Yellowstone at last!
We’re finally in Yellowstone. We’ve dreamt of being here for a while… it’s the place we always pictured ourselves whenever we thought about living on the road, kind of a milestone. It feels good… like this is proof that we made this dream happen. It’s a good time to think about our time on the road thus far. Do we like this lifestyle? Is it as good as we’d hoped it would be? Should we continue?
Yes, yes, and definitely YES! Oddly, after 8 months on the road, it feels like we’re just getting started. We have the rest of our year loosely mapped out- St. Louis, New York, some of the eastern and southern states, Florida. After that, we think we’ll pick a place and stay awhile. Really get to know somewhere. Maybe Alaska, maybe Mexico. Those are just preliminary ideas.
We’ve visited Yellowstone NP two times so far. Yesterday we drove from the west entrance to Old Faithful, the famous geyser. Just a few minutes into the drive, we came across our first large mammal: some elk cows and calves resting in the tall grass of a marsh. We also saw some Canadian geese and ravens (but those don’t really count). Lastly, some bison! These were huge and awesome, and there were several people out of their cars taking pictures. Later I read that bison can weigh up to 2000 pounds, and can run 30 miles an hour, about 3 times as fast as we can! Also they are very agile. You should probably not get out of your car if you are near one!
The scenery was amazing, like nothing I’d ever seen. It looks like there was a huge fire there, and only a few tall trees remain, and they look dead. The rest of the trees look like small Christmas trees, and they densely pack the landscape. It looked remarkable to me, but Andrew says it’s because I’m used to the big trees on the west coast. It’s unbelievable how many trees there are! Like a lawn of trees with barely any space between them. Then there are the gushing rivers, so wide and a gray-blue color. At the bottom you can see the hardened lava. And meadows so large that you can’t see the other side.
We saw some smaller geysers, fumaroles and hot springs. Ingrid hated the rotten egg smell of the hydrogen sulfide. The hot springs were beautiful, such a clear and pure color of blue. I would be very tempted to dip my toe in there if I had not seen the steam coming off (you are not allowed to set foot off the raised pathways, because there is scalding hot water just underneath the surface and it can be very brittle). We saw a bubbling pool of grey mud that looked like a giant pot of boiling water! Essentially Yellowstone park is a huge caldera, about 60 miles wide. So there are these vents and pools everywhere. Old Faithful was fun to see. It was set to go off at 6:26pm and we waited patiently; it finally erupted a few minutes later, shooting boiling hot water about a hundred feet in the air. It was spectacular!
Today, we visited some waterfalls. Also, another geyser called Steamboat. Steamboat is bigger than Old Faithful (300-400 feet tall, I believe it’s the largest in the world) but totally unpredictable. There have been as little as 4 days between eruptions, and as long as 50 years! I was kind of nervous being close to it but it only spouted about 40 feet. We walked to another beautiful crystal pool, called Beryl spring. I hope the photos will do these pools justice. Also another boiling mud pool. All amazing and other-worldly. On our way out of the park, we were thrilled to see a bald eagle. It was on the other side of the river and on top of a very tall tree, but our camera helped us see it better. What a great way to end the day. Tomorrow we plan to get to the park by 7am, to see the large mammals in the Hayden valley. I really want to see a moose!