Just got back from a trip out west to Montana and Wyoming, to visit the famous Yellowstone and Grand Tetons national parks. I’d never been to that part of the country before, and it was truly amazing.
Jeannie and I left very early Saturday morning out of Newark airport and flew into Bozeman, Montana. While Newark is sprawling and complicated, Bozeman is probably the nicest airport I’ve ever been to, all wood and stone and glass construction in the luxury log cabins style that’s all trendy out there. It was easy to get our rental car, a bright blue Ford Bronco Sport that added a fun adventure vibe to the trip, and by 11:25 AM we were at the doors of a restaurant to have lunch.
That afternoon we went to the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. The main attraction is its collection of dinosaur fossils, all locally sourced. The star was Big Al, an Allosaurus, and there were also lots of Triceratops skeletons. The exhibits included alot of storytelling about the fossils and the geography of the dig sites, and the science behind working out the ages and lineages of the various kinds of dinosaurs represented in the collections. Very cool stuff.
After that we drove to the Mammoth Hot Springs area of Yellowstone Park. Amazing countryside on the journey. We stopped at the famous Teddy Roosevelt arch at the north entrance to the park. As we got to Mammoth village we were greeted by a herd of elk blocking the road, including a buck named Twenty-Four, with the most gigantic rack I’d ever seen, and his harem of does. Apparently they like to come out of the mountains into the village this time of year. Our lodgings were a cute little cabin in the campground.
Next day at breakfast, we learned that the elk like to sleep in the doorways of buildings, probably because of the heat coming out under the door, and sometimes block people’s way out. Luckily not us. We spent the first part of the day hiking around the hot springs, a totally surreal landscape full of colorful, steaming ponds and waterfalls, and bizarre forms of white rock.
In the afternoon we took a safari ride out to Lamar Valley to spot wildlife. It was a van with about eight people, and we stopped several times at the side of the road. We saw a bunch of different animals including pronghorn antelope, some birds, more elk, and lots of bison. Our guide was engaging and knowledgeable, and was very excited that she’s be returning for the winter season as a snow coach driver.
Toward the end our guide stopped at the side of the road and pulled out her telescope because she’d spotted some activity and thought it might be wolves. They were about a half mile or more away, at the far side of the valley where it gets woodsy and hilly. They were hunting a group of bison that had broken off from the main herd. We stayed and watch for more than a half hour as the wolves stalked and chased the bison, and the bison moved away or turned to face down the wolves with their horns and chase them away. The wolves were apparently after a weaker bison, an old or young one, and the others were protecting it. But the wolves were working to wear the bison down. We stayed until it was getting too dark to see. Next morning someone had posted a video on the internet from the same spot, of the wolves finally making the kill at first light.
Early October is actually the end of the season in Yellowstone. The weather was really nice for us. Although there was frost on our car most mornings it was warm and sunny in the daytime, getting into the mid-seventies. We were above 7,000 feet elevation the whole time, so it took a couple days to get used to that. They were expecting the first snowfall of the season any day, and after that they start closing the roads. The weather is dry in the summer, but in the winter they usually get over 400 inches of snow, and they don’t plow the roads, hence the snow coaches. It actually sound pretty cool and I’d like to go back in the winter someday.
As it was, many of the park services were already closed including alot of food options. In the major national parks every hotel has a fancy dining room, and that was open everywhere we went although they sometimes had a long wait. The fallback option was the adjoining bar, where you could get pub food. I’ve learned over the years that when traveling it’s best to avoid french fries and have a salad every day instead; at the end of the week you’ll feel much better. We did okay on that score.
Yellowstone is huge, about this size of the state of Connecticut, and has five or six villages in the park each with its own hotels, cabins, campgrounds, stores, restaurants and gas stations. But they’re all really far apart, a good hour or two drive. So after the second night we relocated to Old Faithful Village, so Monday was mainly a driving day. We took the route over the high mountain pass, above 10,000 feet and full of switchbacks, toward the Yellowstone falls and canyon. We stopped several times along the way for scenic overlooks and short hikes. At the canyon we did a big hike along the south rim of the gorge, past both waterfalls and some distance beyond. Amazing! Spectacular! On the last part of the drive to our hotel we stopped at an area of geysers and hot springs as the sun was going down.
We arrived at the Old Faithful lodge, which is an impressive and unique piece of architecture. It’s a giant log cabin built in 1903, with a central atrium six stories high. Very dark aura, almost like a medieval castle, but made of wood, and with a bar little cocktail bar with a piano and violin player.
It seems every day we got up to a longer hike than the day before. On Tuesday we spent most of the day wandering around the basin the contains the Old Faithful geyser and hiking in the surrounding hills. The first thing we saw in the morning we Beehive Geyser going off. It’s the next geyser over from Old Faithful and is actually larger, but less frequent and less predictable, so that was cool to see. The area is quite expansive with lots and lots of geysers, hot spring, mud pools, and other hydrothermal features. It was quite something. Awesome, alien beauty. When we were done there we drove up to Grand Prismatic Hot Springs and checked that out. That evening we got dinner in the hotel bar, and afterwards went out to watch Old Faithful erupt in the dark. (Like Niagara Falls, they don’t turn it off at night.)
Wednesday was our last day in Yellowstone, and we spent it driving around a big loop in the south part of the park. There were so many bison all over the place that you almost got used to seeing them, even when they’re right on the side of the road. First stop was Yellowstone Lake, which was beautiful in its own right but also had another extensive area of geysers and hot spring, a fancy hotel, and a camp store that was still open and made for a good place to get lunch. Then it was back to the canyon and falls, where we did a bunch of short hikes on the north rim, although some were a few hundred feel vertical, hopping from place to place by car to catch the highlights. Our last stop was Norris Basin, with yet more hot spring. Although there are many areas of these all over the park, each on had a different character.
Thursday we got up bright and early and drove down to Grand Tetons National Park. Did I mention that everything is really far apart? By the time we got to the visitor center at Jenny Lake it was after noon, so we did a comparatively short hike up to Moose Lake. There were no hydrothermal features here gut the mountains were truly impressive. Afterward we had a late lunch on a rooftop patio in a place at the south end of the park called Dornans, that must have existed before the park was formed.
That night we had a hotel room in the town of Jackson Hole, which was much more comfortable the the ones inside the national parks; this one even had its own fireplace. The hotel had a hot tub so we watched the sun go down from there, looking out over the mountains thru an impressive wall of glass framed in wood and stone. Jackson Hole is a fun little tourist town (I can imagine it must be insane during ski season) and we found a nice place for dinner that served things like trout, bison and elk (but no dinosaur).
Friday was our last day and we returned to Grand Tetons for an epic hike up from String Lake, partway around Jenny Lake and then up into Cascade Canyon via Hidden Falls and Inspiration point. This was over seven miles long, and over a thousand feet vertical, our longest single hike (although most days we were over ten miles total walking). And was well worth it, totally spectacular, probably my favorite hike of the whole trip.
Needless to say, by the time we were done we were pretty tired. Back in the hot tub that evening we watched the weather turn dark and cold as storms rolled out of the mountains. We were getting out of there just in time. Our flight the next morning was very early. We were up before dawn and our of the hotel before they started serving breakfast. Jackson Hole airport is even smaller than Bozeman, and you have to walk out onto the tarmac and walk up a ramp to get onto your place. It was raining as well left, and up in Yellowstone the forecast was for seven inches of snow that day!
