Yellowstone Part One.....

I had originally planned to drive form Boulder to Pinedale and camp at Fremont Lake but the road to the campground was snowed in. I would have been a scenic place to stay the night (see pic). Seeing no other places to stay I kept on trucking to Jackson Hole hoping to get another day of snowboarding in on Sunday. No such luck the ski resorts had closed the weekend before. All the ski areas out here are in the national forest so the resort operators have to lease the land from the Government. So when the lease is up so is ski season, snow or no snow. All the RV parks were closed for the winter forcing me to boondock it. I found a parking spot on a crowed street and hit the hay. I awoke the next morning to snow storm, which was not the kind of weather to cross Teton Pass in. Teton Pass is about 9,000 feet in elevation and has a 10% grade up and down. My provisions were running low so I found a grocery store and stocked up for the week. At the visitor center the helpful man at the counter suggested an alternate route to Yellowstone, which avoided the Teton pass and only added 40 miles to the trip. The journey through Wyoming and Idaho was as good as the trip through Kansas was bad. The roads were clear and the views were spectacular. I saw a moose and a couple of mountain goats before I even got to the park, which took about 3 hours. Once I reached the west entrance I still had 50 miles to the campground on the north end. That drive was awe-inspiring. The landscape was constantly changing from mountainous, to river basins, to high desert. My first wildlife sighting came as a group of Buffalo walked down the street right by my car….WOW!…(see pic). Next came antelope and big horn sheep. It took me over an hour to navigate to my destination because around every bend was one amazing natural wonder after another that I had to stop and admire plus the cars in front of me were gawking as well. The campsite was deserted so I had my pick of sites. After signing in and setting up camp I decided to take the rest of that day and the next to read up on Yellowstone and plan my course of action for the week. I also need to catch up on my blog. The first night was so very cold. I woke up with 4 inches of snow on the van. Needless to say I had to find another way to keep warm during the evenings. Snow was forecast for the rest of the week, so I purchased a gas heater. It is the catalytic kind so I can use it inside the van as long as I keep a window cracked. Tomorrow I am headed to see Old Faithful……….

I had all intentions of getting an early start this morning but I must have needed the sleep. I finally got to the Old Faithful visitor center around 2:30. It is amazing how big this place is. From my campground to Old Faithful is over 50 miles. Add to that the 35 mph speed limit and it took me 2 hours to get there. Along the way there were many wildlife sightings. As I walked into the visitor’s center the park ranger tells me if I hurry I can see Beehive geyser go off. So naturally I hustled over there to get a good spot. Beehive is named after the shape of the cone, which sits on top of it (see pic). While we were waiting a ranger gave us some history on Beehive, which evidently did not stick because I can’t remember any of it to pass on to you guys. It was very impressive, it reach a height of approximately 200 feet and lasted for almost 4 minutes. Old Faithful was slated to go off in about 30 minutes so I worked my way over there. The whole area has boardwalks for you to walk on so you don’t fall into the thermal features. These boardwalks were completely covered in 3 feet of snow while the ground around them was completely clear. The same ranger was there giving a talk about geysers. One interesting fact I remembered. There are only a 200 geysers in the world and 150 are in the Yellowstone geyser basin. Old Faithful went off exactly on time (I guess the call it Old Faithful for a reason). It was not as impressive as Beehive but still how many chances to you get to see a geyser. Its spray went about 150 feet and lasted for over 2 minutes. I got plenty of pictures. They can only predict the next time it will go off by the last one. If it last more then 2.5 minutes the next will be in 90 minutes plus of minus 10 minutes and if it last for less than 2 minutes the next on will be in 60 minutes plus or minus. After watching the show I walked around the area and shoot some pictures of the other thermals in the area. The rest of the basin was closed off because of the bears that were coming out of hibernation and in the area. This time of year here is very pretty with all the snow on the ground but is not the best time to visit the park because most of the attractions are closed or unreachable. Next stop will be the canyon, which they call “The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.” I hope it is not tourist hype……………..