Yellowstone: Part One

We flew out of DC on Tuesday morning to head off to Yellowstone. A great big THANK YOU goes out to Melissa, TJ and Leo for taking us to the airport. I should pause a moment to let that image sink in to anyone’s head who was not there to witness the ride to the airport….Melissa, TJ, Ace, Myself and Leo….plus luggage for Ace and I for the week….and Melissa and TJ had some things because they’d spent the night at our house the night before….in Melissa’s little car headed to DC in the HOV lane. Yes, people did point and laugh.

We flew through Denver where I got to visit my first ever USO. At the USO Andrew challenged me to a game of foosball. I won’t say who won. I will say a victory dance was danced. I’ll let you decide who is more likely to do a victory dance in the middle of the USO.

The flight from DC to Denver was very enjoyable. The flight from Denver to Billings, MT was the exact opposite. Neither Kennedy nor I were impressed with the amount of turbulence we encountered. We were especially unimpressed with the heart-stopping drops the plane seemed determined to do. That being said, we arrived safe and sound and my parents were waiting for us. They’d traveled out west a few days prior to visit friends and were kind enough to pick us up at the airport.

We loaded all of our things into our black GMC rental Yukon with black interior (Yes, I did feel like I was a member of the CIA traveling in this vehicle.) and headed off for the park.

It became clear very early on that our car was to be divided into two distinct sections. There was the left side of the car, inhabited by my Dad and I that was the observation team.

Dad did the driving and looking. I did the propping up my feet and animal spotting.

Then what in the world was the other side of the car doing? They were the hard core research team. There were more books and maps between my Mom and Andrew than could comfortably be spread out on their laps. And I just DARE you to ask them a question. They’d both head into the stack of books so fast to find the answer that papers would fly. Papercuts were, in fact, a serious job hazard for the right side of the car.

Shortly after leaving the airport, we were able to get onto a very scenic drive called the Beartooth Highway. This was where our real adventure began. We were driving along side the edge of cliffs, gaining altitude like crazy and there were not always guardrails standing between our CIA mobile and the edge. I must admit that the pictures are a little lacking from this particular part of our trip, as the resident picture taker was feeling quite nauseous during the drive. I did manage to get a few gorgeous shots of what we were seeing. And yes, that is snow.

And I got this cute picture of my parents too:

Clearly you can see from Mom’s hair that the wind was blowing quite nicely up on top of the mountains where we were driving. Interestingly enough, Dad seems to be having no trouble keeping his hair out of his face. :-)

From the Beartooth Highway we entered Yellowstone National Park and my dreams about seeing wildlife immediately started coming true! We saw so much wildlife while we were in the park that I’m devoting Part Two of the Yellowstone trip entirely to the animals we spotted along the way. But I must make it clear from the very beginning that bison are EVERYWHERE inside the park. EVERYWHERE. I didn’t truly understand that yet, so when we spotted our first one I went NUTS taking pictures of him/her…how do you tell from a safe distance? Clearly I should have asked the research team….

We stayed for our first few nights in the park at Old Faithful Snow Lodge.

It was wonderful and (as if the name didn’t give it away) within a very short walk of Old Faithful. We got to see it go off a couple of different times.

What I don’t think I could truly grasp until I saw it myself was just how many geysers there are in the area. Everywhere you see steam in this picture is some source of water escaping the ground, at varying degrees of temperature and stench. Yes, I said stench and I meant it. The smell of sulfur is quite prominent at some of these places…

We spent a great deal of time exploring and hiking to see all of the different geysers and hot springs in the area. Here are just a couple of highlights:

There was the little geyser that just barely sputters water from the ground…and Andrew’s best impression of the sputterer.

There was Morning Glory Pool.

And Grotto Geyser (which looks way cooler in person than this picture is illustrating…)

Occasionally, along our hikes we had to stop and take a rest or I would get this look…

It says, “Really? You want to keep going? Have you seen the altitude? Have you seen how big this baby is getting?”

So everyone would be kind and sit and take in the scenery for a few minutes.

Then we’d all jump back up (okay, Andrew would jump, the rest of us got up…) and head down another path to see more spectacular sights. Oh the glorious waterfalls….

A story on the last waterfall picture here….notice that Andrew is in workout gear in this picture. Our research team looked up the trail down to this lookout spot in our guidebooks. It said that the trail was “strenuous” and required walking down 328 stairs to this spot which on the way back up was more likely to feel like 2,000. So I asked Andrew if he’d like to take the camera and get his workout in for the day. He got bonus points for bringing back a picture of him with the waterfall. Yours truly and her parents wandered around at the top of the mountain. For the record, the book said that it would take the average person about an hour to hike down to the falls and back up again…Andrew was back in about 25 minutes. More bonus points.

And just to wrap up this part one post (I know…can you believe you’ve read all this and I still plan to post more about our trip?!) A few cute pictures of the Yellowstone gang.

Clearly this is an excellent picture of Andrew and Kennedy. I’m hiding under that cute pink hat my mom bought at the rodeo in Cody, WY before we arrived.

One of my favorite things about my Dad on vacation: To take a picture, he always turns his hat around backwards so he can see. I just think it’s too cute.

Clearly, Mom thinks he’s cute too.

Documentation of our longstanding tradition of taking our own picture:

All four (five) of us at Yellowstone Lake:

And finally, a no boys allowed picture.

We spent our last few nights in the park staying at Canyon Lodge in a cute little cabin. Just outside the cabin you could see that bison frequently stopped by to visit…but alas they only got as close as down the street from us while we were staying there. Come to think of it, maybe that’s for the best…

And now I’ll leave you thinking about all that wonderful wildlife that’s to come in the next post….