Saturday September 16th
I set off early for the five hour or so drive to West Yellowstone. The landscape soon became more open, with rolling hills, and some nice views here and there.
I stopped by Nevada Lake, a small lake which caught my eye because there were waves of mist rolling along it. After a while I got onto I-90, with its 80mph speed limit, which was nice, even if Google had taken me on the smallest of dirt roads for a little way to get there from another highway. Unlike the case with other highways, I wasn’t amongst the slowest vehicles on the road on 80mph highways – I was actually passing other cars sometimes. There wasn’t much traffic, and it was a nice drive.
Nearing Yellowstone I briefly stopped at Ennis, which was done up a bit to look like a frontier town. From West Yellowstone I drove to the park entrance, right on the edge of town, around 12. There weren’t a lot of people heading into the park at that time of day, so I got through the line up fairly quickly, and started driving through the park, looking for a place to have lunch. West Yellowstone is in Montana, but most of the park is in Wyoming, so I crossed over the border quite soon after entering the park.
I settled on a lunch spot at a turn-out next to the pretty Madison River which ran through the park. I had the spot to myself, and made my customary sandwich and ate it with the river view.
A bit further along was Gibbon Falls, a pretty waterfall with quite a lot of people around, and it was a bit tricky getting parking. Further along I went through Madison, which was marked on the map, but which seemed to be just basically a campground – the one where I was to stay the following night. Some parts of the park were quite populated, but other parts were quieter.
From there I arrived at Norris Geyser Basin, which has a lot of pools with thermal activity. There were loads of people there, and the car parks were full, so I had to park along the road, and walk along a track they’d set up to get there, for about 10 minutes or so. There were officials directing traffic.
As well as the pools, the place also had areas with steam coming out of them. They all smelt of sulphur, which was not very pleasant, and the trees weren’t too happy with it either. You could see a lot of dead trees around some of them. I listened to a park ranger talking about the area for a while. Apparently sometimes a pool would go dormant and trees would grow around it, then after many years it would start emitting sulphur gasses again and the trees would die.
There was a large flat area with wooden walkways along it, and more pools of interesting colours, and gasses being emitted, but the star of the show was definitely a geyser (if that’s the right way to describe it) that had kind of a moist steamy spurt pouring out of it continuously, well up into the sky. It was sunny, and the steam was making rainbows all around, which was beautiful. I took lots of photos of it. There was a walkway that went close by it, and you could get a bit wet when the wind blew it in that direction as you walked by.
From there I headed to Mammoth Hot Springs. This was less impressive but still pretty, with boardwalks to see more of the thermal activity. There was a loop you could drive on, but it said no RVs, so I gave it a miss. You could park down below and walk up though, and I had a look at some of it by foot. I guess people used to bathe in the hot springs at some point, but it didn’t look like they did now. There was a small town nearby, with shops, and I think even a church.
The road wound through pretty territory after this, with hills, a lake or two, and grasses that were starting to go yellow and orange for autumn.
Tower Fall was next on the drive, an impressive waterfall – narrow, but with a long drop. You couldn’t get very close to it. There was a general store at the parking lot there, and a nice view of the canyon the river ran through a little further along.
The road got quite high as I continued on, and there were lovely views over tree-covered hills, as I got into Canyon and checked into the campground. It was a short drive from the campground to some of the sights at at what they called the Grand Canyon of Yosemite.
It lived up to its name. It was very deep, and also long apparently, and quite colourful. There were two powerful waterfalls which were impressive to see. I was there towards sunset, and there weren’t many people around, which was great. I walked down a steep path to see a close-up view of one of the waterfalls, which was majestic, with spray coming up continuously from where it was landing. I think the area was at around 8,000 feet, and I felt it while walking back up to the top!
The campground was quite large, and had free showers! It was a bit of a walk from my site to the shower block, but it was great to just enjoy the shower while not being concerned about whether the time would run out. I think the showers closed not too long after I got in, and so I went and had a shower before I got dinner. It was one of the better facilities from the campgrounds I’d been to. This was actually the last night they were open, then they were closing for the season.
It was a chilly night, just below freezing again I think, but I was pretty warm in the van. There had been reports that there was no phone reception in most of the park, but when I was there someone said you’re out of luck unless you’re with Verizon. I noticed my phone had roamed onto that network, and I did have coverage some of the time, including while I was in this campground, which was handy for messaging people and posting the (mostly) daily updates with photos on Instagram and Facebook for people to follow along.
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