Day 7: Yellowstone
Wildlife (except Bison and Elk) is not very easy to spot during the day and where people loiter. The best time is dawn as the animals have their breakfast and go to the brook/creek/lake to get a drink. Also there will be very few people to invade their space. With this piece of precious information we woke up before Sunrise, got ready , handed over the keys to the cabin and set out on our exploration in our explorer. We drove very slow not to scare any wildlife away and also not to miss an interesting sighting. The weather was not very pleasing. Cloudy and drizzling all along, it was not an attractive time for the animals to take morning walks. Two hours of driving and nothing interesting except for some Bison and Elk grazing the grasslands.
Finally we ended up at Canyon Village. We were there last night for dinner and now it was breakfast time. We grabbed something quick to eat, raided the visitor store, bought some "chachkas" and planned our itinerary for the rest of the day. We decided to head back to Mammoth Hot Springs all the way North and start our tour from there. First checkout the Geysers at Mammoth, then drive down along road2 (remember it from last night?) to Norris, Madison and finally Old Faithful with, maybe, one or two diversions to cover anything interesting.
"Pull over here. We will check this out before we go back since we are not going to come back on this road again." I said to my friend as we were passing the signs to Upper and Lower Falls. We pulled over into the parking area and got out. It was still raining (now it was a little more than a drizzle). I took a trash bag out of the cargo in the car and made a hole to it. Unscrewed the polarizer on my lens, carefully wrapped the trash bag around the camera with the hole providing a view through the lens and put back the polarizer. This was perfect. I could now slip my head into the bag and take all the pictures I wanted without messing up my camera except for the polarizer that would get wet. Not a big deal. Only danger with this was that I had no idea where I was, what was around me once I was in the bag. All I could see was what was visible through the viewfinder. Of course I trusted the people around me not to push me into the 1000 ft canyon below. The canyon through which the Yellowstone River gushes was beautiful. The Falls were enthralling. It was not an easy task to get good shots of the gorges, the river and the falls with low visibility and continuous rain. But I did everything I could to get a couple of good ones. How much ever time one spends there would not be sufficient to absorb the heavenly beauty completely. But unfortunately we are mortals. Once again we took off and were on our way to Mammoth Hot Springs. By the time we reached there it was still 9:30 AM. This is always the best part about waking up early, plenty of time in the day.
By now the sky cleared up a little and the rain stopped. We took a walk along the Lower Terraces Area and the Upper Terraces Area viewing, enjoying and analyzing all the different types of Geysers that came in multiple colors and oozing various levels of steam. The scene was fascinating. Especially imagining standing on top of a unimaginably huge volcano that is expected to unleash itself at any point of time now. "What lies beneath?" is a million dollar question. After the stroll through one of nature's outdoor chemical laboratory, we took to the wheel and started driving towards Norris. The weather god was still considerate to the outdoor enthusiasts and it was a nice time to take another stroll along the Norris Geyser Basin. This was more like a graveyard with a mile long trail through the basin. Steam jetting out of the earth in pretty much any direction one looked. Halfway through the trail, my friend and his wife decided to step on it and go to the car while I fell behind trying to capture anything and everything I could. 'mon... 5 GB of memory, why would I not do that. Three quarters of a mile and I could see the commotion going on in the troposphere above us once again. Thick dark rain clouds appeared in no time. It was just a matter of minutes and everyone knew there was going to be a downpour, an extremely heavy downpour. Now I had to reach the parking lot before things kicked in because even if the rain started when I was 10 ft away from the car, I knew i would get soaked horribly before I actually got into it. Now I started to run like crazy. Luckily I had company. "That was close!" I exclaimed as soon as I got into the car. The second I closed the door, the rain was so heavy that the windshield wipers were useless. People were driving with instinct. Luckily this chaos did not last long. Once again the sky was clear and we were on the wheels. We passed the Gibbon River and decided to take a small detour to the Firehole Canyon Drive. "Glad we took that detour" all of us thought once we got back onto the main road. The drive was beautiful. It was a winding one-way drive. Halfway through the drive we reached the Firehole River and were driving on it's bank. The panorama was splendid.
It was almost 2:30 and 16 miles to the destination. As soon as we reached Old Faithful, we headed to the visitor center to see when the faithful one was going to keep it's word. There was more than an hour to go for that and hence a good time to grab a bite. After lunch we strolled around a little and proceeded to the benches around the geyser so as to get a good view. I did not want to miss this opportunity for photographing, most probably, the most popular geyser in Yellowstone. Since we were almost half hour before time, we ended getting
pretty much whatever seat we wanted. Obviously it was the front row. It was an uneventful wait for more than 20 minutes when all of a sudden everyone started to get up and turn around to see something. "looks like an alien just landed in his UFO. What else can grab these guys attention so much?" I thought. Why not share the excitement; I also made a 180 degree turn to see a huge Bison running around crazy. Obviously the poor thing was minding it's own business when he realized he wandered into this place with weird creatures walking on two legs, with some weird stuff instead of hair on their bodies. After he gave a thousand curious humans (including me) a photo-op, he left the place. I'm sure he would have gone back to his herd and told the story and they might have had a kick-ass laughing session. Once again everything went back to normal and the wait began. After a never ending wait, enough pressure started to build under the surface and the old man started to throw up. It started with two to three feet jets of water and slowly rose to more than 20 ft. The entire session lasted about fifteen minutes. Not bad. It was worth the wait.
By the time the spectacle ended, it was 5 in the evening and we wanted to get out of the park by 6. We had just the right amount of time to exit Yellowstone via the West Entrance (funny - you exit from an entrance :-)). We started to head out of our final stopover in the road trip. Till now, everything worked out really great. There was no time when we were bored, disappointed or fed up. Everything fell into place everywhere and every time except for some very minor hiccups. In a way, it was not a very happy moment leaving all this pleasure behind and go back to the materialistic world but I think that's where the beauty lies. If I were to do this for a year, I don't think I would appreciate it as much as I did now. A break from the routine is what defines this enjoyment. If this itself were routine, there is no escape. Anyway, everything was already decided and obviously nothing would change. As planned, we were out of the 2 million acre park right on time.
  Labels: 4000 mile drive, adventure, badlands, chicago, colorado, cross country, grand teton, mt rushmore, New York, ny to portland, oregon, road trip, south dakota, windcaves, wyoming, yellowstone |
