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. 

A boat trip through the Gates of the Mountains

September 13, 2013
Helena, Montana
Lincoln Road RV Park

Aerial view photo taken from internet of the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness Area

One of our good friends from Corvallis fishes the Missouri River every fall near Cascade, Montana.  He encouraged us to head east from Glacier via Browning and Choteau on Hwy 89, then Hwy 287 to I-15  which follows the Missouri River into Helena. Neither of us had ever been this way so we thought it would be good to see some new vistas. To take full advantage of the Missouri River experience, he suggested we take a boat trip near Helena through what is known as the Gates of the Mountains. I had bookmarked the boat trip website earlier this summer and we both agreed it looked interesting and quite reasonable at $14 piece. We made plans to stay as close as possible to the boat tour since Helena was just going to be an overnight stop for us on the way to Livingston, Montana. 

It was a little tricky to find a campground close to the marina, but after several phone calls, we discovered a decent place, Lincoln Road RV Park about nine miles south. There are other state or BLM parks in the area but they don’t handle big rigs and seemed pretty far off the main highway, something we did not want to do.  Interestingly, a couple of the flyfishing outfitters in Craig and Cascade had 2-3 RV spots for overnighters which would have been another option but they were a little too far away.

The last boat tour of the day was at 2 p.m. (fall schedule). This early afternoon departure time caused us to rush more than usual to travel 200 miles, get checked in at the campground, and head back north to the marina in our Jeep. One factor that added to our challenge was getting slowed down on Hwy 89 by miles of road construction with long delays between Browning and Choteau. We arrived at the marina with only four minutes to spare, but we made it in time to park, get tickets, and board our tour boat, The Canyon Voyager.



The weather was perfect for a boat ride, about 75 degrees with clear blue skies and little wind. Once we got on the boat, neither of us  had any idea about what to expect other than knowing it would last two hours.  The captain of the boat narrated the trip the whole way explaining the history, adding anecdotes, and quite a few jokes thrown in for entertainment value. 

The main history of the Gates of the Mountains area for American settlers goes back to Meriwether Lewis’s “discovery” of this area.  He and Clark were split up during this part of their expedition, so Lewis is the one who made the area well-known with this description of it from his journal:

Friday July 19, 1805--  “this evening we entered much the most remarkable clifts that we have yet seen. These clifts rise from the waters edge on either side perpendicularly to the hight of 1200 feet. . . . the river appears to have forced its way through this immence body of solid rock for the distance of 5 ¾ miles and where it makes its exit below has thrown on either side vast collumns of rocks mountains high. the river appears to have woarn a passage just the width of its channel or 150 yds. it is deep from side to side nor is ther in the 1^st 3 miles of this distance a spot except one of a few yards in extent on which a man could rest the soal of his foot. . . .this rock is a black grannite below and appears to be of a much lighter colour above and from the fragments I take it to be flint of a yelloish brown and light creemcolourd yellow.—from the singular appearance of this place I called it the gates of the rocky mountains. –from the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition

The Gates of the Mountain region was designated a national wilderness area as part of the 1964 Wilderness Act which means no roads, no buildings, no logging, no mining, and no mechanized vehicles including bicycles. There is a day use campground along the river which requires a special permit, as does fishing and hunting in the area. Consequently, one of the special aspects of touring this area is it looks much the same as it did over two-hundred years ago when Lewis and his crew came up the Missouri.



The cliffs of the canyon are limestone deposits from glacier activity millions of years ago.  In several places, there are unique caves and shapes in the towering rock walls. There are interesting formations everywhere, even some where the limestone folded over on itself creating horizontal layers of what must have once looked like taffy.



There were several other unusual formations that the captain pointed out as the monster of the canyon (two cave eyes and a cave hole for the mouth) or other imagined animal shapes.





If memory serves me correctly, I think the guide said this opening was 40 feet wide. With 1200 ft. cliffs, it is a little hard to judge the scale of things.



When Lewis and his crew were navigating their boats through this area, the towering cliffs seemed to block their passage, but as they went around a bend in the waterway, it seemed like the rock walls magically opened up to allow their entrance into the imposing waterway.  Our captain maneuvered the boat so we could experience the optical illusion of the rock walls opening like a gate. Hard to capture in a photo, but it was one of the more memorable experiences of our excursion.




One of the other memorable but tragically sad aspects of the tour was seeing Mann Gulch, the canyon where thirteen smokejumpers lost their lives on August 5, 1949. This historic disaster changed the way fires were fought in the Northwest. I knew the story sounded familiar to me then I remembered reading Norman MacLean’s book Young Men and Fire (author of A River Runs Through It) which chronicles the Mann Gulch Fire.  Also, the 1953 film, Red Skies of Montana with Richard Widmark is loosely based on the harrowing events of the Mann Gulch fire.





Other highlights of the tour included some wildlife sightings—mainly bighorn sheep, eagles, osprey, and one deer. After spending five days in Glacier National Park, we were not as wowed as we normally would be but it was still exciting to see the wonders of nature in such a unique place. 







Lastly, aside from thinking of the Lewis and Clark expedition that occurred here, I like to go back even further and imagine the Native American tribes who once inhabited these canyons.  To my surprise, the captain pointed some very distinct pictograph on the cliffs. This first one is not a clear symbol--maybe a tree or a person, but the second one clearly portrays a bison with arrows running through it. They estimate these pictographs to be about two-thousand years old. It is amazing how strong the color has stood the test of time.





We were both glad we went a little out of our way to see this place. Some of the best experiences we have had over the past two years have been discovering lesser known places and having the time to explore them.  Thank you Don Cook for the great suggestion which took us to the Gate of the Rockies!

Next up a brief stop in Livingston and Bozeman, then on to West Yellowstone. Thanks for coming along.