Part 2: This is my {Bison} Jam

I spent way too much time on this post. Probably 2-3 hours over time, more than one day!

I sometimes ponder if blogging is a selfish or stupid activity. Probably both, but I have said many times before, I enjoy reading my own blog entries later, especially of vacations, and so…I certainly hope you enjoy reading them, but I know I will! Maybe that’s selfish, but as one of the characters said to another on OITNB in an episode I watched last night, do what you think is best! (That’s not a direct quote, but I spend tooooooo much time worrying about how other people will react to things that I do and I should just do what I want, because that’s generally what people think I do anyway.)

So! The first installment is Part 1 and you should read that first if you are here.

Part 1: What Happened to Scott?

We left off entering Yellowstone National Park. I’d been to Yellowstone two times before—once with Louie a few years before and once as a young teenager back in the early 90’s. Both times were great, and especially the more recent time with Louie. We were SOOOO excited to get back for a few more days—I’d booked three nights at Canyon Campground and one night in a cabin at Mammoth Hot Springs, so we would have plenty of time to delve into exploring and hiking. Of course, once you start looking at all the things one can do, 4 nights doesn’t seem like enough…no matter how much time one spends at these national parks, there can often be more time to spend!

We entered Yellowstone via the Northwest entrance through Silver Gate, and within a few minutes, we were in Lamar Valley, surrounded by bison.

This was my first bison photo.

I wanted to take a brush to this one to help shed its fur!

We were seriously in our happy zone. Louie and I hopped out of the car when we could, snapping pictures and just walking around with wonder and awe. Yellowstone is a place that really has it all: wildlife, gorgeous scenery, and of course, weird hot springs. Lamar Valley isn’t a hot springs area, but wildlife and mountains and water and open valleys and wildlife are plentiful. We slowly made our way forward, stopping over and over to take pictures, until I realized, my goodness, we’d better get a move on if we want to get our campsite set up by dark!

I brought this silly stuffed bison along, thinking I’d use it for a variety of funny photos. This was literally the only one I took.

We stopped at Tower Falls for a quick look at the Yellowstone River. We’d done all of the Yellowstone major stops before, but it’s been a few years! One thing I added for this year was I downloaded an app called “GYPsy Guide” which works with your GPS to tell you interesting information about various locations and makes suggestions on where and when to stop places. Yellowstone is HUGE and around every corner there are things to see and do, and it’s sometimes overwhelming.

(Personally I’m just happy watching and listening to the bison. They make these grunts and snorting sounds that are just so fun.)

Anyway, we slowly made our way to Canyon Campground, our home for the next three nights. Check-in went quite smoothly, except evidently I’d said only one adult instead of two, but it was no problem. We got the usual talk about bear safety, and our site had a bear box. They also said to leave food and such in your car if the bear box (a large metal box that bears can’t get into) wasn’t available.

Our site was great—far enough from other sites, yet quite close to the bathroom and water source. A little bit of trek from the dishwashing area (you are only allowed to wash dishes in a certain room because the scent of food and food scraps would attract the bears) but that’s only once or twice a day. The first two nights our campsite area was very quiet—the third night there were some different people and some were quite loud into the night which was annoying, but at least it was only one night. I’m a fan of quiet camping, where basically all the noise you make doesn’t travel past your own campsite. I shouldn’t hear your conversation and you shouldn’t hear mine. The reason to camp in a National Park is to enjoy nature, which means being quiet enough to do so. That’s my soapbox lecture!

New to us for camping this year was an inflatable air mattress. We’d been using thermarests which are a mixture of foam and air in a small portable mat. This year we bought a small full size air mattress that came with a rechargeable pump. We thought the air might get cold, but thought that the sleeping bag would help with that. Well…Yellowstone was pretty cold—we realized later that our first night there might have been a low of perhaps 38 degrees! The cold was coming from UNDERNEATH us, the air mattress, and there was little we could do…we were wearing numerous pairs of pants, tops, wool socks, etc, but it was pretty chilly the first night, and somewhat chilly the following two nights. Not to spoil, but after leaving Yellowstone we stopped at a Wal-Mart (ugh) and bought a foam mattress pad, kind of an egg crate type thing to put on top of the air mattress and WHEW it was amazing and kept us warm and comfortable. I don’t think it ever got as cold as that first night in Yellowstone again on the trip, but it was down into the 40’s several more times.

One view of our tent.

And another. I liked Canyon Campground. We also got two showers each day per campsite at the shower house. There are plenty of services nearby as well. Downside of the campground, only cold water (this is typical in US National Park campground). Upside, fairly clean facilities, good dishwashing area, lots of bear boxes, good fire pits.

On our first night, we were excited to make dinner and a fire. One thing Louie and I really enjoy is relaxing in front of a fire in the evening, so we always buy firewood.

Day 4: We decided to do a short sized hike which started from a trailhead at the Yellowstone Picnic Area for our first hike. It was about 3.7 miles and was supposed to have few nice views. We opted to do it as a loop rather than an out-and-back and I’m not sure I would do that again as the ending part was super annoying. But the trail was great—great views, and we saw several marmots and bighorn sheep. We only saw one other party hiking this trail while we were. By the way, we had a can of bear spray with us on every hike, and we always try to carry several liters of water each, snacks and/or lunch, rain gear, layers in case it gets cold, lights, first aid kit, extra socks, tissues, and a few other random things. Always hike prepared! (Oh, and a map!)

(As usual, most of the pictures of Louie are here on my camera, and most of the pictures of me are on Louie’s camera, and he hasn’t uploaded his pictures yet because his work schedule this week is insane.)

We had some lovely views of the Yellowstone River along the route.

Do you see the marmot?

How about now?

After the hike, since we were at a picnic area, we had a little picnic.

Then we headed to Trout Lake, which was a little ways down the road. We had to go back through Lamar Valley to get there, so there were more bison to look at. Trout Lake is a 1.2 mile loop hike. The start was very steep, but once you got to the lake it was easy, but there were tons of mosquitoes.

People said they saw foxes, but we didn’t. It was a beautiful little lake, one of those places in Yellowstone that should be busy but wasn’t too bad.

Then we headed back toward the middle loop of the park. We took a side trip up a little gravel road called Chittenden Road which overlooks the start of a trail to Mt. Washburn.

We drove through a bit of Hayden Valley to go visit the Mud Volcano area. We headed there to see some thermal features, but also because on our previous visit we’d always seen bison there and loved the look of the bison frolicking with steam and thermal features near them. We didn’t see any this time, but still enjoyed seeing the springs.

Then we headed back to the campground to shower, make dinner, and rest.

Day 5: We got up early to hike Mt. Washburn. We left from the Dunraven Pass trailhead rather than the Chittenden Road one, and got there before 8 am to make sure of a parking spot and to get a good start on the hike. At first, there were only a few other groups hiking, but as the morning progressed it got quite busy. The whole hike was 6.2 miles and wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The views along the way were absolutely spectacular, and it was full of wildflowers. We really enjoyed this hike. The downside was that the whole trip was doubletrack, an old road, and when we got to the top there were actually workers who had driven up the other trail to get to work, which makes you feel like, well, why did I hike if they drove? The top is a lookout/fire tower, and there is actually somebody who stays there all the time to watch for fires!

My photos don’t do the view justice, but in this one you can see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The views were of the whole park, the Canyon, Lake Yellowstone, and you can see various thermal features in the distance with steam rising from them.

This was the tower, and the trucks that some workers drove up. To be fair, I wouldn’t have wanted to drive up the road either, so I guess it was better hiking! The tower had a room with some displays, bathrooms (of a sort), and a viewing platform. It also contained an apartment that you couldn’t go in. We had our lunch at the top.

Proof that we made it! We did a lot of “trading photos” with people, though we were always happy to just take photos without trading, but usually we took advantage and got the photo also.

We enjoy taking selfies too though!

Gorgeous views!

We saw a few bighorn sheep, and then we had a very close encounter with one (we did back up, but we didn’t want to run away, so we just tried to stay still and not frighten it), and then we saw a bunch!

Going down the hike was easier than up, but it was hotter on the way down. We made it though!

Next we headed back to Hayden Valley and wanted to do a short trail called the Storm Point Nature Trail. We had a tricky time at first because of construction through the area…there was a flagger with a one road way and we had to wait and then couldn’t find the trailhead…we drove further, saw some more amazing views and some viewpoints we’d never seen, had a somewhat harrowing experience of what I called “stealth peeing”, and then finally found what we thought was the trail and thoroughly enjoying it…even making it all the way through not being 100 percent sure we were on the right trail, meeting a woman with two kids asking if this was the trail, telling her, probably, but either way it was great! and then finally noticing the trail sign, which had fallen over and was laying facedown in the dirt.

A good old fashioned bison jam. Why yes, I took that picture out of the sunroof.

Lake Yellowstone, along our hike I believe.

After that, we headed back, showers, etc.

Day 6: We woke up early to head to see the Grand Canyon North Rim. On our last visit we’d done a really great hike on the South Rim so we thought we’d do a quick visit to the North Rim. We got to the parking lot quite early, before 8 am, and the crowds were minimal. We walked down a very steep trail to the bottom of the falls.

The canyon is really amazing. We were also able to see Uncle Tom’s Trail from our viewpoint, which is this terrifying trail with 328 steps on the south rim (closed for construction this year) which I never want to hike again.

We got back to the top and then wandered to a few more viewpoints. Louie decided to hike down another trail but I stayed above and just looked from there.

Finally we left to go pack up our tent.

Our next step would be the Norris Geyser Basin. We got there just before noon and as expected, it was crowded. We parked outside of the parking lot on the street and walked for 10 to 15 minutes to get there.

We’d been to Norris before as well, but Louie wanted to see it again because he remembered loving it so much. I was happy to oblige.

What I always find most interesting is how there will be an area where no plants grow, but then they do. Life continues, no matter how difficult it is!

Look at those grasses!

It just looks like a post-apocalyptic scene. Or a war zone. But it’s natural. (Remember, even natural things can be bad.)

After Norris, we headed north towards Mammoth. I’d booked a cabin (with no private bathroom) for us to stay our last night for two reasons: 1) It’s closer to the north exit thus saving us at least an hour drive in the morning as we head north to Glacier 2) We’d seen cabins before and Louie remarked that someday when we were older and richer we should come back and stay in one. We aren’t much richer, or much older, but they weren’t too expensive for one night!

Mammoth Hot Springs. This place is crazy too.

Here we had a bit of parking snafu, which involved getting what was actually an awesome parking space and then panicking. But it worked out, and we were also thrilled to realize at one point that we had good internet, plus, it looked like it was going to storm, so we spent a few minutes in our car catching up on emails and checking voicemails and such. Then we headed out to explore the “terraces.” Here the springs make these weird terraces. Some of the springs flow every year, and then they will abruptly stop, so you’ll see a lot of old springs which just look like ugly rocks now, that used to be live! There’s a whole loop road where only a few of the springs are still running and the rest are dormant, and it’s sort of funny to see.

Speaking of wastelands…

You can see how the boardwalks are being taken over by the hot springs. Soon the park service will have to rebuild!

I believe this was called Canary Spring and it is utterly gorgeous. I couldn’t take enough pictures of it, especially with the dark stormy skies as contrast.

Here’s one of the more dormant areas I was talking about above.

Do you see a face?

We checked into our cabin then, and it was super cute.

They had soap in the shape of bears. I thought we took this with us but I don’t know what happened to it.

Little ground squirrels digging holes or something. I took a fall off the steps later than night on my way to the bathroom (bathrooms were around the corner a bit, though the cabin had a sink so that was great)…I hit the floor completely and was shocked, but not hurt—luckily I fell into the grass.

We cleaned up and put on jeans and t-shirts rather than hiking gear, and then walked over to see a few more springs before deciding to eat dinner at the Mammoth Dining Room. This was our first dinner out in a few nights, so it was a welcome relief to not cook over the little stove! I enjoyed a nice piece of trout, and we had a lovely evening. After dinner we walked around a bit more and saw a ton of elk just hanging around the town.

I slept great in a real bed (yay!) and not being cold (remember, this was BEFORE the foam pad, so we were still pretty cold each night) and would highly recommend the cabins. The only downside is that Mammoth isn’t particularly convenient of a location to anything except Mammoth, so I wouldn’t stay there too many nights. I want to go back in the winter sometime though, as it’s a part of the park that is open in winter.

Day 7: We woke up and had breakfast at the Terrace Grill, which is a fast food place. Breakfast sandwiches, coffee, more elk (well, not to eat but to watch) and then we hit the road for Glacier. We went out the North Entrance (exit) and stopped to get pictures with the Roosevelt Arch on our way.