This is a place that has it all, and has one of the most unique landscapes in the entire world. This is Yellowstone, the park which started the idea of the National Park. The thermal features like the Old Faithful geyser are what most people come to see, but Yellowstone has excellent wildlife viewing opportunities as well as stunning scenery.
Travel tip: It is a huge park, so try to stay in one of the many park lodges. It makes a big difference. Even if you don’t get a reservation, keep checking. Because of lenient cancellation policies, rooms are often available even at the last minute.
Prologue
Although we did talk about the next trip on our way back from the Grand Circle, specifically about Yellowstone, honestly at the time we didn’t think it would come so soon! On a Friday evening in April, the topic came up again. Given the multitude of constraints including the short season in the Northern Rockies, most any time period we considered seemed to be out of question for a trip to Yellowstone. And then it occurred us — why not go right after the end of the semester, when the park will be (barely) open, yet less crowded. But that was too soon — only a few weeks left! Or was it ? I sent an email to Raju and Jayanta about the idea, very much tentative at that point. Raju responded with one word — “done”. On Sunday night, we were booking our flight to Denver. The plan was to give ourselves a week to see Yellowstone, Grand Teton and a short trip to Rocky Mountain National Park.
May 26: BWI
Thankfully the flight this time around was on time from Baltimore, so hopefully we will be able to get a headstart towards the high country tonight by driving to Cheyenne and checking into our hotel at a sane hour. We will see. I’m praying that WYDOT will open the Snowy Range Scenic Byway tomorrow morning. Realistically, it’s a longshot, given that they were having trouble trying to clear all the late spring snow by the holiday weekend. They’ll probably be only willing and able to finish the job by Friday the earliest. Fingers crossed. We may be able to take a shot at skimming the Bighorn Mountains if Snowy Range doesn’t work out. About an hour and a half to go before landing in Denver. Dinner with egg curry was fantastic. Hopefully we didn’t offend too many people with the smell, or worse, stir their appetite!
May 27: Wyoming
We got a late start to the day today when we could only leave Cheyenne at half past nine. As we neared the I-25/I-80 junction, I made one last call hoping against hope that WYDOT had managed to open the Snowy Range Byway. They didn’t. And so our trip began with a tedious 4 hour drive through Southeastern Wyoming before we finally reached Wind River Canyon.
Although it wasn’t the most spectacular canyon one could drive through in the West, it was very pretty, and was a welcome break from the high plains driving all through the morning. The river had quite a boisterous flow. The banks were dotted by big boulders, an obvious sign of frequent rock slides that occur in this area. The rocks even looked like many were jutting out of the hills, hanging precariously over the road! There were signs telling us which period the rocks came from, the oldest of which were all the way from 500-700 million years ago.
At about three, we reached Thermopolis and headed for the Dinosaur museum. Although it was small, they had a nice collection of real dinosaur skeletons, and the trip must surely have been the highlight of the day for Eemon, who could now go back to school and brag about being photographed with T.Rex, among others. Our next stop was Hot Springs State Park. We went to the curious looking Tepee Fountain with its dome shape and eroded rock strands. Although the process that created it and the stalactites of Luray Caverns must be very different (or are they ?) , but they looked very similar to me, one an inverted version of the other. The hot springs pool was a first for all of us. I never went to a spa, and I presume this must have been a natural version of one. They don’t add anything to the water, and it directly flows from what Thermopolis claims is the largest mineral hot spring in the world. Best of all, unlike a spa, it’s free! We didn’t have time for Bighorn Mountains after getting out of the state bath house. I guess folks were contended for the day after the half an hour in the hot spring (at least the guys were) — so we headed directly for Cody.
We reached Cody well before sunset, and did some grocery shopping before checking in at the Big Bear motel. Dinner included rice, daal, baked salmon and cod, and some forgettable hit-and-eat Indian fare. We are only about 60 miles from Yellowstone through the East entrance, but our day tomorrow will begin going the other way through the Chief Joseph Scenic byway and then the Beartooth highway. We didn’t get lucky with snowy range this morning, but hope that Beartooth does open as scheduled tomorrow at 9. We might just end up being one of the first people to go through the Long Lake gate this season!
May 28: Beartooth and Chief Joseph Highways, and entering YNP
The journey to Yellowstone continued today, starting with the Chief Joseph highway and somewhat cloudy skies. As we gained elevation, however, we were soon surrounded by those ominous dark clouds. It made for an interesting ride in scanty visibility through the summit at 8800 feet. Little did we know that our day was going to end in a similar fashion, with glorious weather sandwiched in between. The skies started to clear up towards the latter half of the CJH, and by the time we hit the Beartooth highway, it was sunny. The All American Road did live up to its billing, transporting us to an almost unreal world of alpine tundra. I don’t remember seeing so much white, so vast in its expanse, for so long, and not while flying, but driving over a winding mountain pass and feeling the crisp mountain air. Then there were the frozen lakes. Beartooth lake was the most gorgeous of them all, and the twin lakes played hide-n-seek with us, easily camouflaging themselves in the surrounding snow-covered terrain. The “snow walls” on either side of the road, easily the height of two adults at some places, had to be seen to be believed.
After doing a quick lunch at Cooke City, we finally entered Yellowstone through the North East entrance, and was almost immediately told by a passerby about a grizzly sighting about a mile ahead. We did catch a glimpse of the nonchalant walk with which the bear disappeared into the forest. So, our wildlife sighting started with a bang! Unfortunately, the payoff only diminished from that point onwards. While we had our fare share of bison viewing, efforts to catch a bear through our amateur binoculars and camera lenses proved to be futile. Nonetheless, it did energize us to some extent. Light was bad, and by the time we reached Tower Fall, it had started raining. We took a prudent decision to forgo Mammoth for today, and headed towards the East Entrance, where our lodge was. As in the beginning of the day, the drive over Dunraven pass, and later over Sylvan pass, proved to a thrilling one, with heavy snow falling as we drove past Mount Washburn, not even knowing when it came and went.
Our cabin at Shoshone Lodge turned out to be every bit as good as we thought it would be. Nestled in the foothills of the mountains, it’s a serene location with very clean and well kept facilities. Gayle, the co-owner, told us not to be surprised to find a big animal or two if we looked up the mountain slopes in the morning. Dinner was khichuri and salad with boiled broccoli — unconventional, sure, but positively gourmet considering the circumstances, and even Bengali-ish. After all, it had been raining all evening!
May 29: Yellowstone
How many different weather forecast summary phrase can you think about ? Let’s see.. sunny, partly cloudy, mostly cloudy, showers, rain, flurries, snow, hail. We experienced all of these, and more, in cycles, as we traveled through the park today. This is Wyoming, the weather can change in a whim here, a destination expert had written on tripadvisor — and now we knew why. I guess the unpredictability of spring largely played into it. A day which began with the disappointment of overnight snow closing the Sylvan pass amid gloomy weather eventually became a kaleidoscope of different shades of mountain weather, not to mention the palettes
of color that nature painted, otherwise known as hot springs and geysers.
We managed to see a number of thermal features, including the mud volcano area, Norris and Mammoth, in between dodging the ever-changing weather. Mammoth, at the end of the day, particularly Palette spring, was surely the highlight of the day. The sun was out and shining brightly. The multitude of colors on the terraces was simply breathtaking. We took our time there, spending more than an hour taking it all in, before heading back through Norris and Canyon.
Weather and hot springs were not the lone stories of the day though — we made up quite a bit of ground with our wildlife sighting efforts. We saw a grizzly at Sylvan pass in the morning, and could clearly see it move around, and then being chased away by a bison! That was kind of hilarious, and if you don’t believe it, well, Rumpa has it recorded on our videocam. At the end of the day, just inside the East entrance, we saw a moose pair right next to the road. That capped an eventful day at the park. We ate dinner at the lodge restaurant, which was nice. Tomorrow is our last day at Yellowstone, and the blockbuster Old Faithful is on the menu. The weather is supposed to be less whimsical, and drier — here is hoping that Sylvan pass will be open earlier.
May 30: Yellowstone, entering Tetons
Today was our geyser day. We hoped to cover the geyser basins between Madison and West Thumb, including Old Faithful. Instead of taking the drive along the lake, we went up to Canyon first, in hopes of taking another glance at the Lower falls viewpoints which we had missed so far. It was dry but very windy. Grand View was nice, better than the view from Inspiration Point. We couldn’t stay long outside and was amazed to see a young lady nonchalantly doing some writing in Jeans and T-shirt out in the open near the falls!
Our next stop was Artist’s Paint Pots, the only one between Norris and Madison that we would have time for. Rumpa decided not to brave the winds, so the three of us went and took a look. There was a lot of different colors, and from the hilltop above, it may have looked more like a paint pot with a panoramic view, but we didn’t go up the hill. We made a restroom stop at Madison, where we got the predicted eruption times and planned our approach to Old Faithful accordingly, targeting the 2:30-ish eruption. Firehole Canyon Drive was a nice one, with the Firehole Falls in full glory. This was definitely a good time to see falls, the advent of spring.
Fountain Paint Pots had some really nice springs, although we didn’t have the time to cover all of it. This is where we had our leftover pancakes from Shoshone Lodge as lunch and continued along to Midway Geyser Basin, with Grand Prismatic as its prime attraction. The wind was blowing hard, though, fueling the smoke flumes, and it was a struggle to see the colors, let alone comprehend the grandness of Grand Prismatic. What made it more difficult was that the viewing level. Again, a hike up the hillside would have provided a spectacular view.
We thought we were late for the eruption at Old Faithful and scrambled to take our seats for the show. The geyser had other ideas though, teasing us almost for half an hour, as Raju kept saying, “Lights, camera, but no action!” We bided our time patiently, utilizing the time to take snaps of the beautiful mountain blue bird that kept us busy. Finally it happened. And was over in a couple of minutes. We had seen the Old Faithful erupt! But that’s all I would have to say about it, because we all wondered what the big deal was about. Maybe we overestimated the thrill of a geyser eruption, that too when it was predictable. But it was pretty mundane, and we loved the colors and varieties of the non-geyser thermal features much better. By this time, battered by the howling wind all day, and after the somewhat deflating experience at Old Faithful, we needed a break — so we relaxed at the Old Faithful Lodge. We didn’t have the energy to go into a walking tour of other geysers in the area, and decided to continue on toward the Tetons, with a brief stop at West Thumb. We sure were glad that we did make the brief stop. West Thumb doesn’t get a lot of “stars” from the experts, but it was by far the best thermal area we had seen. The enormous variety of the thermal features, in terms of color, dynamics and landscape was mind boggling. I instantly recognized seismograph and blue ball pools as being the source of some of the most dramatic pictures of yellowstone springs I had seen before the trip. The turquoise of the black pool (!) was the most brilliant one we had seen so far. We literally couldn’t have enough of this place, and ended up exhausting our camera batteries. To top it off, we saw an Elk family right next to the springs.
Everyone was hungry by the end of it, so we went to Grant Village to pick up some snacks and headed south. By now, it was sunny again, and the drive to the Tetons was nothing short of spectacular. We had seen the pictures, but to see, with our own eyes, the grandeur of the mountains rising sharply over the backdrop of Jackson Lake couldn’t be captured by any photograph. Yet, better sights were awaiting us at Signal Mountain Lodge. As if it could get any better, we got a cabin right at the Lakefront. As we took the stairs of the balcony onto the lake shore, the most spectacular mountain scenery I had ever seen greeted us. The girls were busy cooking egg curry using rice cooker, no mean feat, but they missed the changing colors of Tetons and the Lake with sailboats as the sun started going down. We relentlessly photographed until it was completely dark. I had never taken so many pictures in such a short time! We regretted not having given ourselves another day at the Tetons.
May 31: Grand Tetons
Raju and I managed to get up in time to go to Oxbow Bend to watch sunrise. We were rewarded with the best sunrise vista I had seen. Only Bryce Canyon, although with very different looks with its red rocks, could have rivaled this. Satisfied, we came back and took our time to enjoy the cabin and its surroundings before checking out at about 11.
After an unremarkable visit to the signal mountain summit, we discovered that I lost Rumpa’s iPod, putting a dampener on proceedings. We did everything we could to find it, including going back north near the Jackson Lake overlook where we had made a photo stop the day before, to look for it. Nope. I lost it, and we all felt terrible about it. The rest of the day didn’t produce much to cheer us up. Jenny Lake Boating and the hike to Hidden Falls was pedestrian at best. It was nothing better than the many such areas on the east coast, such as Bushkill Falls.
I was already running fever when we reached Lander. Things started to go further downhill, as if it could. Almost nothing in our motel room worked, including A/C, fridge and microwave. The Turkish owner did work hard to fix things and eventually did, but it was too late by then — we were starving. The forgettable day mercifully ended after a noodles dinner.
June 1: Rocky Mountain National Park
After having the famous Maverick breakfast — we failed to see what was special about it — we headed towards Denver. This was the return leg of the unavoidable long drive through Wyoming. As planned though, we managed to reach Grand Lake at the West end of Rocky Mountain National Park at around 2:30. As we began the drive on the Trail Ridge Road,
we quickly realized that we should have visited Rocky Mountains at the beginning of the trip, not at the end, after we had already seen the Beartooth and the Tetons. National Parks close to a big city obviously get a lot more visitors, but the Rockies are not just the Rocky Mountain National Park. The parts of the Northern Rockies surrounding Yellowstone — and I’m talking about Beartooth and Absaroka ranges, and probably Bighorn Mountains which we missed on this trip — probably miss out on more visitors just because they are more remote, and often people choose to spend any extra time they have in the Yellowstone/Tetons area. In terms of the sheer beauty of an alpine mountain range dotted with picturesque lakes, they easily trump Rocky Mountain National Park in my opinion. This is not to say that the park lacks great mountains vistas to enjoy, but it surely was underwhelming after seeing the Rockies up North earlier in the trip.
Rocky Mountain National Park did, however, salvage some of its reputation at the end of the day with a couple of unexpected wildlife sightings, both times along the Bear Lake Road. First we saw a couple of black bears very close to the road where we could see them clearly, instead of just being able to make out their outline as was the case sometimes in Yellowstone. We were finally satisfied with our bear watching! As we continued on, I mentioned one last thing that we really hadn’t seen yet — elks with their decorated horns. “That’s the bottom line”, I said. Next thing we know — there was this big herd of elks right on the roadside! It marked a sweet ending to our visit to Rocky Mountain National Park. We drove through the beautiful Estes Park and Boulder area on towards Denver. We had dinner at a Thai place in the city with Kings, and I stayed back with him for the night.
June 2: Around Denver
The final morning started, as planned, with picking up what was the best croissant in town, according to Kings. We had basically half a day to explore the G circle mountains around Denver. First we visited Red Rocks amphitheater. It was very refreshing and different from anything else we had seen on the trip. It would have been amazing to hear a concert there in those gorgeous settings and have the sounds reverberate through the red rocks. We spent quite a bit of time before heading towards Mount Evans, our final dose of Rockies alpine punch. The road to the fourteener was nowhere near as precarious as the Mount Washington Auto Road in the White Mountains in New Hampshire — but it sure was pretty. The frozen summit lake part of the way up, and the backdrop of the myriad front range peaks were especially nice. The wind caught us off guard one last time at the top. We didn’t have the energy to hike the last hundred feet or so, but still managed to spend a few minutes shivering at the castle on the mountaintop.
It was already close to 3, and we had to head to the airport. The flight was a a few minutes late, but we were still able to land by midnight at BWI.
Epilogue
This trip was a mixed bag, for sure, more like what one would expect — rather than the all-sunny-days Grand Circle trip that had exceeded all our expectations. A combination of non-cooperating weather and the resultant time crunch prevented us from taking a relaxing hike or two into the parks, which, as we discovered during our Bryce Canyon visit, always adds another dimension to a national park visit. We did, however, sample most of the great sights and sounds of the parks, and unpredictable weather notwithstanding, this surely was the best time to visit — and not only because the wildlife viewing opportunities were the best for impatient visitors like us without the luxury of hours to spend behind a spotting scope. The Tetons definitely took the top honors, along with Beartooth mountains. Spending a day or two idling at the Jackson lake shore would surely be the top of the agenda if we are lucky to visit again.