I've Breathed the Mountain Air, Man
July 20, 2017--We left the campground by 8am to get a good jump on the day, having a breakfast of granola bars or Poptarts, but that meant we left before generator time and hadn't had any coffee. There's got to be some place we come across that sells coffee, right?
The first stop was Norris Geyser Basin. At first glance, it looks like the earth, minutes after a nuclear bomb goes off--a few trees, but mainly bared rock and pools of water; geysers and steam shooting up and water roiling. But the longer you walk the boardwalk winding in and around the basin you see the little bit of beauty. The colors of the springs are vibrant and even though you expect the water to be mucky (to go along with the sulfur smell), it's as clear as glass--and so deep! (No coffee sold at Norris.)
We continued on and stopped at Roaring Mountain. It was ok, but after seeing the cool scene at Norris it kind of paled. The highlight of this stop was when we set up our avatars to pose in front of the Roaring Mountain. An older Chinese man started cracking up and stuck his large camera up in the Lego people's faces to join in the fun! (No coffee sold at this location, either.)
Side note: I'm not sure if we noticed it this early in the trip but at least half if not more of the people visiting Yellowstone, and many of the places we were at, were not American. It was cool to see how many visitors from other countries are mesmerized by our natural (and in the case of the Cody Rodeo or our kids' Lego people, cultural) wonders. The bus driver who took us to the Rodeo said the number one country that he transports people are from Norway, second place is Sweden. On the roof of the bus people wrote messages with where they were from and what date they were visiting. It was neat to see Japanese characters written up there!
There's a lot of construction throughout the park as they make the roadways safe for the millions of visitors they get each year. We got to a part where it was down to one lane and we were stopped dead in our tracks. We still hadn't had coffee yet so we turned on the generator and used this time to fire up the coffee pot!
There were a few stops we put on our schedule that we had to skip. There wasn't enough space in the parking lots or the roads were too narrow for RVs. This brings us to another side note: We had very few gripes about our trip, but one that kept coming up was parking the RV. We didn't come across much in our research of this trip that told us that at times being in an RV would be limiting. What was frustrating was that when there's assigned spots for RVs and other over-sized vehicles cars would be parked there even when there were open parking spots for them! Often we'd have to park a mile down the road and walk to the scene. This got to be very frustrating :(
Next we stopped at Mammoth Springs. We saw a black and white picture from when the US Army was in charge of the park. The soldiers were on bikes on the springs and it looked like they were biking in snow. We soon learned that the white of the pictures was thousands of years of mineral deposits coming out of the springs that gave it a snow look to it.
After leaving Mammoth we headed to the North Entrance of the park, which has the iconic Roosevelt Arch. We learned that when the park opened there was a train station in Gardiner, Montana, and Teddy Roosevelt helped bring attention to the first National Park. The train would drop off right in front of the arch and then carriages would take people through to see the sights.
We had a great lunch at the base of the arch and played a wiffle ball game, including the kids of a French family that was also lunching there. Later, ice cream cones were needed and the shoppe had flavors like Moose Moss (mint chocolate chip) and a local delicacy, Huckleberry ice cream. You can find just about anything you can think of flavored huckleberry, something that is also a favorite of the local bears.
On the road again, with the windows open because of how mild the day was, we saw pronghorns and elk on the side of the road as we headed to Wraith Trail. This had a little bit of everything--a forest, a prairie, gorgeous wildflowers, rattlesnakes around a boardwalk path, and it ended at a beautiful little waterfall.
We wanted to stop at the Roosevelt Lodge to hike to the Lost Lake. Mere was wiped out, so she and Kevin stayed in the RV while the rest of us trekked out. The hike was cut short by a bear cub sighting. A big part of the bear diet are these nuts found in pine trees. They're high in calories, which they need for hibernating. We decided to turn back to the RV and hike at the next stop, Roosevelt Tower.
Michelle and I kept talking about writing a book for families that would help guide people to what interests them, as well as clearly explain what you're looking for. We thought there would be some sort of fire tower or a man-made structure on the Tower Fall trail. This was not the case. We were pleasantly surprised to find rock towers and a waterfall here.
Music played a big role on this trip, and while we were in Yellowstone we'd played mix-CDs of old country/Southern rock--Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash (I've been everywhere, man)--and it was cool how often what the lyrics said matched up with what we were doing. Although, I didn't appreciate that times we were driving so near cliffs and the song was about falling.
For those of you interested in the culinary side of our trip, we had 3-Ways (or 5-Ways if that's your thing), coneys, veggies, chips, and fruit.
The first stop was Norris Geyser Basin. At first glance, it looks like the earth, minutes after a nuclear bomb goes off--a few trees, but mainly bared rock and pools of water; geysers and steam shooting up and water roiling. But the longer you walk the boardwalk winding in and around the basin you see the little bit of beauty. The colors of the springs are vibrant and even though you expect the water to be mucky (to go along with the sulfur smell), it's as clear as glass--and so deep! (No coffee sold at Norris.)
We continued on and stopped at Roaring Mountain. It was ok, but after seeing the cool scene at Norris it kind of paled. The highlight of this stop was when we set up our avatars to pose in front of the Roaring Mountain. An older Chinese man started cracking up and stuck his large camera up in the Lego people's faces to join in the fun! (No coffee sold at this location, either.)
 |
Kids set up their Lego people in front of Roaring Mountain |
Side note: I'm not sure if we noticed it this early in the trip but at least half if not more of the people visiting Yellowstone, and many of the places we were at, were not American. It was cool to see how many visitors from other countries are mesmerized by our natural (and in the case of the Cody Rodeo or our kids' Lego people, cultural) wonders. The bus driver who took us to the Rodeo said the number one country that he transports people are from Norway, second place is Sweden. On the roof of the bus people wrote messages with where they were from and what date they were visiting. It was neat to see Japanese characters written up there!
There's a lot of construction throughout the park as they make the roadways safe for the millions of visitors they get each year. We got to a part where it was down to one lane and we were stopped dead in our tracks. We still hadn't had coffee yet so we turned on the generator and used this time to fire up the coffee pot!
There were a few stops we put on our schedule that we had to skip. There wasn't enough space in the parking lots or the roads were too narrow for RVs. This brings us to another side note: We had very few gripes about our trip, but one that kept coming up was parking the RV. We didn't come across much in our research of this trip that told us that at times being in an RV would be limiting. What was frustrating was that when there's assigned spots for RVs and other over-sized vehicles cars would be parked there even when there were open parking spots for them! Often we'd have to park a mile down the road and walk to the scene. This got to be very frustrating :(
Next we stopped at Mammoth Springs. We saw a black and white picture from when the US Army was in charge of the park. The soldiers were on bikes on the springs and it looked like they were biking in snow. We soon learned that the white of the pictures was thousands of years of mineral deposits coming out of the springs that gave it a snow look to it.
 |
| Original caretakers of Yellowstone, US Army soldiers |
 |
| The Argh-Vee posing with Mammoth Springs in the background |
After leaving Mammoth we headed to the North Entrance of the park, which has the iconic Roosevelt Arch. We learned that when the park opened there was a train station in Gardiner, Montana, and Teddy Roosevelt helped bring attention to the first National Park. The train would drop off right in front of the arch and then carriages would take people through to see the sights.
We had a great lunch at the base of the arch and played a wiffle ball game, including the kids of a French family that was also lunching there. Later, ice cream cones were needed and the shoppe had flavors like Moose Moss (mint chocolate chip) and a local delicacy, Huckleberry ice cream. You can find just about anything you can think of flavored huckleberry, something that is also a favorite of the local bears.
On the road again, with the windows open because of how mild the day was, we saw pronghorns and elk on the side of the road as we headed to Wraith Trail. This had a little bit of everything--a forest, a prairie, gorgeous wildflowers, rattlesnakes around a boardwalk path, and it ended at a beautiful little waterfall.
We wanted to stop at the Roosevelt Lodge to hike to the Lost Lake. Mere was wiped out, so she and Kevin stayed in the RV while the rest of us trekked out. The hike was cut short by a bear cub sighting. A big part of the bear diet are these nuts found in pine trees. They're high in calories, which they need for hibernating. We decided to turn back to the RV and hike at the next stop, Roosevelt Tower.
Michelle and I kept talking about writing a book for families that would help guide people to what interests them, as well as clearly explain what you're looking for. We thought there would be some sort of fire tower or a man-made structure on the Tower Fall trail. This was not the case. We were pleasantly surprised to find rock towers and a waterfall here.
Music played a big role on this trip, and while we were in Yellowstone we'd played mix-CDs of old country/Southern rock--Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Johnny Cash (I've been everywhere, man)--and it was cool how often what the lyrics said matched up with what we were doing. Although, I didn't appreciate that times we were driving so near cliffs and the song was about falling.
For those of you interested in the culinary side of our trip, we had 3-Ways (or 5-Ways if that's your thing), coneys, veggies, chips, and fruit.
Video of the bear cub on the Lost Lake Trail
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