“Tom Jefferson’s vision would not let him rest/An empire he saw in the Pacific Northwest/Sent Lewis & Clark and they did the rest….”---Woody Guthrie
While there is evidence of human habitation in the Yellowstone area dating back more than 10,000 years, its geographical wonders were completely unknown to the outside world until the 19th century. The site’s first non-Indian visitor was most likely John Colter, brought west as a member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery expedition, who later embarked on a career as a fur trapper and all-purpose mountain man. In the winter of 1807-08, Colter made a solo journey into the Yellowstone region and returned with fabulous tales of canyons, waterfalls and thermal wonders. People who heard these fantastic stories thought ol’ John had been chewing on too much calamus root and began referring to the area as “Colter’s Hell.” Nobody put Yellowstone on their bucket lists.
A few miners and fur hunters wandered into the area in the years after Colter’s visit but the first organized surveys didn’t begin until the late 19th century. During one of these excursions, a Montana bureaucrat named Truman Everts became separated from his party, got hopelessly lost and was given up for dead. After losing his horse and most of his supplies, the 54-year-old Evert spent over a month surviving on thistle while enduring snowstorms, delirium and a painful scalding from a hot spring. By the time he was found, he weighed a mere 90 pounds and was suffering from frostbite so severe that his feet were worn to the bone. Everts’ rescuers described him as looking like “nothing but a shadow.” But Truman was a tough old cayuse. He eventually recovered from the ordeal and wrote about it in an account titled “Thirty-Seven Days of Peril.” His amazing descriptions of his trials and the wonders he discovered have been credited with helping publicize this unique region and ultimately the movement to make Yellowstone a national park. It was established by the U.S.Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, the first national park in the country and likely the world. The park only hit its high point in notoriety, however, when the internationally famous Yogi Bear moved his corporate headquarters there in 1958.
As we go to press in the summer of 2019, discontent has broken out in Yellowstone’s famous bison herd. The boys have been running around bonking errant children indiscriminately and on August 21st several dozen bison stampeded, bashing into tourist vehicles in the park’s Lamar Valley. Bison leader Aldrich Reynolds attributed the shenanigans to significant salary cuts for the herd in the new park budget and claimed work stoppages could be in the offing.
xWe’ve Got Trouble. Right Here In River City!
“With a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for pool!”
Chock-full of exciting options for fun and frolic in the daytime as they may be, at night the national parks turn out the lights and the party’s over. Since most of them, including Yellowstone, are in the middle of nowhere, it’s often early-to-bed for tourists. All of which makes the frabjous Playmill Theater in adjacent West Yellowstone, Montana all the more special. Each summer, the playhouse rotates two or three plays with a pair of performances nightly. On July 17, our first day in town, it was an old favorite, The Music Man. The actors primarily come from area colleges with theater programs, many of them from Brigham Young, and these young whippersnappers are far more talented and experienced than might be expected. The Playmill has also adopted a clever and profitable intermission stunt; instead of the playgoers herding into a small, crowded lobby, the actors come whistling out of the wings carrying plates of various refreshments, available right at your seats. You can simultaneously buy some popcorn while telling Harold Hill he is doing a terrific job in the play. No Moon Pies, though.
West Yellowstone, itself, is a bustling little town full of restaurants, gear shops and trinket stores, even an IMAX moviehouse, located hard by the west entrance to the park. It is the only town to consider when visiting YNP unless you want to travel a couple hours down the road to Jackson Hole, which is overrated and hideously expensive. The municipality at the northern entrance, Gardiner, Montana, is a snore but okay for one night if you’re spending the day in the Mammoth Hot Springs area. In West Yellowstone, we stayed at the large, roomy and well-located Holiday Inn, on the fringes of downtown but quiet, even if your room is across from the elevator. Where else can you do your laundry for free and share the pool with four 300-lb. women from Canarsie?
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| (1) Siobhan inspects steamy Biscuit Basin; (2) Mystic Falls. (3) Bill with the long-lost Shari Godano. |
Fancy Meeting You Here!
When it comes to hiking, we like to start out with a modest degree of difficulty. For openers, we chose the Mystic Falls hike in Yellowstone’s Biscuit Basin, which begins on a classic YNP boardwalk, meandering through paint posts and geysers to a peachy 70-foot waterfall. It’s always nice to have a big splashing waterfall at the end of a hike. It’s like getting your reward for plowing through that sticky box of Crackerjax.
The trail is relatively flat and wide for the most part, traveling through new growth forest alongside the friendly Little Firehole River. The river begins west on the Madison Plateau. If you like wildflowers along your path, they got ‘em. After a little elevation and some narrowing of the trail, you arrive at fun-filled Mystic Falls. At the culmination, we were joined by a jaunty father and his two teenaged boys, who rambled up and down the rocky banks of the river like surefooted monkeys, reminding us of what it was like to be 15 (the little bastards).
On our way back to the parking lot, we passed several oncoming hikers headed for the falls. Siobhan took note of one of them, remarking “That looks like Shari Godano,” an old Ocala pal unseen for several years. But what are the odds? Two people from faraway Ocala colliding on the little Mystic Falls trail in the wilds of Wyoming? We thought not. We thought wrong. Shari’s traveling partner said, “Shari, that woman just mentioned your name.” Miss Godano turned around, Siobhan looked back and there we were, together again in the fond embrace of the Biscuit Basin. Shari’s party of several was camped out in Jackson, but up for the day. Important world problems were discussed and solutions ironed out between hugs and squealing while the menfolk stood around with their hands in their pockets. A good time was had by all. We told Shari we’d see her in another four years on the Grinnell Glacier Trail in Glacier N.P. and wished her a fond farewell. We promptly called Ripley’s Believe it Or Not but they weren’t interested.
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| (1) Waiting for the Robert E. Lee; (2) The Robert E. Lee arrives. |
Old Faithful Lives
You may have already seen it 200 times, but if you are going to Yellowstone National Park, you will be going out to renew acquaintances with Old Faithful. It’s against the law to renege. Besides, Americans like dependability and this cone geyser is nothing if not dependable, rocketing into action at predictable intervals and shooting its plume of water some 106 to 185 feet in the air more than a million (count ‘em—1,000,000) times since Yellowstone became a national park in 1872. That’s not soggy gingerbread.
Old Faithful is conveniently located in the park’s Upper Geyser Basin in the southwest section of the park, along with a batch of other geysers happy with their roles as warm-up acts. A wooden boardwalk winds through the geyser field allowing easy access and a good soaking if you’re not careful. On the morning of our visit, intermittent 50 mph winds replied to Popeye’s famous quote “Well, blow me down!” while temperatures rattled around in the fifties.
Aware of the geyser’s schedule, a crowd of several hundred gathers on the arc of benches set out about 300 feet from Old Faithful, cameras and iPhones at the ready. The playful geyser teases the mob with a few dekes and feints, raising hopes, then quiets down. It currently erupts around 20 times a day for a duration of between 1.5 to 4.5 minutes, dispatching between 3700 to 8400 gallons of 204-degree water. The steam surrounding the water is much hotter, up to 350F. Upwards of 4 million people a year attend this ritual, though the great majority show up before 6 p.m., so if you want the experience all to yourself, arrive late.
Eventually, Old Faithful roars into action, this incarnation lasting around three minutes and satisfying one and all. The crowd murmurs, then buzzes excitedly and finally hoots and hollers as cameras snap and photographers rush for a better view. Fathers raise their tiny tots to their shoulders for a moment to remember, kids drop the ice-cream from their cones, old people stumble to get closer. It’s Nature at her wondrous best, delivering yet another boffo performance as the crowd goes wild at this once-in-a-lifetime spectacular. Oh-oh, did you miss it? No worries, we’re back for an encore in ninety minutes. Go buy some postcards for those poor saps stuck back in Birmingham.
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| Norris Geyser Basin, home of the nefarious Steamboat Geyser, here seen singing 'Ain't Misbehavin'. The park staff isn't so sure. |
What Would Robert Fulton Think?
If you’re impressed by a geyser shooting water 185 feet in the air, and we sure are, how about one that blasts the stuff almost twice that high? The Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone Park’s Norris Basin Area has major eruptions spewing water over 300 feet in the air. Unlike Old Faithful, however, Steamboat’s displays are extremely unpredictable. In the weeks just prior to our visit, eruptions became more frequent---25 of them in just over a half year as opposed to 2018’s record 32 eruptions. Naturally, we went to see it.
Scientists aren’t quite sure what’s behind the recent increase in activity, but the short answer is geysers operate on their own schedules. “They’re mostly random and experience phases of alternating eruptive activity,” according to Michael Poland, the USGS scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. “So while fascinating, it’s not cause for concern.” Maybe not, but park personnel are buzzing around the area, keeping a close eye on the critter and giving some thought to backing up the viewing area. While we were there, the geyser put on an impressively steamy show, sans eruptions.
Until 2018, the Steamboat Geyser had been relatively calm for 15 years. Poland speculates that heavy snow in recent years probably created more groundwater to feed geysers and hot springs. Steamboat is erupting more frequently as spring snowmelt is at its peak. Mr. P. would like to assure everyone that increased geyser eruptions are NOT related to earthquake activity, so stop worrying about The Big One that would take out most of the Pacific Northwest, including Marty Jourard. Geyser plumbing systems are within a couple of hundred meters of the Earth’s surface while magma systems start several thousand meters below.
The last volcanic eruption at Yellowstone occurred about 70,000 years ago at Pitchstone Plateau. Today, scientists estimate the probability of an eruption in our lifetime is minimal. According to USGS, the year-on-year risk is about one in 730,000 or 0.00014 percent, about the same as the odds on a Beatles reunion. Just in case, though, Deb Peterson, our pal who lives in the Yachats area of the Oregon coast, has constructed a magma-proof underground fortress stocked with gluten-free snacks and sumptuous aperitifs for any Flying Pie afficionados who can make it there before the lava flies. First come, first serve.
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| Sundown at the Holiday Inn after another busy afternoon. There are no bad days at Yellowstone. |
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
