I like Wyoming, let's just make that clear to anyone who didn't pick up on that already.

We arrived in Yellowstone in the mid-afternoon, right around 3:00pm. As with many of the other high elevations, we found large amounts of snow in the area.

Just after getting into the park, we stopped at a small picnic area to let the dogs out. Abby loves snow, the fact that it was dirty didn't bother her.


The melting snow made for lots of tiny streams running everywhere. This one reminded me of my creek.


Right across the road from the picnic area there was a small lake which made me feel very even more at home. It seemed at times like I didn't leave Washington at all.


Anyway, our main goal in going to Yellowstone was to see what we could from the road, then to stop at Old Faithful.

Shortly after departing the rest area, we came across a male Bison which was hanging out by himself in the road. We had to stop and wait for it as it wandered back and forth between the two lanes of traffic. When he wandered into the opposite lane, a car or two could go by before he came back. Once Abby noticed him she started using a deeper growl than we've heard her use before.

I don't know what this bull was doing alone, but I assume his herd couldn't be too far away. It was also odd to see him since we were higher in the mountains and the buffalo herds tend to gather in the lower western areas where it's grassy.


The people in front of us got much closer than I would have. I wasn't surprised to find that people were constantly pushing the limits with the wild animals and other park rules, despite the fact that they hand you a pamphlet at the front gate warning you about the fact that these are wild animals which will kill you for being stupid.

We didn't see any other wildlife until we got past Yellowstone Lake, where the vegetation becomes much more prevalent and grassy.

The lake itself is fairly impressive. It's about the size of two Ozettes, though I suspect that it is quite a lot deeper and contains more than six times the volume of Ozette. The water is a very light blue due to the metals in the water. This effect is common in Washington, but many of our lakes and rivers are too muddy for this to be obvious.

The water is also fairly clear, not as clear as anything like Lake Tahoe (which is absolutely beautiful and you should go there), but it is still fairly clear. I suspect that the nearby basin of thermal activity helps keep the water clearer and high in metalic elements.

Here is the best picture I have of the lake as we drove by.


It was pretty, but there was no need to stop, the road stuck to the lakeshore for almost half an hour worth of driving, so there was plenty of time to take it all in. It was also getting to be late afternoon and we still had a lot of road to cover.

Between Yellowstone Lake and Old Faithful there really wasn't much to see. I could understand how someone who lived in a state with more plains might be more enamered with the trees and vegetation, but being the tree snob that I am, it wasn't much of anything I didn't already have in my backyard (so to speak). I have seen a lot of legitimately impressive forests on our various adventures, but other than the Olympic, the only forest that has really left me in awe was the Redwood forest. The sheer size and height of the trees is enough to make anyone stop and wonder.

I had not done any research about Old Faithful or Yellowstone before we went. If I knew that there was going to be so much more to see, I might have tried to spend more time there, but what we did manage to see was still very interesting. My recommendation to anyone going to Yellowstone is to set aside a couple of days to see all of the geysers and hot springs in the park. We plan to go back one day to camp out and see all of them, but I'll talk about what we did see in hopes of inspiring you to see more than we did.

When you first get out of the parking lot you come to a boardwalk that leads all the way around Old Faithful. At the far end, the boardwalk crosses the Firehole river and leads around a series of other geysers, since we had about 40 minutes before the next eruption for old Faithful, we followed it.

The path has to be on a boardwalk both to keep you from falling through the shallow crust of hot springs if you dared wander too far, and also to keep you from being burned by the hot runoff during eruptions. The area is full of small springs and geysers, some of them constantly erupting and others going off only on occasion.

This is one of the first pools we passed. The water is so clear because it is constantly at or just below boiling point. There is no way for any normal bacteria or algae to live, so the water is very clear (and smells terribly of sulfur).


The thin crust of ground that seems to grow around the edges, combined with the obviously high tempurature makes it immediately obvious why you don't want to step off the boardwalk and discover a new spring. My curious mind does make me wonder how often this type of thing happens though. The ratio of stupid families that visit the area, coupled with the density of thermal features makes me think that injury must be common.

As we walked by a few more geysers and springs, we were lucky enough to see a couple of the more common eruptions go off right next to the board walk. In the foreground there is a very small geyser erupting, while a much larger geyser erupts just on the other side of the boardwalk. If you look just to the left of the large eruption, you can see another small geyser erupting behind it and in the distant right-hand background you can see steam coming from another group of geysers that we didn't get to visit. In the left foreground and middle, you can see two boiling springs, which are actually both geysers that were not erupting.


I'd like to know more about the patterns that they have found in the eruptions. It seemed obvious to me in my hour of time there that there are a few eruptions that are obviously connected in some way, since they always erupt in close succession. I think it would be very interesting to design a research vehicle that could explore the caverns and tubes below to see how they connect.

This is a tiny geyser that is constantly erupting. They named all the geysers, but I didn't take note of them since they are mostly irrelevant, unless you want to participate in some form of anthropomorphication were you discuss how cute the geysers are.


Just behind that geyser, you can see another shallow-crusted hot spring.

Here is another large spring, when you can get close enough, you can see all the way to the bottom of them due to the clarity. The orange color around the edges is actually rust from iron deposited by the iron in the water. In the far background, you can see Old Faithful steaming behind the trees.


We went back to the viewing area for Old Faithful in time to get some seats in the front. Old Faithful seems to be steaming constantly, I don't know if that ever changes or not, but in the grassy areas near it, the droppings and footprints make it obvious that herds of animals come through and graze there frequently. The pamphlet says that they come by most often in the winter, since they don't have to dig in the snow to get to the grass and shrubs. It is fascinating to me that the ground is warm enough to melt snowfall all year round.

Here is old faithful before the eruption starts, steaming away as usual.


The eruptions last several minutes and can reach over 150 feet in the air. Someone could probably dedicate their entire life to studying the underground tubes and chambers that come together in such a perfect way to allow such regular and large scale eruptions.

here are the pictures I took of the eruption itself. If you imagine this going on for several minutes, you might as well have been there. The first picture doesn't look small, but is probably about fifty feet high. Right on schedule.


It is hard to differentiate between steam and falling water in this picture.




After erupting for a few minutes, the blasts slowly get smaller until it digresses into it's former state of constant steaming. The sun gleaming in the runoff looks very pretty in this picture.


If anyone has any questions about the effectiveness of geothermal power, please let your concerns be settled by this group of thermal anomalies. In the Netherlands, 25% of their power is provided by geothermal plants, making electricity so inexpensive that they heat the streets in some towns, rather than using snowplows and other conventional methods of de-icing, but this blog is about my trip, we can talk about geothermal power some other time.

We went back to the car and started the trip home. The road leading away from Old Faithful led us by countless other geysers and hot springs. Overall, we were much more interested in the small springs and geysers that you could get close to than Old Faithful, although Old Faithful was definitely impressive in itself. As I said before, I would love to go back to the park and spend a day or two meandering around the thermal areas. I'm sure that the northwestern portion of the park also boasts more rivers and waterfalls that I didn't even get a chance to look at. It seems like the kind of place that you could spend a lifetime exploring (much like Washington's own national park) without being able to take it all in. If only I could find a way to make that into my job...

As we passed by more plains, the amount of buffalo and other wildlife sightings became more frequent. At one point, somewhere near 20 cars stopped to investigate a herd of 30 or so bison that were grazing in a field next to the road. One group kneeled down a few feet in front of a bull and cow so that they could have their picture taken. Aside from the danger of a stampede, bison have very sharp and pointy horns. Is it any wonder that there are hundreds of people gored every year? The middle of a national park is probably not the best place to sustain serious impalement injuries and hope for survival.

I stepped on the gas and got out of that situation. I don't feel bad for anyone who is killed after being stupid enough to approach a 2000 pound animal with swords growing from it's skull. It's as if people have entirely forgotten that the world is a huge and wild place. They've spent too much time in the tame and controlled parts of the world and assume that the whole place must have had railings and warning signs installed by now. Personally, I appreciate the dangerous portions of the world a lot more than the safe ones, but I try to remain sensible and realistic about my status as a guest in those places.

We passed a few other groups that stopped to watch other herds, but none of them were so daring with the buffalo as the group that wanted the really awesome picture. Further down the road traffic thinned out and we started to see groups of Elk and Moose. One brilliant car slammed on their brakes because they saw a pair of female elk on the side of the road and wanted to get a closer look. I was two cars behind them and had to make a rapid stop. They stood in the middle of the road for a moment or two, then decided to pull over, placing their vehicle no more than three feet from the two elk. The Honda Civic directly behind the stopping van could not see why the van was stopping and moving to the side of the road, so they laid on a heavy and long horn beep to let everyone know how pissed off they were. As they got around the van, they spotted the elk and changed their mind about pulling over. I made another hasty retreat, I had no desire to be part of those videos you see where an angry animal smashes it's head into a car furiously, while the people inside crap themselves.

We crossed the Montana border and made our way into East Yellowstone at around 7:30pm. Made a brief stop for gas and headed North towards Belgrade and I-90. Twilight seemed to linger for a very long time because we were constantly passing through overcast and mountainous areas, but that was a good thing since Highway 191 is a very pretty drive and it would have been a little scary at night due to all the blind curves. Sunset took place just as we got into Belgrade and onto I-90. Our general plan was to get as close to Butte (if not all the way to Butte) as we could before we got tired and stopped for the night. Since we weren't tired enough to stop at Belgrade, we decided to head for Butte, which was only about 90 minutes down the interstate. Between the two places, there wasn't much available, we saw a couple of motels on the roadside, but they were in places that didn't have gas stations, so I decided that it would be better to wait since stopping for the night, then stopping a little ways down the road would be a waste of time. The key to efficient and speedy road trips is to make your stops as efficient as possible. When your travel time is above one mile a minute, even a 15 minute restroom break can add up when you add in similar stops for gas and food. This is especially true when it comes to travelling with animals.

Most of the interstate was easy to keep speed on since the roads were mostly straight and flat. As we got closer to Butte, the roads started winding through the mountains and that made travel a little slower, but like I said, we still made good time.

As we descended down the final hillside into Butte, I noticed some blood splattered on the road and a few parts of what was once apparently a dear. As I started to make my sarcastic comment to Brandy about it, we saw a dark shape in the headlights, which was the remainder of the carcass and a large pool of blood. I quickly swerved into the left lane and missed the body which would have surely totalled my car. As I made the move, I felt my rear wheels slide a little on the slick blood that was on the road. Aside from the time we saw a fawn dying on Hwy 199 in Oregon, that was the most disgusting road trip moment we've had. For some reason, we always have some sort of run-in with deer on our road trips, so I was glad that we got out of that one without making contact.

We got into Butte at about 10PM and started calling the nearby hotels. Apparently Butte is a popular place to stay, because the first for hotels had no vacancy, but there was a Days Inn which had a room with two King beds available for $90 something a night. It was much more than the rate we got in Ogden, but the hotel was considerably less scummy (actually fairly nice) and they offered a free breakfast. We went to a McDonald's, got dinner and ate it in our room.

Travelling through Montana and Idaho is nice because they have CPL reciprocity agreements with Washington. Idaho and Montana actually go a few steps further than Washington and have generous open carry laws as well (although, I have no real desire to do any open carrying since that defeats the entire advantage of carrying concealed in the first place).

The next morning, we loaded up the car, walked the dogs and helped ourselves to the breakfast. It wasn't anything special, cereal, bagels, toast, orange juice, coffee, that sort of thing. I hate when hotels advertise a continental breakfast and all they have is a box of danishes.

We hit the road about 7:00am Pacific and started heading back. Montana is beautiful, but the only notable event was that Abby discovered prarie dogs at one of the rest stops we went to. They scampered around in the bushes and made their tiny peeping noises at us while we walked through their territory. Abby found a few of their burrows and wanted to look inside. I stopped her since rattlesnakes like to hide out in burrows during the day. Abby was disappointed by this since it was the only adventure she really had since leaving Nebraska.

We crossed through Idaho, stopped for gas in Cour de' Laine, which was pretty. The winding roads made Brandy a little naseous, but overall the sights were pretty. Eastern Washington looked like it always does. We stopped outside of Moses Lake for lunch at a Taco Bell, we stopped for coffee and gas in Cle Elum and we were home by about 5:30.

Overall, I think the southern route down to I-80 and across  the plains was better. The mountains in Idaho slow you down a bit, and I think we'll be making future trips primarily via the old route along the 42nd Parallel, but I'm considering trying the Northern route again without so many detours to see if it balances out when you don't make detours, but my general feeling is that if I take that route again, I'll want to make more detours and stops, so I suppose the next trip will be decided by circumstances.

That's all there is. I hope you've enjoyed the pictures and commentary.