We were up at 5am to eat and pack. It was chilly and we needed to get on the road, so all I made for breakfast was oatmeal while Jada and the girls packed up their things in the tent. After I finished eating, Jada cleaned up the dishes while I finished packing up inside the tent and took it down. We were on the road by 7:10am, so only 10 minutes after our goal. We went in and out of cell phone coverage, though I did have free wifi at a place we stopped for a potty break for about 5 minutes. We were on a lot of lonely back roads all with 70 mph speed limits, so it was scary at times until we reached I-90 sometime before noon. I don’t recall the exact time. We were on I-90 for a couple hours. Most of the license plates we saw heading east were Washington plates. I was starting to wonder who would be last to leave and have to turn the lights out. (Both times Jada commented that this was a dumb joke). We exited I-90 for highway 89. We stopped at an Albertson’s in that town to pick up fixin’s for dinner (sausage and chicken breasts, raspberries, and pea pods), and Jada put the chicken in the marinade right there in the parking lot. Highway 89 took us to Gardiner at the north entrance to the park 441 miles later at around 2:30pm. However, we still had over 40 miles to go to just get to our camp site.
Mammoth Hot Springs was on the way to our camp ground, so we spent an hour there looking at all the hot springs and learning about thermopiles and the bacteria that live at the mouth of the hot springs which give the park much of its color. We got the girls their packets to become Jr. Rangers at Yellowstone as well. It was quite a bit more of a task at Yellowstone than in Glacier, and it cost $3 for each packet too. While we hiked around the hot springs, I made the comment that this place was like the Disney World of national parks. You have people from all over the world who may or may not understand what the place is all about with lines everywhere and prices for just about everything. I heard accents from the US/Canada, Asia, France, Germany, and Switzerland plus we saw license plates from just about all 50 states, and several Canadian provinces. But it’s a huge park, so it takes money to keep it in as good a shape as it is. The weather was perfect when we arrived- in the low 80’s with sunny skies. We saw a snake with giraffe-like spots on it as we came down the steps from the springs. There are board walks around all the hot springs to keep people from falling through the crust and protect them from the heat. I still saw people leaning over the side to touch the hot water and burning themselves. Not much you can do about that since there are plenty of signs warning not to do that very thing. I can’t describe the site much, there are just no words for most of the things in this park, though I’m sure I’ll vainly try anyway.
After Mammoth, we found our way to Canyon Village and our campground for the next 2 nights. It was a long drive there, so the girls worked on their Jr. Ranger booklets. There was a line at registration, and the power was out, so it just made registration take a lot longer. It was already 6pm by the time we found our camp site (B47) amongst the lodge pole pines. It was a nice site nestled into the trees. The parking wasn’t its own space, but more of a parallel parking space. Phoebe tripped over the same root twice until we had her mark it with a small rock. She hurt the same palm she hurt back in Glacier. I set up the tent while Jada made dinner. There were a lot of mosquitoes. A lot more than I would expect in an alpine environment away from a readily available water source. We all donned our long pants and shirts to go about our work. I tried out a citronella candle I had bought before we left. It seemed to work ok, but not great. The girls all went to shower since they were available at this camp site. It’s $3.25 per person, but you get it as long as you want to use it, and the water is hot. After I finished the tent and the girls were ready for bed, I went for my shower. It was 9:30pm before we got the girls to bed, and after 10pm before Jada and I turned in. The temperature dropped into the 50’s while we were planning out our sight seeing for the morning, but sleep came quickly for all of us.
January 28: Yellowstone National Park
We slept in for us, not getting up until 6:30am. I just made oatmeal for breakfast again since we had a busy day ahead, and we needed to be on the road by 8:30am. It was in the low 40’s in the morning, so we were all bundled up for breakfast. We were about to leave by 8am, when Phoebe accidentally knocked over the cooler in the car trying to get buckled up and spilling the ice and water all over Ellen’s side of the car. We got that cleaned up (and thankfully it was sunny and dry all day so it dried out by the end of the day) and were on the road still a little ahead of schedule since it was a 42 mile drive to Old Faithful from our campground (like I said, this is a huge park). We hit construction on the way where it looks like they’re putting in a new bridge, but we were lucky enough to not have to wait when we arrived at the 2 different points. We also saw elk and bison in the many alpine meadows on the way there. We made it to the Old Faithful visitors center with just enough time to take a potty break before the Jr. Ranger presentation. The predicted geyser eruption was 10:15am, and the program started at 10am, so Jada kept watch while we went through the program on the geology of the area learning about geysers, mud pots, fumaroles, hot springs. I volunteered to be a chunk of steaming hot magma in the demonstration where the kids were all water and mud droplets underground. We finished up the program just before Old Faithful blew around 10:25am. It went for just under 2 minutes and 30 seconds, which means that the next time should occur within 60 minutes. (More than 2.5 minutes and the wait time increases to about 90 minutes.) This was also the only place with reliable cell phone reception in the park, so Jada got a barrage of text during that time. We immediately drove off towards the Indian Paint Pots. It was already getting hot, but before we got there, we stopped off to see the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring. It was hot and smelled strongly of sulphur there. The boardwalk went right out over the hot spring, and you could see all the different colors which indicate the temperature of the water. The bluer the water, the closer to boiling it was, then it got yellow, red, orange, brown, and eventually white where the bacteria mat was not longer alive. The steam from one of the springs was so hot it fogged up our glasses as we walked along. We moved from there to the Indian Paint Pots. This was the longest line we saw all day...but it was for the pit toilets. We actually got quite lucky with the parking always finding somewhere to park in the lot all day. The paint pots were boiling mud. It was too hot by that point to keep our long pants on, but that’s why we all have convertible pants where you zip off the pant legs below the knee. I must say, I never used to see the need, but for camping, I’m definitely a convert (See what I did there?).
From there, we backtracked toward the Madison junction and around to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone to avoid the construction tie-ups. It was ~60 miles, but I think in the end it was worth it. Plus we got to see parts of the park we wouldn’t have otherwise, and the girls had lots of time to fill in even more of their Jr. Ranger workbooks. We drove on the caldera border (For those who don’t know, almost this entire park was a mega volcano that last erupted 640,000 years ago.), and cross the Continental Divide at over 8000 feet twice. We arrived at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and went to the south rim first. We did a 2 mile hike along the South Rim Trail where there was a sheer drop off on one side of the trail into the canyon. It was uncomfortable for me, but the girls had no fear whatsoever. It was a pretty difficult trail all the way out to what is called the Artists’ Overlook. From there, we were able to see our first bear way down in the canyon. (And, when he says “way down” he means “WAY DOWN!” The only reason that we knew that the brown moving dot was a bear, was because someone else was looking at it through their binoculars!) After that, we drove over to the North rim, and drove along the drive that had several more overlooks.
When we were all worn out, we returned to the Canyon Visitor Lodge so the girls could turn in their now completed Jr. Ranger booklets for their badges. Unfortunately, they weren’t the nice pins like they got from Glacier, but sew on patches. They gave us safety pins to put them on though. Then it was over to the camp ground for dinner where Jada stir fried up all the left over meat from yesterday with rice and snow peas. I picked up some ice to re-stock our coolers, the girls did some post cards, and I worked on this journal. We popped our jiffy pop on the camp stove, and I made a fire so I wouldn’t have to pack the firewood again.
Something I should say about camping with bears in the area for those of you who haven’t done it. Typically at a state park in Oregon, you can leave your grills, coolers, etc sitting out on the picnic table all night. You can’t do that in an area with bears because the smells attract them. So every night, we pack everything away in the car just as if we’re leaving the next day. This sometimes includes the clothes you’re wearing when you cook so the bears don’t follow the smell to your tent. They hadn’t seen any bears in this camp ground in a while according to the park host, so we didn’t have to worry too much about that. Plus I didn’t have my midnight potty run so I didn’t have to be on the lookout for bears.
Now we’re all worn out and hopefully, the temps will drop to send the mosquitoes home. Then we’ll get up and do it all over again tomorrow heading to Mt. Rushmore.