Road Trip #6: Yellowstone– the crown of the tour

(Old Faithful in the early morning sun. Photos by Shel)

[NOTE:  This is the 6th in a series of off-topic posts. My wife Paula and I  recently completed a 10-day, 2,700-mile road trip through the US northwest.]

I have traveled a good deal.  There is no place that I have seen on earth that compares to Yellowstone National Park for unique and diverse beauty. Like Jackson Hole, I had been to Yellowstone more than 40 years earlier.  While Jackson was less than I had remembered it to be, Yellowstone was a great deal more.

The lakes, waterfalls, forests, geysers, cliffs frosted with gold and red mineral deposits, buffalo, elk, solitude, crowds, meadows and forests, steam-heated swimming holes, there is simply more to see and do, more to drop your jaw down in amazement than anywhere I have ever seen or heard about.

Of course, we had far too little time to see what we wanted to see. We could have spent more than double the time just driving along the two loops seeing the most famous–and crowded–sites. The hope of taking a long hike to get away from people and closer to wildlife just did not come to pass.

I had received some good advice from Shelli Johnson, who I know on Twitter as YellowstoneShel. Shelli is the go-to person on national park visits, where she organizes and leads tours that are more organic than the bus schlep types. We didn’t have time to folow most of her tips but she did point us to the Old Faithful Inn and Yellowstone Lake Hotel, the two iconic and historic places to stay.

The two Hotels are decidedly different. Old Faithful Inn  is a magnificent log structure. We watched the geyser from our room, from it’s deck and from its front yard. Yellowstone Lake Hotel is built in the style of the rural grand hotels that you find in ew England and upstateNew York.

The views of the lake take your breath away. Both Hotels are designated historic landmarks and we were told that this designation banned wifi and TV. We did not miss them, particularly when sporadic Edge coverage became available briefly on our iPhones.

Both hotels have an historic elegance to them. You can just picture fashionably clad visitors of days gone by, filling the lobbies and dining rooms. Times have changed. There is a buffet in one and in the other we sat next to four bikers who were dressed for the road and guzzled more beer from the bottle than food from their plates.

None of that mattered.

What mattered was what you saw and smelled outside. Our first morning, we strolled the shore of Yellowstone Lake as the sun rose and colors changed by the second. We hopped in our car and drove less than two miles before we his a traffic jam caused by a wild buffalo strolling down the center strip. A short while later, we came across a few score of his friends and felt like we’d been transported back a hundred years.

They snort and roll in dirt. The young bulls constantly challenge each other. I was told that they have bad tempers and are not the smartest of creatures. Most folk were smart enough to maintain a respectful distance.

The places you’ve heard about are the most visited and are still absolutely worth the view. Places like Artists Lookout seem able to spread crowds out to give visitors some sense of what it must have been like before it became a mecca for tourist buses.

By the end of Yellowstone, I had realized one more thing that happens in the space of 40 years. Yellowstone may not have changed, but I had. All the packing and driving, mapping and moving was beginning to have an eroding effect on us.

We decided to cancel the final leg of our trip, cutting out Mt. Rushmore, the Dakota Badlands and Black Hills. We headed south through Wyoming and picked up highways to drive home over the next three days, stopping only to marvel at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

We got home a few days early, spending much of the first day napping and being thankful we did not have to drive anywhere.

We’re grateful for the trip, but if we were to try another roadside adventure, we would visit fewer places and stay longer at each. This was a survey course, and there is a great deal to be enjoyed in the details.