Getting high on the Grand Prismatic Spring

September 19, 2013
West Yellowstone, Mt.
Grizzly RV Park



The sun finally came out on our last day here in Yellowstone but the high temperatures were only forecast to be in the 50s. Since we woke up to temperatures in the low 30s, we decided to wait a few hours before heading out on the trails.  Our main destination was to revisit the Midway Geyser Basin which we had only seen on a bus tour from afar on a dark rainy day. 

Thanks to tips from Brad, our Buffalo Bus tour guide, and a recommendation from fellow blogger Pam of Oh, the Places They Go!, we learned that there is an unofficial trail (Brad called it a social trail) that you can take to get the best view of the amazing Grand Prismatic Spring.

The drive from West Yellowstone to the Midway Geyser Basin only took about a half hour. There are some lovely views of the Madison River along the way.  Fall is prime fly fishing time and there is a strong part of me longing to be out there on the river.Both Vic and I have taken lessons and done a little flyfishing. It is on our list of future hobbies to pursue and Montana would sure be the ideal place to do it. The Vic kept all his gear including fly tying equipment in our storage uni. I would have to start from scratch which require a pretty hefty investment, but I am worth it—hah. 



One of my favorite novels is Norman MacLean’s A River Runs Through It. The first line about sums up how I feel about even watching the art of fly fishing: “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”  And the last line is quite fitting for the beauty of this place as well: “I am haunted by waters.”



Another beautiful scene on our way to the Midway Geyser Basin was passing a big meadow near the springs dotted with bison.  These particular bison were known for being outstanding in their field.



Couldn’t resist shooting this photo of a cow bison with her young calf.



We parked the car at the Midway Geyser Basin lot which happened to have only one space left even this time of year.  I think the crowds were out in force since it was the first sunny day of the week. From here, we just followed the Fairy Falls Trail a short distance until we found an unmarked trail going straight up a hill to the left. We learned there is another hill you can climb a bit further down but it does not take you as high this trail does, so we decided to go for the gold. 

I don’t have much terminology to describe different terrains when it comes to hiking. There is not really a trail to follow here; you just have to pick your way around fallen trees and rocks as you make a steady climb uphill. Because of the recent rain, many places were slick so we especially appreciated our hiking boots with good tread and ankle support.







We were proud of ourselves to keep on going when others "called it good enough to take photos" at a much lower elevation.  After about a half hour of carefully stepping uphill, we reached the top ecstatic to see this incredible vista.



I could not stop taking photos as each time we walked a few steps more on the hilltop plateau, it revealed a slightly different look at the Grand Prismatic.  It was quite a thrill to be able to see this marvel of nature, the largest hot spring in the U.S. and third largest in the world, from this perspective.  Worth the whole trip to Yellowstone.

These are my experiments with zoomed in shots and different perspectives of this beauty.











I put my camera (a Nikon Coolpix P510) on a Special Effects setting called Painting for this photo.  I actually prefer the realistic photos but thought this was interesting to include.



No one else was on top of the hill with us and we wanted a photo of ourselves with the spring in the background.  It took about ten tries with us laughing the whole time.  Thank goodness for Vic’s long arms.  (We did look for a place to set the camera at the right height to take a timed photo, but to no avail. And, yes, I have major hat head but who cares?)



It was easy to take single photos of ourselves, so we did that too. You can see from Vic’s down vest and long pants that we are in colder temps than we are accustomed to as he is almost always wearing his retirement uniform--cargo shorts and flip flops.




After an exhilarating thirty minutes on the hilltop, we decided it was finally time to head down.  We took our time stepping carefully to avoid any slips, slides, or twists. Vic carefully lead the way down where we ran into other hikers who were only climbing midway.



This is the view of the spring as we descended—much less dramatic the closer you get but still pretty, I love the clouds too! 



This downed tree limb across the trail had names of other “viewers” carved into it making an interesting photo with the spring in the background.



We had plans to go on to Fairy Falls, another five miles, but that didn’t happen. We are still in our conditioning phase, you know. We did pass by this spectacular small pool on our way out.
 

Once again, our pooches were ultra happy upon our return.  At least this time they did not have to endure thunderstorms in our absence. 



More excitement to come as we are off to the Grand Tetons for four days before starting our slow trek eastward. Our time in Glacier and Yellowstone exceeded our expectations causing us to seriously consider Montana as a future home. I have a feeling we will be seduced by Jackson as well. Isn’t it great to be so fickle about lovely places?  Roll on. . . .

A rainy museum day in West Yellowstone

September 18, 2013
West Yellowstone, Montana
Grizzly RV Park



We had planned to explore the Mammoth Hot Springs area of Yellowstone today but our second day of cold stormy weather caused us to stay close to “home” and check out a couple of museums in town.

The first stop on this rainy day was the Yellowstone Historic Center which is housed in the original Union Pacific Depot. Vic used to teach American History so his interest in these types of museums is especially strong. I enjoy it too, but don’t have the same compelling need to read every plaque.  Suffice it to say, that we need to allot a fair amount of time to these endeavor and that’s fine with me as a major reason we are full-timers is to get a more in-depth appreciation for this amazing country we call home.
Vic visited Yellowstone once before as a ten-year-old boy.  He doesn’t remember much about the experience except for seeing bears, camping in tents, and watching the miracle of Old Faithful.





This trip was my first time here, so neither of us knew much about the history of Yellowstone. The museum turned out to be fairly small and limited in scope—but a worthwhile stop. The main highlight was learning about travel to and within Yellowstone through the different eras since the park opened in 1872. (Yellowstone was the first national park.) 



Some of these souvenirs were popular when Vic was here as boy in the 1950s. I think they still sell the same spoons today although I bet it is hard to find the originals that were sterling silver.



When the park first opened travellers arrived by stagecoach, but by 1908 train travel was the preferred mode. In fact, the whole town of West Yellowstone grew out of the need to have services for the arrival of these passengers. I enjoyed seeing how elegant the train trips were as they had several displays of the fine china and linens aboard the train. When the tourists arrived, they could rent special dusters to wear in the carriages that took them on a five-day tour of the park.





The camping was all set up for them as part of the tour package, but I imagine it was still pretty primitive. The crazy part that I mentioned in my previous post was how much interaction there was between the tourists and the wildlife. Feeding them by hand was not uncommon.  If an animal threatened a human, I guess they just shot them back then.  



Traveling in the park in the winter was another interesting part of the museum’s display. In the park’s early days, it closed for the winter but by the 1930s the roads leading to the park were paved and plowed allowing for more travel into the park. In the 1950s, they started to use snowcoaches to take people around the park. This 1953 vintage snowcoach on display outside the museum was built by Bombardier, a company later famous for its Ski-Doo snowmobiles.



When snowmobiles became popular in the 60s, this opened up a whole new form of travel for winter tourists leading the park to eventually open year round in 1971 for winter recreation. Snowmobiles were allowed in the park until tighter restrictions on noise and pollution changed the regulations.  Nowadays, they only allow snowmobiles by special permit (thankfully, they have to be the newer quiet ones that meet EPA guidelines). The park still uses more modern snowcoaches that take people on tours around the park, an especially popular choice when some of the roads are closed due to snowfall.

This Arctic Cat snowmobile brought back youthful memories to me as I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when this model came out in the 60s.  With over 300 annual inches of snowfall, snowmobile recreation was incredibly popular in the UP and northern Wisconsin and Minnesota as many of the early models were manufactured there.



Our second “museum” experience of the day was a visit to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center.  Our guide from the previous day’s tour recommended that we visit this place. It is a non-profit wildlife center whose aim is to educate people about Yellowstone wildlife, with an emphasis on bears and wolves.  The big surprise is that they have two wolf packs and nine grizzlies who live at the center. These are animals who either could not survive in the wild due to abandonment at a young age or who would have been killed because they were deemed nuisances or threats to humans. The center has several acres dedicated to these animals which are set up to be as close to natural surroundings as they can be. It was also impressive to learn the animals have no human contact with the employees who work very hard to keep the animals “entertained.”  We saw them hide squash under rocks for the grizzlies and put out a deer carcass for the wolves to eat (about the time the battery on my camera died.)  Everyday they put out new scents and rearrange different aspects of their surroundings to keep things interesting for the animals. It still seemed sad to see them captive, but at least this place has high standards and is focused on education. They describe their animals as ones who “serve as ambassadors for their wild counterparts.”







The wildlife center also has a birds of prey in special aviary areas where these beauties hung out.





Aside from going to the museums, we also enjoyed checking out the end of season sales in the local outdoor recreation stores. With these cold temperatures (lows in the 30s at night), we needed a few things to keep us warmer than our typical Florida winter apparel. 

It was a little disappointing not to be outdoors on this day, but we rolled with it. In the past year, we have had very few days of rain or even weather that was too hot so we have been quite blessed. The good news is the weather forecast for the rest of the week is sunny—cool—but sunny. Tomorrow, we plan to hike in the Midway Geyser Basin area to get a good view of the Grand Prismatic Spring before we leave this iconic park.

Touring the lower loop of Yellowstone

September 14-17, 2013
West Yellowstone, Montana
Grizzly RV Park



Before arriving here in West Yellowstone, we had a two-night stay in one of my favorite Western towns, Livingston, Montana. I just couldn’t be that close to Livingston on our way to West Yellowstone without having what Jimmy Buffet described as a “Livingston Saturday night.”  We stayed at Rock Canyon Park, a cozy family-owned park on the Yellowstone River just a few miles from downtown Livingston.  My big plans for whooping it up on Saturday translated into having a fabulous meal at the Murray Hotel restaurant. They did have a band in the bar, but unfortunately the music was electronica—definitely geared toward a younger crowd. We just enjoyed walking around downtown and peering into the classic old bars with their neon lights advertising poker games in the backroom. (One of the best signs said: “liquor up front and poker in the rear.” )

Livingston sits in the heart of what is known as the Paradise Valley and has become a popular place for Hollywood types to buy a big ranch and escape the LA mania. Some of the more well-known entertainers who have lived here or still do are Peter Fonda, Margot Kidder, Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, Tom Brokaw, Jane Fonda and Ted Turner, Jimmy Buffet, Jeff Bridges, and a handful of writers including Tom McGuane, Richard Brautigan, and Jim Harrison. There was a time in the 80s and 90s where the classic old bars in Livingston would fill up with these characters, many of whom have been known to live life out loud—shall we say.  There is definitely some kind of mystique about this place that draws me to it.  (Okay, I like cowboys—no mystique there.)



The town of Bozeman, home to Montana State, is only about thirty minutes west of Livingston. Even though I lived in Missoula for seven years, I had never been to Bozeman before. (May have had something to do with the rivalry between U of Mt. and Mt. State—the grizzlies vs. cats.)  While in Livingston, we took a long afternoon to check out Bozeman and we liked what we saw.  It doesn’t have the small town character of Livingston. The downtown is similar to Missoula with a western yuppie feeling, but seemed a little smaller than Missoula. With Yellowstone so close and a great ski area, Big Mountain, just fifteen miles from town, outdoor recreation stores are popular as well as lots of breweries and cafes. Seems like the quality of life in Bozeman would be good with so many outdoor attractions to keep life interesting.  (I took no photos at all!  Guess I needed a break from playing photographer all the time.)

After our little two day stint in Livingston, we headed to the Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone.  Several people recommended this park to us, so we just decided to use it as our home base for exploring Yellowstone. The park is certainly the nicest we saw in the area, but it was on the pricey side considering how few amenities they have.



The sites were excellent in every way and the place is meticulously maintained with extremely friendly management. My only complaints would be the price ($60 with a Good Sam discount), no enclosed pet area, and you are limited to using wi-fi for two hours in a ten hour period.  For $60, I would think they could figure out a way to be more generous with the wi-fi.  Another plus for this park is its location—walking or biking distance to the tourist town of West Yellowstone.  We did enjoy being able to walk everywhere in town right from our site.



We arrived to foreboding weather with forecasts for thunderstorms and heavy rain expected for at least two days. Because of the rain, we decided to take a Buffalo Bus tour of the lower loop of Yellowstone mainly to learn more about this part of Yellowstone before we went exploring on our own.

Our tour guide, Brad, was much like a park ranger in terms of knowing the history, geology, geography, and wildlife biology of the park. The tour began at 8:15 a.m. and ended at 5:00 p.m. giving us ample time to see most of the major sites along the lower loop including a few opportunities to walk some trails on our own at various stops along the way.  Brad was especially excited about the stormy weather and the possibilities of seeing lightning strikes along the way. Us--not so much. It turned out that we had a lot of intermittent sun breaks along with the rain, and yes, some lightning, but the weather didn't really diminish the value of what we were able to experience and see on our tour of  the south loop. 

The first stops we made along the way were for wildlife sightings in Hayden Valley: elk and bison, probably the most common animals to see here.  We enjoyed seeing this big boy whom I am sure my son Brooks would have loved to zero in on with his bow.  (It’s the last week of bow hunting for elk in Oregon and he still has not bagged his annual elk.) 



Next we stopped for a bison jam.  Several were crossing the road causing quite a traffic jam.  Brad said more people are hurt by bison than any other animal in the park.  We learned you want to be extra careful when their tail is up as it means one of three things: love, aggression, or pooping .  Can you guess which of the three applies here?






Brad told us much about the history of Yellowstone with the railroad bringing vacationers to the park and stage coaches taking folks on tours wearing their dusters to stay clean. The feeding of animals was an accepted thing then. They even had big dump sites to attract the bears where tourists would line up to watch the bears eating the park’s garbage.  Gerald Ford was one of the park rangers who had dumpster duty back in the days.  Funny to think of him then going from a park worker to becoming a U.S. President.

Our next major stop was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone where, unfortunately, we had the heaviest rain of the day. My photos did not turn out well here at all, but the cool thing about the rain was that it brought out the colors of the canyon—if you were there in person. There is also a lovely waterfall visible from the canyon boardwalk.



From the canyons we made a stop at Yellowstone Lake and the beautiful hotel on the lake where we had a thirty minute stop to walk.  The lake is impressively large, 20 miles long and 14 miles wide with 141 miles of shoreline—the biggest alpine lake west of the Mississippi. 



One of the surprising things about the hotel is its southern colonial architecture. Apparently, the original hotel was just a big long rectangle building for park workers, so adding the large white columns and porticos for a lakeside hotel almost makes sense. Somehow I only took a photo of the inside of the hotel. You can tell it is not the rustic looking kind of place one might expect to find here in Yellowstone.



Next up on the tour was visiting the area where most of the thermal features are—geysers, mud pots, and pools. I had no idea this area is basically the top of a large underground volcano, a giant caldera with all kinds of boiling fissures.  At first when I saw the area from a distance, I thought there were small wildfires burning several places in the distance. It’s from all the thermal action of the geysers, springs, and steam pots.  Fascinating geology.  We were amazed to learn that extreme life forms (thermophiles and extremophiles) exist in these boiling springs. The discovery of these life forms was fairly recent—the last thirty or forty years—and has led to major breakthroughs in dna testing and biotechnology.



Of course, Old Faithful was a major stop where there is a whole tourist village built up around it. Frankly, this was my least favorite stop with throngs of people (even post-summer) and lots of buildings with gift shops and expensive cafeteria type food. In every building there is a large clock posting the approximate time of the next blow, within 10 minutes plus or minus.  We dutifully headed out to catch it and sat with at least a hundred other folks waiting for the geyser. It wasn't too faithful this day as it blew eighteen minutes after the posted time.







After our long lunch stop at Old Faithful, we slowly wound our way north to Biscuit Basin and took a walk to one of the best spots of the day, the Sapphire Pool.  What a show of nature. The turquoise color looked like it was painted onto the bottom of the pool.  Our guide explained that the color indicated the extreme heat as pools with orange and yellow rims means the water is cooler in those areas. He said the temperature in this pool was around 200 degrees. 

Our last stop was at the place I was most looking forward to seeing: the Grand Prismatic Spring in the Midway Geyser Basin. I learned that most of the dramatic photos I have seen of this pool were aerial views. We must have been past our timeline as we did not even have time to go on the boardwalks to see the Grand Prismatic. Vic and I vowed to come back here on our own on a sunnier day. We also got a tip from Brad about taking a “social” trail up the mountain to the south of the pool to get the best view.  I was taken, however, with the beautiful iron or rust-colored edges of many of the thermal features.



When we arrived back to our campground about 5 p.m., the thunderstorm was in full swing quite close to the park. The bad part about this is our dog, Jetta, freaks out in thunderstorms.  We knew there was a possibility of storms when we left in the morning, so we put on her thunder shirt and played classical music on the i-Pod. (They have done studies that show playing Brahms lullabies or music that matches the natural rhythm of the heartbeat calms down animals--people too).  After being alone for so many hours, the pooches were sure glad to see us, or I should say glad to see Vic.



We both felt that this tour gave us a much better appreciation for the lower loop of Yellowstone, but we did not want to do a second tour of the upper loop as we were anxious to get out on the trails ourselves. Before coming here we did not realize how large Yellowstone is –150 mile loop with four distinct areas: Mammoth Hot Springs, the Lamar Valley, Yellowstone Lake, and the Geyser Basins. Our plan was to go to Mammoth Hot Springs and find a good day hike there the next day, but it rained even harder with temps in the 40s and 50s.  Stay tuned for Plan B.