Yellowstone National Park

Tuesday June 20, 2006

You’re sick and tired of my complaining about noisy motels and campgrounds, so I’m not going to mention how horrible our motel was last night. No talk about how whenever anyone in the building walked to the bathroom the entire structure shook. I’m not going to get in to how the people above us practiced their bowling ball drops all night long. And I’m definitely not going to tell the story about how one really loud drop woke Sage up with such a start that she started screaming, and then I woke up screaming, and the people next door must have thought the Boston Strangler was back in business in Gardiner, MT.

But I am going to talk about Tim Cahill. Many of you may know the name because he plays for Everton in the English Premier League and is starring for Australia in the World Cup. However, that’s not the Tim Cahill I’m referring to. I’m going to talk about Tim Cahill, the author & journalist. If you haven’t read any of his writing, get out there and do it – you won’t be sorry. I’m reading two of Cahill’s books right now. I started A Wolverine is Eating My Leg while in Rocky Mountain NP, and am halfway through it. It’s a collection of articles he’s written over the past 25 years or so, about topics as varied as the Jim Jones tragedy in Guyana to diving for sea snakes in the Philippines. The second book of his I’m reading, which I just started last night, is Lost In My Own Backyard. Cahill lives in Montana, not too far from Yellowstone National Park. He’s written about Yellowstone a bit for Outside and National Geographic Adventure magazines, and this book basically details his love affair with Yellowstone. I’m so glad I started reading this book last night, right after our first drive through the park. I was a little bit down on the park at first – too crowded, all the people who cause huge traffic jams to take picture after picture of an elk, the hordes at Old Faithful. But Cahill put my head on straight. Yellowstone is big enough for everyone: the wildlife, the backcountry hikers, and the yahoos alike. He states that one will always see more wildlife on the side of the road than you will hiking into the unknown, so you might as well stop and enjoy like everyone else. And he also talks about the incredible thermal features of Yellowstone, which is only 1 of 40 known thermal hotspots on the planet -- and the other 39 are all under water in oceans. This truly is a place whose wonders can not be found anywhere else on earth.

On the way into the park today we stopped at a market to get some provisions, and I found a pay phone to confirm the cabin reservations that begin tomorrow night. (And not a peep out of me about how I tried calling the toll-free number from the motel and found out that the motel doesn’t allow toll-free calls.) As I said in yesterday’s blog, we had decided to camp tonight, even though the weather looked stormy and the temperatures were low. Sage had muttered this morning, “I’m dreading camping tonight”, so being the good husband that I am I asked the Yellowstone Lodging group, after confirming my reservations for tomorrow, if they had anything for tonight. Well, they do, and very cheaply I might add. So the day starts off on the right foot, with Sage singing my praises. We’re heading to do Mt. Washburn this morning, one of the interesting geological features in the park, and many consider it to be the edge of the ancient volcano that Yellowstone sits on. (Much of Yellowstone is considered the largest active volcano in the world. It’s massive, almost 40 miles from “rim to rim”. There hasn’t been an eruption of the Yellowstone Volcano in over 640,000 years, and geologists say that it erupts every 600,000 years or so. Do the math, and you can see that it’s ripe to happen any day now. I’m hoping it’ll wait until at least Sunday.) On the way to the trailhead we saw some bison, which are always nice to see, and also 2 coyotes. The first was walking across the road right in front of us (with a radio collar on – how embarrassing), and the other was perched on top of a hill on the side of the road, almost as if keeping watch. We got to the trailhead of Mt. Washburn, and it was cold – only about 48 degrees when we started. The top is at 10,243 feet, and there was lots of snow on the trail on the way up. After halfway or so the breeze picked up and got really cold. I had to put on my wool hat and jacket, and still it was cold. We got to the top where there is a fire tower that they put in a small interpretive exhibit on the bottom floor. The views were 360 degrees, and we were able to see Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and even the Grand Tetons to the south. The wind really was whipping up there, and I doubt it was warmer than 40 degrees. After a quick bite we headed back down to the car, seeing some bison along the way.

We drove down to the Canyon area of the park, where the aforementioned Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is at. There are paths along both the north and south rim of the canyon, but they parallel the road that goes along the rims as well, with plenty of overlooks. As Cahill points out in his book, “No one in their right mind would walk the trail” when one can drive. So we joined with the rest of the crowds, driving down, stopping at an overlook, taking pictures, walking back to the car, and repeat. The highlight of the canyon is the Lower Falls of the Canyon which drops over 300 feet. There are several turnouts to get views of the falls from both sides of the canyon, and there’s also a short trail that brings you right to the brink of the falls, where you can look right down as the water rushes over the rock and down into the valley. Pretty impressive stuff, and I’m not easily impressed.

After our driving tour of the canyon we headed the short way to Canyon Village, where we checked in to our Frontier Cabin. Not as quaint as the one in Grand Teton, but as Sage says, “It’s got a bed and a shower…I’m not complaining.” This morning at the market we had bought some hot dogs, so we set off to find a picnic area with a grate to cook them up. The area we found was SWARMING with mosquitoes. As soon as we got out of the car they just covered you. Thankfully Badger Balm did its work again, and while a few of them got through 2 layers of shirts to give me bites on my back, otherwise I was pretty much unscathed. Right next to the picnic ground was a small meadow. We noticed some people had pulled off the road to look at something in the meadow, so we checked it out. It turned out to be a cow moose eating in the meadow. After watching for a while, we saw something else: a moose calf with the cow! She ate a bit, but mostly sat in the tall grass, close to her mom. After dinner we headed back to the cabin for showers and relaxation.

Tomorrow we plan on getting up REAL early and trying to do some wildlife viewing in the morning. One of the areas we drove by today had loads of people with telescopes and zoom cameras trained on a valley. I asked a ranger this afternoon about it and he said that wolves and grizzlies frequent the area, so we’re going to try our luck.

Big news today: We saw a Maine license plate! Now only 2 more to go -- DC and Rhode Island.