Yellowstone-The Park (07-06-12)

Comprised of 2.2 million acres of land, Yellowstone was designated as our first National Park in the 1800s, in part to protect the fragile thermal areas.  What we didn’t have back then was the National Park Service, so although it was a “park”, poaching and vandalism threatened the area until the cavalry was brought in to police and protect.  32 years later, the National Park Service was started.  If I had decent internet access, I could easily quote their exact purpose, but without it, I will basically say their motto is to “protect and preserve our nation’s parks so that they will suffer no deterioration/damage and will be able to be enjoyed by future generations”.
The main roads in Yellowstone are laid out in a basic figure 8 (called the Grand Loop). Along these roads there are different areas of interest. Several of the distinct areas have their own visitor center, general store, and campground. The Tower Roosevelt area has a lodge, horseback riding, and a resident black bear family (all my close up photos of cubs were taken there).  Why do so many places feel they have to have their own “Grand Canyon”? Yellowstone is no exception.  The Canyon Village area is home to the “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone”. We are staying in the Fishing Bridge area.  Although there is still a bridge, there is no more fishing because the bridge is in the spawning area of the Cutthroat Trout, the predominant native fish of Yellowstone River and Lake. In other areas of the lake, if you catch a Cutthroat Trout, it’s a “catch and release” program, but if you catch a non-indigenous trout, you are not allowed to release it back into the water.  They are trying to rid the lake of non-native species and have “pulled out” more than 65,000 trout so far this year.
We’ve now been in Yellowstone for  two weeks, and have established  a “rhythm”.  This park is enormous and because we are staying put in the same spot for the three weeks that we’ll be here, that means a lot of driving, which is pretty tiring for someone in our party.  We try to follow a “long drive” day with something we can do that’s more local and doesn’t mean 3+ hours behind the wheel for Paul.  If we can’t do that, we at least try to get home early, or drive a long distance but not do a long hike.  We’ve also gotten a good feel for the park.  We know, in general, where the wildlife is, we can tell who has just arrived at the park, and we have gotten pretty good at looking at a traffic jam and determining whether it’s just a bison, or its something more exciting, like a bear(at least it’s fun guessing).
The park has gotten more and more crowded over the last week or so, with parking lots that are full to overflowing, and an increasing number of traffic jams.  We have taken to getting up and moving pretty early in the day so we can beat the crowds, and it seems to work pretty well.  We get the added bonus of seeing more wildlife that early in the day- mostly coyotes though.  This guy would NOT get out of the road.  He kept crisscrossing in front of us.  Paul thinks he was using the noise of the truck to flush out any small animals near the road.


There are several “geyser basin'” areas-Norris, Midway Geyser, Lower Geyser, Upper Geyser, Biscuit Basin etc,  all containing a combination of geysers, hot springs and steam vents. I think my favorite so far was Midway Geyser Basin, which contained Grand Prismatic Spring:


One of the oldest areas of the park is Mammoth Hot Springs.  We saved this area for last because it’s the furthest away and we debated moving to a campground closer to it, but decided to stay where we are. 
The Mammoth area contains some of the older springs, and they aren’t as active as those in other areas of the park.  The cascading of the water over the travertine was beautiful in it’s own right though.This area is also more “built up” than the other areas of the park, because it contained the original headquarters and the small village where the Calvary lived so many years ago.

We thought we’d spend more time in this area, but it rained that day and so our plan of hiking some of the trails over there did not happen. Instead, we drove home in the afternoon, passing by our favorite bear cubs on the way!

 

This time around there was a ranger controlling traffic, but that was fine- I stuck my head out the sunroof of the truck and took these pictures.