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Our 2nd road trip in less than a week, this
one to Yellowstone National Park; started out at 7:25 AM on a Monday
morning with this beautiful but bothersome sunrise, shining directly down
the eastbound lanes of I-80. One of the three girls from Poland; in her
crisp and precise English and delightful accent asked, "are you able
to see anything at all?" I answered, "no, I can't see
s**t!" They all laughed. The trip, all 435 miles of it would take
exactly 6 hours to West Yellowstone, MT, 330 miles of it on Interstate
Highways. The plan was to get Old Faithful and the West Thumb area (the
southwest quarter of the park) visited that afternoon. I had heard
nightmare stories about the traffic in the park, stoppages for animal
crossings and delays, but that only appears to be the case in the
summertime, because we were trouble free in the park the entire time. If
you are thinking of visiting Yellowstone and will be traveling without
school age children, I would suggest visiting Yellowstone in late
September or early October, but you must understand that early snows could
put a dampener on your trip. We nailed the weather perfectly for our trip,
it was comfortably cool for both days, but cold at night. We did run into
forecasted rain the 2nd day in the afternoon, but it only lasted 90
minutes and we soldiered on.
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No more than three minutes into the park
from the west entrance is this bridge over the twisting Madison River.
This part of the park is in the area of the huge fire of 1988. That isn't
smoke in the picture, just vapors from one of the very hot geyser's in the
area.
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No more than a mile down the road we ran
into our first minor traffic tie-up, and it was bull elk and several of
his friends...
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These two pictures are of the bull elk shown
resting above (or at least the top one), I took the bottom picture on the
way back to West Yellowstone for the evening as he was walking along the
Madison River in the same area as I saw him earlier. I took several shots
of him as he walked along, running past him several times trying to get a
head on shot, he was too fast for me, but he never seemed bothered with my
presence.
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The next morning, on our way to the Mammoth
Springs area, again in the same area, first we came upon this guy and
several of his friends. The bull shown with the start of a fresh crop of
antlers may be the reported "Stubby" or the "bad boy" of Yellowstone, so
aggressive and bothersome to both cars, people and other animals in 2004
that they were forced to sedate him and cut his antlers off (perhaps they
made the cut at the wrong end of the elk). There is an entertainer here in
Wendover at one of
the clubs this week who is a good friend that also drives Yellowstone tour
busses, I saw him last night, told him we had toured the park and he
started telling stories of the Stubby," the bad boy elk. He said the elk
had returned this year and hadn't gotten any tamer with age, and they were
forced to cut his antlers off again. I told him about the bull above and
he thought that the new growth antlers might mean this is "Stubby." Bo" (half of the singing duo of Kip and Bo) told me that
this is both the elk migrating and rutting season, and the large herds we saw
in the park are on the way south to the Jackson Hole area for the winter,
more on that later, the picture below is of "bad boy's" friends.
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We had no sooner left "bad
boy" then we cam upon the biggest traffic jam of the trip, down in
one of the meadows along the Madison River was a large mixed herd of elk
and buffalo, and an even larger "herd" of photographers,
equipped with tripods and huge telephoto lenses. I actually tried to get a
shot showing elk and no photographers, now I wish I shot the whole scene,
the photographers had the elk and buffalo out numbered. The next time you
see a Yellowstone shot of elk of buffalo "in the wild" on a
meadow, the animal might not have been alone, nor the photographer.
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All the pictures above are in the area of
the park between the west entrance and Madison, as shown on the map at the
bottom of the page, at Madison we made a right turn and headed for Old
Faithful and West Thumb. While still on the subject of elk, here's one
other story. As I parked the car in the West Thumb area, there we people
looking into a wooded area so I asked "what's up?" a woman
pointed to a dark area in the woods where I saw this bull elk.
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At the time I didn't know about the rutting
season, and having been up close with both elk and buffalo already that
day with no problems, I went into the woods for this close up. No sooner
then I took the shot then his "friend" showed up and he quickly
circled around behind her. I may be slow at times, but I finally got the
message, took the picture below and got out of there before the X-rated
stuff started, or the bull decided he didn't want me there anymore.
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On the way down to Old Faithful from Madison
there are two areas of geyser/hot springs concentrations, we chose to stop
at Fountain Paint Pot in the Lower Geyser Basin.
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While there I started asking other visitors
if they had already been to Old Faithful and when was the last time it
erupted. When I finally found someone, it appeared that we had about an
hour to travel the 10 miles it would take to get there. We had a few
distractions from these buffalo that tied up traffic, and Old Faithful,
which usually goes off every 90 minutes, went of 10 minutes early and we
were forced to wait for the next eruption.
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As you can see from both pictures, we are in
the area of the 1988 fire, and even though there some new-growth
evergreens, it will take the park years to recover. Fire is always a
possibility in Yellowstone, and we saw several burn areas that probably go
back 25 years or more.
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After this guy caused us to be late for Old
Faithful we had lots of time on our hands before it went off again. We
took the time to eat and I checked out other mini-geysers in the area. I
also looked ay my digital camera and found the lens incredibly smudged,
the pictures from my camera aren't up to those from Alex's, but they'll be
better now. The shot below is the last impaired picture.
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Dennis Silvia Photo
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There's a saying somewhere about "like
minds," and it appears that aXe and I often think alike, the bottom
picture was taken by him from a Visitors Center window in 2002. My shot
above that one came from the right of the middle tree. The guides claim
that Old Faithful's dome is growing, it's hard to tell from these
pictures, but the trees have.
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There she goes, it was worth the wait. After
that we drove down to the West Thumb Geyser Basin and on the way back Old
Faithful went off again, exactly 90 minutes later, we saw it from the road
on our way back north.
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This is one of the very hot springs on the
edge of beautiful Yellowstone Lake in the West Thumb Geyser Basin. The
lake reminds me very much of Lake Tahoe.
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While at Old Faithful, a helpful guide
answered a question about possible warm water swimming areas with a
mention of a place along the Firehole River, so we took a detour to see if
we could find the spot. While this didn't turn out to be the place, it was
a neat area. The top two pictures were taken by me, but you can see Alex
taking a picture in the first photo that also shows my well-used Mazda. In
the 2nd picture you can see Alex's neat little Casio digital camera, it's
a very compact, 5 mega pixel unit that has a self-contained rechargeable
batter that is capable of taking and saving over 300 high quality
pictures. The photos shown below are from her camera.
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The next morning we were up early and off
the Mammoth Hot Springs area. The first picture below shows the trio in
front of the remnants of earlier hot spring action in the mammoth area,
active spring deposits are gold in color.
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I'm reminded of a 60's era anti-culture song
here, "Signs, Signs, everywhere are signs, blocking off the scenery
and breaking my mind. Do this don't do that, can't you read the
signs?" OBTW, it is "public land" isn't it? "And the
sign said..." Actually the sign said something about "fragile
crust and danger," but there was a clear pathway up to the spring
shown below, so in keeping with the thinking of the song, imagine that the
sign said "old bald men should stay right here and keep off the
trail." In answer, imagine me thinking, "I'll hang my
jacket over the sign and continue up the hill." That's just what I
did, and after Alex took this picture the girls followed and we took the
beautiful picture above.
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And these as well:
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How hot was the water? Well, I reached down
through the railing and got close enough to the water to feel it was
hotter than I wanted to sample.
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Those of us that are addicted to anything on
wheels has to love this old "touring car" a the description
shown below it.
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I have no idea who owns or uses these two
homes in the Mammoth area that are on a blocked off road and are well
enough guarded that I was thwarted in my attempt to get close enough to
get the best pictures of several elk and buffalo lounging and grazing on
the lawns. According to my friend Bo, the animals of the park are
attracted to the tasty Kentucky bluegrass planted around the homes.
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Earlier these two buffalo made a downhill
charge to get into the area of these homes that set the girls off and
running, yelling, Miles, Miles, they're charging. Foolishly I held my
ground and got some good shots, but once you've seen one big buffalo... In
truth, buffalo cause more injuries and damage than any animal in the
park.
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These elk were just to the right of the two
homes, and as you can see, the girls were able to get very close without
disturbing them.
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There are three main areas of interest at
Yellowstone, Old Faithful, The "Grand Canyon of the
Yellowstone," which I am about to cover and the Mammoth area, the
shot above is of the official greater of the day at Mammoth. You can well
cover Old Faithful in less than two hours if you time it right, Mammoth
requires a lot of climbing to see it at it's best, and requires about
three to four hours. The canyon area is the most spectacular, and you
should view it from an access point about four miles south of the Canyon
Village.
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On our way over the mountain and down to
Tower Falls and the Canyon area we ran into gridlock around a pair small
group of sheep and then a couple of mule deer. The sheep were spread out
so I settled for a close up of one. We never saw any of the moose or even
the bears the park is famous for, but another group from Poland went up
there the following week and took some "bear" pictures, I'll
post some later.
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This is Tower Falls along the Yellowstone
River, the falls area had a long trail that used to lead to the bank of
the river and base of the falls, but the last 500 feet of the 2,000 foot
drop was washed out and closed. It's a good thing too, for I walked down
as far as I could, all the time dreading the climb back up, the extra 500
feet may have done me in.
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| The map shown below is interactive and
can be seen here...
By clicking on an area you san see maps and photo links. |
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