Start: Alpine, WY - <a href="http://www.greysrivercove.com/">Greys River Cove RV Park</a>
Destination: Yellowstone National Park, Madison Campground
Odometer: 104,189 (start)  104,477 (end)   288 miles
Date:  Tuesday, September 6th,  2011

Again, nature can be the best alarm clock.  Thanks to some strong and persistent winds, and our general sense of alertness at the hour, we had broken camp and were on the road to Yellowstone around 5:30 in the morning.
To get to Yellowstone, we went through Grand Teton National Park, instead of along side it as the day before.  We were able to see some beautiful landscapes during sunrise, see the roaming buffalos at Moose, get a closer view of the Grand Teton Mountain range, and cross the continental divide.  It was a pleasant, quick, and rather uneventful drive through mostly thick forests.

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We reached Yellowstone a little after 8 and asked the ranger at the gate when the next eruption of Old Faithful would be.  We were informed there’d be one around 9, so we headed straight for the Old Faithful geyser. Despite our efforts, we were stymied by a slower moving car that could not be legally or safely passed.  We arrived at the Old Faithful visitor center to see its 9:07 eruption from the distance.  We’d have to wait another 90 minutes or so for its next performance.

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Rather than leaving to go set up camp and come back, which would be a 30 minute drive each way, we decided to have breakfast at the visitor center, check out the post office and exhibits, and try to get a good seat.

Old Faithful is not the biggest geyser around, but its certainly the most famous.  It gets its name from the fact that its eruption is frequent, occurs roughly every 90 minutes, and has been keeping the same schedule for decades.  As such, an old and faithful tourism industry can, and has been, built around it.  The park contains hundreds, if not thousands, of geysers, which dot the park both along the road and in the distance.  Seeing steam coming from the ground is a normal occurrence that is part of the landscape.  I did not realize that Yellowstone, and much of the region surrounding it, used to be a volcano and is still thermally very active.

Waiting for Old Faithful to erupt was a somewhat odd experience.  Everyone knows what will happen, and has seen/heard about it, but wants to experience it first-hand.  The anticipation for what amounts to an event of a couple of minutes has been building for minutes, hours, days, or a lifetime, depending on the person.  However, before the eruption, there really isn’t much happening: just steam coming out of a hole with a whole lot of people watching.  As such, most people are just sitting around waiting, and waiting, and waiting.  This wait however is punctured several times by teases, as some extra splashes of water emerge from the hole in the ground or the steam rises a few additional feet.  Then, finally, without much warning:  eruption.  Water is shot over a hundred feet in the air, and its vapor continues to rise, as if a cloud, into the sky.  While I had thought everyone would be standing up and pushing to get a better view, I was pleasantly surprised by the rather silent awe that came upon the crowd as most sat and gazed at this spectacle of nature. The design of the viewing gallery also helped, by only being two rows deep, but encircling the geyser wide enough for everyone to have a good viewing angle.

ADD VIDEO OF ERUPTION

What was odd about this experience was the sense that this was nature, but it was also a somewhat human-produced show, like a play or skit we’d all come to see.  The ways that people and parks civilize, control, and commercialize nature is something that I’ll be thinking about during this trip.
After Old Faithful, we headed over to our campground to get set up.  But first we took an unplanned stop at the Black Sands Basin.  This was a highlight of the trip, I dare say more than Old Faithful.  The Black Sands Basin had waters of light blues, steam of bright white, sands of tan and yellow, and wild ducks of a shade of grey we had never seen.  It was great just walking around the pools and sands and feeling the hot mud.

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The campgrounds were also quite nice.  The check-in process was longer than desired, but we’d highly recommend the Madison Campground.  Our campsite was large, we were next to the bathroom, and there was a path to the river behind our site which we were able to take.

After setting up our campsite, we headed off to start the Upper Loop of the park.  There were so many great sites along this road, but a few stand out.
First, are the Artists Pots.  We didn’t really know what these were, but had heard that they were a key place to visit.  Initially, we were quite disappointed.  There was a long walk to the area, the length of which we were not aware of.  We came to what looked like a few pools of water on a hill, and were unimpressed, especially after seeing the Black Sands Basin.  You can’t go this far and not go farther though, so we went to the right and started on the loop around the hill.  We’re glad we did, because the Artists Pots got better the further along the path we went.  The array of bubbling colors, from oranges to whites to blues, and the whole panorama when one reaches the top of the hill are quite a scene.

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The next stop was the Virginia Cascades, but the cascades ended up being the side story of that stop.  The road to the cascades is a one-lane, one-way road that travels along the river, and as such has many turns to it.  The drive was pleasant, but then, coming around a bend, there was something coming down the road, going the wrong direction on the one-way road:  a buffalo.  We had been warned that buffalo are rather docile, but can become agitated and can travel up to 30mph.  I managed to stop the car a fair distance away, but was concerned about the cars I knew were coming up behind me being able to see and stop after coming around the turn.  Also not helping was the emergence of a second buffalo from around the bend.

The first rule in a situation like this is:  Don’t Panic. The buffalo were moving slow enough, so I focused my attention on the cars coming from behind me.  I prepared to have to drive forward, but readied myself to honk the horn for when they came around the turn.  Fortunately, the horn did not startle the buffalo and the car behind us was able to stop and pull to the side.  I then proceeded to go in reverse to park on the side of the road.  The other car seemed awed and unconcerned, so I backed up behind them and the second car that arrived, to be the third in the line (I had no interest in being the first car they’d meet and was reminded of the saying about bears and just having to be faster than the slowest person in the group).

I’m glad to report this situation passed without incident.  I was able to snap some up-close pictures of the buffalo, the car was undamaged, and we had a cool story to tell.  On the downside, we ended up missing the good viewing spot for the cascades. Oh well, we’ve seen cascades before.

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After the cascades came the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.  At first, I thought this was going to be a cheap attempt at gaining attention by throwing the Grand Canyon in there, sort of like a place being the New York City of Nebraska (no offense intended to Nebraska).  Again, our low expectations turned out to be completely incorrect.  This is an amazing canyon (and since I’m writing this after leaving the Grand Canyon, will add that we appreciated this canyon much more).  This canyon has a huge waterfall of light-green water, with canyon walls of 800-1200 feet high, containing an array of colors and textures throughout.  Each viewing spot offered a new and impressive view of the canyon.  We did both the north and south rim, and were continually awed.  I had not heard of this canyon before, but it should be on everyone’s site-to-see list.

ADD GRAND CANYON OF YELLOWSTONE SLIDESHOW

Further along the loop, we came to a drive that led up to Mount Washburn, which is the tallest mountain in Yellowstone, more than 10,000 feet high.  This “road” is a turn that needs to be taken while already on a sharp turn, is more gravel than road, and more steep than flat.  This turn-off was my idea, and I was starting to regret it, for fear we’d end up with a flat tire.  I remembered seeing other cars of less quality than ours go up and down however, so I relaxed.  That was until, again, there was a buffalo in the road walking down towards us.  While there was no one behind us, there was also no one around us in case something happened.  Falling back to what worked before, I stopped the car on the side, made no sudden movements, and let him continue on his way; which he did.  (We had a discussion later, with no solid conclusion, on whether, if a buffalo charges, it would be better to:  a) stay still b) accelerate towards it c) put the car in neutral d) speed backwards in reverse...what would you advise?) We finally made it to the top of the hill, and were glad we did the drive.  The view of the planes and mountains of Yellowstone were unparalleled.

We also stopped at some water falls, at some viewpoints of misc. mountains, at a petrified tree, and at a herd of buffalo crossing the road.  These were all on the way to our intended destination of the Mammoth Springs, which was the last main stop-off on the loop.  I knew little of this place, and in my head had the image of a large hot spring were one might bath again, similar to Thermopolis.  While the resort area built up around this Spring may have had a bath house, the free public attraction was just a hill with a lengthy boardwalk that took one up to the top of the Spring.  We were both tired, so we started at the bottom to see if it would be worth our time and energy.  We were impressed with what we saw.  There was an exhausted mineral fountain and what looked like ski slaloms and platforms of white, grey, and various shades of brown formed by the mineral deposits. This was the bottom, so the top must be better, right?  Well, not really.  After a steep walk 300 feet up the hill, and probably a mile long, with a few terraces along the way, we came to the peak to see a dried out pool of white minerals and a view of the resort.  Unlike the Artists Pots, this Mammoth Springs started strong and ended weak.



On the plus side, Mammoth Springs was a few miles from the border with Montana, so we took a detour north to add the envisioned “Welcome to Montana” sign to our collection.  After a few steep, winding roads, we came to a river with a little bridge and a sign we almost missed: “Entering Montana.”  It was a bit anti-climatic, but we got the picture, crossed the line, turned around, and started the journey back to our campsite.

Our journey back required us to go back again through Mammoth Springs, but this time, as we went around its traffic circle, we were greeted by, what we think are, elk, grazing on the grass in the center.

After gawking and snapping pictures along with a few other cars for a few minutes, we continued on our way.  By this time, the sun was setting and we were racing it back to the campground.  We lost that race, but were glad we did, because we were able to see some great sunset landscapes containing a marvelous spectrum of purples and pinks.

We arrived at our campsite around 8:10.  We had been traveling the Upper Loop for about 9 hours, but the time flew by.  We bought a nice block of ice from the automated ice-vending machine, had a late dinner, and went to bed.
We were only spending a day in Yellowstone, but we could easily have spent several.  It is an amazing place, and we made the most of our day in it.  We saw famous and not so famous geysers, more buffalo than we’d have liked, and beautiful mineral pools and formations.
Tomorrow, we head into Idaho to visit Craters of the Moon, then south to visit and camp at Antelope Island State Park, in the Great Salt Lake of Utah.