Yellowstone National Park
We got an early start driving to Yellowstone because we were apprehensive about crowd and traffic problems at this very popular park on a peak season Saturday. As it turned out, we saw very few cars or people during the early part of the day and even during the afternoon there was not a problem. We ate a nice sit down lunch at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone Visitor Center at a coffee shop that was only about 2/3 full.
My last visit to this park was when I was around 7 years old, and many sights were still familiar. Of course the big change is how the 1988 fires have altered the forests. There is not very much bare earth. The majority of the burn areas we saw have bare tree skeletons sticking out of a carpet of green. The green is millions and millions of lodgepole pine trees about 3 or 4 feet tall. The lodgepoles need fire to propagate. Their cones are very resinous and the fire pops them open and strews the seed. Studies after the fire showed from 50,000 to 970,000 lodgepole seeds per acre.
Bison Enjoying a Wallow
The park is still very scenic, but it is different and has a more open feeling in the many burn areas. Wildlife was not significantly adversely affected by the burns and there are lots of animals to see. We saw pretty much all the large mammals except for Grizzlies, which I saw at least dozens of (way too many) during my visit as a child. Just outside the park we saw an adult Black Bear and a cub, a Red Fox (deceased) and a Marmot.
In the park were many thousands of Bison, lots of Elk, a few Moose, some Deer, many Pelicans and other large birds, as well as Trout and lots of miscellaneous species like Chipmunks and Ground Squirrels. The prize was a Wolf ambling around back in some trees.
Lots of the animals definitely do not act in a natural way. At one point there was a large Bull Bison wandering around the curio shop at Fishing Bridge (he made a little charge at Judy, which, believe me, got her attention), and at another place two cow Elk crossed the highway, where we were pulled over, by first walking about 15 yards along the road then crossing IN THE CROSSWALK. These Elk were more domesticated than the humans.
I especially enjoyed the, 100 year old, seven story high, Old Faithful Inn, which Sue made sure we visited. Man, what atmosphere. You could just imagine arriving on the train for your week long visit, dining in the elegant old dining room and sitting out on the deck in your suit and tie observing Old Faithful while sipping a cool drink. They'll never make them like this again.
Old Faithful Inn
It was a very full day in Yellowstone, although we saw a fairly small part of the park. We drove about three hundred miles (all six of us in one car) and made lots of stops and several short hikes, the longest being from the rim of Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone down to the river at Lower Falls.
Six of us in one car made for an interesting dynamic. You wanted to be careful what you did and said. For instance if someone made a casual remark about how nice it would be to wade in a stream, you can be sure the car was turned around in double quick time to call the bluff (but it wasn't a bluff, Rick was a man and did go ahead and wade in the icy water). And if someone was educating the group by reading out of a Park Service brochure and inadvertently pronounced "geyser" as "geezer" you can be sure no one forgot it and that there were many remarks about trying to find all 300 geezers in the park.
Old Faithful
Dining Room
Yellowstone River
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Top of Lower Falls
Trout at Fishing Bridge
Great White Hunters, Wes, and Rick, Behind Trees, At Fishing Bridge
Thermal Area, Yellowstone
Bison In a More Natural Setting
Yellowstone Lake
By the time we got back to Cody we were pretty tired but felt like we need to check on "our babies" (Judy's words) at the airport. While there, we got a restaurant recommendation from an airport worker. Sue's concern, this night, was that we eat at some place "cute." The recommended steak house was at least in a "cute" area of downtown, but I'm not sure how Sue felt about our dining area, which was outside, but joined the alley behind the building.