Trip to Yellow Stone Day 1

July 3,4 2007

On July 4th, 2007, Aparna and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary by going on a road trip to Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone National Park is beyond doubt the best National Park I have ever been to in terms of things to do and see.

We started on the evening of the 3rd arrived in Yellowstone on the 4th (it's about 1000 miles from Sunnyvale). Our trip to Yellowstone was not really pre-planned, (which it should have been, considering that July 4th is the peak holiday season, especially to go to Yellowstone) and we had decided on the trip around June 29th. Not surprisingly, when we started looking for motels in and around Yellowstone, every place was either full or very expensive.

The place we finally managed to reserve was Hadley's Motel - a quaint, privately owned set of log cabins about 500 feet from the park's west entrance. Hadley's motel is not one of those luxury places with a pool, spa etc., but such luxuries would be of little use to us, as our plan was to spend as much time in the park as possible rather than in the motel. The owner, "Big Al" is perhaps the friendliest motel owner I have come across so far. The moment we entered he greeted us with the biggest smile, and offered to help us plan our visit to Yellowstone. He gave us a very detailed and practical strategy to see the park and several interesting bits of information not to be found in the park brochures.

It was 7:30 p.m. when we reached the motel and in about an hour the sun would set, but we were so excited to get into Yellowstone that we simply dumped everything in the room and headed for the park. There was a bald eagle nest about 7 miles into the west entrance at pretty close range. We got a pretty good glimpse of the chicks and the mother with our binoculars. We also caught sight of some elks within a few miles of the drive. The sun had set before we could go to far into the park and we had to return. The sunset in the park was quite nice and Aparna snapped quite a few pictures of the crimson sky.

Aparna and I took with us a gas stove, spices, rice and everything needed to cook a proper home-cooked meal. We had a great home-cooked dinner. Big Al advised us that the best time to see animals was either very early in the morning or late in the evening, so we decided to wake up as early as possible the next day.

Well, so much for decisions - we crawled out of bed well after sunrise, had breakfast at a nice place called Tubby's bakery, and by the time we entered the park, it was 8:30 A.M.

There are three important places to visit in Yellowstone - Old Faithful (which houses lots of famous geysers), Canyon Village (with some amazing hikes and water falls) and, Mammoth Springs (which had very interesting natural formations). We decided to start with the area around Old Faithful since it was the closest.

Aparna and I had never seen geysers before and we were absolutely fascinated with what we saw. The drive to Old Faithful is spectacularly scenic and winds around the Madison river. We saw quite a few elks on the way.

If you have never seen Geysers before, the Old Faithful area will simply amaze you. Geysers here sprout out of every nook and cranny in this area with water bubbling and spewing out of holes. Boiling bubbling water smelling of sulphur dioxide and gushing steam makes the entire landscape look as though it frequently loses its temper.

The geysers in Old faithful were beyond anything we had imagined. The Old Faithful geyser erupts once every 90 minutes and shoots water up to a height of almost 80-100 feet!!! It was simply flabbergasting. It lasted almost 5-10 minutes. I had only seen water going this high in Las Vegas before.

While Old Faithful is perhaps the most popular geyser, there are several other very interesting Geysers in the Old Faithful area. The next one we saw was the Castle Geyser. We had to wait for 2 hrs before the Geyser erupted (the office gives an expected eruption time interval such as 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.). The Castle Geyser eruption was quite spectacular and lasted more than 15 minutes.

The Grand Geyser is the world's largest predictable geyser
, however the wait is long - usually a 4 hours interval with eruptions once every 8-16 hours. In retrospect I think we should have planned our Old Faithful visit around this Geyser. Nevertheless, the estimated time was between 12:30 and 4:30 and we were getting hungry so we decided to have lunch and missed the eruption. The next eruption was scheduled to take place at around 9:30 p.m. It would be too dark by then.

We saw one more spectacular Geyser - the Daisy Geyser which erupted with amazing force and lasted about 10 minutes. The sun was quite hot and we were quite tired after walking the entire day. We caught a short nap in the car and then proceeded towards the mammoth springs area in the evening. A bison came grazing right near the visitor center and that was the first bison we ever saw. We had been repeatedly told that bisons are over 2000 pounds and run at speeds over 30mph. They are quite strong and unpredictable, so I dared not approach too close to this one. It's quite amazing that all these vegetarian animals can grow so big and strong.

We started driving towards the Mammoth Springs area at around 5:30 p.m. and the drive was very scenic, winding right by the Gibbon river. On the way, we saw the Yellowstone falls. The river flows by the road and you can stop anywhere to dip your feet in it. The water was nice and cool.

While we could not make it all the way to Mammoth Springs before sunset, the trip turned out to be extremely fruitful. We saw quite a few Bisons and herds of elks and even had a close encounter with a black bear cub!!

A bison actually walked on to the road and stopped the traffic. Frankly I was a bit scared at first since the bison walked straight towards us, but it seemed more scared of us than we were of it. We took pictures of it. Overall we must have seen more than ten different bisons in one evening.

Spotting the bear was sort of luck. We decided to turn back and were driving back home when Aparna spotted two SUVs turning onto a road nearby. They seemed to be following some animal. We made a U turn and drove towards them to see that they were following a black bear cub which was looking for food. We followed the bear and took some very clear shots of the bear. This was the first time Aparna and I had seen a free bear up close.

By the time we returned it was already late in the night. We cooked on our gas stove. I prepared some corn (bhutta) on the fire and it was amazing fun. We were tired after a long day and went to sleep planning to get up early next day. Overall we had an amazing day. For me it was the single most amazing day I had ever had in a National Park.