Bubbling Masses and Melting Campers (July 28-29)

Day two at Yellowstone. After a restless night, I climbed out of the tent to see that after we’d gone to bed, the family from Japan had returned. They must have figured they could get a hotel room nearby, and I can only assume that 2/3 of the campers at the park were chasing down the same dream. With nowhere to stay, they had come back late in the cold, pouring rain, and set their tent up again. Kudos to them for making it through the night. They didn’t even yell at each other in the night or in the morning.

The rain stopped, but the skies were grey. Our rather morose group of campers slowly got going (apparently we are not good at getting an early start on the day). It’s ironic that it took us so long to get started, since most of us really had not slept much and were mostly awake by 6 am! We decided that today was a good day to eat at the diner inside the general store near our campground. Having a friendly server set down a plate of hot scrambled eggs, hash browns, bacon and toast worked a small miracle in my soul.

We gathered our courage and our children and packed into vehicles to go see Old Faithful. We started north of the famous geyser, stopping at different geyser basins and mudpots and waterfalls along the way. After a while you start to realize that a good portion of the enormous park is a bubbling, primordial mass, burping and belching gases from the center of the earth. I know in my head that underneath us all lies a layer of hot magma, but that reality hits home a bit more when you can see it happening all around you. Yellowstone is full of fascinating variations on that theme. The sights are a bit more appreciated than the smell that comes with them, though, as sulfur abounds!

 
 

 

 

By the end of the day, we had doubled our wardrobes with assorted Yellowstone sweatshirts, sweatpants, socks and gloves. Luckily we were saving a lot of money on ice for our coolers, because it sure wasn’t melting.

This night seemed a bit more promising, as there was no rain to contend with. But the clear skies ushered in the cold front, and we shivered in our sleeping bags as the temps got down to the mid 20s!

All that Yellowstone souvenir clothing was put to good use.

The thing about camping in the cold is that you go to bed pretty early because you just can’t stand being out in the cold anymore. But in your sleeping bag, you are still cold, and you don’t sleep very well, and then you wake up at 6 am and really just don’t know what to do with yourself anymore.

Well, there is a good solution to this at Yellowstone. Animals are most active in the early morning and early evening. So Brian and I took whoever was up at 6 on a sort of safari, driving through the Hayden Valley to see what we could see. At first, we couldn’t see much, because there was so much fog. We drove along the river, and the river was socked in.

Though the fog made it difficult to spot animals, it really is amazing to see a valley open up before your eyes, with a river running through it and big swaths of fog hovering over the water. We did get a glimpse of a pelican, along with innumerable geese and ducks, floating on the river under the cloud of fog. The grass was silver with frost, and the mountain peaks, when we could see them, had a rare layer of snow in July.

After a while we came up to a spot where 8 or 10 cars were pulled over in a random parking pattern. At Yellowstone you quickly come to recognize where wildlife has been spotted by the size of the traffic jam it creates. We joined the club and drew our car to the side of the road, and we were delighted to see a large bear (still debating if it was a grizzly or a black bear) and two smaller cubs. Further down the line we ran into a herd of buffalo.

The main event of the morning, however, was still to come. We had emerged from our tents cold, smelling of damp and campfire, and shivering under 3 layers of clothing. From there we’d gotten into a warm van to drive around for a while, and the car was a welcome respite from the cold. But from the car we went straight to the shower building, and we all filed into showers where we rinsed the smell of smoke from our hair and our toes started to regain feeling in the hot water.

At Yellowstone’s Canyon Campground, you get a certain number of free showers, I think 2 per day, and you pay for the rest of them. It’s not cheap, close to $4 per shower. But there are plenty of showers, so there’s not much wait, and there is no time limit. You don’t get your allotted 4 minutes before you are kicked out or pay more. You can stand and come back to life for as long as it takes.

After we’d wasted a bit more of the earth’s water resources than was strictly necessary for cleanliness, we felt human again.

Then we packed up our lunches, packed into the vans and went to hike in the quickly warming sunshine. We hiked a path that took us through a meadow full of wildflowers, then on past a few thermal sites—mudpots and fumaroles that offered that same other-worldly feel as the geyser basins—past a couple of lakes, and then on to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. For the rest of the hike we got closer and closer to the namesake falls, and the different colors and shapes of the rock canyon walls earned their name, Artist’s Point. Breathtaking views every step of the way.

We had another fire, spent lots of time warming up first front and then the backside, but eventually the fire burns out. Bedtime still brought a certain amount of dread, but it wasn’t quite the same as what we’d been experiencing previous nights.