In my last travel post, I wrote about our time in Jackson Hole and Grand Teton National Park, This story is about our time in Yellowstone National Park.
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Yellowstone National Park is a magnificent place. It sits in the Northwest corner of Wyoming, a state that is mostly flat. Driving through Eastern Wyoming is dull. Except for the occasional pronghorn antelope, one sees only empty rolling flatlands encircled by barbed wire. Eventually the Wind River Mountains appear on the horizon, and the geography changes.
We drove north out of Jackson Hole and passed the snowless Grand Tetons for the last time. Yellowstone Park is next to the Grand Tetons and is a short hundred mile drive.
Our original plan was to stay in Old Faithful Inn and to spend a few days looking at all the weird and wonderful geophysical thermal anomalies that comprise Yellowstone. The plan evolved into a one day drive through with lunch at Old Faithful Inn. As I explained in an earlier post, getting a room at Old Faithful on very short notice is the same as winning the Mega-Lottery.
We chose to tour Old Faithful Inn because it is a magnificent structure made entirely of logs harvested from the park. It is one hundred and seven years old, and a National treasure. It is also the centerpiece of Yellowstone Park.
Old Faithful Geyser is a few steps away from the front door of the Inn. When the Inn was constructed, most people traveled to the park to see the geyser. They still do. In the old days, they came by train and continued by way of a yellow bus to the inn.
The main lobby of the Inn is several stories high. There are two giant fireplaces to take a chill out of a weary traveler’s bones. All the stone is from the park. The main architecture of the building was pre-planned as most buildings are. The details of the interior could only have been done by an artist using material gathered from the Park on site as the structure went up. Only Walt Disney could have envisioned the railings, and the gussets that make up the guard rails and sconces in the lobby.
We timed our lunch around the geyser. Ever since discovery of the park by John Colter a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the geysers has been spouting off on a cycle of about one hour. Of course it was spouting off longer than that, but it wasn’t until 1806 that Colter recorded the discovery.
Peggy and I watched two cycles of the geyser and toured the shops in between. The sun was getting low and we had to move on. I deliberately took a longer drive out of the park to give us a view of the many geysers, and boiling mud fields, and paint pots as we could see. We got lucky and sighted a small herd of buffalo and some elk too. I also got to hear an elk bay for a mate; the scariest noise I’d ever heard.
Our Yellowstone journey ended as we passed through the West Entrance. It was amazing to see how quickly the forest was regenerating itself from the fire a few years earlier.
Here are some of the pictures from this segment of the trip.
Related Articles
- 10 Great Things To Do In Yellowstone National Park (gadling.com)
- Burning Gas to See the Sights-Grand Teton (grumpajoesplace.com)
- Photo of the Day – Wildlife in Yellowstone (gadling.com)
- Yellowstone’s Most Dangerous Threat: Idiots Armed with the Latest Gadgets [National Parks] (gizmodo.com)
- Huge volcano under Yellowstone Park rising (msnbc.msn.com)
Filed under: Biography, family, Memories, Travel | Tagged: Geyser, Grand Teton National Park, Jackson Hole, John Colter, Old Faithful, Teton Range, United States, Yellowstone National Park |
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