Yellowstone to East Table

Sometimes, even in Yellowstone, Campground Hosts get divorced.

On our way south, out of Yellowstone, we stopped at its biggest attraction, Old Faithful. To me, it was pretty crowded, but of course this is the low season. Here's a shot of the huge main parking lot by Old Faithful.
This must be a zoo in the summer.

Old Faithful wasn't that faithful for us: about 30 minutes late for its scheduled eruption.

We got a raincheck for a free second viewing, but it was time to push on. BTW, we saw a smaller geyser in Oregon that I liked a lot better. See later posts for more info.

The lodge at Old Faithful was quite nice. Many of the lodges and concessions have apparently been outsourced to a company call Xanterra. We saw this here and at Crater Lake (see later posts). The lodges look great, but there's something overly commercialized about them. More "Trump-Tower" than "National Park."

Plenty of great views on the way out, and along the Grand Tetons. BTW, the fire damage from Yellowstone's 1988 fire (which burned 38% of the park) is still very much apparent. Many of the trees are less than 10 feet tall, and they are towered over by the dead ones, and surrounded by fallen trunks. You can see that in the first two photos here.




Here are the grand tetons.

Since it was a Friday night, we were worried about finding a campsite, so after a good lunch in Jackson, WY, we stopped early in the afternoon at the East Table campground in the Targhee National Forest. It was on the Snake river, and very close to Idaho. It was totally deserted when we got there.

The river was high, and large tree trunks would occasional flow down, making loud wood-splitting noises when they hit things. We also saw rafters and plenty of pelicans and geese.

The clouds looked menacing, so I prepared the tent for storms that never came.


These packets contain pheromones designed to discourage beetles that destroy the trees.

Great dinner, slept well, blah blah blah.

Stay tuned for thunderstorms and people sleeping in filthy bathrooms.

Yellowstone Day 2

Here's what we woke up to on our second day in Yellowstone:

Video

------

Video

------

This guy was really big -- bigger than he looks here, because the camera always subtracts 400 pounds. Lena did not like it. She just wanted him to leave.

After that excitement, we had breakfast, and Lena found that with some Benadryl she could keep her sneezing to a minimum. Things were looking much brighter, so we stopped thinking about getting home, and went back to enjoying the trip.

First we went on an 18-mile bike ride on the road from Norris to Madison (in Yellowstone).





Next, we got back to the car, and drove off to look for showers and laundromat.

There are a lot of tourists at Yellowstone even though this is the low season.

We've hit a kind of scenic saturation on this trip, having seen so many incredible landscapes, but we could still enjoy the views here. Here are some shots from the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone."


Since it looks so much like a painting, I photoshopped it so that it would look even more like a painting.


We hit a lot of overlooks and short trails, paint pots, and geysers, and finally retired back to the campsite. Looks like it was chili with embedded Triscuits and turkey franks today. The campground was strangely deserted -- the tents and RVs were there, but I guess everyone was still out sightseeing.

After dinner Lena knitted, but the smoke from our campfire and several others was getting to be too much, so I took a walk down to relax by the Gibbon River.

Video

------

We slept well again, thanks to our wonderful earplugs. The trick with these is to take a few weeks to get used to them before the trip. Otherwise, they are uncomfortable after a few hours.

By inserting them quite deeply, I'm able to eliminate all sound. As they expand, the noise of the toddler in the neighboring site playing the harmonica (more breathing in and out through the harmonica than "playing") gradually recedes until it is gone completely. This works for generators, loud talking, and music as well. I took them out at about 2 AM, but due to the snoring from a neighboring tent, I put them back in.

We have good luck and bad luck tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Prune Creek to Yellowstone

It's been hard to find wifi places to keep up with the posting. But back to the story...

When we woke it was COLD! I've got a great Northface sleeping bag, but it's only a three-season bag, so I have to use the maximum warmth configuration.

This really is an amazing sleeping bag. I've had it since 1992 and it still looks brand new. It packs down to the size of a football.



But as I was saying, it was icy cold. You can see the frost on the grass and on the car. One of us had a great idea of just jumping in the car and finding a warm restaurant to eat in. Luckily the Arrowhead Lodge was only a few miles away, and was open at 6:30. This was a great place that caters to snowmobilers in the winter.
Here's Lena filling out some postcards after some superior eggs and pancakes.

The 64-year-old waitress lives in Florida, and every year she chooses a different national park, then gets a waitressing job there for the summer.

It was time to clean out the trunk and get things reorganized, and then we were off for Yellowstone.

We chose the northern route

and there was plenty of snow at the 9,430 foot pass over the rockies.


I had expected continuous mountains from here to Yellowstone, but instead there is a wide low plain between the Bighorn Mountains and Rockies. We split a filling steak salad at Granny's in Cody, Wyoming. Here's a photo on the wall of the restaurant compared with a photo I took:


The drive into Yellowstone was much further than we had expected, but the scenery was spectacular. Here's Yellowstone Lake, the highest big lake in the country.

Our first wild animal encounter was a buffalo, which Lena used to work more on the pointing thing.

We also saw a grizzly bear, but at a great distance. We came upon a lot of cars pulled over the side of the road, with a crowd looking in binoculars. Most of the people are unaware of what they were looking for, but eventually you get someone to tell you that to the right of that patch of snow, no the other patch, near that ridge by the dark greenery is a grizzly with two cubs. Finally, you can make it out with the binoculars. Kind of exciting, kind of not. It mostly made me want to get a bear costume and frolic around at great distances while the tourists wet their pants. Then I could move closer and do line dancing. I'll do this next time.

We got the campground at 4:30 to discover that it might be full. After much searching, we find one of the last sites. The sites are packed pretty close here, and we're somewhat surrounded by other tents and RVs, but we're glad to be able to stop driving. Actually, this had been a long day, and we were starting to think more about how nice it would be to get home again. Lena apparently has a strong allergic reaction to high-altitude pines, and the Claritin wasn't cutting it. This was my problem as well as hers because Lena's default sneezing mode is what I call a "scream sneeze." My knee was a bit sore also. Lena, who would be dictator tomorrow (we take turns), announced that we would probably get the hell out of Dodge.

But we had a job to do, so after a great dinner of something or other than we forget, probably hot dogs and beans, we went on a hike to the Norris thermal area. Most of Yellowstone is the crater of an active volcano (last eruption 634,000 years ago, but it is an active volcano -- it says so at the visitor center). About a half mile into the hike, we started encountering more and more fallen trees so there was a lot of climbing, crawling, and detours. After the big Yellowstone fire in 19?? the place is swarming with tall dead trees and new trees 6-10 feet high. The dead ones fall all over the place.

Anyway, we finally arrived at the geyser field, and got a good show.




We walked back to the campsite along the road, and we fell into bed around 9 PM. There's still a lot of noise in the campground at this hour, but we've got earplugs that filter out all noise, and we slept through until 7:30 PM the next morning.

Wait until you see what 2,000 pound creature greeted us right in the campsite when we woke up. Great video in the next post. Don't miss it. I know that the "camped in the crater of an active volcano" wasn't quite as exciting as what you expected, but this one will live up to its billing.

Devil's Tower to Prune Creek, WY

We woke up to our fun view of Devil's Tower from the tent.

I had heard what I thought was a wide variety of birds, but when I got out of the tent, I saw that most of these different songs were coming from a single bird, this one:

I decided to go on a long bike ride, and Lena decided to stay at the campsite. With two long sleeve jerseys and a jacket I was very cold whenever the sun went behind a cloud. This was a great ride, with rolling hills and smooth pavement. Although the speed limit was 65, there was very little traffic, and the shoulder was wide.



This shot shows how the road wound through the farmlands. Click on it for a full view.

This picture was taken when I was 18 miles from the tower (where I started).

The cows along the route were apparently unused to bicyclists. One herd ran along the fence with me for a half a mile. Another herd took off in panic and tried to jump a barbwire fence. It looked like one was stuck, but when I came back it had gotten loose.

I turned around after 25 miles, and here I am with only five miles left.

I got back at around 12:30, and Lena had packed up almost everything. We took off and I felt that I deserved a 1/3 pound buffalo burger with homemade fries and a beer. I guess it's a little gross to always take pictures of half-eaten food, so I'm going to try to remember to take a picture before eating.




We arrived at the Bighorn Mountains very abruptly, and headed up over the pass. About halfway across Wyoming, in Bighorn National Forest, we started looking at campgrounds. We were at about 8,000 feet, and the first campground we came to was closed, and very snowy and wet. The next was Prune Creek. It was also snowy, but open and nice. Apart from the camp host, we were the only ones there.

On the menu was banger and mash -- that is, Aidell's chicken apple sausage and mashed potatoes (from a mix -- very good).

The wood from the camp host was soaking wet in parts, but after a while we had a nice warm fire.

We went to bed around 9:30 and slept well. We sleep even better than at home, partly because we're worn out after all the packing, driving, sightseeing, and unpacking. The mattress has done great now that we pamper it by putting a blanket under it.

We've got some adventures coming up. We camp in the crater of an active volcano, and a huge mammal comes into our campsite to give Lena the fright of her life. Stay tuned!