Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Luke 12:27
The heavens declare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory.
Psalms 97:6
Psalms 97:6
August 23rd
We decided to take advantage of the hot tub at our hotel, hoping that it would ease some of the soreness in our legs. We went downstairs to the pool area and stayed for a little while... there were lots of kids down there rotating from the pool to the hot tub despite signs saying that children under 8 were not to be in the hot tub...so, after staying a little while, we headed back to our room and got ready to head to Yellowstone.
We stopped at Walmart to reload on food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This always took us at least an hour.
It was raining when we left Walmart. SO, I used Zack's cell phone to look up the weather for the next couple of days. Looked like rain for several days...BUMMER.
Entered Yellowstone from the north through Gardiner via the Roosevelt arch. We drove to Mammoth to be surprised by a large herd of female Elk and their calves sitting and grazing on the lawns of the lodge buildings.
We walked a little way up the street and walked around on the boardwalks set up around the hot springs. We were fascinated by the shapes and colors of rock that had been formed by the springs. Brilliant whites and oranges...It looked so strangely out of place, like something you would see on the wall in a space museum depicting what the surface of another planet might look like.
It started to sprinkle again and so we headed back to our car, hoping to make it to our campsite before the rain started in earnest. We did not make it. By the time that we made it to Norris Campground, it was pouring down rain. We sat in our car to wait things out. We prayed for a lull in the rain, and then we decided to try to put the tent up as quickly as we could...lets just say that that was not all that quickly and we both got soaked ...and there was plenty of water that got into our tent.
We went to a ranger presentation down at a ranger museum at the entrance to the campsite. Mostly to get dry, but the ranger gave a very animated and interesting talk all about buffalo. By the time that her talk ended, we had dried somewhat, and the rain had lightened considerably. So, we headed back to our campsite. Zack made some beef stew while I crawled into our wet tent with a towel to dry off the inside and set up our air mattress and sleeping bags. We ate in the dark by the light of Zack's head lamp.
Then, because it was dark, wet, and cold, we climbed into our sleeping bags and called it a day.
August 24th
We had been told that the early morning was the best time to see wildlife, so we woke up early to see if we could see anything. We drove over toward Canyon Village. Then up to Roosevelt tower. We stopped at Tower falls to look around.
We headed out to Lamar Valley and saw a large herd of buffalo. We also saw some pronghorn from a distance. A little further down into Lamar Valley, we met some people that we watching for wolves. They were watching a group of Elk up on a ridge (that were all very focused on something) through their high powered telescopes. The man that collars and tracks the wolves was also there and had been following 3 of his collared wolves. We didn't see anything, and decided to continue further into the Lamar Valley, but ended up turning around before we made it all the way to Cooke City. We turned around at a pull off where some people had spotted big horned sheep and mountain goats high up on the mountain cliffs. They let us look at them through their telescopes...we really did meet a lot of nice people on our trip.
Once we had turned around, we decided to stop at a small picnic area, soda butte, for lunch. It was located right by a creek and there were tons of ground squirrels running around. We had our customary peanut butter and honey sandwiches, sun chips, and fruit cups.
After lunch, we headed back toward Norris the way that we had come. We stopped at Mount Washburn and decided to do the 6 mile RT hike to the top. Mount Washburn is apparently the tallest peak in Yellowstone and there is a weather station/fire watch at the top. It was a pretty steep three mile climb to the top. We took a couple of breaks, but not nearly as many as we did on our hike up to Grinnell Glacier. At the top there was a French family that took our picture in exchange for us taking theirs. We went inside the tower and looked out over the surrounding landscape. Had it been clearer, we could have seen the Tetons from there.
It was getting to be late in the day and so we decided to head back down to our car. It was really windy and had gotten pretty cold at the top and so we decided to add a few layers before our descent. We were thankful that we had taken the time to pack wind breakers this time. On the way down, we were surprised by marmots running to and fro gathering grass on the hillsides on both sides of the trail. We watched them for a while and then headed on toward our car. On the way down the trail, we met a very nice family from Wisconsin. They come to Yellowstone every year for vacation and it is their favorite national park. They were telling us about places to go spot wildlife and that they liked Yellowstone the best because of the wildlife that you cold see.
So, once making it back down to our car, we decided to take their advice and head toward Hayden Valley. We had not had dinner and we were afraid that if we drove all the way back to Norris before going to Hayden Valley that we would miss the wildlife. So, we decided to make dinner at one of the picnic areas in Hayden Valley. This may not have been the smartest idea.
We went to one of the picnic areas along the river in Hayden Valley. We drove all the way to the back of it and found a table near the river. It was beautiful. We had decided to make Orange Chicken...also not a smart idea, since this was probably the most aromatic meal that we had to make. Across the river we could see a large male buffalo grazing...and a short time after starting to cook the meal, we heard grunting and funny noises coming from the woods behind us. So, Zack backed the car up to the picnic spot, leaving both doors open for quick escape, and took the bear mace out of the car and had it handy by the table. We saw a few cars come down to the area that we were in...but they were there to animal watch (a we were stupid enough to be cooking a wonderful smelling meal to entice all of the animals to come). We had sufficiently freaked ourselves out enough by the end of the cooking process that we ate our dinner in the car. Thankfully we didn't see and bears. Once we had finished dinner, it was getting pretty late and had started getting dark. Zack was not looking forward to driving on the roads in Yellowstone at night. Buffalo would just walk out into the streets and stand there...and they were quite hard to see. We saw 2 buffalo walking along the side of the road and had an elk run across the road in front of us...needless to say, Zack was happy to be safely parked back at our campsite for the night.
August 25th
(part 1)
It was FREEZING that night. Zack and I were both really cold and Zack lasted as long as he could and then he decided to get up and make oatmeal. This was our transition day from Yellowstone to the Grand Tetons. We were not really in any big hurry to leave. We had chosen to drive slowly out of Yellowstone looking at things as we went. We broke down the campsite and headed out.
We went to the Norris Geyser Basin and walked around for a little while. There were thermal pools with brilliantly colored waters...almost at a rolling boil they were so hot. And then there were geysers smoking, rumbling and spitting. It is really something amazing to see!
We headed on down past the Hayden Valley to the mud volcanoes. These are just as unusual. They are boiling pits of mud full of sulfuric acid. The gasses released from below are changed into sulfuric acid, and the acid eats away all of the rock and other things in the area and turns it into a mud...and then the heat from the cracks in the earth crust bring the muddy mess to a near or roiling boil. The smell was horrific! It was a very strong sulfur (rotten eggs) smell, and by the end of the trail, I had a splitting headache!
We headed down to see Old Faithful. We had timed it just right because it was scheduled to go off within about 20 minutes of our arrival. It is always such an amazing thing to see. Natures own fountains...the sheer power of the pressure that is building up until it breaks free sending water hundreds of feet into the air. Again...how can people say there is no God?!
We stopped at a few of the villages on our way out to look around and finally left out of the south entrance. We stopped to take our picture at the Yellowstone sign. Then we headed to the Tetons through road construction on gravel roads.
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