Yellowstone National Park – A Traveling Fool

The Big Horn Mountains in northern Wyoming and southern Montana have a long Native American history. They have been home to the Shoshone, Crow, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota. The Medicine Wheel in the northernmost area of the mountains is considered to be quite sacred.

It was in the Big Horn Mountains where I finally saw my first moose. It was from a distance and was a young, male moose without a rack. But it was still exciting to finally see one after years of traveling to areas where they are prevalent only to have them be elusive when it came to a sighting. I got a couple of blurry photos.

Shell Falls is located in the Big Horn Mountains and is a wonderful grouping of waterfalls cutting through the rocks of Shell Canyon. The canyon and waterfalls get their name from the large number of fossils of hard-shelled creatures that exist in the area. The rumbling of the water surging over the falls can be felt in your feet.

Cody, Wyoming was named for Buffalo Bill Cody, who was one of its founders. A large museum, called the Buffalo Bill Cody Center of the West, is really a conglomeration of several museums – the Buffalo Bill Museum, the Plains Indians Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum, the Draper Natural History Museum and the Cody Firearms Museum. I managed to explore all five museums, starting with the Plains Indian Museum, in the time we had there.

We traveled through the Shoshone National Forest on our way from Cody to Yellowstone. It was quite wild and beautiful – a great entry to Yellowstone. We came into Yellowstone National Park itself through the East Entrance. Immediately we began to see bison, elk, and a mama grizzly with cubs. The bison in Yellowstone are much larger than those at Custer National Park. This is because Custer National Park manages its bison herd (including culling) while Yellowstone just lets nature take its course.

Soon we began to see the indications that Yellowstone, although classified as a dormant volcano, is active enough, starting with a mud volcano. We encountered the Dragons Mouth, which moaned and groaned and smelled like sulphur. When Yellowstone decides to blow, it will take everything within a 300 mile radius with it. As of 2013, it was still content, after thousands of years to just keep bubbling, gurgling, and shooting water from geysers. Possibly, since there are so many ways of “letting off steam”, it could remain content not to erupt for thousands more years.

After skirting Yellowstone Lake, we headed north towards Mammoth Hot Springs, where we spent the night in some cute little cabins. My cabin had one room and a bathroom. I had no bars for my mobile phone inside, but had three bars out on the front porch. So I made some calls and sent some texts while gazing across some other cabins at the Mammoth Hot Springs themselves. After dinner in the main building of the hotel, I headed back to the cabin to turn in for the night.

The next day, we explored the Hot Springs themselves. Although outside of the caldera, the hot springs bubble away and have created a large field of travertine. In the years since my 2013 visit, some earthquake activity has shifted some of the hot springs so that parts of the travertine are now dry.

We spent the entire day in Yellowstone, visiting such features as Tower Falls, Washburn Hot Springs Overlook, the Brink of the Upper Falls, Artist Point for the Lower Falls, Gibbon Falls, Firehole Falls, Fountain Paint Pot, the Great Fountain Geyser at Lower Geyser Basin, and Old Faithful. In order to get a good viewing seat for Old Faithful, we needed to get there well enough in advance to not have enormous crowds as of yet. When it finally did its thing, I kept going long enough for me to be able to take some video as well as photos.

We spent the night at the Old Faithful Inn, which was built in 1905. Old Faithful could be seen from the Inn. We had dinner in the dining room of the Inn. My room was on the opposite side of the Inn from Old Faithful, but had several smaller geysers just outside.

The following day, we visited Isa Lake, which sits on the Continental Divide and drains in two different directions. It is one of the very few lakes in the world that does this.

The West Thumb Geyser Basin is on the shores of Yellowstone Lake. One of my favorite features of this geyser basis is the Abyss Pool. It is a gorgeous turquoise color and appears to be completely bottomless.

On our way out of the park down to the South Entrance, we passed Lewis Lake, Lewis Falls and the Lewis River in Lewis Canyon. Lewis & Clark skirted Yellowstone as they felt it was too rugged. Lewis still managed to get all of those places named after him. But what about Clark? Didn’t he deserve at least a waterfall?

We entered Grand Teton National Park from the John D Rockefeller, Jr Memorial Parkway. Rockefeller had purchased most of the land from Jackson Hole to Yellowstone to create Grand Teton National Park. Several glacial lakes exist at the base of the mountains. We had lunch at Jackson Lake Lodge.

In the Jackson Hole area, we encountered another young, male moose a little closer up. I managed a couple of decent shots of him as he stopped to watch us go by.

The town of Jackson is located in the Jackson Hole Valley. There is a National Elk Refuge nearby. The town still has some of the original buildings from the late 19^th century. The town had a lot of art galleries, antique shops, and gift shops – some with Native American-made pieces.

We spent the night in Jackson at the Rustic Inn, which had several buildings with front porches, high ceilings in the room, and pretty amazing amenities. There was a grocers a short walk away and a fridge in the room. The shower was the fanciest I had ever seen in real life, with multiple shower heads overhead and coming from the sides. It was fun to figure out, but I nearly drowned myself at one point.

Next time – from Jackson Hole to Afton, WY, Montpelier, ID, Salt Lake City, UT, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and back to Las Vegas, NV.