Yellowstone and Idaho- Saturday, July 8, 2017

      Once again, Julie gets to have her birthday in an exotic spot.  This time, of course, we woke up in a cabin in Yellowstone National Park.  We're sleeping tonight in Pocatello, Idaho-- not quite known as a romantic spot, but here we are.

      We went for a sit-down breakfast at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge, which was the lodge that went with the cabins where we stayed last night.  After that, we went to the nearby Old Faithful Visitors Center, which seems to be the main visitor's center for the park.  As we arrived, a film was starting that they time to begin before Old Faithful's eruption.  It was basically an introduction to the park, and went over a lot of things that we have already become familiar with.  When the film ended, the group was invited outside to wait for Old Faithful herself.  Once again, we helped prove that a watched pot never boils, and the geyser was almost twenty minutes late again.  Scott went out to watch it outside, while Julie and the girls looked around the visitor's center and ultimately watched the eruption from inside, sitting down and watching through its big windows.  After that, Scott was ready to look around the visitor's center exhibits, but the girls were ready to get on the road.

     While waiting for Old Faithful, Julie had talked with a ranger named Roger who gave her tips to see some animals we hadn't found yet.  In particular, he said that elk could usually be seen around Mammoth Hot Springs, which is where we were headed.  Scott had suggested that we go towards Mammoth Hot Springs anyway, because this site is one of the major ones that we haven't seen here yet.  He knew we'd go quite a ways past the West Entrance of Yellowstone, but from what he'd seen on the maps, he figured we could go out the Northwest Entrance almost as easily and get to see some sights along the way.

     We got out to look around at an overlook for the Norris Geyser Basin, and saw many clouds of steam rising from the area.  There was a long stretch of the Loop Road that was down to a single lane and it took us a while to get past it.  When we got to Mammoth Hot Springs, the parking lot looked full, and Julie saw that there seemed to be a lot of steps along the wooded boardwalk around it, so we drove past.  We did get to see a little bit of its famous calcium formations, with hills of white and yellow stalactites as we drove past.  Even more excitingly, we saw our biggest animal sighting of the day as we were driving through the Mammoth Lodge area.  There, amongst the cars, buildings and people were a few elk does.  It seems that the wolves that were reintroduced to Yellowstone in the 1990s have been devastating the elk population.  The elks have apparently learned that the wolves don't like people, so they are often to be seen where people are. We went out the North Entrance of Yellowstone a row of shops and restaurants in Gardiner, Montana.  We had a lunch at a place called Yellowstone pizza.  The girls were thrilled to be back where there was cell phone service.  

     However, Scott also made use of the cell service to check the maps for where to go next.  It was then that he realized his mistake.  We couldn't get to Idaho from the North Entrance except to turn around and back track through the park.  That meant at least an extra hour in the car and a total of around two hours that we never should have driven if we'd had gone out the west gate as we had originally planned.  This was supposed to be a relatively short driving day, and he the realization stunned him. He knows what kind of a toll that the car rides are taking and felt so bad he wanted to cry when he realized what he had done.  But there was no getting there any other way.  We had to go back through the park, through the one lane construction area again, and back out the West Entrance.   This leg of the trip was a very quiet one.  

     We did see even more elk as we passed through the Mammoth Lodge area, including quite a few doe and at least one buck that was just dozing in the shade of a tree as the cars drove around him.  We went back through the construction, and eventually went out the West Entrance to West Yellowstone, Montana.  We missed taking a picture at the Idaho border.   Scott was surprised at how flat this area of Idaho is, but Julie pointed out that it's what makes it potato growing country.  We did see a lot of potato fields, usually with the big irrigation systems that look like Tinker-toy arms stretching out across the fields.  The temperature was hot again and went up to 100 degrees at one point, so many of the fields were being irrigated as we passed.

     We finally made it to Pocatello, Idaho.  There's nothing we're planning on seeing here but our hotel reservations were here.  We chose this spot originally because it would put some distance between us and Yellowstone and was supposed to make the drive tomorrow to Oregon a little bit shorter.  When we pulled into our hotel,  Emma said it looked like a bank, and we agreed.   We got directions for going to a nearby mall and its movie theaters.  Julie chose a place called the Black Bear Diner for dinner.  They had good food, but served portions that were too large for all of us.  Anna let the waiter know that it was Julie's birthday.  The staff sang to her and gave her a complimentary dish of huckleberry ice cream.  We've seen a lot of huckleberry in the restaurants and gift shops in this area.  After dinner, we went to the movies.   Anna and Emma went to Despicable Me 3, and Scott and Julie went to Spider-man: Homecoming. 

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.

Yellowstone- Thursday, July 6, 2017

     We heard the news that there was an earthquake in Montana at 12:30 AM last night, but we didn’t feel anything.  We checked the news website and saw that the map included where we were, in Billings, but the epicenter was quite a ways further west from where we are.  A few weeks ago, the news said they were having earthquakes in Yellowstone.  Maybe we’ll feel one before we’re done.

      As we headed west out of Billings, we caught our first glimpse of the actual Rocky Mountains.  It was hard to tell how far off they were, but we were heading towards them.   We took Beartooth Pass to get through Custer National Forest to Yellowstone, and that trip was an adventure in itself.  It is a winding road that takes you up into the very mountains that we had seen from a distance.  Julie was getting a little nervous on the drive up, especially when she was in the outside lane of traffic.  The temperature back in Billings was about 78 degrees, and yet here on the mountains, the snow was still melting.  It made for some pretty waterfalls.  Our first real stop to get out and look around was at Rock Creek Vista Point, where the elevation was listed as 9,190 feet.  We figured we’d be heading back down soon after that, but there was still more “up” to go.  We went even higher to a rocky flat field near the top, that looked like it should have Julie Andrews singing and dancing through it.   We were right at the Wyoming/Montana border.  The highest elevation we reached was near the summit at 10,947 feet. The lowest our car thermometer got was about 59 degrees, but we were driving between the packed snow banks.  We all got out to touch it.  On a dare, Anna and Emma put their feet in a pool of melted snow water that had ice floating in it. 

     Before entering Yellowstone, the road swept back into Montana.  We ate lunch at the Prospector Restaurant in a town called Cooke City and went shopping in the gift shop across the street.  The girls had earned some t-shirts for sticking their feet in the snow-melt pond.

     After entering Yellowstone at the Northeast Entrance, it didn’t take us long to see buffalo along the roadside.  Scott and Anna both pointed out the first one at nearly the same time.  Just a short distance further was a small herd and we stopped to watch the handful of them grazing in the distance.  From what Scott’s parents had said, Scott predicted that we would look back and laugh at how we gawked at these few from such a distance away.  He was right.  Before the end of the day, we had seen hundreds of them in large herds throughout the park, and several up close by the roadside.  Two were even inside the walkway by the “mud volcano.”  We also saw a small herd of pronghorns and several mule deer.

     We saw the stage coaches leaving as we got to the Roosevelt Lodge and we stopped to see about taking one, but it was already after 3:30 and the last ones of the day were the ones that had just left.  We did see a big, fat ground squirrel by the ticket office, though.   We started to follow the loop road counterclockwise through the park, because our ultimate goal was to get to the East Entrance where we will be staying.

     Since we were going past the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River, Scott talked us into going to Artist’s Point to view it.  Unfortunately, some RVs had apparently maneuvered themselves into a position that they couldn’t get out of, and we ended up spending over half an hour in a traffic jam just waiting to get into the parking lot.  Once rangers came to break up the log jam, the trickle of traffic started to exit past us.  Scott said that if you have to wait this long, you know that means the view is going to be spectacular.  Emma disagreed with that premise, but it was a great view.  A short walk from the parking lot took us to the view that the painter Thomas Moran judged to be, “beyond the reach of human art.”  As he did, we were looking up the canyon to the lower falls.  The canyon widens out on each side of the falls, offering quite a spectacle.  Looking down the canyon, away from the falls, was also an impressive site.

     We stopped at the Sulfur Cauldron, where the smell was distinctly of brimstone.  Heat bubbles up from the earth and feeds these muddy gray and yellow pools.  The sulfur smell comes from bacteria that live in the hot acidic water.  A short distance away was the Mud Volcano.  We walked a little bit there, and saw two buffalo inside the wooden walkways there, and of course, saw the mud bubbling away.  

     We made our way past Yellowstone Lake, through a large fire damaged area, and out to the East Entrance of the park.  Our lodge is just a mile beyond the East Entrance.  It is called the Pahaska Tepee.  We didn’t realize it when we made the reservations here, but apparently this lodge was originally built as Buffalo Bill’s hunting lodge.  We didn’t know what exactly to expect, but the girls had already deduced that we weren’t really going to stay in tepees.  We had seen pictures of A-frame cabins on the internet, and there are some here, but we are staying in cabin that is a little bit more traditional in its shape.  There are two units per cabin, so we’re sharing ours with another family.  Our room is roughly the size of a decent hotel room.  It has two large beds, and its own full bathroom.  It doesn’t have a tv, though, and there is no cell-phone service.  There is a land-line in each room, and there is Wi-Fi, but it only works at the main lodge building.  Once we got checked in, Julie and the girls had dinner in the restaurant here. 

     Scott didn’t eat because he was a bit upset for a number of reasons, but it didn’t help that his video camera mysteriously stopped taking video somewhere around the Mud Volcano.   He couldn’t figure out why, but eventually found a way to re-initialize the camera.  He had saved the video from the day, but lost all of the stills he was taking with it today.  That’s not as big of a loss as it might sound because he has been downloading them to the laptop, and Anna was taking a lot of pictures, and Julie had a few on her phone too.    He still has the video from today.  Without good Wi-fi, we’ll probably post a couple of days’ worth of blogs altogether when we get back to civilization.  Julie asked about laundry facilities, but there aren’t any here.  The closest ones are 28 miles away, back in the park, so we won’t be doing any laundry tonight either.  

     Now that Julie has seen a lot of buffalo, she really wants to see a bear.  We’re reminded all the time that we are in grizzly country.  Our cabin has safety rules that were handed to us and gone over with us as we checked in.  Julie said that she wasn’t leaving Yellowstone until she saw a bear.  Anna said, “Oh, yes we are.”

     In many ways, this has not been a fun trip for the girls, and we’re reminded of it almost constantly.  We’ve had long car rides, and even on a day like today, when it’s a relatively short distance to get to Yellowstone from our last hotel, once we were in Yellowstone, the main thing that we did was drive around in a car for probably over a hundred miles.  When we got out, it was only briefly, and then we were back in the car again.  Anna has had a little time in the front seat this week, but Emma has had none, and life in the backseat can certainly be cramped in boring.