Yellowstone
Monday, July 1
This day represented another change in our plans. By accident, we added Yellowstone to our itinerary. A rainstorm came through in the early morning and canceled our horse ride at Chico Hot Springs. It would’ve been nice to hit the trails there, but the guides wouldn't let our group move during the downpour. Looking for an alternative, Diane poured over our maps. She found a way for us to get to Idaho, our next state, by taking a road through Yellowstone.
We were lucky it was such a rainy day. The crowds at the northwest entrance of Yellowstone started out as reasonable ones, initially. They got bad fast, which resulted in traffic jams well before the rain eased off. Despite the density of our fellow tourists, we managed to inspect a few of the interesting geographical features along our route. Mammoth Springs is great, by the way, and we would strongly recommend it. You can hike across most of the place on wooden boardwalks. (I'm generally in favor of interacting with nature at some level, not merely gazing at it like on a television.)
At a nondescript stopping point near Indian Creek, we encountered stinky, bubbling pools low to the ground, like they were part of a swamp. Technically, I'm sure the place wasn't even a marsh. But it lay down in a wooded glade of sorts and it frothed with steamy warmth, green algae, minerals, and burping gases. No one else seemed to want to come near it. That made it even better for us. We did a lot of pointing things out to each other.
As we exited the site, an elderly couple approached me. The man asked, "Is it worth it?"
"Just smell the fresh air!" I exclaimed. He leaned back his head and roared. His wife chuckled, too. They were practically the only ones besides us to stop here so I had to wonder what attracted them.
"I can feel it already," she nodded. She wrinkled her nose. "It it far?"
"Not even a football field away into the trees."
She sighed as she stumped off along the path. She was struggling with a noticeable limp, so the distance was important to her. Likewise, she probably enjoyed the definite lack of the usual crowd at a Yellowstone attraction. After a moment of rest when she reached the nearest line of trees, she plodded on out of view. The whole time, she seemed to maintain a slightly grumpy air about the mildly rotten air.
In our car, we passed Sheepeater Cliff on our left, then we drove across the bridge over Indian Creek. As we rolled over the creek, Diane caught sight of a something by the side of the road. Whatever the species, a largish animal had found a spot between the bridge and the water. What it was doing there all alone was hard to say, but Diane tapped my arm. She has a rapid, hard, blade-of-the-hand touch she uses for urgent situations. This qualified.
"Pull off! Pull off!" She pointed to a spot in back of us, where I could not go.
Up and to the right, I saw a lay-by, apparently paved there for people who wanted to stop and hike to the creek. I pulled in and discovered, behind the bushes and stubby trees, a parking lot of sorts. It could fit a half-dozen cars although it lay mostly empty. There was a single picnic table on the sand beyond the lot. A grandmother and two children sat at it with their lunch. The clever Yellowstone park rangers had situated an outhouse building thirty feet in back of the table. It was the dual-outhouse that drew the crowd, small as it was. Six people stood in a line to pass through either door.
While I gawked at the people for a moment, I glimpsed my wife to my left. She was not leaving me but had already left and was returning. She grabbed my left arm.
"It's over here," she said. "I think it's an elk."
She led me on a brief hike to the south shore of the creek, From there, I could see the animal was, in fact, an elk. Or maybe I don't know the difference between an elk and some other large quadruped without antlers, which is possible. (A little while later, it turned out I didn't know what a weasel looked like.) Anyway, the creature was pretty big. Even lying down in a thicket of weeds across the river, it was a substantial presence. But we didn't have to worry about it charging us across the stream, so we could get as close as we liked.
Besides, some nut (some *other* nut), as always happens, managed to pull off the road next to the bridge, the way my wife had wanted me to do. That put his car within twenty feet of the elk. When the driver got out, the distance suddenly looked even smaller.
It looked small to the driver, too. After a moment of excitement while getting his picture, he backpedaled toward the open door of his car.
Obsidian Cliff
This was another Yellowstone site where the crowd was minimal. How many people want to look at rocks in a cliff or on the ground? Not many. But historically, the obsidian sites in the United States were important. The tribes traded pretty extensively for the shards and blades, which were pretty much the sharpest available.
Roaring Mountain
This really looks cool. My first glimpse made me pull the car off into a lot. Okay, so the throng of picture-takers at this site seemed too much. I could see why they wanted to be here. I'd recommend it despite the difficulties getting in. People, people, people. Yellowstone has too many people in it. But this mountain is genuinely cool (and hot, technically).
Geyser Basin
Whoops, the geyser basin was so packed with tourists, we decided to drive through without stopping. Maybe some other day. Maybe in the winter. And maybe with more time to devote to a hike through the geyser area while dodging the crowds as much as possible.
Gibbon Falls
Compared to the geysers, I guess a waterfall seems ordinary. Anywhere else but Yellowstone, though, and this view would have been a major tourist spot. It was still kind of popular, actually.
Clearwater Springs
This is a 'nothing' kind of place but we liked it. Now, that's partly because there were less than a dozen other tourists on the walkways with us. There isn't much to see, a few mineral pools and interesting plants, except there was also a fast, little animal zooming around. The animal caught most of our attention. It zipped along a log, posed for a moment, popped onto a rock, skipped back to the log, and skittered back to the other end.
We followed it and took pictures. We got blurry, awkward shots. The animal wasn't a chipmunk. It wasn't a squirrel. It wasn't large, though. It was certainly no bigger than most cats, and it was even faster.
Only when we came home and showed our friends the photos did we find out (thanks, Ted) that we had not known what a weasel looks like.
Heading to Idaho
Since we only drove through the northwest quadrant of Yellowstone park, our experience of it was necessarily limited. But the road took us into the last state of our trip, Idaho. We were bound for Shelley - not an old girlfriend. It's a town.
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