Yellowstone & Grand Tetons

I’m behind again. I haven’t told you anything about Kate’s visit nearly three weeks ago, or about the Outside Lands music festival we attended the week before last. I’ll leave the musical critique to Jon (when the poor guy has finished his maths assignment), since I want to tell you about the trip we’ve just returned from to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

Susie (my good friend from school days) and her husband Dave arrived for a visit on Wednesday last week. They were lucky with the weather, because they arrived at a time when San Francisco is emerging from the fog of summer into warm, sunny early fall days. Thursday was so nice that I left work early and had a dip in the pool.

Susie had very kindly invited me along on their great adventure through America’s national parks. This began with a flight to Salt Lake City on Saturday. We just had time for a trip to Temple Square (Mormon central!) and dinner. Salt Lake ranks with Las Vegas as one of the strangest places I’ve been to. Temple Square is a perfectly manicured 30-odd acre site in the city centre. The instant you walk through the gate, a very nice man emerges with a free map and details of the free tours on offer. We went on one of these tours, led by two (also very, very nice) young Mormon missionaries. They showed us the temple, tabernacle, museum and (huge) office skyscraper. It was all rather surreal. The city itself was dead (on a Saturday night!), but Jon had no trouble getting a beer with our meal in spite of Utah's weird alcohol regulations.

We had a night in Salt Lake, then picked up the rental car and (after some very logistical packing, because it was only a compact car), headed off on the long drive through four states to Yellowstone. That’s right – we started in Utah, drove much of the length of Idaho, crossed a small patch of Montana and finally entered Wyoming just past the entrance into the park. We stopped to buy supplies at the immense Walmart in a rather sad town called Idaho Falls (followed by more packing logistics). We also passed through a fairly wild storm, which sent tumbleweed scuttling across the highway. It was a really long journey – some 380 miles – and we couldn’t resist seeing some of the sites when we finally got there, so took time out to photograph a herd of elk by the road and also got our first taste of hot springs and bubbling mud pots at one of the volcanic sites on the way to the campground. We didn’t actually arrive there until about 8 o’clock, by which time it was dark and raining hard. Pitching the tent in the pouring rain was not fun. Fortunately, we were close to a restaurant, into which we retreated in order to get away from the weather.

I didn’t sleep well either of the first two nights. Most probably because, in spite of my five layers, I was still cold, because my 35 degree F sleeping bag was not capable of withstanding the plummeting night-time temperatures at ca. 8,000 feet. There was even ice on the tent when we awoke one morning! By the third night, Jon sweetly offered me his sleeping bag (good to 18 F), so I managed to get some shut-eye. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, you could hear what were probably wolves howling in the distance, which was rather eerie, to say in the least.

Our first full day in Yellowstone began with a drive up to the canyon of the Yellowstone River. We saw bison along the way, plus a wolf that was really just a black dot in the far distance, and also visited the Mud Volcano area of steaming, sulphurous pools and mud pots. It’s impossible to exaggerate the extent to which you find steam pouring out of the ground all over Yellowstone. It’s one immense volcano with a caldera that covers much of the park, and apparently, it’s due an eruption, which would purportedly destroy all life on the planet.

We did a hike along the canyon to a lake, then circled back past some more steaming holes, before continuing around the immense loop road to see Old Faithful, a geyser that erupts approximately every 90 minutes and shoots water some 120 feet into the air. We arrived at the right time and managed to see the event before heading back for a tasty meal by the camp fire.

The next day was a much brighter day weather-wise (although still cold), and we enjoyed clear skies for most of it. We headed up to Mount Washburn, and hiked up to the top past trees covered in the first sprinkling of snow, to the summit at just over 10,000 feet. On the way back down, we chanced upon a flock of bighorn sheep, which stuck around and let us photograph them. We then decided to head north a little way, hoping to see bears in the “prime grizzly country” of Antelope Creek. We didn’t see bears, but we did come across a commotion along the road that turned out to be caused by a moose grazing by a nearby stream. On the way back to camp, we got stuck in traffic in Hayden Valley, where bison were crossing the road.

The final day of our trip began with heavy rain. We drove into Grand Teton National Park, afraid that we wouldn’t get to see any of the famous mountains. However, it began to clear, so we stopped by the side of the road to watch the clouds lifting slowly off the jagged, snowy peaks. As we were there, we noticed another commotion just down the road. There was talk of a grizzly bear. Before we knew it, the grizzly in question (a female), had bounded across the road and into the willow on the other side. Too fast for a photo, but impressive nonetheless! After stopping at a couple of lovely viewpoints, we decided to take the boat across pretty Jenny Lake and walked to a waterfall before making our way back around the edge of the lake. We were rewarded with another wildlife sighting – this time a female moose knee-deep in a pond.

Finally, Susie and Dave drove us to tiny Jackson Hole Airport (they were continuing on down to other parks the next day), where they dropped us off and we caught a propeller plane to Denver, where we transferred to a connecting flight back to San Francisco. It was a really amazing trip, although I must say that it isn’t too hard – after freezing your socks off for several days – to return to the balmy climes of September in California.

Photos are available here: http://public.fotki.com/EllenHardwick/yellowstone-and-gra/ (password: moocow)