In September 2019, we traveled for the first time to Yellowstone National Park. We put together an 8-day itinerary that included Jackson Hole, the Grand Tetons and a guided tour of Yellowstone.
My wife and I had never been to Yellowstone and she especially harbored a desire to see bison and other large mammals in the flesh. We made the decision in the springtime to go for a week or so in September. I started researching various options for tours or self-guided travel and found that the big hotels in the park, like the Old Faithful Inn were already booked. Tours through major providers like National Geographic or Tauck didn’t seem to be quite right, but gave me ideas for itineraries. I knew I wanted to spend at least part of the time in Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons. Eventually, through recommendations in TripAdvisor, I found the option of taking a four-day tour through Yellowstone and Grand Teton with Brushbuck Tours. We rounded that out with three additional nights on our own in Jackson, Wyoming.
Saturday, September 7
Our arrival at Jackson Hole airport was visually dramatic. The flight’s descent afforded good views of the Grand Teton mountains, as did taxiing on the runway. We deplaned via an outdoor ramp, also with great views, which is terrific on a nice summer day but I wonder what they do in less clement weather. Do they use the same system in winter?
As we got inside the airport there were folks from the Teton Raptor Center showing off a variety of live owls and hawks. It made for a pretty impressive reception, and an energetic crowd at baggage claim at the same time.
We got our bags and found that there was no Avis counter at the airport, and no signs for one either. There are other rental counters at the airport, but I had booked ahead with Avis. I happened to notice an Avis bus outside so we hopped on, getting the last two seats among a a bunch of not-very-happy-looking people. It was a fairly long 15-20 minute ride to the Avis office in town. We drove through the small but bustling center of Jackson to what felt like the outskirts on the other side, got to a desultory little Avis office and were ushered off the bus into a long line at the counter to get cars. Not a good system, but we eventually got a car.
I had chosen the Huff House Inn based on good TripAdvisor reviews. The Inn has several cottages but our room, the Grand Teton Suite, was in the main house. I recommend it heartily as it was very convenient for breakfast and to use the Inn’s kitchen and living room as needed. The Inn itself is located less than two blocks from the heart of town, Jackson Square. We took the receptionist’s recommendation and walked the couple of blocks into town, heading to Liberty Burger for lunch. We soon found the restaurant and had what was advertised as the best burger in town along with onion rings. Not the world’s greatest but it was a passable lunch.
We walked a little further up the main street to the Jackson Hole Visitor Center where we first stopped to see another display of raptors from the Teton Raptor Center. These people get around. The birds were cute and it was interesting talking to the handlers for a few minutes. We won a highly valued bison pen by answering trivia questions at the end.
Inside the Visitor Center, the volunteers gave us ideas of where to go and what to see in the area. The Visitor Center is at the north end of town and has a viewing area over an open valley that turned out to be the National Elk Refuge. Signs indicated that it was mostly a winter feeding ground for elk and other wildlife. We were a couple of months too early for anything other than a few ducks in the wetlands.
It was only mid-afternoon so we decided to take a drive to orient ourselves to the Jackson area. The visitor center lady told us a local ski center had a free cable car after 5pm to its mountain restaurant which was a good place to get a view of the valley. That was a better deal than the $35 gondola ride I had heard about that went all the way to the top of the mountain for 360-degree views. And today was probably a better day to do it than the next which threatened to be cloudy and rainy. She also suggested we try to see animals at dusk near one of the rivers just out of town. She marked both sites on a tourist map.
Using the map the lady at visitor center marked up, we set out for Teton Village. The map quickly proved to be absurdly not to scale as we headed well past the airport, then down the winding little Moose Wilson Road that turned to very bumpy gravel before finally getting to Teton Village. The rental car was not really built for that kind of travel. At one point, we noticed a bunch of cars parked by the side of the road and people gathering with binoculars and cameras, but I was too focused on our gondola mission to stop.
It was close to 6pm by the time we got near Teton Village. Traffic slowed for a major bicycle race that had its finish line in the village, clogging up the small road and filling the parking lots. It was hard to figure out where the gondola was or to find a free parking spot. Eventually, after asking at one of the hotels, we found a parking spot and the gondola. We rode up the mountain to about 8,000 feet for what turned out to be a pleasant enough but fairly ordinary view. It turned out the larger, fancier gondola that went to the top of the mountain wasn’t even running, so that wasn’t an option anyway. We stayed up at the restaurant terrace for a while, contemplated the various ski, hiking and mountain bike runs, and agreed that none of those activities were for us. We were getting chilly as the sun was setting (cleverly, we had not brought our jackets from the car) before catching a ride back down.
We decided to skip trying to see any animals at the river and headed back into town, stopping for provisions at an Albertson’s grocery store. Nearby, we saw a sushi and noodle place, Noodle Kitchen, and decided to eat there even though it wasn’t really what I had in mind. The meal was frankly mediocre at best but I wasn’t very hungry anyway. Just tired and ready for bed.
My lesson learned is that we probably tried to accomplish too much in that first day. And that Teton Village is further away from Jackson than I thought, no matter which direction you go. And that I should check directions myself before heading out on a drive. Make that several lessons.
Sunday, September 8
The Huff House Inn served breakfast included with the room rate and we reserved a spot at 8am. We pre-ordered french toast and salmon eggs Benedict. Both were quite nice and civilized.
It was a fresh day, cloudy but not yet rainy. We headed out, this time to the main Grand Teton National Park visitor center, the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center, which we had passed on last evening’s adventures. This was a very informative visitor center, with lots of displays and a good 20-minute movie that finished with the curtains opening on a grand view of the Grand Tetons, diminished slightly by the gray clouds. We stayed at the center for more than an hour, including a helpful 20-minute ranger talk explaining the geology of the mountains and suggested sights to see.
Per the ranger’s suggestion, we headed up to the Jenny Lake Visitor Center and then drove the Jenny Lake loop. The skies were cloudy, verging on rain, and the Tetons were imposing but not quite awe-inspiring.
The Jenny Lake Visitor Center was smaller and less informative than the Craig Thomas one. Jenny Lake itself was also rather smaller and less magnificent than I’d expected. The loop drive also turned out to be mostly through trees. We skipped the one pull-out that offered a view of the lake and mountains, which in retrospect was a mistake but at the time we felt we’d seen what we needed to see.
We drove over to the Rockefeller Preserve Center, where it was fully raining. In the parking lot, rangers reported recent bear activity so some of the paths immediately around the Center were closed. We walked the one open path to the Center and stayed awhile to dry off, enjoying the unique audio room with sounds of nature as well as the library with a nice fireplace. But all in all, there was not much to see in the Center. It does preserve the legacy of the Laurence Rockefeller family who used to come here in the summers and enjoyed the trails up to Phelps Lake. It turns out the bumpy gravel Moose Wilson Road we went on yesterday, which goes past the Center, was actually mandated by Mrs. Rockefeller to be kept in a natural state to remind visitors of the remoteness of the area and show how all the roads used to be. It’s an effective but joltingly annoying lesson.
We decided to avoid the bumpy road one more time and instead headed north for the Antelope Trail loop drive, despite the rain. Here, we finally saw some large mammals — two clusters of maybe six pronghorn antelope grazing in the distance. We couldn’t see the prongs very well, but could see their white butts. It was too wet and not special enough to stop long for photos, plus they were a long way away and I didn’t have my zoom camera handy. Fortunately, we would see plenty more antelope in the coming days.
We headed back into Jackson, stopping at the Creekside Deli for sandwiches. We took them back to the hotel and rested for a bit, hoping that the rain would subside.
We had dinner that night at The Local. I had a porterhouse steak with a pepper sauce and some local rye whiskey. My wife had trout fillet and was somewhat dismayed to find that mountain trout come out a little red and tasted quite like salmon. She wanted something a little whiter and lighter, but in all this was one of our nicest dinners in Jackson.
Monday, September 9
We enjoyed one more nice breakfast of eggs benedict at the Huff House. I noticed the view out the Huff House window was of a construction site with a basement foundation already set. I asked the innkeeper about it and she said that within a week it would be a new section of the Inn. Evidently, the next door house of a dentist went on the market the previous year and the owner of the Inn bought it as a defensive measure to make sure no one else built there. After sitting on the property for a year, they decided they needed to do something with their $1.2 million view of the ski slope. The Inn’s 20 or so new rooms were prefabricated and already sitting in a lot nearby, ready to be placed. They said if we came by next week, we would see the new building. I resolved to do so.
We drove up to Jackson Lake and on the way encountered our first herd of bison. It was very exciting, they were very close to the road — one hundred or so bison scattered over the terrain.
We checked into the lodge around 1pm and got into our room on the main building’s third floor. The Jackson Lake Lodge (TripAdvisor, website) is old, built in 1955, and I was surprised there were only about 50 rooms in the main building on a single floor. There are lots more rooms in nearby cabins but we were happy to be in the main building. There was no TV in the room, a bit unusual these days, but the lodge did have reasonably good wifi which was a plus. The highlight of the lodge is its second floor lobby with a terrific view of the Tetons and Jackson Lake.
We headed down to Colter Marina for an afternoon boat cruise of Jackson Lake, which I had booked ahead. The cruise was largely uneventful and a bit of a disappointment: an older boat, an older captain Joe, a young, personable first mate Kristi who did the talking. We basically went across the lake, got close to the mountains on the other side for a few minutes of good views, saw an osprey nest that Captain Joe pointed out, then motored back to Colter Marina. In all, the cruise was about 90 minutes and nothing much to write home about.
We tried the Colter Bay visitor center after boat ride but it had just closed for the evening so we went back to the lodge where I took a short walk to Lunch Tree Hill. This is the spot where Yellowstone Superintendent Horace Albright brought John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to picnic in 1926 and began persuading him to help preserve the Grand Tetons as a national park. Rockefeller ended up creating a shell company to buy properties anonymously and eventually (after a threatening letter to Franklin Roosevelt to agree to back a national park) donated them to form the Grand Teton National Park. I have mixed feelings about the methodology used to create the park, but I am glad for the result.
Though I was not feeling my best, and the nearly 7,000 foot altitude slowed me down, I’m glad I took this short uphill hike. The views were quite spectacular, even better and more peaceful than those from the lodge. The view was made even more interesting when a fellow walker pointed out a moose in the distance on Willow Flats.
The guy turned out to be a good spotter. A little while later, on the lawn by the lodge, he drew a crowd by pointing out more moose and elk through his high powered binoculars and a scope set up with a phone for pictures.
We caught sunset from the Lodge’s Mural Room where we had dinner. They held a window seat for us where we could see the last of the sunset’s colors. Our dinner there of bison and trout was quite tasty.
Tuesday, September 10
We gathered ourselves and headed back to the Colter Bay visitor center to see what we missed the day before. There wasn’t much to it, but for a little display of native American art and, of course, a gift shop.
We drove a few miles to Signal Mountain, winding up to the top for a view of the whole Jackson Hole valley (a redundancy…a Hole is by definition a valley). From the top, we could see the bison herd we’d seen the afternoon before, in almost exactly the same location. We couldn’t identify a whole lot else other than a nice view of the valley. There was a cell signal at the top which was probably not what they named the mountain for but was welcome nonetheless as we checked email and the news. We decided the separate Signal Mountain stop with a view toward the Tetons was not worth the effort since it was cloudy in that direction and parking was limited.
We headed back toward Jackson, driving past the bison again rather than taking the inner route by Jenny Lake. The bison were very cooperative for photos, and I got a little better with my zoom lens.
We drove back into Jackson to meet up with our tour. After unloading at the Parkway Inn where we would stay that night, I returned the rental car. We took the front desk lady’s recommendation and went for lunch to the Silver Dollar Bar and Grill at the historic Wort Hotel, a few blocks away. My wife was intrigued by the history and decorations in the hotel and spent quite a long time wandering. We made it back to Parkway Inn, checked in and dropped our luggage in what turned out to be the largest suite in the hotel. It was very nice, with a big bedroom and living room, kitchen area and two bathrooms. Too bad we would only be in it for a short evening. We then rushed downstairs to meet our Brushbuck tour guide and group.
Our guide was an older cowboy-looking fellow named Kevin (see his album of wildlife photos, which I found later). There were five other folks in our group whom we would get to know over the next four days. We clambered into the van that would be our transport and randomly landed in the seats that would be our main homes for the rest of the week.
Kevin took us on the road toward Teton Village for an afternoon tour of Grand Teton National Park. Kevin promised this tour would focus on seeing large animals as well as the sights. The first thing we did was go right back to the same winding gravel Moose Wilson road that we had done on Sunday. The road was a little easier with Kevin driving, but no less bouncy in the van. Soon, however, it became clear that Kevin would help us see far more than we did on our own. We came across a small black bear working on a berry bush at the side of the road, too close to get a good picture before he disappeared.
A little further ahead we stopped at the pullout that we had passed on Sunday. Kevin led us a few steps to a ridge overlooking a series of beaver ponds and small meadows. I couldn’t see anything other than ducks on my own (though I saw some ripples in the water that I thought might have been beaver), when Kevin soon identified an elk in the shadows. He then spotted a mother moose and young moose lying deep in the grass. We stayed in the area for a good 30 minutes, getting used to our binoculars, Kevin’s more powerful scope, and started to get an eye for picking out animals in the wild.
Kevin explained a bit more about how the beaver had been nearly hunted out of existence in the 1800’s, made a comeback, then nearly died out again in the 20th century. They are making a comeback again, and their dams help create a marshy environment that attracts other animals. He also said the dams frequently cause floods on the road, so there is an ongoing cat and mouse (beaver and ranger?) game being played to convince the beavers where not to build dams. The beavers generally win.
A little further up the road, we came across some pronghorn antelope in a field. I was actually the one that first spotted them.
It was a good large-mammal start to our tour. With the light fading, Kevin got us back to the hotel by about 8:00pm, telling us that he would pick us up at 6:30am the next morning. It seemed awfully early but his goal was to see more animals in the early morning light, then forge our way into Yellowstone. It was not to be the last of our early mornings.
We decided to grab a light dinner at the closest place, a Japanese restaurant, Kazumi. The meal was serviceable; the food was not great but at least the waiter was friendly. You would think we would have learned our lesson about choosing Asian food in the Wyoming mountains, but it was convenient and we were soon back in the hotel. Our early morning alarm would come awfully soon.
Wednesday, September 11
We were able to get ourselves up and out the door of the Parkway Inn by 6:30am, before the hotel’s continental breakfast opened. Kevin loaded up all our luggage and we rolled over to the Creekside Deli where we got breakfast sandwiches and juice to go.
We headed north, turning onto Gros Ventre Road to look for wildlife by the river. This was the same area suggested by the lady at the Visitor Center our first day. Before long, we saw a group of cars and campers clustered around a trio of bull moose. They were a long way from us, and by law our little tour bus was not allowed into the campground area, or at least that’s what Kevin said. We took some long shots and watched them for a while.
After a pit stop at the Craig Thomas visitor center to use their bathroom, we headed to another overlook that would have offered a great view of the Tetons if it weren’t so cloudy. It was the place Ansel Adams used for his famous photos of the Tetons, overlooking meadows and the Snake River in the foreground. In the meadows, Kevin helped us see more elk and pronghorn antelope in the distance, but too far for a good photo.
We went to the Oxbow Bend viewpoint over the Snake. Again, this would have been very pretty but it was cloudy and the rain picked up. Still, we saw heron in the trees across the river (I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in trees), and a great white pelican flying by (I didn’t know they came so far inland, but they do).
We drove by Jackson Lake and skipped the lodge since the views were cloudy, a good thing since we’d already stayed there. We headed on north toward Yellowstone. The rain relented a bit as we climbed into the actual park, up the Lewis Canyon, which was pretty but only merited a quick photo stop.
By the time we got to Lewis Lake, we had already imperceptibly crossed into the Yellowstone Caldera and onto the Yellowstone plateau, which seemed to me to be pretty much the same thing — they’re not. The Plateau is much larger, the Caldera is the result of the most recent major explosion, about 600,000 years ago.
We also crossed the Continental Divide for the first time and Kevin tried to explain how the Snake River flowed south and eventually westward while the Yellowstone flowed north from the park and eventually eastward to the Missouri and Mississippi.
Kevin passed the time telling us stories of his background, growing up on the Shoshone reservation east of Yellowstone. Over the years, Kevin came to the realization, like many others, that working with tourists was easier and more remunerative than working with cattle. He focused on becoming a backcountry guide, leading private tours on horseback until he got to the point where he couldn’t ride all day. He said he shifted to Brushbuck and “front country” driving tours about three years ago. That was the first we heard of the phrase “front country” to represent us paved road dilettantes.
Kevin wanted to take us to Old Faithful which was not on the day’s itinerary — it was scheduled for Friday, our final day. He felt that if we got it in today, we would have more flexibility on Friday. One of our tour members wanted to see it Friday per the schedule and when the weather report looked better. There was some dissension on the bus, some of us wanting to defer to our guide’s expertise, but Kevin soon relented and kept to the original itinerary. The politics of small groups.
We made a stop at our first geothermal feature, the West Thumb Geyser Basin near Yellowstone Lake. There were a few bubbling springs with steam rising, some mud pots and a bit of an acrid smell. It was a small taste of the geothermal activity that makes Yellowstone famous. We would see lots more, especially Friday.
Heading for a rest stop at the Grant Village store, we rounded a corner and saw several large female elk on the road right next to us. The elk were quite magnificent and we had them to ourselves for a few moments before other cars stopped.
We got the classic shot of an elk casually crossing the road, stopping traffic.
We rolled a few yards down the road and encountered a male elk with a magnificent rack of antlers. He was resting by the side of the road, within earshot of the females and not far from a calf also resting in the grass. They were both beautiful. We did our best to get photos without disturbing them.
Kevin took us to the Lake Yellowstone Hotel where he decided we would take time for a nice lunch, since it was raining. The hotel itself looked somewhat like World War II barracks from the outside but was quite impressive inside.
We ended up having to wait nearly 30 minutes to seat our group of eight at two tables. It was a chance for us in the tour group to get to know one another, at least. Our food took a long time to come and was fine, though nothing really special. Overall, the lunch stop killed almost two hours. Disappointingly, it was still raining outside and we could barely see the shores of the lake.
We headed north for a while toward Canyon Village and Mount Washburn, the highest mountain in the park. I think Kevin was scouting for sights for us to see, like the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone or the Upper or Lower Falls, but we passed each of them by for the time being. They weren’t on the day’s agenda, but Kevin seemed to know better than to bring that topic up again.
Eventually, Kevin pointed the van into Hayden Valley, in the direction of the East Gate and our lodge for the evening. Hayden Valley is one of Yellowstone’s prime wildlife viewing areas and very quickly we saw more several more bison not far from the road. One was a solo dude just hanging out by the river. Nearby was a pair that seemed quite interested in one another…but nothing happened while we were there. The female was sporting a tracking collar; I wondered of that made her more attractive to the bull, or less.
While still in the valley, Kevin was able to spot some more elk for us to see in the distance. He watched for bears but did not have any luck with them. In retrospect, it was not a dramatically good day for wildlife spotting in the valley, but we were excited and pleased with what we saw.
We headed east toward our evening destination, climbing over a mountain pass to the Yellowstone’s East Gate entrance which, deceptively, was well within Yellowstone’s eastern border. The grandly named Pahaska Teepee Resort (website) was just beyond the gate and listed as being in the town of Cody, Wyoming, though the actual town was another 60 miles to the east.
The “resort” was a single building with a gift shop, gas pump, restaurant and lounge, surrounded by a dozen or so multi-unit cabins scattered up the hillside. No teepees in sight, and no other town or buildings within walking distance. This was the location of Buffalo Bill’s hunting lodge and in fact his lodge building was still there, but in a state of decrepitude. My wife checked it out but could see nothing through the dusty windows.
We dropped our bags in our cabin room which was basically two beds, a little desk and a bathroom. It at least seemed reasonably clean and we figured out how to turn up the heat. The tour information had warned us the lodging would be “rustic” and it was, as advertised.
We hustled down to the main building for dinner. The food was hearty if not exactly healthy, and the service was friendly and reasonably quick. We stayed in the lodge for a while trying to use the spotty wifi signal before finally giving up. We huffed and puffed our way up the hill (it was the altitude, not that we’re out of shape) to our cabins and were soon in bed.
Thursday, September 12
Breakfast started serving at 7:00am and we were there for the opening. We had a big, heavy breakfast; the portions were more than we bargained for, but we ate most of what was in front of us. Maybe not the healthiest decision but we are not conditioned to turn down food.
Somehow, we got everyone out of their cabins and into the van by 8:00am. Fortunately, this morning the sky lifted and the mountains surrounding the resort were much prettier. As we headed down the road just a few hundred yards, an early morning bull bison was standing by the road, quietly eating grass. The bison slowly walked all the way around our van, not particularly perturbed by us.
About five miles into the park, over the first high mountain pass, Kevin stopped at an overlook with a great view of Yellowstone Lake. With the skies clearer, he took the opportunity to give an overview of park’s topography and surrounding mountain ranges. It was great to actually see what he had been talking about the day before. There was no actual “caldera” to see, but we got a better sense of vast area ringed by four mountain ranges: the Wind River, Beartooth, Absaroka and Gros Ventre.
We sat in traffic for road construction at Fishing Bridge for nearly half an hour which gave everyone time to contemplate the pros and cons of building roads in the wilderness and how bad traffic must be in peak summertime.
Our next stop was the Mud Volcano, where there was a short boardwalk that went past the Dragon’s Mouth Spring. It does indeed look like there may be a dragon breathing inside a cave. The Mud Volcano itself is mostly a pool of bubbling mud, the volcano having blown itself out some decades ago.
We headed northward to Artists Point for a classic view of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. Gorgeous.
Every direction seemed to be a great shot. It was a truly spectacular place.
We drove a short way for a view of the Upper Falls which were only slightly less gorgeous.
We stopped for lunch at the Canyon visitor center and shops. Rather than sit down for a longer meal, my wife and I grabbed a quick sandwich then headed to the Visitor Center. There we saw several excellent presentations about the Yellowstone Caldera and its eruptions over history. It was the best presentation of Yellowstone geology that we’d seen (gist of it here and here for ash maps), more informative than Kevin’s verbal explanations. It made us realize that we would have liked to spend a little more of the tour time in the visitors centers…but you can’t see wildlife in there.
We pushed northward toward Mt. Washburn, stopping again for some big vistas.
On the other side of the pass, there was another beautiful canyon carved by the Yellowstone River. I wasn’t sure if it was precisely part of the Grand Canyon, but it was very dramatic and lovely (I’ve since learned it’s narrowest section of the Grand Canyon called the Calcite Springs).
There were basalt column features in the canyon wall, both on the roadside and opposite side of the valley that were reminiscent of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland (and, as it turns out, the Devils Tower further east in Wyoming). The top layer corresponds to Yellowstone Volcano’s eruption 1.5 million years ago which formed a molten lava lake some 25 feet deep.
I noticed a second layer much lower on the cliff face and asked about the age of that layer. I found a sign that said the lower layer was from about 50 million years ago. I was pleased to add that little bit of knowledge and relayed it to Kevin, but it didn’t really register with me until I researched it later.
The lower layer was from volcanic activity around the time when the Absaroka mountain range was being formed…unrelated to the current Yellowstone hot spot which was then hundreds of miles away. The entire cliff face reflected maybe 80 million years of geologic activity, sliced away by the Yellowstone River over the last 15,000 years since the last major glaciers of the ice age. Dinosaurs died out some 65 million years ago, just below the lower layer of basalt. The Tetons were formed in the last 6-9 million years, just a bit below the upper layer of basalt. The most recent large explosion of the Yellowstone Volcano 600,000 years ago left mostly ash, not lava, so no additional basalt. But the ash had become rock and then was pushed around by glaciers since then. Humans had been around for maybe the top foot or two of topsoil, and Westerners (us white folks) for maybe the top inch or two. I pieced this timeline together from different sources so I may not have it 100% correct, but I think it’s accurate enough to be a humbling reminder of the vastness of geologic time and the relative eyeblink of human endeavors. The earth is more fluid and dynamic than we think, and will long outlast us, one way or another. Somehow that’s both comforting and sad at the same time.
I didn’t have all that on my mind at the time. I was more interested in trying to compose what I hoped would be artsy shots of the canyon. What do you think?
We moved from the Yellowstone River valley into Lamar Valley which is advertised as a prime wildlife viewing area. It did not disappoint. We soon saw several hundred bison in various grazing herds. Antelope were also easy to see across the open valley. Then someone saw bears on the slope above us. It was a mama and two large cubs, turning rocks over for grubs. We watched them for a long time.
Kevin found a wolf trotting far, far away across the valley. We could see it with his scope, but not with binoculars or bare eyes. It’s a miracle he can spot things so far away. After a while, the wolf howled and suddenly a chorus of coyotes (that we couldn’t see) joined in. It was a very eerie sound, one that hits a primal chord.
I spotted a bald eagle soaring down the valley like a Air Force jet flyover at the Super Bowl. It happened too quickly for a photo, but I had a good look at him through binoculars. A truly majestic bird.
We spent maybe two hours in same spot seeing all this activity, not to mention bison crossing the road just ahead and then all around us.
We saw one straggling bison and realized that it had a broken rear leg and was emaciated with its ribs very prominent. I couldn’t bring myself to take a picture of the sad scene. Kevin noted that while the park rangers vowed to let nature take its course and would let the bison linger and eventually die or be killed, Kevin’s position would be to put the poor beast out of its misery. It was hard not to agree with him.
We went just a few hundred yards up the road when Kevin spotted a grizzly bear across the valley. We watched as four bison filed slowly by. Neither the bear not the bison seemed to care about each other.
It was getting to be around 5:00pm so we started the final hour or so drive to Cooke City. Kevin promised to get us there for an early evening. We went only a few hundred yards before we spotted a grizzly bear trotting along the opposite bank of the river, just 100 yards or so away. Kevin tried to stop to get photos but the bear was on the move and there wasn’t a good spot to pull over. We tagged along with him, trying to stop where we could, but he was moving away from the river and further into the brush. After a while, we had to give up; it was our closest encounter with a grizzly and he (or she) was mighty impressive, but none of us actually got a decent picture.
The drive toward Cooke City got progressively more beautiful as we headed into the mountains just as the sun reached golden hour. We were about 30 minutes out from Cooke City, driving through a narrow valley formed by a stream when an eagle-eyed vanmate noticed a glint through the bushes near a stream. It was from the antlers of a big bull moose, and soon we noticed there was a second one. We pulled over and did our best to get shots through the bushes in the fading light.
Finally we made it to Cooke City, after encountering one more huge bison in the road just a mile or so out of town. It was almost dark, close to 8:00pm. So much for getting there early, but it had been a wonderful day of large mammal spotting.
Kevin pointed out the four potential restaurants in town, each a short walk from our Super 8 motel. We quickly got settled in our rooms, very pleased that they were a step up from the cabins the night before. There was actually TV and Wifi in the rooms, and an ice maker down the hall. Most of us opted for The Bistro that Kevin recommended and my grilled pork chop was actually quite good.
Friday, September 13
This was our earliest morning yet, and we got up, packed and were out the door at 6:00am, as assigned. The hotel breakfast was not open yet, so Kevin directed us to the Bearclaw Bakery next door for an excellent high carbo breakfast to go.
Inside the park, we stopped near a sheer mountain face to look for mountain goats. Before long, they come into focus as little white dots way up the cliff face. We stayed for about 20 minutes spotting different goats but they were too far away for my camera. It was very chilly as the sun was just rising, casting a lovely light on the mountain.
We drove back through Lamar Valley, stopping a few times for antelope and bison, and Kevin scanned for more wolves and bear to no avail.
We drove about an hour across the north side of Yellowstone to get to Mammoth Hot Springs. There we found an otherworldly scene of white and rust colored mineral springs cascading down a hillside. Kevin drove us to the top and we walked together through the upper set of boardwalks.
Kevin took the van and some of the crew down to a lower parking lot while the rest of us walked down the hillside. The crystalline layers seemed like fondant icing from a massive cake. It made for an Instagramable spectacle and tourists from all nations posed for photos.
Having gotten our views and photos of the hot spring, Kevin decided there was time to head a few miles north to Gardiner, Montana, to take photos at the Roosevelt Arch. The arch was the north entrance to the park, and its cornerstone was laid by Teddy Roosevelt. It is now set on a little bypass so there is no traffic through the arch, just tourists. We happily had it to ourselves for awhile and snapped our photos.
While in Gardiner, we stopped for lunch at the Wonderland Cafe. Kevin checked on the timing of Old Faithful eruptions and determined that we needed to make a long, direct run to hit the next predicted eruption at 3:00pm. So we bundled back into the van and sped for about 90 minutes, ignoring any potential stops or animal sightings along the way, of which there were few anyway, to be honest.
During the drive, Kevin launched into a long discourse on the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone. When the process started in 1995, Kevin adamantly opposed the move and was a spokesman for local ranchers and hunters. Over the course of two decades he changed his tune and now believes it was, on balance, a positive program that has been well managed. The number of elk have declined but the herds seem to be healthier, and there have been a number of unforeseen positive effects including the return of beavers and their watery habitats. It’s still a contentious issue for some whether the wolf reintroduction was the best thing. The entire wildlife ecosystem throughout the greater Yellowstone region (more) is more closely monitored and managed than in the past, and Kevin at least holds out hope that humans are getting better at balancing and understanding the complexities of its different moving parts.
We arrived at Old Faithful with about 10 minutes to spare before the appointed time, which is always approximate anyway. We found likely spots among the thousand or so folks ringing Old Faithful, watching and waiting.
In the distance, one or two other geysers erupted. Old Faithful is just one of many in the Upper Geyser Basin, but it is the most predictable so it gets the crowds and fame. I would have liked to wander the rest of the Upper Geyser boardwalks but that was not to be. Maybe some other trip.
I guess you could say once you’ve seen one geyser you’ve sort of seen them all, and Kevin in fact pretty much said just that. But I think maybe the same is true for bison or elk. Each one is an individual, and the encounter is what makes each one special.
It was another 10 minutes or so past 3:00 before Old Faithful actually burbled to life. The eruption’s jet of water and plume of steam itself was impressive, lasting maybe 3-4 minutes. Everyone snapped their pictures and movies. Mission accomplished. Tourist bucket list item checked off.
Once the eruption was over, Kevin gave us just 10 minutes for a bathroom break and quick look inside the Old Faithful Inn. The Inn is a magnificent historic landmark, begun in 1903, and worthy of a much longer visit. There are tours of the building itself, but we had to scoot. The bathrooms are nice, given the amount of traffic. I can say that much.
I would have really liked to spend more time at the Inn, geyser basin and in the large Old Faithful visitor center, but the group’s vote was taken to go see the Grand Prismatic Spring. So we got back in the van and retraced our path back north a few miles.
As we had been racing our way to Old Faithful we had seen the crowds and parking lot traffic at the Grand Prismatic Spring. Kevin alluded that it was only since the 2009 National Geographic overhead drone shot that people have felt that the Grand Prismatic is a must-see. You can’t get much of a sense of the colors from ground level. And at this time of year you mostly see steam. All this proved true.
We got to the Grand Prismatic, Kevin eventually found a place to temporarily park the van so we could get out and find him afterward. From the parking lot, you first cross the Firehole River, which was actually quite lovely, with the spring’s steaming water cascading into it.
The boardwalk went past the Excelsior Geyser which is now not really a geyser but another prismatic spring. The colors were impressive even though it was hard to get a really good shot.
The Grand Prismatic was a little further up. The slight plateau was quite windy and there were a number of forlorn hats that had been sacrificed to the National Park Service. I held onto mine. The spring itself was quite steamy and it was hard to even stand and look at it, much less get a good photo. These were my best.
There is a trail up the nearby hill to an overlook that purportedly offers a better view, but that would have taken an hour or more and we didn’t have the time.
The boardwalk looped back toward the parking lot, passing two smaller springs, the Opal and Turquoise. The prevailing wind offered a slightly better view of these.
In all, we were at the Grand Prismatic Spring for maybe 30 minutes, but it hardly seems to have been worth the effort. Even more, I wished we could have stayed longer at the Old Faithful Inn and the visitor center.
By now, it was about 5:00pm and time for our run back down to Jackson. Most of us passengers took naps. We assume Kevin didn’t. The road itself was mostly through pine forest so there was not a whole lot to look at. Kevin kept a low-key commentary going for those that weren’t asleep.
As we left Yellowstone and descended back into Jackson Hole, I requested a photo stop to catch the Grand Tetons without clouds. Kevin obliged with two vantage points. Both were lovely, especially the second stop just as the sun was dipping behind Grand Teton itself. A nice finish to our tour.
We were back in the Parkway Inn by 7:00pm or so, the first ones let off. We said goodbyes to our tour mates and to Kevin. We had a nice dinner at The Kitchen, bumping into one of our tour mates for one final meal.
Saturday, September 14
On our last morning, I went for a walk to hunt down souvenirs and to get photos of the construction at Huff House. Sure enough, they had added a two-story modular building to what had been a basement foundation the week before. Pretty remarkable.
I made one more trip back through Jackson Square where there was an Art Festival with food trucks all around. I skipped the calories and found my souvenirs.
The departure from Jackson Hole was just as dramatic as the arrival, and the weather was better.
In retrospect, it was quite a good trip. We enjoyed Jackson and the Tetons, and the Yellowstone tour turned out at least as good as I had hoped. Kevin was an excellent guide and showed us far more animals than we ever would have seen on our own. I was certainly glad to have him driving rather than negotiating the roads myself. It was good to have someone to answer our questions, rather than guessing at them myself. We got along well enough with our tourmates, though we sometimes might have liked to vote someone off the van. We would have liked more time in the visitor centers and Old Faithful area, but that was more or less the tradeoff Kevin made on the first day in sticking to the itinerary.
A lesson from this trip is that it would be good to plan in an extra day at the end of each journey to catch up on things we missed, before heading home. Easier said than done, no doubt, but something to aspire to. I guess it gives us a reason to go back someday. Maybe.
With the benefit of a few weeks of hindsight and processing, I’ve come to a few “big picture” thoughts that I didn’t fully grasp at the time, but are taking on more resonance as lessons learned.
It took me a while to process that all the geothermal activity we saw in multiple places over many, many square miles of Yellowstone were all related to the single hot spot that is the Yellowstone Volcano. It is massive, a very different beast than Hawaii’s volcanoes. While it is capable of planet-altering cataclysms at some point in the coming millions of years, I’m somewhat reassured that it’s unlikely to do anything so substantial in the coming human-scale millenia. Perhaps the worst might be hydrothermal blasts of steam and ash — a sort of supergeyser — that might be locally devastating but not planet-altering. But even that doesn’t seem a likely event anytime soon, based on the measurements and monitoring underway. The cliff face at Calcite Springs with the basalt columns gave me a humbling perspective of geologic time. Given that vast span of time, it’s only been a few decades that we’ve started to understand tectonic plates and the forces at play, much less measure and predict them. We have a long way to go and a lot of other existential threats to manage before this supervolcano takes us out. But what an excellent laboratory in which to learn.
Likewise, it took me a while to begin grasping the complexity of interconnections between wildlife and humans not just within the parks but the larger Yellowstone Ecosystem as a whole. We are still in the early stages of understanding the impacts of species like wolves (and ultimately, ourselves) on entire systems of flora and fauna. Again, what a great laboratory. I’m glad humans recognize the value of this special place and are starting to figure out how to better manage the whole region. We’ve really only been at it for a little more than 100 years, and most of that was still in the messing up rather than fixing up stage. But managing involves making decisions and judgments that seem above our current paygrade, and especially above our current political abilities. We have a lot more to learn, and I’m afraid that we’re still at the stage where trial and error is our primary methodology.
Then there’s the whole role of humans in the equation, including balancing needs and quantities of tourists, building more facilities, accessing more parts of the park, offering affordable housing for tourist industry workers, interests of hunters and ranchers outside the park, impact of humans on wildlife, and so much more. It calls for an even greater level of wise management that strains our current capabilities. And what becomes of the role of government in this reddest of red states? I can’t say I have many lessons learned on this front, just a lot of worries at the moment.
I’m glad the parks are there. I’m glad we got to see them. I’m glad they seem to be getting better over time. I’m glad I was able to learn some lessons from visiting. I hope the same can be said by visitors 50, 100 or (dare I say) 500 or 1,000 years from now.
There were several other lessons on a personal level that I am still processing. Given that our world operates as an increasingly consumer-driven economy, the tourism choices we make are among our biggest-ticket decisions. How do we make the best of those choices, for ourselves and for society?
Tourists, even with the best intentions, are often assholes. We get wrapped up in superficial, primal needs: what to eat, when; where to poop or pee, and when; looking for wifi or cell signals to check emails to see what’s happening in the “real” world or do research on where to eat next; is my seat on the bus comfortable; are the other people on the bus jerks or are they ok? I’m trying to learn to be better.
I think it’s important to travel with an open mind and open heart, with receptors turned on and preconceived notions tuned down. But even in the best of circumstances, it takes time to actually learn things, process them, and make connections. For me, writing about the experience has become an essential step in learning, getting beyond the superficial. You can do some research ahead of time, and you can do a little more in real time (doing too much online research in real time as you’re traveling gets distracting and exhausting), but for me, nothing beats going to see a place with your own eyes, experiencing it in the moment, and then taking time to really think about what you experienced.
It’s great to have a guide and probably wise to seek them out as often as possible, even if it means paying a bit more. I love to travel independently, be on my own schedule and pursue my own interests, but that’s not always the best or most efficient way to learn, particularly in a short period of time. Better to have a guide to help take care of the superficial and point out the things that are important…to help put you in the best position to learn things for yourself. That said, the lessons can’t be force-fed; they will be different for different individuals. It’s another interesting balance.
Being cooped up with the same group of people for four days, it’s easy to start speculating on individual personalities, backgrounds and motivations. It’s not fair to the real people — there’s no way we could really get to know one another — but it’s fun to let one’s imagination run wild and make up stories. I can see why Agatha Christie often wrote about murders among people traveling together. I’m not that kind of writer but I can see the temptation. Maybe there’s a future where my wife, who is a much more avid mystery reader, and I could cook up something together. We could be Mr. and Mrs. Jessica Fletcher. Murder, They Wrote.
