Wanderung 3

Rocky Mountain Ramble

May - July 2003

June 15th - Yellowstone - West Loop, Wyoming

We tried to complete driving some of the byways around Yellowstone by first taking the Firehole Canyon drive and then driving out to the town of West Yellowstone, which lies just outside the park to the west in Montana. On the way to the Firehole Canyon we stopped to admire a large herd of buffaloes where calves were cavorting and young bulls fighting. One calf was even rubbing noses with his mother, but whether that was a sign of buffalo affection or had some other meaning I don’t really know.

The Firehole Canyon drive featured a beautiful waterfall and cascade on the Firehole River, which leads from the Old Faithful geyser area to the Madison River. We were treated to views of steep cliffs from the original caldera and lava intrusions. The canyon was lined by cliffs from the old caldera wall of the ancient Yellowstone volcano, and sometimes you could even see a hint of old lava flows. It is curious to think of this entire area as the base of a massive volcano, but that’s apparently what the recent evidence indicates. The remnants of the hot magma powering that volcano are still heating the water and causing all the various thermal features to this day. However, I’m quite happy that I wasn’t around when that volcano blew its top and formed the caldera, because the caldera is some 30 miles across or so and the explosion would have been correspondingly tremendous. Just guessing, but it seems to me that a volcano that big finally went off, it would make Krakatoa’s explosion look like a firecracker.


 

As we headed westward out of the park, we had yet another animal-caused traffic jam, but this one was for a bald eagle that was nesting just beside the road. The park service had folks on duty to keep the people at least ¼ of a mile away from the nest so as to not disturb the eagles. Of course, right outside those limits everybody stopped, took out their cameras, and started snapping away. We joined the throng and got a couple nice shots of an eagle sitting on a really huge nest of sticks and twigs.

We continued on to the town of West Yellowstone that lies just outside the park boundaries in Montana. I had thought to fill up with gas there, but much to my surprise I found gas there was $1.75 a gallon compared to the $1.60 we had paid a couple of days back in Gardiner, Montana. So I held off on filling the truck and we walked around the town.

West Yellowstone had about a 6-block core commercial area, which was much larger than Gardiner, Montana. We couldn’t find any grocery store in Gardiner but West Yellowstone had two of them. Besides the usual tourist stores and art boutiques in the commercial district, we found a nice bookstore where I purchased a book on the clearance shelf about famous western women. When I finally got the chance to read these capsule biographies several months later, I found them to be quite interesting indeed. I guess the next result of our explorations was that if you want to purchase cheap gas, go to Gardiner, but if you want pretty much anything else you might want to try West Yellowstone.

After lunch at an Arby’s I found hidden away in a gas station on the north side of town, we walked south a couple of blocks to see the Yellowstone Museum, which was housed in the old Union Pacific train station. This used to be the transfer point of tourists arriving by train to the stagecoaches, or later touring cars that they used for visiting Yellowstone Park. On arrival the tourists would be treated to a sumptuous meal in a dining hall holding 300 people before they changed into their sightseeing clothes for the remainder of their tour, using the special men’s and women’s dressing rooms reserved for this purpose.

The grand tour of Yellowstone itself lasted 5 days and proceeded counter clockwise around the loop road that still exists in the park. The first day was the drive into Yellowstone with stops at springs where folks would wash out their handkerchiefs, and ending with the Old Faithful geyser basin. The second day was the West Thumb geyser area by the lake where they could catch a fish and boil it right there in the “Fishing Cone” hot spring. The third day was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone with the upper and lower falls. The fourth day was the Mammoth Hot Springs area where they could have trinkets coated by the mineral water flowing out of the springs. The fifth day of the journey was a return to West Yellowstone past the Norris Geyser basin. In my opinion it seemed to be a great itinerary because you would have something new and different to see on each day of the tour.

This itinerary, of course, typified the visits of those who had sufficient funds to pay for this first-class treatment. These visitors were called “Dudes” in the vernacular. But other folks also visited Yellowstone, and I was particularly interested in the description of the “Sagebrushers”—people who tried to find their own transportation and lodging when visiting the park. In the early days of the park, these folks drove their Model Ts into the park with camping gear and made their way around the park. We felt a spiritual affinity to these folks, as if we were their latter-day descendants. I was amused to learn that they had to back up the hills in reverse gear so that the gravity-fed fuel system of the Model Ts wouldn’t run dry—it must have been a heck of a drive on some of those hills!


 

We stopped off at a grocery store for supplies, including cash from an ATM, and I had a close encounter of the traffic kind when backing out of the parking lot. We were both in each other’s blind spots and backed out simultaneously, so it was just one of those things and the policeman found no fault for either of us. The damage, however, was not evenly divided. My truck received a small scratch on the fender and the rubber top of the bumper had a slight tear. The other gentleman’s Honda Accord had a broken taillight. It was frustrating calling the insurance company using the cell phone because we were on “analog roam” and the level of static was very high. What with one thing and another, this minor incident delayed us about an hour but we still had time to visit some more of the thermal areas on our way back to camp.

We drove back into the park and turned south to see the Fountain Paint Pots and Midway Geyser Basin. I recalled that way back in 1972 that these “paint pots” had really fascinated and frustrated me. The pain pots are thick mud pools created by the reaction of the acidic water with the underlying rock, and the steam comes up in the form of big fat mud bubbles that pop with a loud “blurp” sound, kind of like a belch. Maybe I haven’t done it justice in that description, but it’s actually fun to watch and listen to these things.

Taking pictures of them is, however, another matter. They pop quite quickly, so if you press the shutter when you see a bubble, it will have already popped by the time the camera shutter operates. Back in 1972, I ran out of film while trying to get a good picture and ended up frustrated when we developed the film back at home. This time, however, I had a digital camera and I resolved to just sit there and keep taking pictures until I got at least one good one of a bubble popping. I kept taking pictures, reviewing them, and in most cases immediately deleting them. This went one for about 20 minutes while Monika patiently stood by and other folks stared at me curiously as they passed by—such are the dangers of having an idee fixe. But in the end I thought I had at least one good one and we proceeded on to see the other features in the basin.

The basin had the usual features of small geysers and hot springs, but it also included some very interesting hot water flows with the different colors of algae. Even if you know that the colors are really different species that live in the different temperature zones, it still is a very pretty effect.

At the tail end of the day we took a quick detour back to the Old Faithful area to get some pictures of the Castle Geyser. In particular, I was trying to get pictures that would mimic the perspective of the 1870 photograph I had seen up at the Mammoth Hot Spring museum. Unfortunately, I found that the exact location of that old photograph, as best as I could make it out, was now at a point several yards off the permitted trail, so I couldn’t get exactly the same shot. Nevertheless, the cone of that geyser is very distinctive and, I think, pretty, so it wasn’t time wasted.

That evening we had a campfire program on the grizzly bear. The Ranger told us about the bear that had been hit and fatally injured by a car just outside our campground the day before, and we were all sad about that, but she also told many other facts about this really interesting animal. Compared to our visit in 1972 where we saw bears begging alongside the road, the National Park Service folks have been completely successful in solving the problem of begging bears. Feeding bears is no longer allowed and they enforce very strict food control policies in the campgrounds. That was for us a pain in the neck since we had to remove all traces of food, the stove, and dishes from the table into the truck after every meal. Still, the net result was that now tents were allowed in all Yellowstone campgrounds except one RV campground, whereas in 1972 they had so many problems with grizzly bears that tents were only allowed in one of the park campgrounds. So despite the inconvenience, their efforts and strict food policies have worked.

Part of the talk was about the history of changing attitudes toward the bear. One part of that history was “Smokey the Bear” who had acted as a National Park symbol and fire-prevention mascot. They handed around the song about him that I remembered singing when I was a child. The refrain went:

Smokey the bear, Smokey the bear,
Growlin’ and a-prowlin’ and a-sniffin’ the air.
He can spot a fire before it starts to flame.
That’s why they call him Smokey; that’s how he got his name.

The Ranger also told us about a contemporary problem bear nicknamed “Kelty” who had gotten into the habit of “tent-bouncing” where he would bounce off the sides of the tent. He apparently had no malicious intent but rather was just out having fun with the big, colorful, springy things that the humans put up in his back yard. However, as a human you can probably imagine what you would feel like if a grizzly bear starts bouncing your tent—I know it would scare the bejeesus out of me! Well, I thought that even though Kelty was a naughty bear, he really should also have his deeds immortalized in song—the altered version of the old song would be:

Kelty the bear, Kelty the bear,
Bouncing and a-jouncing and a-looking out there.
He can spot a dome tent that’s ready for his game.
That’s why they call him Kelty; that’s how he got his name.

Copyright 2004 by Robert W. Holt and Elsbeth Monika Holt
Prolog Map Epilog

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