This morning began, for me, exactly when morning technically starts - at midnight. Finally back on the Interstate after the endless expanse of Oregon on two lane roads, I began driving through Idaho at 12:30am. After a very uneventful 2 hours, Keegan took the wheel at 2:30 at a rest area in the exact middle of nowhere (or maybe it was the centroid of nowhere). The next time I became conscious again, we were driving through eastern Idaho near Yellowstone. It was a land that appeared completely frozen, with all of the trees covered in a layer of snow. It looked almost dreamlike and glassy in the predawn light. By a mistake in navigation, we ended up taking a rather circuitous route to the Western Entrance of Yellowstone, though the incredible scenery made this a somewhat happy mistake. We drove through snow covered mountains and around a frigid lake, all made beautiful by the first light of dawn tinting the sky.
Finally, we arrived at Yellowstone around 7 a.m. on road covered in a layer of snow and ice. Fortunately, the slippery covering did nothing to stop Rastro, and we had little trouble reaching Madison Campground, located about 15 miles from the west entrance. We even saw some elk along the way. Since we had driven through the night and the campground office was not open yet (in fact there was absolutely no one around), we decided it would be wonderfully expedient to nap for a while in front of the office. We woke up to find things beginning to thaw out and the campground beginning to come alive. We got our site and set up camp like usual on top of the couple remaining
inches of snow, prepared breakfast (oatmeal), and feasted. After we were satisfactorily settled in, we decided to do a little exploring.
Our plan for the day had been to visit Old Faithful and the other geysers around it (fortunately the roads were open for us to get there), so we drove out to Old Faithful and arrived just in time for it to give us a good show. After that we decided to check out the Old Faithful Inn, which turned out to be awesome. The Inn is quite old and almost completely made from logs, not to mention it has a tree house built in the rafters which makes it pretty much the coolest Inn on earth. It was so cool, in fact, that our quick little exploration turned into a couple hours long, including lunch at the Inn's dining room. After so many days of camp cooking with a little fast food thrown in, sitting down at a restaurant to eat was like an incredible luxury. The food was quite good and not that expensive, and soon we were all quite satisfied and ready to take a good long nap.
To Keegan's dismay, however, we couldn't really nap in the Inn's lobby. So, before we could go back to camp and nap, we had to see more geysers, as we were in the area with the largest concentration of hydrothermal features on Earth. We braved the snow and cold wind to walk a loop that led us through quite a few geysers of various shapes, sizes, and eruption behaviors, along with several hot springs. Besides water violently shooting up in the air - which is obviously the coolest thing that hydrothermal features do - the next coolest thing is the coloration that the hot water produces around the hot springs, from bright blues to vibrant oranges and yellows.
Along the way, we also got to see two marmots tussling. As every tourist does when they see wildlife, we immediately pulled out our camera and attached the fancy telephoto zoom lens. At least, we thought it was fancy, until the guy next to us pulled out his massive 2 foot long fifty million X zoom lens. Afterwards, we headed back to camp - with a stop to see the very entertaining mud pots - and, being the exciting folk that we are, we all went to sleep for a good long well needed nap. Upon waking, we made dinner - or at least we attempted to make beef stew in our dutch oven. Unfortunately, our charcoal didn't seem to produce heat long enough to make our potatoes soften up, so in the end we just put the dutch oven on the stove and simmered it for a while, eventually ending up with some pretty good stew.
During the evening we also made friends with the group next to us (a group of 15 Indians who had never camped before) as it started to snow and they needed the shelter of our Easy-up. At last, being extremely tired from the previous night with little sleep, we got into our tent and wonderfully warm sleeping bags and slept - for a LONG time. It was the most glorious thing we did all day.
Finally feeling rested,
Dan (and Keegan)
Finally, we arrived at Yellowstone around 7 a.m. on road covered in a layer of snow and ice. Fortunately, the slippery covering did nothing to stop Rastro, and we had little trouble reaching Madison Campground, located about 15 miles from the west entrance. We even saw some elk along the way. Since we had driven through the night and the campground office was not open yet (in fact there was absolutely no one around), we decided it would be wonderfully expedient to nap for a while in front of the office. We woke up to find things beginning to thaw out and the campground beginning to come alive. We got our site and set up camp like usual on top of the couple remaining inches of snow, prepared breakfast (oatmeal), and feasted. After we were satisfactorily settled in, we decided to do a little exploring.
Our plan for the day had been to visit Old Faithful and the other geysers around it (fortunately the roads were open for us to get there), so we drove out to Old Faithful and arrived just in time for it to give us a good show. After that we decided to check out the Old Faithful Inn, which turned out to be awesome. The Inn is quite old and almost completely made from logs, not to mention it has a tree house built in the rafters which makes it pretty much the coolest Inn on earth. It was so cool, in fact, that our quick little exploration turned into a couple hours long, including lunch at the Inn's dining room. After so many days of camp cooking with a little fast food thrown in, sitting down at a restaurant to eat was like an incredible luxury. The food was quite good and not that expensive, and soon we were all quite satisfied and ready to take a good long nap.
To Keegan's dismay, however, we couldn't really nap in the Inn's lobby. So, before we could go back to camp and nap, we had to see more geysers, as we were in the area with the largest concentration of hydrothermal features on Earth. We braved the snow and cold wind to walk a loop that led us through quite a few geysers of various shapes, sizes, and eruption behaviors, along with several hot springs. Besides water violently shooting up in the air - which is obviously the coolest thing that hydrothermal features do - the next coolest thing is the coloration that the hot water produces around the hot springs, from bright blues to vibrant oranges and yellows.
Along the way, we also got to see two marmots tussling. As every tourist does when they see wildlife, we immediately pulled out our camera and attached the fancy telephoto zoom lens. At least, we thought it was fancy, until the guy next to us pulled out his massive 2 foot long fifty million X zoom lens. Afterwards, we headed back to camp - with a stop to see the very entertaining mud pots - and, being the exciting folk that we are, we all went to sleep for a good long well needed nap. Upon waking, we made dinner - or at least we attempted to make beef stew in our dutch oven. Unfortunately, our charcoal didn't seem to produce heat long enough to make our potatoes soften up, so in the end we just put the dutch oven on the stove and simmered it for a while, eventually ending up with some pretty good stew.
During the evening we also made friends with the group next to us (a group of 15 Indians who had never camped before) as it started to snow and they needed the shelter of our Easy-up. At last, being extremely tired from the previous night with little sleep, we got into our tent and wonderfully warm sleeping bags and slept - for a LONG time. It was the most glorious thing we did all day.
Finally feeling rested,
Dan (and Keegan)
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