.  Apparently, the park was created by a volcanic eruption, leaving a large caldera w/ mountains all around it.  The geysers, hot springs, paintpots, fumeroles, and pools generally follow the outer limits of the caldera. 

At the Lower Falls

Lower Falls

The canyon runs between the mountains and has two falls – Upper and Lower.  We took a two hour hike on the South Rim Trail, all along the yellow-walled canyon and saw great views of both falls, and got lots of pictures.  We took Uncle Tom’s Trail off of South Rim, down to the river for an unbelievable view of Lower Falls.  All well and good, except for the 328 steps we had to take back up to South Rim trail…between the elevation and the steps, we had to stop several times to catch our breath!  At the end of the trail was Artists Inspiration Point, where all the people were taking pictures of the falls and Canyon.  

Bull Elk

Momma bear and her cub

Then we hiked back and got back on the road to head towards Mammoth Hot Springs.  Just as we were leaving the canyon area we saw a bull elk, just chilling lying in some shaded grass under a tree – well, first we saw the stopped cars, and then once we got closer we saw the bull elk.  Got some cool pics and then moved on, until we saw more stopped cars - this time it was a black bear and her cub.  Pretty cool – the little one was romping around while the mother guardedly followed behind it.  We took more pics, of course. 

The Pallette Spring

We pulled into Mammoth Hot Spring area and immediately noticed elk all over the place, almost domesticated, sitting on the lawns of various buildings.  We saw Fort Yellowstone, which was created when the US Army was responsible for protecting the parklands and wildlife before the National Park Service existed.  We walked a big loop and saw lots of springs - Bill liked the Palette Spring (see pic).  The colors result from various thermophiles (different microorganisms that grow based on different water temperatures).  Many of the springs were inactive, for whatever reason, not sure, and this was our least favorite part of the north loop.  We headed towards Norris to complete the loop and saw a large group of elk “in the wild”, and then hit another major Bison traffic jam leaving the park, just like we did that morning. 

We had a nice dinner at Bullwinkle’s in West Yellowstone (cute touristy town) and then headed back to Big Sky.  We had a close call on the way home when we tried to pass a big truck at the one passing point, and there was a deer standing in the middle of the road at the top of the hill…Bill swerved a bit into the oncoming lane, the deer ran off and luckily nobody was hurt.  In hindsight, we think it was an even closer call for the truck that we passed, but we’d like to think positively that nothing happened.  Glad I didn’t think to look in my side view mirror, just in case.  Counted our blessings that night!