The Grandest Great Adventure: Yellowstone

My senses are raw after four days in Yellowstone and a fifth cruising through Grand Teton National Park.  The area is so immense, the landscape so magnificent, and the beauty of every feature from rivers, lakes, mountains, and springs is overwhelming to me. 

We arrived in Yellowstone along with the Siesta Adventure Team with Regina in tow.  We drove over 50 miles from the West Yellowstone entrance into the park to our campground at Grant Village where we were prepared to dry camp for several days.  For newbies to the camping world, “dry camping” means that all glamping bets are off.  You don’t have access to any water, sewer, or electricity.  We brought one solar panel with us along with a small generator that could boost our batteries during generator hours from 8am to 8pm.  We filled up the freshwater tank on our camper on arrival and prepared to be good stewards of our water usage for the next several days. 

The Minnie Winnie at Grand Village Campground

The campground was completely forested and situated on the edge of a lake inside Yellowstone.  Nearby were a couple of camp stores, a visitor’s center, a gas station and laundry facilities.  We were hoping to see critters during our stay, but we were subjected only to squirrels and chipmunks other than the weasel (?) sighting by Vicki on day 4.  We haven’t yet confirmed that it was a weasel, but it was a long animal with a squirrel in its mouth.  Since the weasel seems to me to be a menacing little creature, I’m going to stick with it. 

The guidebooks cover all the incredible features of Yellowstone.   I can’t do it any more justice than they do.  As Vicki said during one part of our adventure, “I have run out of adjectives.”  We saw the Grand Prismatic Lake, the Hayden Valley, Old Faithful, the Biscuit Basin, the waterfall at Artist Point, Paintpots, the Mud Volcano, the grand arch over the North Entrance, Mammoth Springs, and more.  We encountered a herd of bison along with elk and bighorn sheep.  Much to our extreme dismay, we didn’t ever see a bear or a moose.  The Husband said finding a bear was much like finding love: you only find one when you aren’t expecting it. 

The Husband at The Biscuits

This is the view from the boardwalk at the Mud Volcano area

The Wife at Mammoth Springs. Hot and tired.

We learned this is called “parkitecture.” The Old Faithful Lodge.

The overlook at Grand Prismatic

I can’t even remember where this was, but the picture doesn’t do the colors justice.

Overlook at Grand Prismatic

“For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.” Thank you, Teddy Roosevelt.

Gibbon Falls at Yellowstone

Something beautiful.

The whole underbelly of Yellowstone is basically getting ready to blow. No worries, people.

The Wife somewhere in Yellowstone

Dragons Mouth Spring. There were a lot of rumbling sounds coming from that cave. Maybe that’s where the bears were!

Random Yellowstone Lake. Did I mention there is beauty EVERYWHERE?

Again, the magnificence of Artist Point is not captured here. It just isn’t.

I’m going to cover all the things the guidebooks DON’T cover. 

• Turnouts.  Everywhere in Yellowstone, there are signs essentially saying, “Hey, we love that you’re driving around seeing the sights.  However, if you’re a slowpoke, use these handy little sections on the side of the road to let other people pass by you.”  No one uses them.  No one.  No one thinks they’re the slow driver.  And Yellowstone is BIG.  ENORMOUS.  If you’re trying to see everything there is to see in the park in a few days, you must hustle at times.  The Grand Loop itself is 142 miles.  142 MILES.  But it doesn’t matter how many of these little pullouts there are.  People are just going to plod along at their snail-like pace, waiting for a bear to shuffle out of the woods.  Don’t get me wrong:  I was enjoying the sights, too.  But, people, come on.  Use the turnouts.
• Food. The guidebooks tell you where you can find food, but I’m here to give you a hint:  pack your own.  Food at Yellowstone is expensive and…meh.  It reminds me of the fare at amusement parks.  Just trust me and pack your own sandwiches.  Give your hard-earned money to the park in other ways.  Then you won’t have to wait in the atrocious lines and eat the mediocre food.  Lesson learned by our Adventure Teams.
• Drink it in. There are a lot of people at Yellowstone rushing from one tremendous place to another.  Parking was sometimes an issue and bathrooms were scarce.  I can see how one could easily become irritable trying to check off attractions one after another. However, I cannot even tell you how many times I was moved to tears at the beauty of this park.  There were harried people there, but there were also people who were much like we were:  standing stock still in awe at the magnificence of it all.  We started joking after only a day in the park, “Oh, yeah, another beautiful vista.  Oh, look!  Another crappy river running through an incredible valley. Blah, blah, blah.”  Everywhere we looked there were wonders to behold.  If you visit this park, take a minute, and let yourself be moved.  Let the rushing crowds fade into white noise behind you and use all your senses to feel the power and beauty of this place.
• Bears.  I just don’t believe they exist here.  I just wanted to give them a hug, but they made themselves scarce.  Stupid bears.
• Moose. See above. 
• Layers. The mornings were COLD on the cusp of September…28 degrees cold one morning.  Since we were dry camping, we were trying to conserve power and set our thermostat in the camper for 50 degrees so we wouldn’t freeze our patooties off in the morning.  I usually started with a long-sleeved t-shirt, another shirt and a jacket in the morning.  By afternoon with temperatures in the 60s and 70s while hiking, I was in shorts.   
• Time your visit. I’ll have to say, the luxury of being able to visit the park while most kids are in school was spectacular.  The crowds were smaller, and the weather was amazing.  We hit the park at the perfect time with the one exception of the smoke from the California wildfires clouding our views on most days.  But, California is probably going to burn most summers, so there isn’t much to be done about that.

After four days in Yellowstone, we hit the road for our next stop:  Grand Tetons National Park and Jackson, Wyoming.  To be frank, the Grand Tetons were VERY smoky due to the wildfires.  It was like approaching an artist’s backdrop that wasn’t quite complete.  Or maybe like the Truman Show.  The Tetons stood off in the distance in a shroud of hazy smoke.   We stopped only for Jenny Lake.  It was incredibly crowded there and, since we were still essentially overwhelmed by our experiences at Yellowstone, we beat a hasty retreat out of the park to Jackson, just a few miles south. 

Jenny Lake at Grand Teton National Park

Our campground was just west of Teton Village, so we parked there and both Adventure Teams hopped into the truck for a quick trip for dinner into the Jackson Hole area which we quickly dubbed Gatlinburg of the West.  Jackson Hole was loaded up with ways to spend money on what many of us in marketing call “trinkets and trash.”  Since the area is also home-away-from-home to the wealthy and famous, there were numerous galleries in the area.  No matter:  Vicki and I still had our picture taken with the stuffed buffalo outside one of the overpriced shops. 

We found some incredible statues outside one gallery, including a statue of one of my sheroes, Amelia Earhart.  They quoted Amelia on the sign on the bench.  It reads: “Everyone has oceans to fly, if they have the heart to do it.  Is it reckless? Maybe.  But what do dreams know of boundaries?”  What indeed?   

The Wife loves this statue and the quote on the bench.

Siesta Adventure Team under the elk antlers in Jackson, WY

The Siesta Adventure Team at dinner in Jackson

We had a decent meal and a few glasses of locally brewed beers there, picked up a few souvenirs and headed back to our campsite.

Campsites can be tough to find in Jackson and the one we stayed in was the most expensive of our entire trip.  It was OK, but probably not worth the high price tag.  We were told that moose sometimes wander through the campground, which would have completely made the price worth it.  However, once again, there were NO MOOSE TO BE FOUND.  (So many lies…)

Sure. We saw a moose. Sure, we did.

We’re currently driving through Wyoming on our way to Cheyenne, the first stop on our trip homeward.  We’re passing through vast barren swaths of land dotted with sagebrush and lined with fences.   There are a few scattered dirt roads here and there seemingly leading to nowhere.  I’m not quite sure what the industry is out here that sustains life, but I’m sure that I’ll be Googling a lot now that we’re getting some 4G service here and there. 

Lots…and lots…of sagebrush as far as the eye can see.

Minnie Winnie Adventure Team out until the next installment.