wow, that was too short a trip
Sep. 25th, 2006 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmegaeraBut, boy, was it fun. I got to show M around Charley's park (she claimed she wasn't getting tired of my "and Charley did this here, and Charley did that there" spiel, so I kept doing it...), and I got to do two things I'd never done before:
1) I got to see Giant Geyser go off! Well, the last 20 minutes of an hour and a half eruption, anyway [g]. So I missed the 200 foot part, but I still got to see it go up at least 50 feet, which was pretty darned incredible, considering that Giant is not your standard regularly-predictable geyser. I was just darned lucky.
and
2) We got to see wolves!!! M and I drove out to the Lamar Valley our last evening in the park just hoping to see something, and *I* spotted them, gallivanting across the valley. Seriously gallivanting. They looked like big dogs just running around and bouncing and playing with each other. It was so nifty. Unfortunately, even with the zoom on my digital camera, they looked like dots. M had a telephoto on her film camera, so we're hoping that her pictures come out better.
The rest of the trip was pretty darned wonderful, too. We arrived shortly after noon on Thursday, and spent the afternoon dawdling our way down from the west entrance to Old Faithful (Fountain Paint Pots, Grand Prismatic Spring, etc.). We saw an osprey catch a fish in the Firehole River at Grand Prismatic, and caught an eruption of Old Faithful just after we checked into our cabin.
Friday I spent mostly out in the Upper Geyser Basin. M spent the morning with me, but she unfortunately caught a cold on the plane flying out to Seattle, so she wasn't feeling all that good by the afternoon, and stayed in the cabin to rest once it started to rain. Fortunately, it was a beautiful morning before she gave out on me, and we saw Grand and Daisy. After lunch I went back out and that was when I caught the tail end of Giant (in the rain [g]), as well as another eruption of Grand.
Saturday it snowed. Very lightly, but M still wasn't feeling up to much, so I went out and walked down the basin -- caught Grand going off from a distance, but the boardwalks were covered in ice and people were slipping around, so I decided not to try to get closer. So I dodged bison down on the paved trail to Riverside, and waited an hour before it finally went off. Then I came back to get M and we went to the Old Faithful Inn and took the docent tour, then M went back to the cabin and I went to wait to watch Grand go off one more time. Waited almost three hours in the cold and wet and decided to give in since I'd seen it three times this trip already [g], and it was getting late.
Sunday we woke to snow on rooftops and grass, but not on the roadways, thank goodness, and took the long way to Mammoth, over the Continental Divide to Lake Yellowstone (where we saw pelicans) and Fishing Bridge (where we stopped at the museum, or the dead zoo as they call such installations in Ireland) and Canyon, where we ate lunch at the only place still open that late in the season (the grill) and strolled out to the viewpoints. Then over Dunraven Pass, where M saw a bear, and around by Tower and on to Mammoth Hot Springs, where we checked into our cabin.
Our one full day at Mammoth, I walked the boardwalks and then we ate our one fancy meal in the park (not for lack of trying for more) at the hotel, and drove down to Norris, then came back and lazed around till it got close enough to dusk to head out to the Lamar Valley to look for critters.
We hadn't seen herds of bison up till then, and I had been wondering where they'd all hidden. We found out that night. Bison were *everywhere* in the Lamar Valley. Cows and calves and everything. The elk were all at Mammoth, where they bugled all night (fortunately, our cabin was far enough away that this didn't keep us awake all night the way it did when I stayed at the hotel a few years ago -- I like elk bugling as much as the next person, but not at three a.m. directly under my window). Anyway, we stopped at a pullout where there were a bunch of people with binoculars and scopes pointed at a spot across the valley where they swore there was a grizzly, and even though one of them let us look through his scope, darned if I could see anything. So we went on, and about two more miles down the road past the Yellowstone Institute, there they were. Wolves. And it wasn't even dusk yet. They were incredible. And we got all the way back to Mammoth before it even got dark.
The next morning we headed down to Gardiner and spent a couple of hours at the new Heritage Center, picking up a few more details for the book that I needed, and some photocopied 1878 maps for M to play with (she paints and draws).
Then [sigh] we headed home. I came down with M's cold the day we left, so it was a long drive home for both of us. But we made it.
And I'm already planning a Yellowstone/Worldcon in Denver trip for 2008 [g]. Why the heck not??? I'm going to need to do more research for the second book by then...
1) I got to see Giant Geyser go off! Well, the last 20 minutes of an hour and a half eruption, anyway [g]. So I missed the 200 foot part, but I still got to see it go up at least 50 feet, which was pretty darned incredible, considering that Giant is not your standard regularly-predictable geyser. I was just darned lucky.
and
2) We got to see wolves!!! M and I drove out to the Lamar Valley our last evening in the park just hoping to see something, and *I* spotted them, gallivanting across the valley. Seriously gallivanting. They looked like big dogs just running around and bouncing and playing with each other. It was so nifty. Unfortunately, even with the zoom on my digital camera, they looked like dots. M had a telephoto on her film camera, so we're hoping that her pictures come out better.
The rest of the trip was pretty darned wonderful, too. We arrived shortly after noon on Thursday, and spent the afternoon dawdling our way down from the west entrance to Old Faithful (Fountain Paint Pots, Grand Prismatic Spring, etc.). We saw an osprey catch a fish in the Firehole River at Grand Prismatic, and caught an eruption of Old Faithful just after we checked into our cabin.
Friday I spent mostly out in the Upper Geyser Basin. M spent the morning with me, but she unfortunately caught a cold on the plane flying out to Seattle, so she wasn't feeling all that good by the afternoon, and stayed in the cabin to rest once it started to rain. Fortunately, it was a beautiful morning before she gave out on me, and we saw Grand and Daisy. After lunch I went back out and that was when I caught the tail end of Giant (in the rain [g]), as well as another eruption of Grand.
Saturday it snowed. Very lightly, but M still wasn't feeling up to much, so I went out and walked down the basin -- caught Grand going off from a distance, but the boardwalks were covered in ice and people were slipping around, so I decided not to try to get closer. So I dodged bison down on the paved trail to Riverside, and waited an hour before it finally went off. Then I came back to get M and we went to the Old Faithful Inn and took the docent tour, then M went back to the cabin and I went to wait to watch Grand go off one more time. Waited almost three hours in the cold and wet and decided to give in since I'd seen it three times this trip already [g], and it was getting late.
Sunday we woke to snow on rooftops and grass, but not on the roadways, thank goodness, and took the long way to Mammoth, over the Continental Divide to Lake Yellowstone (where we saw pelicans) and Fishing Bridge (where we stopped at the museum, or the dead zoo as they call such installations in Ireland) and Canyon, where we ate lunch at the only place still open that late in the season (the grill) and strolled out to the viewpoints. Then over Dunraven Pass, where M saw a bear, and around by Tower and on to Mammoth Hot Springs, where we checked into our cabin.
Our one full day at Mammoth, I walked the boardwalks and then we ate our one fancy meal in the park (not for lack of trying for more) at the hotel, and drove down to Norris, then came back and lazed around till it got close enough to dusk to head out to the Lamar Valley to look for critters.
We hadn't seen herds of bison up till then, and I had been wondering where they'd all hidden. We found out that night. Bison were *everywhere* in the Lamar Valley. Cows and calves and everything. The elk were all at Mammoth, where they bugled all night (fortunately, our cabin was far enough away that this didn't keep us awake all night the way it did when I stayed at the hotel a few years ago -- I like elk bugling as much as the next person, but not at three a.m. directly under my window). Anyway, we stopped at a pullout where there were a bunch of people with binoculars and scopes pointed at a spot across the valley where they swore there was a grizzly, and even though one of them let us look through his scope, darned if I could see anything. So we went on, and about two more miles down the road past the Yellowstone Institute, there they were. Wolves. And it wasn't even dusk yet. They were incredible. And we got all the way back to Mammoth before it even got dark.
The next morning we headed down to Gardiner and spent a couple of hours at the new Heritage Center, picking up a few more details for the book that I needed, and some photocopied 1878 maps for M to play with (she paints and draws).
Then [sigh] we headed home. I came down with M's cold the day we left, so it was a long drive home for both of us. But we made it.
And I'm already planning a Yellowstone/Worldcon in Denver trip for 2008 [g]. Why the heck not??? I'm going to need to do more research for the second book by then...
