Journey to the world's oldest (National Park)

My treat to me (it's not all about Eli you know!) on this trip was a visit to Yellowstone National Park. I have always wanted to go there and I wanted to make it happen on this US visit. I hoped that Eli would be as excited about it as I was and I had primed him with repeat viewings of the Yogi Bear Movie (ok, so it isn't the best educational tool, but it kept him entertained!). The fact that it also meant that I could spend my birthday in Yellowstone was an added bonus.

We'd flown into Bozeman Montana on an unseasonally warm and sunny day, but we still made the most of the generous offer of warm clothes from Uncle Mike (Grandma Susan's brother), just to be on the safe side. After collecting our extra garments we headed off for Yellowstone. It turns out that I took a wrong turn somewhere, so we actually entered the park through the West Yellowstone entrance (and not the northern entrance as I had planned), but we eventually drove through the gate and were on our way on our Yellowstone adventure. Not far into the park we spotted our first herd of Bison/Buffalo (the names are interchangeable!) - and at the time we thought that was great (later we realised that there are heaps of them!).

Our first stop out of the car was at the Visitor Centre at Madison. And here's some trivia (that I stole off a sign at the site) - it was here, "at the junction of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers, on September 19 1870, that members of an expedition gathered around a campfire on the last night of their historic expedition of the Yellowstone country and discussed the astounding natural wonders they had seen. There emerged an idea, expressed by Cornelius Hedges, that there should be no private ownership of these wonders but that the area should be preserved for public enjoyment. Others shared these views, and on March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Act establishing Yellowstone as the world's first National Park." Such a great story.

Not only did we see heaps of Buffalo including lots of newborn calves at Madison, but we also spotted quite a few cheeky little Uinta Ground Squirrels - it turns out that there are a lot of these in Yellowstone too - especially around areas frequented by people (they are rodents after all!). This little fella was quite near the path to the Visitor Centre, but he was pretty well camouflaged and most people walked past without noticing him at all. Not Eli and I though!

After our stop at Madison, it was time to get back into the car and head in the direction of our accommodation - Canyon Lodge. Yellowstone NP is huge - it was about 45 km from Madison to Canyon Village - and even though it takes a long time to get anywhere, there was always something to look at out the window, so I didn't mind at all. Eli was enjoying the scenery too, although he did punctuate his site-seeing with occassional iPad sessions. We finally arrived at Canyon Village and Eli spotted (in the carpark of all places) his first ever snow. It wasn't much - just a pile that was no doubt placed there when the carpark was scraped clean, but Eli was drawn to it. After touching it for a while, I asked Eli what he thought and he answered 'It's cold'. Fair enough I guess.

After spending the night at Canyon Lodge and dining in the pretty flash restaurant, Eli and I took to the hills and began exploring the park. Our first stop was at a place called Artist's Point, where you can get a great view of Yellowstone Falls and the beginning of what is known as 'the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone'. It was pretty spectacular, although Eli's enthusiasm for waterfalls isn't 'sky high', so we didn't linger very long (and he denied all future suggestions of stops at waterfalls).

We were lucky that there were plenty of people at this stop (despite how boring Eli might have thought it was) and one very nice lady offered to take a photo of the two of us - so here is the proof that we were both there!

















A short drive down the road and we spotted what looked like some branches poking out of the grass. Of course they weren't branches, they were the antlers of a few resting Elk. Eli and I parked the car and walked closer to get some photos, but as is often the case in Yellowstone, by the time we were done with our shots there was a traffic jam of vehicles that had stopped, in the middle of the road, to take photos. We were glad to get back in the car and get away from the crowd (and we felt a little bit guilty about attracting all of the attention to those elk).

We continued on our drive south, towards the Mud Volcano and other geothermal wonders and drove through the gorgeous Hayden Valley, where we saw yet another herd of grazing Buffalo. You might just make out the Buffalo in the wide shot of the valley - I like this photo because it gives an appreciation of the size of the place (given that Buffalo are pretty darn large creatures).

Next stop was the Mud Volcano, which turned out to be spectacularly smelly - the hydrogen sulphide gas was pretty full on in some places and Eli certainly made it known that he wasn't a big fan of the smell. That being said, this part of Yellowstone is pretty active and there were lots of springs and areas where steam was shooting out of the ground. Eli and I did get a kick out of the signs in the area too - here's an excerpt "In thermal areas the ground may only be a thin crust above boiling hot springs or scalding mud. There is no way to guess a safe path - new hazards can bubble up overnight, and some pools are acidic enough to burn through boots. More than a dozen people have been scalded to death and hundreds badly burned and scarred." Needless to say, we kept to the tracks. Another sign mentioned the risk of the toxic gases and suggested that if you feel sick, you should leave the area immediately. I think Eli and I both got a kick out of the risk factor here.

We jumped back in the car and drove down to where the road met Lake Yellowstone (which is also huge), before making our way down to West Thumb Geyser Basin - it was turning into a geothermal exploration kind of day. At West Thumb there are dozens and dozens of hot springs, not smelly mud pits like at Mud Volcano, and the colours were amazing. Each spring was different from the next, even when they were just a metre or two apart from one another. Many were blue in the middle - which won Eli over immediately - with crusts of thermophile bacteria around the edges in assorted colours of white, yellow and orange. Each of the springs is also named, but I'll spare you the details of all but a few of them here.





Some of the springs, like this one on the left, emerge from Lake Yellowstone itself and during winter, the otters tend to go fishing around the 'hot spots' throughout the lake - a good idea since much of the lake is frozen. Even though these springs at West Thumb pour almost 12 000 litres of hot water into the lake every day, the average summertime water temperature of Lake Yellowstone is a chilly 7 C.

This spring, on the right and below, with the incredible colours, is called Black Pool. Apparently it really did used to look black - back in the 1980's at least - when lots of brown and black thermophiles inhabited the deeper sections. Apparently the spring erupted in 1991 (this happens occassionally, but thankfully not during our visit!) and killed most of these thermophiles. Now the spring is a beautiful blue colour.

Black Pool was definitely our favourite spring - Eli loved the blue depths and I liked the sharp contrasts between the edge, the shallows and the middle. Eli also liked walking through the steam coming out of this spring - this photo doesn't really do it justice, but it was certainly a nice change from the smelly mud volcano.




















I also really liked this spring, called Abyss Pool. It is one of the deepest, going down to about 16m and the colour was amazing - especially with the forest and sky as contrasts.


And here's Eli in front of Collapsing Pool - a quiet looking spring that occassionally violently erupts to life and changes shape and form between each event.






After having our fill of hot spring action at West Thumb, our next stop was to check out a third type of geothermal feature - geysers. Like many other visitors, we decided to check out the geysers at the Old Faithful Area - an area where most of the active geysers in the world can be found. In addition, five of the geysers in this area go off predictably - there are timetables at the Visitor Centre! Like thousands of others (see the crowd in some of these photos) we decided to sit and wait for Old Faithful Geyser to go off. It was so named because of it's consistent performance and it erupts, on average, every 93 minutes. We arrived about 10 minutes before the scheduled eruption, so I took a few photos of an increasingly restless Eli (and the swelling crowd) as we waited.

Then, after a few pre-eruption spurts, off she went, just a couple of minutes behind schedule. It was pretty impressive - something in the order of 20 000 litres of boiling water being shot between 30-55m in the air over the course of a couple of minutes. And then it just died down again (for another 93 minutes or so) and the crowd descended on the Visitor Centre and gift shops...

As you may have gathered, it had been a long hot day exploring the Yellowstone hot spots. As some sort of compromise/trade off, I'd promised to Eli that we would finish the day off in cooler climes. Uncle Mike had told us that there was likely to still be snow on the ground at Dunraven Pass (around 2800m above sea level), so we headed there on the way back to our lodgings. Unlike Eli's experience with carpark snow the day before, this was a more authentic snow experience, with heaps of snow still on the ground. Here he is, still wearing shorts of course, standing on snow for the first time. And here is a shot of the two of us, just to prove that we were both there.

 



Of course, standing on snow is one thing, but gathering up a handful and throwing it at your Dad is (it seems) both irresistable and incredibly funny. I had wondered why Eli was so keen to get to the snow (he had once again been asking about whether it was afternoon yet - for most of the morning), but countless snow balls and more than a couple of big chunks of ice thudding into my back later, I'd figured out where his motivation was coming from. To avoid the risk of being knocked senseless by the increasingly large chunks of ice Eli was eyeing off, I encouraged him to help me build a snowman.

He was happy to help, at least in terms of gathering materials other than the snow - it was freezing (obviously). Here's our snowman, starting to take shape. And yes, I know he's not huge by any means, but given that we didn't have gloves on, we were going for quality over quantity. We used small pine cones for the eyes and nose and decided to give him some antennae too (sticks and sprigs of pine needles), just to put our own stamp on the tradition. Inevitably though, after our creation was complete, Eli reverted to his preferred activity and started lobbing snowballs at me again.

I don't think these photos need too much explanation...but I soon needed another distraction...so I decided to make a snow soccer ball and let Eli smash it to smithereens...

After slipping, sliding, lobbying, jumping and smashing snow and ice for about an hour, we were both cold and wet, so it was time to head back to Canyon Lodge for a warm shower. What a huge day out and about in Yellowstone - we both really enjoyed it, although I got the strong feeling from Eli that in his mind geysers, springs and mud volcanoes are a bit like waterfalls - once you've seen one, you don't need to see any more.

The next morning we woke to a surprise - it was snowing! The days before had been warm and sunny, but today was anything but. Still, we were both keen to get outside and experience it - Eli even wanted to go for a walk in the snow on the way to breakfast. Apologies for this video, on it's side, but it's all that I have to show that it really was snowing on us...

It was great walking in the snow - it was just a light and really dry dusting type of snow - nothing like the cold wet sludge I've experienced in the Australian 'Alps' - and Eli and I really enjoyed walking around Canyon Village in these conditions. Eli wanted to wear my beenie and I really like this photo of him, with fresh snowflakes on his head.













There had been enough snow overnight that there was a light covering on all horizontal surfaces, including our car and this picnic table that we claimed as our own...


I also couldn't resist trying to take a photo of an actual snowflake that landed on my jacket...

Our plan for the day was to head north, back over Dunraven Pass, and up into the Lamar Valley in the hope of seeing some wildlife - I was hoping to see bear, wolves and moose - prett ambitious I know. It was still snowing on the way up to Dunraven Pass and the mountains had received quite a bit of snow overnight - it looked awesome. Down the other side of the range we were glad to see some signs that the snow was going to stop, with some sun and blue sky emerging through the mist.

On the way to the Lamar Valley I stopped briefly to view the Yellowstone River as it continued to cut it's way through the park. I say I, because it was still bitterly cold here - in fact it was a very cold day with the maximum temperature staying at our below 7 C - and Eli decided that he'd rather sit in the car than get out and look at the river (maybe rivers are like waterfalls too?). Despite the cold, I was glad to get out and have a look around, especially since I spotted this orange bellied marmot sunning himself on the edge of the cliff.

The Lamar Valley was beautiful - lots of buffalo here too (all of those small black dots in the photo are buffalo), with rocky outcrops that looked just like wolf country to me. We stopped occassionally and did see a herd of pronghorn antelope (but they were too far away to get good photos) and there were plenty of people braving the cold and sitting still with their telescoping lenses and binoculars - looking for wildlife - along the way. Of course we didn't go in for that sort of sedentary-styled adventure, so we continued up through the Valley until a picnic spot on Soda Butte Creek, where we saw more of our little ground squirrel friends...

On the way back down the Lamar Valley - we didn't want to drive out the north-eastern gate of the park - we got a good close look at a buffalo herd, including some young calves that were pretty active and a couple of adolescents that were enjoying a bit of wrestle...















Next, and much to Eli's horror, we had one more stop at a geothermal hot spot and township, called Mammoth Hot Springs. I tried explaining to Eli that these springs are quite different to those that we'd seen the previous day, because they are travertine-depositing - they sit in an area dominated by limestone, not rhyolite, like most of the rest of the park - but for some reason it was a difficult sell. I'm sure the cold day had something to do with it too, but after some discussion and chocolatey compromise, I eventually coaxed him out of the car long enough for us to take a short walk around the active area of springs. 


As you can see from the photo on the right, Eli wasn't exactly thrilled with the terraces of travertine, but I must admit that it was freezing and that these springs were pretty smelly! There were plenty of thermophiles here too (actually Eli might be also be one), hence the orange and yellow colours (of the spring, not Eli).

Eli did eventually perk up a bit, especially once we spotted this bull snake right near the path. It's amazing how many people walked right by it without noticing, but that's probably a good thing, because you should have heard the screams when people did see it! 

We didn't stick around at Mammoth Hot Springs long though, because we were both keen to get warm again (in the car). We headed back home through an area with lots of waterways - lakes and streams - and I was really hoping to see a moose - no such luck though, just lots of signs suggesting that you might see them in this area.

The next day was our last in Yellowstone NP, but it wasn't just any day, it was my birthday. Eli's gift was to graciously offer to get me a coffee and give me all of the milk (which is a serious concesion on his part since he loves milk so much). He also said that he hoped that I saw a bear on my birthday, but that he wasn't sure that I would. I thought that this was both very sweet and very clever of him (you should never guarantee a bear sighting!). It was a great start to the day. We were also happy to find that we were waking up to another warm and sunny day and I think a lot of the animals around Canyon Village thought the same way, because we saw a snowshoe hare and a least chimpmunk on our way back from breakfast.

We left Canyon Village for the last time and headed towards an area where bears had been reported over the past few days, in the hope that this might be our lucky day. It turns out that it was, as we spotted not one, but two black bears on the road west from Tower-Roosevelt. We, unlike many others who simply stopped on the road, parked our car at a pull out and walked back to where the bears were to get a better look. It is the breeding season, but it was a great thrill to see two bears together and to see the variability in their fur colour too. I took heaps of photos and videos, as did the large number of people that quickly aggregated along the road.


The highlight was probably when the cinnamon bear stood up on his back legs and scratched his back on a tree, although as a few people have mentioned, it does look like that he was just trying to hide from the attention he was getting.

After seeing our bears (I was one very happy boy) we headed towards Mammoth Hot Springs and the northern entrance (exit) of Yellowstone. Along the way we were met by a buffalo herd-inspired traffic jam. Apparently the buffalo get around on the roads quite a lot during winter, because they are firm, but these buffalo were enjoying a stroll down the road in early summer. Eli and I enjoyed watching them head our way and then move past us (see the video), although we were both a bit miffed by the car that was driving so closely behind them - he actually ended up splitting the herd into two groups and Eli spent the rest of the day talking about how the two groups would now have to find each other again.

After the buffalo had passed us by, we finally left Yellowstone National Park via Mammoth Hot Springs, where it is a lot drier. Here we were lucky enough to spot a female elk, which really rounded out an excellent day of wildlife spotting.

We then headed back to Bozeman and spent the night at Mike and Rita's place before beginning our long homeward journey the next day. We both really enjoyed our trip, but as ever, it was good to be back home again.