Yellowstone - ’Till Next Time

North America » United States » Wyoming » Jackson Hole
September 27th 2006

Published: October 1st 2006

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After 4 nights in one place it was almost getting to feel like home! But alas, we must move on, new and exciting places are beckoning and we are both feel like we have had an overdose of hot springs, mud pools, geysers and tourists! But, there are a few things we still wanted to see, so…

Statistics

Starting Destination: West Yellowstone, Montana
Ending Destination: Jackson, Wyoming
Ending Destination GPS: N: 43° 31.220’ W: 110° 50.397’ Elev: 6245’
Miles Driven: 146.3
Miles Hiked: 5
Cumulative crossings of the Continental Divide: 8

Geysers, at last!

This morning our first stop was the fountain paint pots, following the recurring theme we saw hot springs, mudpots and geysers… A small one was actually going off when we were there! Perhaps this was a good omen? Next we made a loop past the Geyser we had passed on waiting yesterday—there wasn’t a time posted—good, that way we couldn’t feel like “if only we had just waited!”

Our next stop was Old Faithful, Carl wanted a picture and thankfully there wasn’t much time to wait - only more people!! Of course, the conditions weren’t as favorable as they were initially on our first attempt, but they would work. However, it was a little concerning that the wind kept changing direction… So, after about 45 minutes of waiting, “Thar she blows!” right into our faces as the wind changed direction again just at the wrong (right) time… While we waited it was interesting listening to some of the conversations - from the impatience of youth (“hurry up”) to impending skepticism (“for the first time in living memory - Old Faithful forgets to blow”). While we waited we also checked at the visitors’ center for an updated time on the Lone Star Geyser - the most recent timing was 9:45am this morning… So now came the dilemma - do we walk out and see if we can catch it or just proceed to The Grand Teton National Park? Given all the available information Maria had calculated that the potential range for eruptions was 3pm to 5:30pm - if we left promptly then walking we could be at the Geyser around 3pm. Ok, let’s try it!

So we drove out to the trail head, Maria talked to the National Park Service employee who was painting the wooden curbs—she hadn’t heard anything, packed our day pack and took off… Along the way we dawdled a little, taking pictures of the stream (Maria was trying out the settings on her new digital camera), trying to find rainbow trout brown blobs (they are kind of hiding, incognito in the picture left - can you see them?), and generally enjoying the afternoon - until about 400 meters (440 yards) from the geyser, when we met some people coming the other way… Yes, you guessed it!

They said that we had just missed the geyser… To say we were disappointed would be an understatement. Maria was ready to turn around and walk back, but we thought we would proceed to the geyser anyway. There were several other people there when we arrived, all saying that they had “just missed it!” So Maria went over to the log book and tried to figure out where her calculations had gone wrong - a little silly, really, as this was nature we are talking about! Carl noted that he thought there was more activity today than we saw yesterday. We went back to the viewing log and Maria was just about to suggest that we have a consolatory cookie, when “Whoosh!” Boy, were we surprised! So we ran around like maniacs trying to take pictures before it “went away.” It was a beautiful sight and we could get much closer than you can at Old Faithful - if you got in the right location there were also two rainbows… At one point you could see both the start and the finish of one, they were so close that you could almost reach out and touch them. However, the weather had not totally changed, so the wind moved around a bit; and yes, we got sprayed again! After more than 20 (twenty) minutes the geyser started fizzling out and finally quieted down… Leaving two pretty excited observers and one newcomer who arrived during the eruption - Maria was so focused on trying (unsuccessfully) to get her new camera to take a short movie clip (after thinking the previous night that she didn’t need to read the instructions for movies as she would never take one) that she didn’t even notice!! We walked back to the truck, commenting that perhaps if we had waited 30 more minutes yesterday? But we will never know…
P.s. we were all the way back to the truck before we had the cookies!

Off to the Teton’s

Our next destination - Grand Teton National Park; we retraced our steps of a few days ago, crossed and re-crossed the continental divide (alas, again we had already eaten lunch) and headed South… We caught our first glimpse of the Tetons through the trees (spectacular, even from a distance!) before we left the park then drove out the South Entrance, along the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Parkway (he was instrumental in the development of the park, donating a significant amount of land to the National Park) and into the park. We were kind of surprised that there wasn’t an entrance station, ’till we realized that there were no other roads, you had to have come from Yellowstone! By this time it was getting late, the sun was lower in the sky and lighting up the trees - we encountered our first “scenery” jam as people had stopped to take pictures of a particularly spectacular stand of aspens… We stopped too!! Of course, not to be outdone - we also encountered a brown blob jam!

Hello! Bullwinkle…

If you remember from the last brown blob update, we had only “sort of” seen the moose brown blob… We were a little further down the road from the aspens when this situation was remedied - there was a real “Bullwinkle” lying down in the valley off the side of the road… It was getting dark, but Carl managed to get sufficient evidence, a photo (left). So now all we are missing is the Bear brown blob, and Maria is kind of hoping that we don’t see this one too “up close and personal!” We continued following the road to our final destination - a campground in Jackson, already thinking that we would extend our stay…

Carl’s Travel Trivia

Yesterday’s Answer: Depends on the Woodchuck! Thanks to everyone for their creative responses - the real travel trivia is back from vacation...
Today’s Question: What is a moraine?

Yellowstone - ’Till Next Time