Yellowstone- Friday, July 7, 2017

     The second week of our trip is coming to a close today, and there’s still a week to go.  Julie’s parents flew to Las Vegas today with tickets that we bought them, and will be spending a few days there before meeting us in Seattle.

     Last night, Anastasia went out to the car to get something after dark.  She says she heard a big animal breathing and making a snorting noise, huffing and puffing.  She believed it was a bear and came scurrying back in.  

     The girls started this morning with a horseback ride.  There’s a group that gives rides outside our lodge at Pahaska Tepee, so Julie, Anna and Emma went with two guides, Dakota and William, and a couple from Nebraska with their grandson, Logan.  Julie has ridden horses before, when she was younger, but it was the first ride for Anna, Emma, as well as Logan.  They went out for an hour on a trail that had originally been blazed for Buffalo Bill’s Pahaska Tepee lodge.  Anna rode on horse named Axel; Emma, on a horse named Twizzler; and Julie, on Big Al.   The girls all seemed to have a great time, seeing trees and going up and down hills in the Shoshone National Forest.  They saw the state flower of Wyoming, the red "Indian paintbrush."  They saw wild strawberries, which the guides said were a big attraction for the grizzlies.  The guides said they had seen a grizzly earlier that morning, and had the bear spray ready to spray at him.    Anna heard the whole life story of one of the guides.

     After they returned from horseback riding, Scott had checked us out of the lodge, and we went back in to Yellowstone.  To mix things up a bit, Anna drove and Emma sat in the front seat with her, while Julie and Scott rode in the back.  We hadn’t gone far into the park before we had the biggest animal sighting of the day.  We’ve learned that when you see a lot of cars stopped along the road, there’s usually an animal that people are watching.  This was such a big group of cars, along with two rangers and bunches of people with big camera lenses, that our curiosity was piqued.  Anna turned around and parked, and we walked back.  Sure enough, there were two grizzly bears!  They were just lying on their backs.  They weren’t easy to see, and some of the observers had to help us spot them, but we did see them.  They rolled over a little bit and it made it easier.  One was very blonde, almost white, color and the other was light brown.

     We stopped for a picnic around ten o’clock on the shores of Sylvan Lake.  We had bought some items at the lodge’s grocery store and since we really hadn’t had breakfast yet, we made it a picnic brunch.  When we stopped at Steamboat Point to see the steam coming up, there were two large ravens just sitting there watching us.  They were a little creepy, but they didn’t seem to do anything about us being there.  The bugs bothered us more than the ravens did there, so we didn’t stay long, and a few of them tried hoping a ride in and on our car as we left.  A little further on down the road, we were looking at a series of “thermal features” that were spouting steam, when a black wolf trotted in front of them.  He seemed to be on his own and was just passing by.   There are several visitor’s centers in the park.  We stopped at one for Yellowstone Lake.  The museum at this one concentrated on the birds that can be found in Yellowstone.  We were surprised yesterday to learn that there are pelicans in the park, and we saw one shortly after our stop here.

     We stopped at the West Thumb Geyser Basin, and walked on the boardwalks there a bit.  There are lots of signs around walks like these warning you to stay on the paths.  The ground itself is very unstable and a person could easily break through a thin spot into scalding hot acidic water.  This set of walks took us around to several thermal features on the shore of the large Yellowstone Lake.  We learned that there are similar thermal vents on the floor of the lake, much the same way that there are thermal vents in the Pacific.

     We passed the Continental Divide late this morning, a significant milestone on our trip to the West coast.   Of course, we had to try pouring water out there because water on one side of the divide will flow to the Pacific, and water on the other will flow to the Atlantic.  The actual pouring of the water was a bit anticlimactic, though, as it just sat in a splatter on the asphalt.  So much for that bit of science.  Anyway, the sign said the elevation there was 8,391 feet.

     We tried to go to Old Faithful next, but driving through the parking lot was a mess.  We couldn’t find a spot, and we finally decided to pass on seeing it now.  We knew we’d be coming back for a while later in the afternoon because our dinner reservations and our cabin are both here.

     Skipping Old Faithful meant that our next stop on the loop road would be the Midway Geyser Basin.  Here was a stop that Anna had been looking forward to, because it includes the famous Great Prismatic Spring.  We walked up the path towards the bubbling pool of the Excelsior Geyser Crater.  It was formed when a geyser exploded here in the 1880s, and it was active as a geyser again in 1985.  Although it’s dormant now, the simmering bubbles in the multi-hued blue pool show that it is still being heated from below.  As we walked past it, the wind was blowing towards us across the pool.  It felt odd to have the warm steam blown on us as it was occasionally interrupted by the coolness of the breeze itself.  When  we got to the Great Prismatic Spring, it was impressive to be sure.  But there was also a few things that disappointed us.  For one thing, the narrow walkway in front of it was very crowded with many visitors, including many foreign ones.  This pool is best known because the microorganisms that live in it form In different layers and cause a rainbow ring around the pool itself.  You can see these colors in other places, including the Excelsior Geyser Crater, but here they are so orderly that they seem unreal.  At least that’s the view that they always show from helicopter shots above.  When you are down next to it, you can see the colors.  The reds and oranges bleed out of the pool as the water overflows and trickles underneath the walkway.  The blues even seem to be reflected in the steam as it comes off from the pool.  Still, the best view of it seems to be from directly above, not from the side.  Some animal tracks were visible in the land around the spring.  We guessed they were from buffalo and bears.

     We then went back to Old Faithful and fought to find a parking spot.  We ended up in the wrong place because there are three lodges around the immediate area, and they all seem to share a huge complicated parking area.  We ended up at the Old Faithful Lodge, but our cabin is at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, and our dinner reservations were at the Old Faithful Inn.  It’s a confusing enough series of names for people not familiar with them like us.   The situation was made more frustrating because it was starting to get hot.  The temperature had been going up and down all day as we moved around the park, but was probably in the low 80s at that point and it was being amplified by the parking lot and pavement.  It was about 2:00 so we ate a quick snack in the car.  Our brunch had been late, and our dinner reservation was early, so we didn’t want to eat too much.  After getting our bearings and moving the car several times, we waited in large wooden chairs at the Old Faithful Lodge’s patio until it was close to the 3:38 time that Old Faithful was predicted to blow.  Of course, it seemed like this was the day that Old Faithful would break down.  While we were waiting, Julie’s knee was bothering her, and Emma was starting to overheat, so they went back and watched from the shade.   Steam and water spouts from several geysers could be seen around the area.  A ranger said that one, which could be seen over the treetops, was erupting for the first time in two years.  Yet another one started to put off a pretty impressive plume just before Old Faithful did.   It teased us several times with some burbles, but the actual eruption seemed like it was 20 minutes past its allotted time.

     Our dinner reservations at the Old Faithful Inn were for 4:30 and we made our way there.  The lobby of the inn was impressive to sit in while we waited.  It has a rustic grandeur, being made entirely of logs and rising several stories into the air.  A grand stone fireplace sits in the middle and we were lucky enough to find seats there while we waited for our time for the dining room.  The meal was good, but on the expensive side.   The girls decided to try the buffet and generally liked what they got.

     We then went and got the keys to our cabin at the Yellowstone Snow Lodge.  We were a little afraid about what it might be like inside.  Emma said they looked like a military training camp, and Anna said they looked like sheds.  We also noticed that there were what looked like community restrooms and showers on the map.  So we were a little nervous about what it might look like when we opened the door.  Anna was the first to look in and said, “It’s not dookie!”  It’s actually has a nice finished hotel-room-style look inside.  We do have our own bathroom with our own shower.  The walls are white, and the room is spacious with two big beds.  True, there is no TV, no air-conditioning, and worse yet, no Wi-Fi, (Anna can probably tell you exactly how many hours she’s been without cellphone service) but everything else seems quite comfortable.  Our cabin is at the end of the row, so our windows have a view of pine trees.  The three girls took the four bags of laundry that we had accumulated up to the main building of the lodge, while Scott stayed and typed on the blog.  A thunderstorm blew through, and the temperature dropped a bit as result.