New Zealanders, Griz, Yellowstone
August 10, 2017

We have moved on; however, I want to talk about something I failed to mention back at the previous place.  Only two days ago, but it already bobs around in a sea of intermingling memories. 

At Fairmont Hot Springs, we met the nicest young couple from New Zealand who were there with their three young children.  In the course of getting acquainted, we learned they were from the north island and had been in the U.S. for nine years.  He is a professor of microbiology at the University of Montana in Bozeman.

When they finished their mini-vacation at Fairmont, he was taking the children home and she was headed for a get-away on her own - to spend a volunteer week camping out and trail building with a group of 100 others, an activity that she had done previously.

When I mentioned that we had just hiked at Avalanche Lake, they were surprised because they said that area had been closed very recently due to six grizzlies hanging out there.  No wonder there were so many signs about being “beary” careful!

On a recent hike, they saw a grizzly bear with a cub on the trail ahead of them and of course opted to turn back.  I asked if she shot a photo first and she had - ah, a woman after my own heart. . .

More Montana . . .

We are at Yellowstone's Edge, a really lovely park right on the bank of the wide placid (at least right here) Yellowstone River.  Each spacious RV spot has a lush green grassy yard with nice trees placed just right so they shade but don't shed on your RV.  All the facilities are top notch and the owners are welcoming and helpful.

We are so grateful that we arrived when we did; otherwise, we would never have known the magnificence of this region.  We are staying in a settlement called Emigrant - after three original pioneers who were the first Anglos to winter over here - in a region titled Paradise Valley, for very good reason.

When we arrived, we were awed by the golden grasslands covering rolling foothills leading to high forested mountains reaching high above - just about as picturesque a scene as could be imagined.  Three days later, the smoke has caught up with us and the incredible countryside is obscured in a gray twilight effect.

We have heard that the catastrophic fires in Montana are left to burn except where structures and/or infrastructure are threatened.  The expense to fight them is far too high.  Add to that wildfires of enormous proportions in Canada, and the result is that a huge swath of both countries lies under a blanket of lowering sky, sufficiently heavy enough often to blot out sunlight.  Evidently, the end of the fires will come only with the beginning of winter's precipitation in October.

Yellowstone . . .

It was our great good fortune to spend two days in the storied Yellowstone National Park before whatever wind or weather shift pushed the smoke in our direction.  We hear of places where the breathing conditions are so dire that residents are advised to leave, at least at night.  Who knows, perhaps the wind will shift back to clear this region out again.

As we drive from our "home" to Yellowstone, we depart Montana and enter Wyoming, the first time for me in that state.  We only know that's where we are because when we return, a highway sign welcomes us back to Montana.  Other than that, Wyoming declines to say "Howdy", evidently. 

With our usual modus operandi of attempting to see everything there is to be seen and to do everything there is to do, we began our Yellowstone odyssey by turning out at each and every turnout.  We did not have a priority list of sights nor did we have much of an idea of the incredible vastness of the park.

The majority of the geothermal features are within a 40-mile-wide caldera, the remains of an ancient cataclysmic volcanic eruption.  Yellowstone contains the majority of the world's geysers.  Within the park are regions defined by what features are active there.

Mammoth Hot Springs . . .

One of the first places we explored was Mammoth Hot Springs, an area of mountainous travertine mounds.  Although my photos could never do it justice, my words are even more inadequate, so I will offer some of the recordings from my camera.

Boardwalks have been constructed throughout the most accessible geothermal areas and visitors are admonished to remain on them for very good reasons: both for the safety of the fragile ecosystem and for the safety of people who could easily fall through the sometimes thin crust to their death.

Some more foolishly adventurous folks have died horrifically at Yellowstone when they defied warnings not to venture off-trail into hot areas.  A desire to find pools in which to "hot pot", as it's called - bathe in the springs - or just to wander afield have resulted in severe injuries and death. 

There are many miles of stunning landscapes within Yellowstone that are hikeable country.  We covered a lot of territory both on and off boardwalks in our quest to embrace the awesome beauty around us, walking until our energy would no longer respond to our desire to see more.

Norris geyser basin. . .

Still steaming and seething as at Mammoth, the sights in the Norris Basin differed to some extent, teeming with more watery pools.

It was amazing to us that so many hot springs could each and every one be so vastly different from every other one.  The colors vary depending on the temperature and quantity of the water or steam, the mineral content and other factors. 

The result seems to be an endless variety of steaming, spouting, boiling, bubbling, roaring, hissing, crackling, erupting, shooting, burbling stunningly gorgeous scenes.  The noise of one delicate plain sounds exactly like a huge skillet filled with bacon frying and sizzling.

The water is sometimes so colorless and clear that you can't tell it's there as you look through it to the crystalline formations below.  Oftentimes, it is a completely clear shade of turquoise that is so startlingly beautiful you are left in disbelief.  Peering down into the depths of those aqua pools brings to mind tropical climes with divers swimming lazily along in exploration of the reefs except for the fact that these depths are scaldingly hot, boiling along like a pot on the stove.

The falls . . .

Combining lots and lots of surface water and precipitous mountains has to result in waterfalls and there is ample evidence of that in Yellowstone.  The Gibbon River drops as the Virginia Cascades.

In the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, I had to gasp at the grandeur of the massive stone walls whose color revealed the origin of the park's name. 

Within those cliffs runs the Yellowstone River.  It runs wide and serene in other sections, but there it drops with such mighty energy that it can be felt from a distance.  There is the upper falls . . .

. . . and the lower falls.

Near the Golden Gate bridge along the grand loop drive, we saw Undine Falls when we walked back from the Golden Gate overlook, one of the more harrowing traverses in the park.

The original bridge was constructed there beginning in 1884 on a wooden trestle that skirted around an ungradable rock cliff.

I found this priceless assessment of traveling that particular stretch of "road" in 1889, written by none other than Rudyard Kipling:

"On one side piled rock and shale, that enjoined silence for fear of a general slide-down; on the other a sheer drop, and a fool of noisy river below. Then, apparently in the middle of the road, lest any should find driving too easy, a post of rock. Nothing beyond that save the flank of a cliff. Then my stomach departed from me, as it does when you swing, for we left the dirt, which was at least some guarantee of safety, and sailed out round the curve, and up a steep incline, on a plank-road built out from the cliff. The planks were nailed at the outer edge, and did not shift or creak very much—but enough, quite enough. That was the Golden Gate."

I was fair nervous enough riding along that cliff edge with modern engineering and concrete materials beneath me.  The wooden trestle would have done me in for sure.  My photo of today's conveyance below differs markedly from the one above showing 1885 travelers coming into Yellowstone via the wooden trestle.

"Wild" animals. . .

Okay, so it wasn't the feared grizzly bears, not even the hopefully not as aggressive black bears nor anything else that we haven't seen in close proximity to our own back yard, but we did spot some game: the coyote that seemed to want to lead us down the highway and the nightly contingent of elk that show up at the Mammoth community to keep the lawns grazed down.