Yellowstone National Park is the nation’s (and the
world’s) first national park, established in 1872. It may have the distinction
of being the world’s only national park to sit largely on top of an ancient
volcano. It has been about 650,000 years since the last eruption, but according to
park officials the last time it did explode it put into the atmosphere about a
hundred times as much matter as the 1982 St. Helens eruption. It was probably a major climactic
event for the planet. One could consider the volcano to be dormant but that is
not quite true. It is predicted in about 50,000 years it will explode again. In
geological terms, that’s not very far away.
One can infer the presence of molten lava a couple miles beneath its surface rather easily, because Yellowstone is also the geyser capital of the world. I knew about Old Faithful before coming to the park but I had no idea it had so much thermal activity. Geysers pop up all over the park in all sorts of fascinating forms. It lends Yellowstone a feeling of impermanence. There is so much spectacular scenery in the park it is hard to imagine that it will all be so easily destroyed, as surely it will. A million years from now Yellowstone will be a completely changed place. Over a thousand earthquakes are registered every year in Yellowstone. Most are very minor and we didn’t feel any while we were there. But there was something disquieting about sleeping on top of an ancient volcano.
Another unfortunate fact about Yellowstone was the forest
fires. It was fire season while we were there. We stayed on the west end of Lake
Yellowstone. Much of the eastern side of the lake was ablaze: the east entrance
to the park itself was closed. Often fires are left to burn but this one was
being fought actively. Later in the week from the Grand Tetons we would get a
better perspective on this forest fire, which was bigger than we thought. While
we were in Yellowstone the fires accounted for a lot of haze on the lake and the
persistent smell of burned wood throughout the park.
In 1988 alone half the forests were consumed by fire. This
meant that wherever you went you were likely to see the effect of these fires.
Typically the fires left the trunks of the trees intact, with the branches
burned away. Eventually the trees would topple over onto the forest floor and
just stay there. In the 15 years since the fires it seemed like it would be a
hundred years before all those burned tree trunks would deteriorate. However
there is plenty of new pine forest rising to take its place. Most of these trees
are only a few feet high. Due to the voluminous snow it will take a long time
before they reach any appreciable height.
Despite the effects of these fires across the park it was still a breathless and enchanting display of nature’s finest. In some ways it reminded me of Hawaii. If you don’t like the way things look drive a few miles and it will look completely different. There is a lot of geological and natural diversity in a rather contained place!
I was the first one out of our cabin in the morning because I was anxious to look around. I hadn’t yet seen Yellowstone in the sunlight. I wandered down the road to the Lake Lodge, where we registered in the dark the previous night. It is a large timber lodge that had all the essentials: trading post, registration area, Laundromat and cafeteria. It was only a few hundred yards from Lake Yellowstone, which was covered by a mixture of fog and smoke from the forest fire. The smell of smoke in the air was almost overpowering.
The Lake Lodge was a great place to refuel our hungry bodies. The cafeteria offered pretty good food at reasonable prices. A large breakfast for three cost about $20. The food was rather plain: eggs, French toast, hash browns and the like but it was sure convenient. It was better than breakfasts at most diners. Out the window was a nice view of Lake Yellowstone.
For our first day in the park we decided to hit the
essentials. This meant going to geyser central, or the area near Old Faithful,
some 20 miles or so to our east. We wanted to make a grand inner loop of
Yellowstone going clockwise around the central plateau. (Here is a good
map in PDF format.) This would be a day for constant stops in our rental
car. Our first stop was an area of Lake Yellowstone called West Thumb. It was
here that we saw our first thermal spring called Geyser Basin, and got our first
up close look at wildlife: we spotted an Elk happily chomping on the foliage.
At West Thumb we made a hard right toward Old Faithful. (It
would be very helpful if the roads were labeled with route signs. Actually the
place was very sign impaired. Things you take for granted, like warnings about
the maximum speed going around a bend, were largely absent.) All the roads in
Yellowstone are two lane roads, and many are in terrible shape. I guess it is
more important to give tax cuts to the rich that fix some poor suffering roads
in our national parks. Fortunately we had a rental car, so we didn’t worry
about the suspension. We climbed and descended a mountain and found ourselves
approaching a large area of civilization around Old Faithful.
The Old Faithful area itself has lots of lodges and hotels, as well as a visitor center and plenty of places to buy food and souvenirs, which we did. We couldn’t resist a fresh cinnamon roll at their bakery. We had about an hour to kill before the next eruption, but eventually found ourselves among the crowd along a peripheral area ready to witness the explosion. Old Faithful’s eruptions are not regular but they have a pretty good idea when the next one will go off. This one went off about a minute later than expected. It was pretty impressive, with hot water and steam rising some two hundred feet in the air. (Curiously it is not the geyser that puts out the highest stream of water and steam. Another one down the road holds that distinction. Unfortunately it only goes off every few days, so most don’t bother to wait around for it.)
After the eruption we took a walk around Old Faithful and
ended up at the Visitors Center. A helpful park ranger was giving an interesting
lecture about Old Faithful. I learned, for example, that a narrow channel some
four inches wide some twenty feet below the surface was the choke valve through
which all the superheated water eventually emerged.
We then got in the car and wandered north on the road
toward Madison, stopping at virtually every geyser or hot thermal spot along the
way. To get to a spot invariably required walking on a boardwalk. The ground was
too hot and the water was either too hot or acidic to actually touch. Each
thermal spot was a little bubbling pool of water full of unique and lovely
colors. It was like looking into a rainbow! Often there were clusters of thermal
spots within a few hundred feet of each other.
They were fascinating to look at but it would be tedious to bother to describe them further. Hopefully the pictures give you a sense of their loveliness.
Eventually we continued up the Firehole River through an intersection known as Madison, then turned northeast toward Norris. At Norris you could take a road north toward the Mammoth Hot Springs area. But we headed east toward the very center of Yellowstone, called Canyon Village. The day turned out to be warmer than expected. We anticipated highs in the 60s but in fact by late in the afternoon it was pushing 80 degrees and we were shedding clothes right and left. Fortunately the weather was clear, dry and lovely. There was a lovely stream by the side of the road. Terri couldn’t resist stopping near the Virginia Falls area. We all took off our shoes and soothed them in the cool spring fed water. It was a lovely moment to sit there on a little bluff and relax in such a pristine environment.
Canyon Village was a lot like the Old Faithful Area in that
there was plenty of civilization, lodges, visitor centers and places to eat. We
were already looking for moose but had found none. Rosie has this thing about
moose and really wanted to see one. At the gift shop there was a full sized
stuffed moose. This was as close as she would get to a moose, but she hugged it
with delight.
Yellowstone has its own Grand Canyon conveniently located next to Canyon Village. Once hydrated (we were constantly refilling our water bottle; the dry air sucks the water right out of you), we found a one-lane road that took you down the west side of this Grand Canyon. Having seen the Grand Canyon two years earlier it was nothing at all as magnificent as that place. Still, it was pretty impressive, and the few photos I’ve thrown here attest. There were both lower and upper falls and numerous places to stop and look out at them. It is here that the park got its name because the sides of the canyon were largely yellow rock. We stopped at three lookout places but we knew there were others to enjoy later on in our trip. Eventually we were back on the main road heading south toward Lake Yellowstone and our cabin. It was pushing dinnertime.
The Yellowstone River starts at Lake Yellowstone and moves
north through the canyon. Eventually it leaves the park, connects with the
Missouri River, then the Mississippi River and drains into the Gulf of Mexico.
Leaving the canyon area behind we found ourselves on a plateau where the forests
rapidly parted and a plain began.
This plain (Hayden Valley) was spectacularly beautiful. There was so much open land to gaze out across! Eventually we came across a herd of bison. We learned of a uniquely local phenomenon called a “bison jam”. This is a traffic jam where cars slow down to get pictures of the bison. Most of the bison seemed to be in this area of the park. This made sense to me: the nearby river provided plenty of convenient water and there was lots of vegetation to munch on nearby. Bison are large, furry animals also known as buffalo who were beautiful to look at, but could be quite dangerous. You were supposed to stay at least 25 yards away. Sometimes though you had no choice but to get closer. Occasionally a bison would just decide to sit on the road a while, and cars would simply wait until the bison decided to move.
The Lake Yellowstone Hotel was near our lodge. We tried to
eat there but found it was a fancy dining room and there were no reservations
until 9:30. So we went back to the Lake Lodge Cafeteria, which had good dinners
and no waiting. I couldn’t resist the turkey with stuffing and mashed
potatoes. I so rarely get to eat mashed potatoes anymore.