We took the opportunity this morning to drive around the city before we left, and it is a cool place. The Snake River runs through town and, as you'd expect, there are some waterfalls. Not high waterfalls... but the original town seems to be built around a 10 foot waterfall that run diagonally across the river. Like I mentioned yesterday, a very clean city. I wish we had a bit more time to explore, but we got an early start today before anything was open.
Our destination for the day was Yellowstone National Park via West Yellowstone MT. Yellowstone National Park is huge - over 3,600 square miles. About three times the size of Rhode Island. About 50% bigger than Delaware. While the majority of the park is in Wyoming, it does spill over into Montana and Idaho. Despite its size, there are a limited number of entrances into the park - only five. And once in the park, there are relatively few roads - all of which are only two lanes. Most of the entrances and roads are closed in the winter. Not all of them... just most of them. Strangely, the only entrances that are open year-round are on the northern end of the park. Here in May [again, ignore the posting date on the blog], we have to travel up to one of the entrances at the northwestern end of the park. It will be a few more weeks before the southern entrance via Jackson Hole is open and almost another month before all of the roads are open.
As has been the case with this entire trip, the views and scenery were amazing. Traveling north in Idaho and over towards Montana, the lingering effects of winter were still visible. There is clearly a winter tourism industry in these parts that centers around snowmobiling. The various businesses that sell, service and/or rent these vehicles were closing for the season. Angela pointed out various "trails" that ran parallel to the road as snowmobile routes. Apart from a single night-time excursion on a frozen fjord in Norway, I have never been on or around snowmobiles.
West Yellowstone MT is at the western boundary of Yellowstone National Park. It is a huge tourist destination in its own right that began in 1908 when a railway line from the west was created that ended effectively at the entrance to the park. The town grew up around the railroad terminal and now has restaurants, motels, shops as well as residences - houses and condos. We drove around and saw hotels or hostels that looked like dorm rooms. It appears that this too is a snowmobiling mecca with a very seasonal work force. In the winter, it is bitterly cold with an average daytime HIGH temperature of only 24 °F (−4 °C). It the gets really cold at night.
After we drove around the town, we parked and walked around the town. We are in that "between season" lull that occurs right after the winter season and before school lets out and the crowds descend upon the park. Like any tourist town, there are a lot of souvenir shops. We hit the shops and grabbed lunch at a local spot. The town was pretty dead, due to the aforementioned lull.
The entrance to the park is literally on the outskirts of town and that leads to a long two-lane highway into the park. The thing that was most impressionable to me upon entering the park were the lodgepole pines. This trees are almost perfect cylinders with branches sticking out. And when they fall, the park service just leaves them there. They appear to take forever to decay - just based on the number of fallen, solid lodgepole pines laying across the forest floor.
It doesn't take long to come upon hot springs and buffalo. The buffalo shown below were grazing right next some hot springs (note all the fallen lodgepole pines).
Apparently, a buffalo weights two tons and can sprint at speeds up to 30mph. I used the zoom on my camera and stayed behind both a fence and a boiling calderon of highly acidic water to take these shots.
There appear to be four main rules in the park:
- Do not stop your car in the road.
- Pull over if you are driving too slow to let faster traffic pass.
- Do not approach wildlife; they will attack.
- Do not venture off the walkways around springs and geysers; the ground is typically just a crust and you will fall through and boil to death.
We are in the slow season and the traffic is already a problem - mainly because people ignore Rule #1 and #2. All roads are two lanes. There are places to pull over to view the scenery or let other cars pass. I cannot imagine the nightmare that this place becomes at the height of the season.
We are spending two nights at the Old Faithful Inn, which just opened for the season today. The inn, which is huge, was built over the winter of 1903-1904 using locally sourced lodgepole pines and quarried stones. It was expanded with an East wing in 1913 and a West wing in 1927. We are staying in the West wing extension. While the rooms in the original portion of the inn are nice, they have shared bathrooms. As it is, our cozy room has its own bathroom, but no phone, TV or internet (the horror).
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| Old Faithful Inn |
Yellowstone sits above a "supervolcano" - a ridiculously big volcano. Most volcanoes are found along the edges of tectonic plates, where there are natural weak areas for magma to force its way to the surface. The Yellowstone supervolcano is somewhat unique in that it forces its way up through the middle of a tectonic plate. Over half of the world's geothermal features (e.g., geysers, hot springs, mud pots) are in Yellowstone. Steam can be seen rising from the ground at numerous sites all over the park. There is a volcano under there that is just waiting to erupt. I'm sleeping good tonight.
Tomorrow we get a chance to thoroughly examine the park.
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