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| The image of Yellowstone forever stuck in my head came from a Bing Wallpaper years ago. |
Years ago, logging on to Windows, Bing picked out a lock screen wallpaper that I have not forgotten. It showed a bright blue pool of water surrounded by the colors of the rainbow with fire blowing around the edges. It looked out of this World, and the image stuck in my head and carved out its own little corner in my hippocampus. Further investigation revealed this spectacular feature to be the Grand Prismatic Spring, arguably Yellowstone's most unique and celebrated feature, and that day about 8 years ago was when I subconsciously started planning America's favorite Summer Vacation.
Our travels through the other jewels in the National Parks System had only elevated the sense of anticipation we felt for this trip that was yet destined for some time in the future. The opportunity arrived in 2019, when we finally decided that our Memorial Day would be spent in Wyoming. For years, I had dreamt of the Grand Prismatic Spring, wowed at the towering Teton peaks in photography exhibitions, and been amazed by the Serengeti of America in the Lamar Valley. This was our chance to be there and see for ourselves if these images in my mind were a product of the Great American Marketing machinery or if there was substance to it.
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If you have only one shot at viewing the Tetons, and want the best picture out of the trip, head to Schwabacher Landing early in the Morning. P.S: Remember to go low when you get the picture. Very Low. Lower. |
Memorial Day is a great time of the year. It's late May and the fickle minded nature of the weather makes way for a more consistent Sunny experience, with the occasional rain shower keeping things fresh and interesting. Our previous Memorial Day sojourns had taken us to the Badlands & Custer in South Dakota, and we wanted to take our Wild West experience a notch higher with the trip to Wyoming. Up in the mountains, May always carries the risk of a late season blizzard, but it had the benefit of thin crowds that only start to pick up when Summer kicks in, and more importantly, increased observable wildlife activity from animals emerging from Hibernation, descending upon the Great Plains, foraging while the day temperatures are still relatively cool.
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While in Yellowstone-Grand Teton, chances are you will be in Bear Jams, and chances are that some of the bears you see will be young. Young bears are still fairly large like we found out when we encountered this family near the Pilgrim Creek region in Grand Teton. It is fascinating to learn that a lot of the bear moms like hanging out near the roads because that keeps them safe from Eternally Hangry Grizzly Dads who like killing cubs that ain't theirs. Something to do with establishing genetic supremacy. Getting rid of the grizzly obsession is crucial to enjoying the Park. We got over ours after the 15th bear in the first four days of trip, and once we got that out of the way, the natural beauty of the park was even more stunning! Before the trip, we really would've liked to see bears. By the end of the trip, we had seen so many (both black, and grizzly) that our focus shifted towards their more elusive competitors at the top of the food chain: The Gray Wolves. We didn't see any wolves on our trip. Guess we need to head back soon.... |
For months, we pondered and debated every last detail of the trip - where we would stay, how many days we would spend at each part of the park. You see, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is huge - large enough to be a State by itself. And as experienced roadtrippers, we knew only too well not to get caught in the trap of having one home base throughout our trip and drive around to the destinations - that simply doesn't work. Instead, we decided to break our 10 day trip into 3 days at Jackson Hole near the Tetons, which was the far south portion of our itinerary, 3 days in Cooke City, the eastern most part of Yellowstone and the Gateway to the Lamar Valley wildlife experience, and 3 more days in the central"8" Loop of the park, so we could easily access the Thermal features, and make multiple trips to the Grand Prismatic Spring. At the time we planned it, we did not know the park and driving distances too well, but in hindsight, our stay locations gave us the best shot at taking in all of Yellowstone-Grand Teton on a slow and relaxed schedule.
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Hot water sculpting layer upon layer of limestone with its own acidic carbonic acid solution is a spectacle worth seeing at the Mammoth Hot Springs area - as a side bonus, you are guaranteed the observation of elk at close quarters, present in large numbers in the parking lots and around the village. Even when they don't really care about you, you are obliged to move 6 feet or further away from them. They are biig, and can do significant damage without much effort. |
Our typical day on the trip went something like this. We woke up for the Sunrise, every single day and stayed up for Sunset. The dawn and dusk are when a lot of excitement happened in the park. The Golden hours of Sunlight made for great pictures, and wildlife was up and about. Around the time of our trip in May, the Sun typically rose at about 6 AM and set at about 9.15 PM. So maximizing our daylight hours meant we went to bed a little after 10 and woke up at 5 every morning. We caught up with sleep in peak Sun hours - about midday, after we had scraped bits and pieces for lunch.
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| As it turned out, there were more things to learn about the Grand Prismatic Spring before we could cross it off our bucket lists. In early spring,when the air temperature is still fairly cool, and the surface temperature of the hot water spring is significantly higher, a steady stream of condensation blows over the spring, making it hard to visualize the colors in all their glory for more than a couple seconds now and then. Oh, and you realize you can never personally view the spring from right up above as seen in the Bing Wallpaper....duh! Not unless you are in a helicopter that stays low while you admire the beauty. |
Lunch and Dinner were arguably our most difficult planning assignment. Food for grass eaters such as ourselves is hard enough in any non-urban American setting. Add to that the vastness, and remoteness of traveling through Yellowstone, and the problem compounds. On our very first day in the park, we realized, we wouldn't necessarily be able to drive to a restaurant or concession stand precisely when we wanted food - we went hungry for lunch that day. We would have to plan our meals in advance, and stock up on food whenever we found some, even if we didn't really need it at the time. This change in strategy meant, each time we were able to find a restaurant and fresh food, we would buy two more of whatever we ate to-go, so that we wouldn't go hungry if we found a grizzly or a wolf pack on our drive back on Lamar Valley. And trust me, that happened several times.
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| The Pros of traveling to Yellowstone in early-Spring - Exhibit A. Spring is shorthand for Baby Animal Season. This moose calf was likely days old when a traffic jam spotted it, and this was one among several young animals we encountered on the trip. Cons: Remember, baby elk and moose are staple diet for Grizzly families (who also tend to have really young babies this time of the year), and you cannot wish away everything you are about to see in the Wild. Not the kind of stuff you want to remember from vacations! |
Weather is the other element you've to be watchful of. Days before the trip, the forecast looked really discouraging with every day in the week we were going to spend at the park showing either rain or snow. The Park Cams on the NPS website that relay real time park conditions and traffic was almost always showing dense fog or wet roads. I even went as far as buying rain protective covers for my telephoto lens preparing to always be shooting in rain. Fortunately, the reality of the situation was not as bad. There were a couple days passing through the mountains when the snow did give us some anxious moments (there's not much shoulder on the roads on the Mt.Washburn pass). We could never make it down the spectacular Beartooth Highway due to heavy snow and landslide in that area. But for the most part, we could stay informed on the weather and prepared accordingly, and managed our expectations. We did enjoy bright blue skies, and sunny days during most of our trips. Clouds during Sunrise and Sunset actually helped the landscape look more dramatic!
Yellowstone is popular as America's first National Park. It's goal is to preserve the wilderness that once spanned the entire North American continent before the colonization and industrialization of the 19th & 20th centuries. Once away from the roads, on hikes at least a few miles away from the road, the feeling of isolation and having the whole World to yourself is real. It is not hard to find yourself the canopy of a large tree and a lush green meadow to lay upon for a little siesta, with scarcely other people to disturb you. Although, in that scenario, it would be wise to have your wife awake and on the lookout for any curious bears because they like the same exact thing.
America is proud of Yellowstone - it is often called "America's Best Idea" - and the ideas of preservation started at Yellowstone have been emulated through the rest of America, and the rest of the World. And yet, the scale of Yellowstone - the area of land owned and developed with road networks and infrastructure - is virtually unparalled. But the cost of creating this park was significant too. It is easy to forget the decades of Armed conflicts in the Yellowstone region, and the forcible eviction of the Native American tribes who called the vicinities of the Park home, and tied spiritual significance to the thermal features of the parks. A visitor to Yellowstone today does not encounter relics from the grim past when millions of bison were slaughtered for a multitude of reasons ranging from creating more grazing lands for cattle, to beating boredom on long train journeys on the Pacific Railroad. There is no other way of looking at it - Yellowstone was built on blood and tears.
The story of the park is captured in great detail in the book "Empire of Shadows" by George Black. Page after page, the book sums up the price nature and humanity paid so that two hundred years later, the people of the World could appreciate what nature was before the destructive forces of the Industrial Revolution.
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| When you are done enjoying the treasures Yellowstone has to offer, try to read more about the price Native Americans and Nature had to pay so we could appreciate the Wilderness centuries later. |
When we were planning our trip to Yellowstone, the years of pent-up excitement and anticipation often made us wonder if we had maybe built it up too much in our heads - surely, there was no way it could be as good as we were expecting it to be, and that we would likely be underwhelmed when we finally got there. We were pretty sure we would come back with pictures and memories, but that we would move on to our next trip and forget everything about this place when something cooler came along, like every other State and National Park we had been to.
It wasn't.
We knew exactly what we were going to be seeing, and we were still awed at everything we experienced during our 10 days in the area. After our trip to Yellowstone is when we started questioning our goal of giving every US State a chance, and getting to all 50 of them before we started to pick favorites. Yellowstone spoiled us, and has made it an involuntary compulsion for us to keep returning there for every vacation for the rest of our lives.
And I don't blame us. We are humans after all. When you can fall so much in love with something so familiar and accessible, and still gain a generous measure of excitement from it, why then would you ever go looking for anything new?
