Birthday Geysers (and so much more)!

Old Faithful 

I’ve been reliving fourth grade during this trip.  Fourth grade was the year that we learned about each region in the United States.  As I’ve been traveling I’ve caught myself thinking back to what I learned in fourth grade and thinking, “Oh wow, it really is like that!”  For some reason, the geysers of Yellowstone were the thing that intrigued me the most.  I’ve literally been dreaming about seeing Old Faithful since I was ten.

Daisy Geyser 

I decided that I would make that dream come true on my twenty-eighth birthday.  I was so excited!  You don’t even know!  I half ran and half skipped from the parking lot to get my first glimpse of Old Faithful smoking away until her next performance.  I rushed into the (extremely fancy) visitors center to check the time of the next predicted eruption.  I also got a chance to talk to a very friendly ranger.  I announced to him that he was talking to the most excited girl ever and he gave me a high five then proceeded to highlight must see sights on a map for me.  Then it was time to get a seat for the highly anticipated event!  I had enough time to have a birthday lunch while waiting, then it happened!  After a few warm up spurts, Old Faithful shot about 100 feet into the air and kept shooting water for about three minutes!  It was totally spectacular and mesmerizing!  It is such an amazing natural phenomenon that people clap after it (as well they should!).

Hot spring!

After checking the notes I took on the predicted times of eruptions of several geysers in the vicinity of Old Faithful, I realized that if I hurried I may be to Daisy go off!  I rushed down the bike path and about two minutes after my arrival Daisy erupted!  Daisy was more spread out and not quite as tall as Old Faithful, but nonetheless totally spectacular!  This geyser drew a much smaller crowd, so I was able to be right next to it.    As a result, I was able to see the water that came out of the geyser running down over the rock and towards the river.  That part was just as beautiful as the actual spout of water (yet doesn’t get as much press)!  The beauty was augmented by the fact that there were fields of brilliantly colored microorganisms living on the rock that became even more brilliant and beautiful when the water was rushing over it! 

I then proceeded to wander around Upper Geyser Basin, which has the highest concentration of geothermal features in the world!!!  I saw a few other geysers spitting water and several smoking away!  I also saw many hot springs!  While these features do not seem as if they would be conducive to fostering life of any kind, it turns out they are!  You can tell what temperature the water in a hot spring is based on the color because different types of microorganisms can live the various temperatures.  It also turns out that the diversity of the life in the springs may rival that of the rain forest!  Nature is so mysterious and cool!

After wandering around in the geothermal features for quite a while, I made my way to the back country office to inquire about backpacking.  I started chatting with the ranger that was extremely excited when I announced that I was able to explore the park without a set end date.  She immediately got out a map and started marking things and annotating the highlighted portions with specific directions about what to see or how to explore the area!  Shortly after she started this process, another lady came in and started chatting.  It turns out she was the nurse for the clinic and one of the bravest, most adventurous women ever!  She shared many stories about her adventures and even some pictures!  The two ladies, another tourist who joined the conversation after a short while, and I chatted for several hours!  It was so much fun to talk with other adventure enthusiasts! 

At that point, I realized that it was about time to figure where I was going to be spending the night.  I headed to the nearest campground and got in line to find out if they had any spots left.  A man went through the line to ask if people had reservations.  When the man in front of me replied that he didn’t the man looked rather concerned and said he may get the last one.  Then he got to me.  When I told him no he looked like there was no chance.  I replied, “Well, maybe it’ll be a birthday miracle.”  Then, birthday miracle number one happened when the man behind me said that I could camp behind his RV if they ran out of spots.  Then, birthday miracle number two happened when the people in front of me told me that they would just register me with them for the night and we could share the spot.  Then, birthday miracle number three happened when the man came out and hung up the “campground full” sing , looked at me, and announced, “You got the last one!”  I set up my tent on the last available spot then headed back to Old Faithful.  I got a burger and coleslaw from one of the restaurants and took it over to a spot near Old Faithful.  Then, I proceeded to have the prefect birthday dinner while watching super-heated water shoot 100 feet into the air!  It was perfect!  For dessert, I headed over the Black Sands Basin.  I thoroughly enjoyed wandering around the multitude of hot springs while soaking in the odd, yet not completely unpleasant smell and the glorious warmth from the steam.  I even had the pleasure of eating a bit of birthday cake by a hot spring, while completely surrounded by steam! 

The next morning I headed to the north-west corner of the park.  There are huge, beautiful sculptures made out of the deposits of materials that were left by the water in the hot springs that used to run over the area.  As I slowly worked my way back south, there were active hot springs and streams working on making new sculptures.  All this strange, other worldly beauty was made even more amazing due to the fact that it all was surrounded by mountains in the distance!  That’s the thing about Yellowstone. . .it has breathtakingly beautiful natural features and views everywhere in addition to the totally amazing and rather peculiar geothermal features!             

My exploring took me towards the eastern edge of the park.  There, I found a trail to go look at a waterfall in the canyon that the rangers highly recommended I go see.  Shortly after I began hiking, I got to a fork in the path.  I decided to go on the less traveled path first.  After a short walk through the woods with a few great views of a waterfall and the Yellowstone River!  It was so peaceful and relaxing!  As an added bonus, I was the only human there!  After soaking up the beauty and savoring the solitude for a while, I hiked back to take the other path.  The other path wound its way down the side the canyon a ways.  Then, I came around the corner, and, without any warning, was greeted with the most spectacular sight of my life!  I was standing right at the top of a water fall twice the height of Niagara Falls that plummeted down into the most majestic canyon I have ever seen!  There’s a reason they call it the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone!  And, just as if it weren’t prefect enough, there were rainbows created by the sun and the spray from the waterfall!  As I was examining the view, I saw a platform about three quarters the way down into the canyon across the river on the South Rim.  Obviously, that was my next stop!  After walking down about 300 stairs, I got to the platform.  It’s situated right in front of the falls!  I was better able to appreciate just how tremendously far the water was dropping!  There were also tremendous views of the river rushing through the canyon! 

As I slowly started making my way south, I came across a pullout with a view of a field with at least forty bison resting by the river!  I sat and watched the bison for a while.  They are such amazingly huge animals that really don’t seem to be designed in a structurally stable way!  Their fronts are so massive, but then they tapper into rather small backsides, and all of it is mounted on the smallest, skinniest legs ever!  Somehow the design works for them though! 

The next stop was at the mud volcanoes.  There were several mud pots along the path.  There’s something about a pond of boiling mud that is even more amazing and perplexing than a hot spring!   It’s so strange to see such a thick liquid boiling!  It made a different and odd noise too.  I rather resembles oatmeal that is boiling.  You can see start to form bubbles, but it takes it a while to get enough force to break the surface.  When it does it make a rather significant “blooping” sound.  It’s rather like watching water boil in slow motion.  As I walked along the path, I learned something amazing.  The geology of Yellowstone is moving at a much quicker pace that it does anywhere else.  Most places they tell you something happened recently in “geologic terms” and that means millions of years ago.  In Yellowstone, things change drastically within a lifetime!  For example, I was standing by a huge, steaming mud pot with a sign explaining that in 1948 the area was just a hillside covered in tress.  Then, without any warning, the earth exploded and shot the trees out of the ground.  The mud pot was tremendously violent and active for several years and it migrated about 200 yards from the original spot.  Then, it became the more calm and dormant mud pot that is there today.  That all happened in 63 years!  That’s amazing!   

By this point I was rather tired since I had worked my way through a good portion of the park, which took a while because it is gigantic!  Seriously, Yellowstone is bigger than Rhode Island or Delaware!  At that point, I started heading back to Old Faithful.  At this point I was starting to become moderately aged faithful since I was consistently drawn back to Old Faithful before I ended my adventuring for the day.  I found a spot away from the crowds on the boardwalk for this viewing.  Being a little further away really allowed me to better comprehend just how high the water was shooting out of the ground!  It’s so amazing!  I don’t think that watching water spontaneously explode out the ground and create a totally beautiful and natural fountain would ever get old! 

After spending the night at a lovely campground just outside the west entrance, I headed back into the park.  As I was driving, a bison started crossing the road right in front of my car.  I stopped for him.  He started walking right next to my car, at which point I rolled down my window to get a picture of him.  He was so close that when he turned his head to see what the noise was I was rather nervous that he was going to poke his head into my car!  After the bison moved on, so did I.  I decided to explore the geyser basins near Old Faithful.  The first one I got to had a heard of bison milling around the hot springs.  It was incredible to see such large animals walking around steaming ponds on the tremendously delicate earth! 

I spent the whole day totally immersed in a world of totally incomprehensible geothermal features!  It was grand!  After a morning full of hot springs, geysers, mud pots, and fumaroles (these are the hottest feature in the park. . .it’s a vent in the earth that just had steam shooting out of it because the water all evaporated before it got the surface due to the heat), I decided to join a ranger walk around the Old Faithful area.  When I got there, there were tons of people all crowed onto the boardwalk.  While I can totally understand everyone wanting a deeper understanding the geothermal features, it seemed like a little bit of an excessive turn out for a ranger program.  It turned out that Beehive, a huge geyser that only goes off about ever fourteen hours was set to erupt at any moment!  I got a great vantage point, then, it exploded 200 feet into the air!  It’s a much more narrow stream of water than Old Faithful is, and it also makes a really loud noise because the water is going so fast, it is breaking the sound barrier!

After wandering around the amazing features in the area again, I found a spot on the boardwalk with a good view of the back of Old Faithful and waited for her to put on her show.  It never failed to amaze me with its magnificence and grace!  Then, I went to get a good look at the Grand Prismatic.  The Grand Prismatic is the largest hot spring in the park (and the third largest in the world).  The ranger in the backcountry office had given me direction to walk down a trail for a while and then climb up into the trees to get a good look at it.  You can walk right next to it on the boardwalk, but all you can really see is the very edge and a ton of steam.  When you climb up into the trees, you have a bird’s eye view of it.  You can see the impressive size and the even more impressive displays of colors!  It is totally awe-inspiring!

The next day, I meandered north-east through the park.  I stopped at a section of geothermal features and saw the most amazing mud pot ever!!!  The mud was so thick and it was so hot that the mud bubbles shot up into the air and then plopped back into the pond of mud!  It was hypnotic!  After prying myself away from the boiling mud, I drove through the mountains up to the north­­-east corner of the park.  Then I took a short hike to go see the gigantic petrified redwoods!   Then I started heading back south and hiked a little ways to go see a natural bridge.  Yellowstone has a little bit of everything!  It’s a totally amazing land! 

The Grand Prismatic 

I finished up my Yellowstone tour by driving along Yellowstone Lake, which is huge and beautiful!  Then, you guessed it; I headed back to Old Faithful.  First I went to get some souvenirs at the general store.  When I was paying, I mentioned to the clerk that Yellowstone is the most amazing place ever, which got us chatting.  After he found out about my adventuring, he told me that I should come back as an employee for next summer. . .something to think about!  Then, I headed over to Old Faithful one last time for the visit and just after I got there, she erupted!  I’d say it was the perfect way to say farewell to the park!   

A Grand Time in the Grand Tetons!

Flaming Gorge

After leaving Rocky Mountain National Park I headed north towards Wyoming.  Then I proceeded to drive across almost the entire southern part of the state.  It was a beautiful drive!  The landscape was a combination of the Rocky Mountains, the rolling plains of Oklahoma, and the beautiful dessert rock formations of Utah.  I decided that it was about time for a shower, so I check into a hotel with plans to go explore Flaming Gorge after procuring a room.  However, I was struck by the splendid comfort and of being inside with so many modern conveniences, so I skipped adventuring for the evening and savored the luxuries for the evening.    

The path into the mountains!

The next morning, I drove around Flaming Gorge. . .it’s quite ruggedly beautiful!  Then I proceeded to weave my way through Wyoming, Utah, and the very edge of Idaho as I made my way towards Grand Teton National Park.  After driving through a little corner of the park, I found my way to the visitor center.  I am pleased to report that the atmosphere of Grand Teton Nation Park is similar to that of the Needles section of Canyonlands National Park.  The rangers are more than happy to give you tips as to where to explore and recommend hikes, and then, they turn you loose to go adventures on your own and at your own risk.  Then, you get to go explore the fabulously beautiful wilderness teaming with wild animals at your own pace!    

Holly Lake
(site of my campsite in
the back country)

My first adventure was a two day, one night, backpacking loop.  The first day, I hiked a little over eight miles up to a serene mountain lake.  The lake was totally still and calm except for a few ripples when the wind stirred, this amazing stillness allowed the water to reflect the rugged and strikingly tall mountains all around it! Now, I’m sure you’re thinking, “Of course they’re tall. . .they’re mountains!”  But, unless you’ve seen them you don’t understand.  The Rockies are amazingly tall too, but you don’t really get a chance to see or comprehend just how tall they are because they are totally surrounded by other mountains (after all, even the foot hills are really foot mountains).  At the Grand Teton, however, the mountains and the foot hills are spread out, and the space between them is fairly low and flat.  As a result, you get a chance to see mountains shooting straight up from the ground!  This allows you to see and attempt to understand just how huge and impressive a mountain really is!

My very large friend!

 After setting up in a spot with an incredible view of the mountains and securing the rest of my gear in the bear locker, I headed for a large rock situated on shore of the lake.  I sprawled out on said rock and proceeded to alternate between gazing at the incomprehensible beauty all around me and dozing.  After dinner, I got into my tent to read for a while when I heard an unusual noise.  It kind of sounded like a cross between moaning and grunting.  I decided to check it out.  As soon as I rounded the corner, I saw a moose!  A huge, male, moose with gigantic antlers (and well, to be honest, gigantic everything!).  I stood there for a while and checked him out while he checked me out.  After he lost interest in me, he walked down to the lake and had a good drink.  He even scampered (almost running) along one side of the lake.  I don’t know how he pulled off that scampering. . .I’m not even sure how he pulled off the walking or staying upright and balanced for that matter!  Moose are tremendously top heavy creatures and when you throw those antlers into the mix, I don’t know how any of them can move at all on those long, skinny legs without tipping over! 

View of the mountains just
over Indian Paintbrush Divide 

The next morning I thought I heard my moose friend again.  After briefly surveying the scene and not seeing him, I continued to pack up my stuff.  I went back to my rock by the lake for breakfast.  As I was munching away, I looked out across the lake and saw the moose!  We enjoyed each other’s company for the remainder of breakfast, then we parted ways.

               

The next three miles of the journey were straight up!  I made slow but steady progress.  I was a little wary of crossing the first snowfield I got to.   The snow was very solid and rather slippery.  I was very careful to make sure I didn’t slip and slide down the steep snow bank, partly because it was rather dangerous would most likely have resulted in an injury of some kind, and partly because I had worked quite hard to climb up the mountain and didn’t relish the idea of having to do it again.  After making it safely across the snow and finding the path, I continued up and over the mountain.  That’s right. . .I  climbed up and OVER and mountain range through Indian Paintbrush Divide!  When I got over the ridge, I was greeted by the most beautiful canyon carpeted in an array of the most spectacular wildflowers I have ever seen!  They were brilliant blue, purple, yellow, white, and orange!  After zigzagging my way down the side of the mountain, I got to Lake Solitude, my favorite mountain lake so far.  It was another amazingly calm lake situated at the foot of the mountains.  It was totally surrounded by a meadow of wildflowers and had an especially magnificent view of the mountains at the other end of the canyon.  I found the perfect spot with a view of it all and had the most spectacularly perfect lunch hour of my life!  This was all complimented by the fact it was the most beautiful, sunny, 75 degree day ever with the bluest sky I have ever witnessed! 

Lake Solitude (a small preview of heaven)

After lunch, I continued hiking in the canyon for several hours.  There were wildflowers and bubbling streams and waterfalls along the entire length of the path!  Eventually, I got into the woods, then slowly worked my way out of the canyon and around to the other side of the mountains.  The other side of the mountains was awash in brilliant fall foliage.  There were bright orange, red, and yellow leaves everywhere!  It was as if they were showing off for the first full day of fall!  The tail end of the hike worked its way along the edge of Jenny Lake.  I must say, this was the most difficult and most enjoyable solo backpacking trip to date! 

Amphitheater Lake

The next day was my last day as a twenty-seven year old, so I decided to send twenty-seven out with style.  I hiked a slow five miles up the side of a mountain to Surprise Lake and Amphitheater Lake.  I was able to have another perfectly peaceful lunch hour by the banks of Surprise Lake.  It was another beautifully sunny day and I found a lovely rock with a backrest to lounge on while munching and marveling at my surroundings.  For dessert, I continued a short distance to Amphitheater Lake.  It was amazingly clear and still!  I found the world’s most perfect rock; it was shaped like a beanbag chair with indents that seemed as if they were designed exactly for my body!  I settled into a lovely reclined position and basked in the sun and the beauty for quite a while!  After a most enjoyable and gorgeous retreat down the mountain, I went to the campground near Jenny Lake and procured a spot for the evening.  Then, it was time for dinner.  I was due for a warm meal that someone else cooked, so I headed to Snake River Brewing Company.  Shortly after sitting down, a lady came and sat next to me. We started chatting immediately.  It was quite wonderful to have someone to chat with!  The only part of my trip that I don’t really love is eating alone.  For me, sharing a meal with someone makes it so much more enjoyable!  So, it was lovely to have a lovely human to interact and drink beer with until my food came!  After enjoying a totally delicious stout and pizza, I moved on with my life. 

Surprise Lake

While walking to my car, I realized that it would not be prudent of me to start driving anytime soon!  So, I chatted with two of my dear friends and watched the sun start to sink down over the mountains.  It’s so lovely to be able to hang out with my favorite people even when we’re several states and time zones away!  

View of the larger, lower lakes on my way down the mountain