Yellowstone & Beyond

Animal Day at Yellowstone—A moose as we were departing. An Elk casually eating along the highway and Mr. Bison and his buddy walking down the center of the road.

Unable to get on the internet at our "lodge" in Yellowstone last night, we are catching up with a day-and-a-half at Yellowstone and our journey toward Rapid City today. We won't discuss our lodging at Yellowstone, but, simply put, it wasn't what the pictures showed. It really didn't matter all that much because we stayed in the park late, drove to our hotel in the dark, passing elk along the road, and just hit the sack for an uncomfortable night of sleep in a room that was less than nice.

It's not easy to explain Yellowstone, except that it's millions of acres of land that literally has a little bit of everything, including the animals you see above.

We are driving down the road today in the park and, as the traffic slowed and eventually stopped in front of us, two huge Bison are walking down the center stripe of the road between the cars. They are just meandering right down the middle, barely missing the cars with their horns sticking out and really, could care less that there were people and cars around. It's their road, you know.

Anyway, I leave a little space between me and the car in front the Bison makes a left turn in front of our car, gives me a look like "thanks for the space" and walks off into the trees. It was truly a classic moment and Mimi and I were laughing so hard we couldn't move for about 30 seconds. There are thousands of Bison in the park and they don't care about roads. We were stopped three times today to let Bison cross the road. They are really big uglies and between the car and them, they'd win in a walk! We saw a whole bunch of elk in the park, including a big bull elk that wouldn't come out of the trees. I got a brief glimpse of him but not enough to take a photo, unfortunately. Then, as we leave the park and head for Cody, Wyoming, there are two moose right along the road. The one, in the photo above, was huge with a big "rack" on him. The momma elk just kept eating away right at roadside, unbothered by the people that started to gather along the highway.

Didn't get to see any bears, unfortunately and sadly, but we sure saw everything else, including a coyote chasing a field mouse in a field of Bison.

Yesterday we started Yellowstone with a beautiful drive from the Tetons and got some brand new views of the Teton peaks that are so majestic and saw incredible fall colors of the aspen along the way. After entering the park, we headed for Old Faithful, the most famous of the geysers but not even close to the only one. We sat on the porch of the Old Faithful Inn and watched Old Faithful erupt. There are more than 30 other geysers and steam pools all around Old Faithful and a boardwalk to walk around all of them. The whole park is full of these geysers and mud volcanos and hot springs. They pop up everywhere, including right next to the streams and rivers that run through the whole complex and they are amazing.

The temps of the water from them is about 160 to 200 degrees and you stand there watching water bubble like a hot tub. They worn you to stay on the boardwalks because the ground is crusty and you can easily sink into oblivion and scold yourself to death. Over a dozen people, who didn't take heed to the warning, have died by falling into these pools and surrounding areas. More than 100 have been severely scalded. When you look at these pools bubbling, you don't dare even think about stepping off the boardwalk.

History lesson No. 1. Some 650,000 years ago Yellowstone was a total volcano and the huge eruption caused all kinds of rock formations that, over time, have worn their way into canyons and gourges and geysers. The ground underneath is still boiling but, above the ground, is a beautiful park full of wild animals and forests and mountains that stretch forever.

Our newest surprise came this afternoon as we headed east in Wyoming where we ran into some of the most amazing terrain we've seen on the whole trip in the Big Horn National Forest. Heading over Granite Pass (9,000) are some of the most amazing rock formations you've ever seen and a geologists delight, I'm sure.

We drove through a limestone canyon that was only about 30 yards wide with steep walls that reached some 600 feet-plus into the sky, straight up! Signs near these cliffs said the walls of rock were anywhere from 330 million to 500 million years old. One granite wall was 2.5 billion—yes, billion—years old.

It was a phenomenal drive and, though we were tired and looking for a place to park for the night, we kept stopping to take photographs. We had no idea we were going to be driving through this kind of terrain so it was a very pleasant surprise and most enjoyable.

We stopped in Sheridan for the night and will take off in the morning for Grand Rapids, which is about three hours away. From there we'll check out the badlands, Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Hopefully we can head for home sometime Monday and aiming to reach home by Tuesday night.

Home? Where is that? Is it still standing?

Happy Trails.