Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Chapter 14: We Go North

7:00a. Madison Campground

The temperature dropped into the 30s last night. We all bundled up into our long johns and Cold Gear and extra sweat pants and made in through the night more-or-less OK.

There's a rumor that one family member took advantage of an empty Gatorade bottle to avoid night-time trips to the latrine, but that cannot be confirmed.

9:00a. West Yellowstone, Montana

We learned two things in the last fourteen hours

One: we are less than twelve miles from a town called "West Yellowstone"

Two: there is a camera store in West Yellowstone.

You may remember that my wife's trusty camera stopped working during yesterday's trip to Lake Yellowstone. Although my wife and I both have smartphones, the cameras are way too rudimentary for our needs. How is my wife supposed to build an attractive scrapbook or Facebook album with lousy smartphone pics? So we've come to West Yellowstone to see if we can have the camera fixed.

West Yellowstone is something of a revelation. We've been restocking our camping supplies at the general stores found throughout Yellowstone, all of which are at least 45+ minutes from our campsite. The town of West Yellowstone, however, is resplendent with grocery stores (and restaurants and hotels), and is only 20 minutes from our tents. If only we had realized!

I check in at the local photo store. Unfortunately, they don't do repairs; they only have new cameras and camera supplies. I ask the owner if there is anyplace else that can help out, and she notes that there's a repair shop "just up the road" in Bozeman. When I ask how far "just up the road" is, she replies: "Two hours." Like I said, things are far apart in the west.

I can't leave West Yellowstone without a way to take good photos, so I bite the bullet and buy a new camera, funding it out of my imaginary "vacation budget." This new camera has an optical 70x zoom and records HD video, both of which are an improvement over the old camera, so I guess that's good too.

I thank the owner for her help and hospitality, both because she was super nice and also because her establishment has way more pro-Second-Amendment posters on display than any other camera shop I've ever visited.

We take a quick drive through the streets of West Yellowstone just to survey the scene, and then we are off for today's adventure.

There is pizza and beer less than 15 miles from my tent!

11:30a. Mammoth Hot Springs.

We've driven to near the northern edges of the park to visit Mammoth Hot Springs. It's the hottest day of the vacation so far, and the siteseeing trail at the Hot Springs takes you over masses of sulfuric minerals that have been accumulating for thousands of years. My wife and the boys head off to explore it while I sit in the shade under a tree.


It turns out that the Hot Springs are not nearly as interesting as Norris Basin, Old Faithful, and the Grand Prismatic Springs, so before long, we've driven down to the Mammoth Hot Springs Inn and nearby visitor's center.

This is as exciting as Mammoth Hot Springs gets. Now imagine it's 97 degrees and kind of smelly.
The visitor's center has quite a few interesting exhibits (and it's air conditioned!), so we spend some time there. We also check out the Inn and the giant Elk that apparently makes itself at home in the side yard of the Inn. Then we are off to check out Roosevelt Arch at the North Entrance to the park.

Apparently this elk spends most of the day just chillin' next to the Hot Springs Inn.

Around noon. A roadside.

A few minutes after we leave Mammoth Hot Springs, I spy something moving on a nearby hillside. I pull over and, with the help of the new 70x optical zoom, we are able to spot a small family of Big Horn Sheep grazing on the cliffs. Take THAT, Sheep Meadow!

Two Big Horned sheep take a break in the shade


1:00pm. Roosevelt Arch


We reach Roosevelt Arch and take a few pictures. Just outside the park is a small town (Gardiner, MT. Population: 875) that is nevertheless big enough to have its own Steelers bar.


There is also a high-school football field with about a dozen elk grazing on it. You don't see that every day. (Unless you live in Gardiner.)


4:00pm. The Boiling River

In the valley below the Mammoth Hot Springs, a stream of super-heated geothermal runoff meets a typical snow-cap-fed mountain stream. Where the boiling hot water meets the ice-cold water, it forms (for a time), a small river of moderately warm water.

I thought this would be another example of a look-at-it-for-two-minutes attraction, but it turns out that (a) you can swim in the river and (b) my kids LOVE swimming in a lukewarm river.

So for more than an hour, my kids gallivant in the water, my wife wading behind them to keep an eye on things, while I stand on shore and explore the features of our new camera while getting sunburned.

The river, while not deep, does have a strong current, and I often see lost items floating quickly down the river, chased by their owner: things like flip-flops, hats, sunglasses, and my four-year-old. Luckily, we eventually collect everything we've brought with us and make our way back to the car.

How many Musials can you spot in the Gardiner River?

6:00p. A random hillside in Yellowstone

The park rangers have told us that there's a pack of wolves that makes its home on a certain hillside in this area of the park. After a few wrong turns, we find the designated parking lot and make a short hike to a knoll where a few dozen folks have set up folding chairs, cameras, and telescopes. We chat with a few people and realize that we neither have the time, patience, or optical equipment to have a chance of seeing the wolves. So back home we go.

7:00p. Driving back to camp

This is our last evening in Yellowstone. While today has had its moments, it's also been hot and stuffy and involved a lot of driving -- some of the white-knuckle mountain-pass variety. After having learned about West Yellowstone earlier today, we decide to treat ourselves to a restaurant meal. There were more than a few places that looked like good candidates for pizzas and beer. So off to West Yellowstone we go!

7:30p. West Yellowstone

In perhaps the oddest event of this trip, we find out that the entire town of West Yellowstone (and apparently other parts of Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming) has lost electrical power. None of the restaurants are open. And so we're sent, tired and hungry, back to our campsite.

8:30p. Madison Campground

Instead of restaurant pizza, our dinner has turned out to be "whatever is left in the cooler." This manifested itself a three-course meal of spaghetti, followed by hot dogs, with pop-tarts for dessert.

As for me, I was bummed that I didn't get the cold draft beer I was craving, so I used some ingenuity and invented this drink:

The West Yellowstone Disappointment
Ingredients:
One packet of Lemonade Mix
One liter of water from the camp water pump
Jim Beam purchased from a Missouri gas station
Red Solo Cup

Recipe:
Mix all ingredients as desired
Adjust for altitude.