Yellowstone to Elko, NV, Days 10 & 11, July 15 & 16

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What's hot: Mammoth Hot Springs

What's also hot: Mountains of wildflowers

What's not: Sensory overload.

Also not hot: Wildlife traffic jams.

The road: Slow-moving RVs on one-lane highways and high mountain curves.

Travel lesson of the day: Humans on vacation are so-o-o-o ... human!

from Kathy:

One animal, many vehicles: That’s the scene on the sides of major roads through Yellowstone. Someone sees a bear in the valley and suddenly 20, 30 or 50 cars, RVs and motorcycles STOP at all angles and run with thousands of dollars worth of photographic equipment to hang over the guard rail and catch (on disk) one poor creature in the act of foraging for berries or blinking in the sunlight or nibbling grass. People of all ages ooo-and-ahhhh in languages from near and far, in dress from all over the world.

We conclude that somewhere back in the bush, the herd has the following conversation:

Doris the Buffalo: Horace, you’re on road duty tonight.
Horace the Buffalo: But I just did it last night!
Doris the Buffalo: You promised you’d trade one weekend night for two weeknights…remember?

After seeing all the warnings about bear avoidance, we rename all the vehicles: Rolling Grizzly Snack Boxes.

The funniest car-stopper is the mule deer. They are numerous, but people stop for them in droves just the same as they stop for the rare eagle or bear.

“I hate those mule deer things,” declares JJ.

There are mountains and mountains and miles and miles of wildflowers: abundant, bright, unstoppable in the sunlight. Think coreopsis by the millions, lupine, larkspur, eryngium, cow parsnips, yarrow, yarrow, yarrow, forget me not, columbine, Queen Anne’s Lace, penstemon.

We leave the park on Wednesday morning. Destination: Craters of the Moon National Park. Miles and miles of lava fields, volcanic gravel fields, lava flow caves.

Then miles and miles and hours of unbroken high deserts in Idaho and Nevada.

Listening to Jon Krakower’s Into the Wild on the road, a story about an eccentric, romantic young man who goes into the Alaska wilderness but never comes out alive. Couldn't be a better story for this wild, empty landscape. Good food for thought every time my hermit-dreams show their old faces.

We land at Elko, NV, where every hotel and motel is also a casino. If God ever sends me to hell, it will be a smoke-filled casino with bright lights in the middle of desert nowhere.

Where do they get the water to run these desert towns? From the aquifer under southern Idaho, which was once the volume of Lake Erie. Check out the photos . . .

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Photos

Wildflowers Everywhere
and Tourists, too

Mammoth Hot Springs
That's limestone in the background, not water

Climbing the Craters of the Moon
Paul & Scott ascend the mountain of fine black gravel left by the last explosion 2000 years ago.

On Top of Old Smoky
Don't get too comfortable up there, Scott, geologists say it's coming back!

Water, Water, Not Everywhere
Click to enlarge--you'll get the idea.

Get Over It
Click to enlarge--this one is worth reading.