We were glad to get to bed on time because we had to be up
earlier than we would have preferred. We had scheduled a boat ride on Lake
Yellowstone for 9 AM. Getting on an early ride was important because our plans
for the day were to go to Mammoth Hot Springs, at the northwest corner of the
park.
We fueled up at the Lake Lodge Dining Room, which was
already feeling very familiar. Afterward we drove south along Lake Yellowstone
for a few miles until we arrived at Bay Bridge. It’s not much of a bridge,
perhaps a hundred feet or so going over a small area of water that separated a
small lake housing a marina from the larger Lake Yellowstone to the west. There
were several dozen boats in the marina, but only one designed to ferry dozens of
passengers. The sun was coming through the haze. Fortunately the smoke from the
forest fire wasn’t too bad today. It looked like we might be able to see some
nature on our boat ride.
We joined about eighteen other passengers on a large
covered boat that slowly ambled out of the dock. It wasn’t until we had passed
under the bridge and were several hundred yards from land that the captain
revved up the engine. Lake Yellowstone is a large lake ranging from 5 to 15
miles across. It is also one of the highest lakes in the world, resting 7,733
feet above sea level. It is not the sort of lake you will ever want to swim in.
During the summer surface temperatures approach 60 degrees. It sounds
like a great place to catch hypothermia!
In addition to the captain we had a park guide on the ride
with us. Like most of the workers there, they were employed for the season,
which was June through August. After that only a few brave and hearty folk, like
park rangers, remained. Most seemed to work for a company called Xanterra
Resorts, which must have won the park’s concession contract. A surprisingly
large number of them were senior citizens. I guess it’s a good way to get away
from hotter climates for a few months. If I live that long it might be a good
way for me to spend my summer, and pick up some spare change too.
We didn’t traverse the whole lake in an hour but we did
get out a couple miles. From the lake we could get a fabulous view of the Lake
Yellowstone Hotel. It was the original hotel in the park and dates back to the
late 19th century. It has likely gotten much bigger over the years
because, as you can see from the picture, it is huge. I didn’t realize how
huge it was until we got out on the lake.
We also sailed by Stevenson Island. We learned that a few years back a bison had wandered across the frozen lake, only to be trapped on the island. He must have been one lonesome bison! It took a couple years for the ice to freeze over hard enough for him to make his way back to the rest of the herd. Otherwise except for some birds the island is usually unpopulated. Moose occasionally make the two-mile swim to the island but we didn’t see any.
We were back in the car by 10:30 and ready to head north
toward Mammoth Hot Springs. We were not surprised when we encountered another
bison jam on that road. This time we had an uppity bison that decided to block a
whole lane of traffic. Eventually the drivers just said “to heck with it”
and took turns slowly driving around the bison. I bet bison enjoy making
humans’ life miserable.
Once we passed the bison it was only half an hour or so
before we were back in Canyon Village, where we had seen the Grand Canyon of
Yellowstone the evening before. We were intrigued by the canyon and wanted to
see it again, but that journey would wait until tomorrow. Instead we passed
through the intersection (in need of a traffic light, but missing one) and
continued north toward Tower Falls, with Terri in the driver’s seat.
I am glad she was driving. I have a bad case of vertigo and
if I had any idea of how scary that road would be I would probably have insisted
we switch drivers. It doesn’t help that the road is very bad, with potholes
filled in numerous times. It was made worse by a very steep ascent to perhaps
the highest place in the park: Mount Washburn. Well, it is likely as high as a
car can ascend in the park on the regular roads! If it were a normal road it
would have had guardrails and signs warning you to take curves at a certain
speed. But this was no normal road! You had to keep an eagle eye on the road or
you and your car were likely to be going over a ravine and several thousand feet
down a mountainside! (I heard later a reason why we saw so few guard rails: the
heavy snows and avalanches tended to wash them out.)
At least the scenery was breathtaking! To scoot around the
edge of Mount Washburn (10,243 feet) you had to go through Dunraven Pass (8,859
feet). I was pretty sure that this was as high as I had ever been in a car. To
the east were miles of pine forests stretching to the horizon. To the west one
looked down upon a land that became dry and desert like the further one looked.
When I felt it was safe enough I had Terri stop and I snapped a picture or two.
Eventually you descend Mount Washburn and pass through Tower Falls and the Roosevelt Lodge. We would study these places in more detail tomorrow. At the Roosevelt Lodge you could take a sharp right and head for the northeast entrance to the park at Silver Gate, Montana. We never journeyed on that road. Instead we followed the road westward along the very northern edge of the park toward Mammoth Hot Spring.
We had a clue what was coming from our view on Mount Washburn. This was a dry area, which turned increasingly desert-like the closer we got to Mammoth Hot Springs. About ten miles from the spring, you can suddenly see them: huge slabs of rock covered with the most bizarre and shiny colors: Mammoth Hot Springs.
The first trains must have stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs
because the houses looked very old. The town is very much in the desert. We
spent a few minutes in a museum in the visitors’ center. But before going to
the springs themselves, which were plainly visible, I wanted to venture, at
least briefly into Montana. So we drove a few miles north toward that park
entrance.
In the process you pass through the 45th
parallel (the sign informs you that you are equidistant between the equator and
the north pole). But it just feels different all of a sudden. I have heard
Montana referred to as “big sky country”. That fits it very well. This is a
state, after all, that has exactly one congressional representative, so it has
few people to speak of in it. Nonetheless it is an awesome, wild and expansive
place. I realize for much of the year it is crazily cold, but in the summer at
least it is a spectacle worth beholding! It was a warm day. Temperatures were in
the 80s.
We had some lunch at Mammoth Hot Springs at a fast food place that was very busy. We then drove a few hundred feet down the road and went into the springs themselves. The pictures are more eloquent than I could hope to be. It was more of the thermal activity you would expect in the park, except the acidic water dripped down over these large rocks and rendered the exquisite colors. The climb eventually proved too difficult for Terri. Rosie wanted to be a Gumby and stayed mostly in the car. But I climbed the boardwalk paths through the rocks and enjoyed the views!
We were finally moving south, heading back toward Norris,
which was halfway between Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful. This road was
new to us too. First we had to put the desert behind us. This meant a steep
climb up a mountain and over Sheepeater Cliff. (It was named after the
Sheepeater Indians, of course. I bet you know what they preferred for dinner.)
Once over the mountain we were in forests again, much of it burned by fire, but
with new growth emerging everywhere. We made a stop at Sheepeater Cliff. Check
out the funky photo! It’s like someone had elaborately chiseled all these
rocks out of a large rock but it just evolved that way.
At Norris we stopped at the Museum of the American Park Ranger, which had the advantage of letting us sit down for a few minutes and watching a video. We couldn’t find potable water or decent restrooms however, so we quickly headed east back toward Canyon Village on the same road we had traversed nearly 24 hours earlier. This time we did not stop to soak our toes in the stream.
Our timing was perfect. We had planned to eat in Canyon
Village that evening. First we made one quick trip to Inspiration Point: others
had told us they had seen moose there, but we saw none. We ate in the dining
room at Canyon Village. It was nice to be served instead of queuing up in a
cafeteria line. Rosie had her usual cheeseburger. I elected to have some pasta
with Italian Sausage. Terri had a side of Cornish game hen. It was not exquisite
cuisine but for the location it was pretty good food.
After eating the sun was setting and the twilight was arriving. There was of course time for the usual bison jam as we approached Lake Village. This time it was just tourists snapping pictures causing the jam. We were already growing inured to it: seen one bison jam, seen them all.
We made a pit stop at our cabin: fortunately no bison were
in our parking space. Terri wanted to go attend a lecture in an open
amphitheater down at Bay Bridge, because the lecture was about the Nez Perce
Indians and the war we fought with them.
Terri had read a book about it in high school and it was
not a pleasant story. It was one of the sadder chapters in our colonization of
the west. Most of the Nez Perce Indians didn’t take too kindly to their Indian
lands, already agreed to in treaty, being shrunk again to a small area in Idaho.
This was not okay with our army, which decided that those who didn’t agree to
this new treaty would be driven into the reservation anyhow. Most of the
Indians, under a number of chiefs, began a long, fruitless trek through
Yellowstone, Montana and Idaho trying to evade the cavalry. Most of the time
they stayed ahead of the cavalry but there were frequent skirmishes. In
desperation they made a last dash for Canada, only to be cut off by some other
army troops who had gotten wind of the move via the telegraph. Armed with
cannons the army succeeded in mowing down a lot of these Indians before they
surrendered. The remaining chief uttered this immortal line: “I will fight no
more forever.” Off to the reservation with you, fella! What was left of the
tribe was a mere fraction of those who had set out. Lots of people had died,
including women and children.