Wednesday, the Crack of Dawn

On Wednesday, the day we were checking out of our little hotel in West Yellowstone and heading to the booming town of Gardiner, some brilliant person decided it would be cool to get up early and see if we could spot some wildlife in the park on the way in (yes, yes - that's me with my hand raised up in the air. Call me brilliant!). How early is early? Well, the alarm went off at 4:30. Which for me wasn't terrible - I was still kind of working on East Coast time, so that was 6:30 for me. Sleeping in! I'm not sure John was amused, though.

We packed up all our stuff in to our trusty Maxima and headed in to the park. Ah, the best laid plans... Didn't work out quite as well as we had hoped, because it was foggy as all get-out that morning. Fog plus mist from warm rivers that have hot springs running in to them = poor wildlife viewing!

We did manage, however, to spot a little herd of elk cows and an elk baby (what do you call them? Elklets? Calves, I suppose). It helps to spot them when they walk out in to the road in front of you...

Thanks, elk, for helping us out!

And pictures of Yellowstone in the fog at dawn are really not half bad. PLUS - added bonus - there's lots fewer cars on the road at 6AM. Got to get up early to beat all those darned tourists!
We headed down Firehole Canyon Drive, which was a one way scenic little road along a river, with some cascades and lots of fog:

Trees in the mist...

As we kept driving we came across a guy kind of hiding behind his car, looking through a scope or taking photos (I can't remember). as we're fabulous as spotting people spotting wildlife, we pulled over and walked back to the guy. He was looking at some sort of big bird in a tree, which we were hoping was an eagle. Not to be - it was an osprey that flew away as we walked up. Apparently they are a bit shy. Ah, well. Sorry, guy, for scaring your osprey away!

Turned in to Sentinel Meadows to see what was down there. There were some gorgeous shots to be had of the nice misty river in the morning sun:

As I was taking these shots, John was going "Psssssst! Alissa!" to me the whole time. Which, of course, I didn't hear. As I walked back up to the car, he said - "did you see the buffalo you just walked three feet from?" Well, no. No, I didn't. Apparently I walked right past a buffalo and was completely oblivious. Go, me! Anyway - he stuck around for a while so we took some shots of him, too. He was kind of a mangy looking guy - hair all falling out, looking ribby. Hope he makes it for another year!

Got an itch...

Mangy buffalo in the mist

Look what I found, Mom!

After we had our fill of Mr. Buffalo (again, we're jaded with buffalo. No need to stop for them unless they are 1) in the road or 2) really cool) we continued down the road to the Fountain Paint Pots. This was a little boardwalk that wandered past bubbling mud (fun!) and some little geysers:

Boiling mud
All about boiling mud
A little geyser that was putting on an impressive show
A decidedly un-shy coyote, trotting along the side of the boardwalk right by the parking lot.

Our final stop before heading to Camp Hall was the Midway Geyser Basin - we HAD to see what was causing this HUGE plume of steam up ahead of us!
Turned out the steam was coming from the Grand Prismatic Spring (to the left) and the Excelsior Spring to the right, which pump out 4,000 gallons of boiling water a minute in to the Firehole River. No wonder that river is so steamy!

Spring water running in to the Firehole River.
Bacterial mat at the edge of Grand Prismatic

Apparently the wildlife don't read the signs...
It's hard to capture how amazing this place is. The steam is different colors - reflecting off the colors in the pool. The colors were amazing. And we decided we needed to come back later in the day some time, when perhaps the warmer air would make it not quite so misty.
Mist? What mist?
Yes, I froze my butt off this morning. It's COLD there in the mornings!
A little spring off to the side of Grand Prismatic, with some mountains in the background
Hiker in the mist (ok, the hiker is really just walking on a boardwalk. And it's John. But the mist is certainly there. Or is it correctly called steam?).

Off to change some laundry - we've got to get things clean and ready to pack again for a four day trip to NY. We leave on Friday. Nothing like a little relaxing time at home, eh? Hope to post back tonight about the rest of Wednesday. What, you thought we were done? Hey - it wasn't even 8:30 AM yet!

More From Tuesday

Yay! Denver Airport has free wireless! And, it's FAST! Best wireless connection I have had in a week.

OK, so you saw the pictures from Artist's Point in Yellowstone Canyon. We had a crazy desire to do some hiking after we left Artist's Point, so we checked out the map and saw the South Rim trail. 2 miles, one way. Not terrible, but the prospect was MUCH cheerier when Jonathan (so graciously) offered to drive the truck to the end of the trail and wait for us there. What a gentleman, eh? So, while Jonathan had a good old time playing with his GPS and hanging out with the big red truck, we hoofed it along the South Rim. Got some nice views of the Lower Falls:

And then we got to a point in the trail where tired looking people were sitting on logs, huffing and puffing and waiting for the rest of their party. What is this, we wondered? Smart people read the sign before the ventured down, down, down. Us? We just followed Miss Bundle of Energy, Gracie, who led us down a LOT of stairs. We got closer and closer to the bottom of the falls, all the while seeing red-faced people coming back UP. The view from the bottom was awesome - really close to the falls, could look up and see people across the river at the brink of the falls, could see the rainbow from the mist, and could see the river flowing away. Too soon, though, it was time to go back UP. John and I took our time while Gracie and Katie and Kathy flew up the stairs. Want to know how many? 328!!! 328 freaking steps to get down to the bottom of the waterfall. Uncle Tom's Trail, should you ever go to Yellowstone and wish to torture yourself. Actually, it wasn't terrible. But I shook my head at people walking down with two walking sticks, already looking winded. They'd never make it back up, I was sure. But we survived!

(From top to bottom - Kathy heads down the first long flight of steps, the view of the falls from the bottom, and the view of the REALLY LONG flight of steps back up. Do we really have to walk up all those steps?)
The aftermath... You ok, John?
The darned girls look all fresh and ready to do the stairs again. What gives?

We didn't have too much farther to go to get to an overlook of the Upper Falls. Smaller than the Lower Falls, but still pretty.

We grabbed our ride, right after Kath got conned in to signing a petition to put the wolf back on the Endangered Species list (big topic out here - they just got de-listed and they are being hunted, legally, in areas surrounding Yellowstone. Some people think the genetic diversity isn't enough yet to sustain a population for very long, so are fighting the de-listing. While we were there, I think they did at least stop the fall hunting season on wolves in the park.) Anyway - the girls were happy that Mommy helped save the wolves, and that they got a cool wolf stamp on their hands. We hopped in to the big red truck again and headed across the river for a view from the brink of the Upper Falls. The photo doesn't come close to capturing the power of the water going over the falls, or the height of the mist spraying up from the bottom. It was impressive.

OK, I am taking back my "I am impressed" comments about Denver's internet. I can't get pictures to post, so those might have to wait. I may wait to post this one til tomorrow when we're home (hopefully).

Anyway, after lunch at Camp Hall we decided to hike to Mystic Falls, having heard that it was an easy hike and it was pretty. So off we went, to the Biscuit Basin, where we visited yesterday. The trail to the falls was at the far end of the Biscuit. The hike to the falls was fine, although the falls themselves were not tremendously impressive, compared to what we had seen that morning. And then we could have turned around and gone back the way we came. But did we? No, no. We looked at the sign and said, sure! We can continue the eight billion miles and just make this a loop hike. It'll be FUN! I looked way up in the sky and said "hey - those trees look cool against the blue sky." Little did I know that soon (ok, not soon, really - we're slow) we'd be right up there with those trees. It was a hot and slow hike, but the view from the top of the hill was excellent, and we actually saw part of Old Faithful erupting, from way up at the top of the hill. Kind of fun.

Somehow, Gracie manages to hike in a dress and look all fresh and clean and cute...

Mystic Falls. Not quite as impressive as the Upper and Lower Falls - we were jaded by then...

I thought those trees looked pretty, up against the nice blue sky. Way up there, right? Little did I know that soon we'd be WAY up there, too.

View from the top of the hill. Somewhere, way down at the bottom, is the Biscuit Basin and our car.
Old Faithful Lodge, and if you blow the picture up you can see a little bit of steam coming up from Old Faithful.

Back at the bottom and headed for the car - one more view of the Sapphire Pool
The girls jump in the water to wash off some dirt. The water temp isn't bad, Aunt Lissa!
Hi Gracie!

The Halls needed to do some laundry and we wanted to take them to dinner, so we trooped in to West Yellowstone for laundry, shopping, and some remarkably good Chinese food (really, if you saw West Yellowstone you'd know why we were impressed. It's three blocks big). Said good-night to the Halls and went to bed, planning on getting up at 4:30 the next morning to pack up and head in to the park early - hoping to see some wildlife.

Check back to see if we were successful!

PS - posted pictures on Wednesday from the comfort of my OWN COUCH! We did finally make it home a little before 8am this morning, and immediately crashed until about noon. AND - our luggage made it, too! Hooray for small miracles!

Yellowstone on Tuesday

While we're stuck in the Jackson Hole airport (a whole different story...) I'll do a little updating. Maybe if we can find free internet in Denver somewhere I can do some more. If I am awake. We're now on the red eye flight from Denver to Dulles. Where we'll see if we can sleep on a plane. Fortunately I don't have to work tomorrow. John, on the other hand, may be S.O.L. Poor boy!

Anyway - from a really long week ago...

We were still based in West Yellowstone, and we knew we didn't have to be at the Hall camp super early, as Kathy is a smart woman who enjoys sleeping in. So we got in to the park a little before 8AM and stopped at a few places that I wouldn't let us stop at the day before, because I am a freak about being on time. :-). We took a little drive down toward the river (don't ask me what river, I have no idea and no map in front of me - it's in my suitcase that is lord knows where right now). Pretty down there, and some mountains in the distance.

And here's the view from the other side of the river - also pretty, but not the mountain view from the other side. You get fire-burned buttes instead.

We also stopped at Terrace Spring, which I truthfully remember nothing about. It was not tremendously memorable, so good thing I took a picture or two!

And then we made a quick stopped at super packed and crowded Gibbon Falls, part of (surprisingly enough) the Gibbon River. Some nice folks from somewhere far away took this shot for us, and we then returned the favor.

We met up with those nice folks again at our next stop, Beryl Spring. This was actually a pretty cool little spring - deep blue color, and right above it was a super loud steam vent that sounded like a jet engine (man, do I wish I could hear a jet engine right now...)

A little further down the road John (the eagle-eyed spotter when it comes to people spotting stuff) saw some people off in a picnic area looking through binocs and running with cameras. So, of course, being the good tourists we were, we stopped, too. And wandered down the river a little ways to spot... two ENORMOUS elk bulls. They were right across a little river from us, just grazing away and ignoring us. There were pretty cool. Made me think of my hunter friend, Gary, who would appreciate their enormous racks. And no, Dave Telesco, my mind is NOT in the gutter here!
Once we had our fill of elk, we drove a bit further, only to get charged by a buffalo in the middle of the road. OK. Maybe not CHARGED. He was walking. Slowly. But those suckers look ENORMOUS when walking next to the car. Needless to say, we did not get out.

When Mr. Buffalo cleared the road (I think they enjoy causing "buffalo jams") we kept on toward Camp Hall, only to encounter another "elk jam" right by their camp ground. We did get out to take photos of them, but as we were now completely jaded by the other huge elk, we didn't spend too much time here. We certainly were not as impressed as the other people. By the next day, we barely looked up at elk. Yeah, yeah. Another freaking elk. Got it.

We got to Camp Hall just at the end of breakfast, had a couple yummy pancakes and sausage on the way out the door, and rode over to Artist's Point with them. Artist's Point overlooks the Lower Yellowstone Falls, in the Yellowstone Canyon, with the Yellowstone River running through the canyon. It's a popular, crowded spot - John and Jonathan's favorite kind of places! But it does give some really pretty views of the falls:

Katie and Gracie look cute for the camera.
Katie (looking pleased), Aunt Lissa, and Gracie in front of the Lower Falls

OK, I've got to turn the computer off, go run through security AGAIN, and see if we can catch a flight to Denver, finally. If we've got free internet in Denver I'll see if I can get on again. Although I might need to give the laptop to John for a while. I've been hoarding it. Except when I can't figure out how to get on line, and then he has to fix it for me. John's good like that!

Here's hoping we get home some day. I would LOVE to see my own bed!