A swing through Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park is one of those places I admit to being somewhat ambivalent about. It offers stunning beauty and natural wonders but also tremendous crowds and the sensation of being in a drive-thru wildlife attraction. On our way home from Glacier we stopped in the little town of West Yellowstone and had a couple of days to experience the best and worst that YNP has to offer. The weather was definitely showing the change of seasons with morning temps in the low 20's and made for some gorgeous morning views of the steam-shrouded geysers set against the backdrop of crystal clear Montana and Wyoming skies. Our first day in the park we cycled from West Yellowstone to Madison Junction and back and for most of the ride we were passing cars slowly creeping along the roadway. Not the most fun bike ride but still better than those stuck in their vehicles staring at a never ending stream of brake lights ahead of them. Still it was fun to pull into some of the turnouts along the Madison River and watch the early morning fly fishermen and women doing their thing. And on this day the fish were biting as we saw several trout  snap at the flies being cast their way.

Next day we got up even earlier and headed for the Old Faithful area. Most of the northern loop of the park was closed to traffic so we anticipated lots of crowds  but were pleasantly surprised to find easy parking and not-overwhelming numbers of folks flocking to see the park's most famous geyser erupt every 90 minutes or so. A lot of the geysers in the park seemed more active than I remember from our last visit and despite my ambivalence its hard not to be wowed when Nature puts on its geothermal show. 

Its also nice to stop in and visit the Old Faithful Inn though this trip we were not fortunate enough to stay there overnight. COVID precautions have toned down the experience inside the grand lobby considerably but gazing up at the magnificent wood ceiling so high above is still something to behold.  Gone is the ambiance of sitting in front of the roaring fireplace or listening to the live piano music lofting from the second floor but one can still mosey out to the upper outside deck and watch the geysers do their thing. The main dining room has switched to a buffet setup rather than the full service dining of years past but the food was very good and as always its fun to sit inside and look through the windows at the incredible scenery. 

Here's a short video of our Yellowstone stop. If you've been to YNP you'll likely recognize some of the locations and if you haven't been, hopefully it will whet your appetite to make a visit. From here we had one more stop to make before arriving home. We had spent a couple of weeks in the Tetons in July and were looking forward to a couple of more days there seeing what Fall was like.....

A glimpse of Fall in Glacier

 Our trip to Glacier this year was unique for us in one aspect: it was our first trip as a couple taken in the Fall. My wife is a teacher and is semi-retired but still teaching a couple of classes online. For her entire teaching career taking a trip in September or October was unthinkable as she had to be in the classroom. Now able to teach virtually freed her up to give a Fall trip a try.

Of course as a teacher she was blessed with summers off when school was not in session. Taking a summer trip isn't ideal because that's when the rest of the world is taking their summer vacations so we were really looking forward to our three weeks in Glacier National Park. I mentioned in my last blog how busy we found the Park to be and that was our biggest surprise. And it wasn't just other retirees either; there were lots of families with young children throughout the Park. One young lad we met talked about how he was up at 4:30 in the morning to sign in to his online classes back home in North Carolina. By noon he and his family were free to get out and enjoy the beauty and majesty that is Glacier. 

WIFI is still problematic in most areas of the Park. Even at the KOA campground where we were staying you could tell when everyone else was logging on because the KOA service basically shut down. To be safe we drove into Kalispell, the closest major town, and my wife paid to use a shared-office service that was able to guarantee high-speed internet capable of handling ZOOM calls. The folks there told us they had a busy summer with lots of teachers from around the country scrambling to be able to teach ZOOM school.

It was also colder than we anticipated and even in early September the high mountains were starting to see snow and it was getting close to freezing in the mornings when we ventured out. Not that big of a deal but holding a wet kayak paddle at 37 degrees isn't all that comfortable and we didn't want to break out the winter neoprene gloves quite yet. Daytime highs were in the 60's and low 70's which was very pleasant but it was definitely sweatshirt kind of weather most of the time. The KOA in West Glacier features two pools, one for families and the other for adults only but I don't think they were heated. We jumped in a couple of times  but then promptly headed for the definitely heated hot tubs. This particular KOA is the number one-rated KOA in the country and it is an amazing Resort for the RV set. Pools, a couple of on-site restaurants, the aforementioned pools and hot tubs, weekend entertainment, are just a couple of the amenities the campground offers. We were actually staying at this KOA years ago when it went up for sale and my wife and I had pipe dreams of becoming campground owners. The price was around a $million and was considerably out of our range way back then. The Resort just sold again in the last year or so and from what we were told the price was in the tens of millions. If you get the chance to stay at the West Glacier KOA we'd highly recommend it and like many campgrounds also offers camping cabins and even more upscale houses capable of hosting large families or groups. 

The other major surprise other than the crowds was how much of the Park was already closed - most of the eastern side (Many Glacier, East Glacier, Swiftcurrent) were already shut down for the season by the time we got there in early September. We did, after more than 30 years of coming to Glacier, finally ride one of the famous Red Buses that have been taking tourists over the Going To The Sun Road since the 1930's. You'll see what that was like in the video below. We lucked out in having a beautiful clear (though cold) day for our trip and our driver, Rich, has been driving Red Buses for thirty-plus years and was a wealth of information into the Park's early days.

You'll see in the video that we were able to get out on the water a couple of times and the perspective from a kayak or paddleboard is completely different from the land-bound. And of course, for those who know me, any trip like this would be lacking without putting two wheels to some backcountry roads.

When our time was up in Glacier we headed down to West Yellowstone where we spent a couple of days and watched the temps dip down into the low 20's as we took our morning strolls. From Yellowstone we dropped back down to the Tetons where we stayed once more at the Gros Ventre campground which is where we stayed in July. I'll be putting up short videos about Yellowstone and the Tetons and the Teton one will be an interesting contrast to the video I shared in the summer. The Gros Ventre campground is perhaps our favorite campground in the U.S. and is a great place to see wildlife (moose and bear) casually wandering through the campsites. 

We've been back in Denver for about a week now and its good to be home. But make no mistake, the road that beckons is already whispering in my ear. Not sure where that road will take us, but I'm looking forward to wherever it leads. See you out there!

Of Earthquakes and Lakes

Our trip home from Glacier National Park intentionally took a meandering route through Big Sky Montana to West Yellowstone. It's a pretty drive as Montana, at least in the bright sun, is a beautiful State. Part of the route is along Highway 287 that takes you along the Madison River that starts in Yellowstone National Park and eventually flows into the Missouri. If you're a fisherperson, specifically a fly-fisherperson, this stretch of the Madison must come close to fishing heaven. 

We've driven this route before and were aware that we'd be going past a place called Earthquake Lake. Not having had time to really explore the area in the past we made a conscious decision this time to stop and see what this part of southeast Montana was all about. 

Late at night on August 17, 1959 the Yellowstone region experienced an earthquake. Not that unusual for the ground to move in this part of the country as Yellowstone is one of the more seismically active areas in the U.S. experiencing as many as 3,000 earthquakes a year. Most of those go unfelt but the one on August 17th definitely woke people up. It registered 7.5 on the Richter scale and occurred just before midnight and caused a massive landslide of more than 80 million tons that moved at more than 100 mph in the area just northwest of Hebgen Lake. The slide roared across the Madison River blocking it and forming a new lake that started to fill at the rate of 9 feet per day. Within a couple of weeks the new lake was five miles long and 190 feet deep. Cabins and cars were swept away. Twenty-eight men, women, and children lost their lives. A camping lodge near the river quickly evacuated their guests to higher ground (now called Refuge Point) in the middle of the night where they experienced aftershocks and as daylight broke were able to see the massive scar left by the slide in the near distance. Rocks and debris were still rolling down the hillside.

Flying by at 60 mph most of today's travelers have little awareness of the horror of that night. The earthquake also destroyed the highway cutting the survivors off and necessitating helicopters to rescue the injured the next day. Looking at the lake now one might think it looks a little strange with lots of dead trees poking out of the water but the surrounding area doesn't easily paint a picture of what happened 62 years ago. This trip we took the better part of a day exploring Earthquake Lake first by kayak and then on foot hiking the trail from Refuge Point as well as walking the Ghost Village road to the head of the lake. As my wife was walking the road she stopped to take a picture when a car stopped by and a gentleman rolled down the window. Turned out he was a survivor of the earthquake and had been sleeping in the cabin my wife was taking a picture of. Joe was kind enough to spend a couple of moments sharing insights into what happened that night so long ago. He was 15 at the time. Now living in Fort Collins, Colorado he indicated he still makes a trip back almost every year. 

There is an unmistakably eerie feeling to being out on the lake but at the same time the scenic beauty of this area takes your breath away. Here's a short video of our exploration.