I drove to Yellowstone NP this year. I made up my mind to go in basically a day and a half. When I arrived back home, I decided the trip was memorable for what I saw and what I left at home. I left Sunday morning on 2 September 2001. Since I left on a weekend, I didn't try to go as far as I normally do. I spent the first night in Missoula, Montana. I can drive as far as Missoula on one tank of gasoline (petrol). Montana has a daytime speed limit and that slows you down a little bit. What it amounted to was that you could drive 80 m.p.h. instead of 85 (128 kph vs 136 kph). Someone that lives in the highly populated eastern USA has no concept of driving 320 miles in 4 hours and not stopping for anything like you can do in Montana. The people on the inside lane all politely pull over and let you pass them.
I got up fairly early on Monday morning, had breakfast, and headed for West Yellowstone, Montana. You have 3 choices on routes to take when you want to end up in West Yellowstone from the Pacific Northwest where I live. The two primary choices are route 191 or 287. Route 191 heads south from Belgrade and drives straight south through the Big Sky ski area. Route 287 is more of a diagonal and drives through Ennis, Montana. I figured they were still working on the highways and there would be a 30 minute delay no matter which way I drove. For once, I was wrong. Both highways were finished. Route 287 is faster just based on geometry. Highway 540 comes into the park through Tower and that is way off to the side and driving in the park is really slow. It might be even faster to head south on Interstate 15 and then use the gravel road (route A2) that runs from Dubois, Idaho to Mack's Inn. The speed limit on the gravel road is 25 or 35 but if you drive that slow, you will be passed continuously. Each time you are passed puts anything made out of glass at risk. In 1986 I drove back through Virginia City and on the road towards Butte, a high-rise 4-wheel drive pickup pulled up on me doing at least 95 mph. A short time after that, there a twin bridge section where they had to slow down and I didn't. I didn't see them for another 15-20 minutes. People are not used to poking a long at 55 mph.
I arrived in West Yellowstone around 2 PM and got a room. I couldn't get a key but I had the room. I filled up with gasoline and headed for the park. You have to pay $20 to visit for 7 days. If you pay when you first get there, you can get a pass with out facing a large line like you see in the early mornings. I always have a goal of seeing something. This time I wanted to take a photograph of an Elk and a Buffalo with my 80-300mm zoom lens. I had a 35-70mm and I was never close enough to the animals. I always want to see Old Faithful and the Lower Falls and I always want to see a new geyser erupt. The animals and the new geyser sound simple; however, if you are 63 years old like I am and you have been visiting Yellowstone NP since you were 10 years old, it isn't that easy.
I headed for Old Faithful. The drive there goes by a lot of interesting geothermal areas. I was nearing the Madison Junction and saw a bunch of cars parked on the side of the road. It was a large herd of Elk, which caused an Elk Jam. There were 3 cows in the water and they looked straight at me. I had my first goal and I hadn't been driving more than 20 minutes. I arrived at Old Faithful a little while later. I was a little bit early and I had to wait 30 minutes or so until it was going to erupt. Old Faithful makes up her own mind and what ever the rangers guess is just that, a educated guess. They claim +/- 10 minutes but this time they were slow by 20 minutes.
It wasn't a bad day. The wind was from the side and I had good light. Frequently something is wrong and you are a visitor just like everyone else. Taking photographs on those days is a waste of time. I finished the roll and went into the visitor center. While I was there, the ranger announced that the Beehive geyser was getting ready to erupt. I had never seen Beehive erupt. I had to run to the car for more film. It started erupting while I was hurrying to a place where I could see the geyser. I had a couple of distant shots but it was still a new geyser for me. I had been in the park for less than 2 hours and I had accomplished 3 of 4 goals. To me a goal is something that requires work and seeing Old Faithful and the Lower Falls only depend on you driving there.
I headed back to West Yellowstone. I could get my room key and then go to the Grizzly Development Center (GDC) and see some really large grizzly bears and a wolf pack. I had just driven past one of the geyser basins and I came upon a number of parked cars. There was a large buffalo herd in the meadow. Some of them were not more than 50 feet away from where I was parked. One of them walked up until it was around 30 feet away. This was well past when it was time to move to a different area.
More people are injured in Yellowstone park by bison, according to the park, than any other cause. The bison don't seem to have keen eyesight and will walk up until you are in their space. You have intruded at that point and they can charge. A bison can run 30 m.p.h. (48 kph) for a short distance. That short distance is much closer than you can run to safety, fast. At least with a bison, running away doesn't trigger a chase instinct like it does with a predator. The park, in many places, shows a short video of a bison charging a family. The family was minding their own business and walking back to their car when the bison walks up until it is too close to them and charges. Two of the family jink to the left and a teenage girl jinks to the right. The bison hooks her, tosses her around a little bit, and she goes down. Think of the image of a bull fighter being gored in a arena but by an animal that is much larger than a fighting bull. The bison is not through at this point. It turns around and charges back hooking her and tossing her around again. She goes down again. This time people were making noise, which bothered the bison, and before the bison can turn around and charge again, she is up and running to safety after having survived being hooked twice by a bison. This year, the ranger commented that the person running towards her was her grandfather.
Here was a bison that was getting so close that I had to go to the wide angle end of my zoom lens just to get a head shot and I am thinking about the video but with me in it instead of the young girl. I walk back to my car with my eyes on the bison. My total elapsed time in the park was less than 3 hours and I had accomplished my 4 main goals. I started to head out but was blocked by a couple of really large bison crossing the road. They walked right in front of my car and were not much more than 10 feet away at that point.
You might wonder what a bison can do to a car. A couple of days later. A car and a large bison (1,800 pounds) competed for road space after dark. The final score was a tie. The bison wiped out the car and the car killed the bison. The bison rolled up on to the hood of the car and almost into the passenger compartment. As this was happening, the people inside the car missed the bison rolling up on the hood. They were surrounded by the air bags that were set off by the impact. It wasn't until the air bags deflated that they saw the bison and probably freaked out. Beyond damaged egos, no one in the car was injured. The ranger felt that there should be a $2000 fine for injuring an animal. He commented that there was some justice of sorts. The recovery of the vehicle is expensive because the tow truck typically comes from West Yellowstone and the car is automatically at fault.
The grizzlies weren't that interesting. It was too warm and the wolves were sleeping. It was too warm and I decided to come back towards closing time. The grizzlies still weren't that interesting but the wolves all knew it was close to feeding time. I got a couple of interesting shots of wolves and then a very frustrating thing happened. I was leaning out over the railing into the wolf compound. Two wolves stop below me about 7 feet vertical distance and looked up. It was sort of like go ahead and take a photograph of us. The problem was the long zoom lens wouldn't focus that close. Later, one of the wolves started to howl. What a finish on a day around Yellowstone.
Tuesday morning, I got up early and decided to head for Canyon Village. I stopped at the entrance and asked about the "Golden Age Passport". I was over 62 and qualified. The ranger refunded $10 and gave me a get in free card that is valid for the rest of my life.
The road closure from Madison Junction to Norris added almost 2 hours to the drive. I got to Canyon Village and drove into where you can see the lower falls. I was kind of disappointed because the downstream section of the river had a lot of smoke in the air. The view of the lower falls was spectacular. I ended up spending a lot more time taking photographs of Japanese tourists with their own cameras than taking photographs of my own. This really wasn't bad because I had seen the lower falls 100's of times and they had not seen it before. There used to be a trail from the south rim down to the river below the falls. I have hiked down that trail and looked up at the falls from side of the river below it. I never grow tired of seeing it.
I stopped in Canyon Village to eat at the Deli. Then, I headed on back towards Old Faithful. I had been in the park for less than a day and had met all of my goals. Now it was time to see what else was going on. It didn't take long. Haynes Valley isn't very far from Canyon Village and I could see what was producing the smoke. Across the river and about 400 yards into the trees was a forrest fire. The name given to the fire is the "Sulfur Fire". I was following cars and had not noticed it when I drove by it on my way to Canyon Village. When I saw it, it had burned around 820 acres. The latest information has it at 3,600 acres. I had never been that close to a forrest fire.
I ended up at Old Faithful. There isn't that much interesting to see between Canyon Village and Old Faithful. You have the lake but I don't find looking at a lake that interesting. I have literally spent several years at Fishing Bridge. The most exciting thing that ever happened there was walking back to our camp in the dark. I was walking down the road by following the dip in the trees where the stars were visible. I was born and raised on a farm and make a lot of noise when I walk. You could trip on a large clod of dirt if you walk with a light step. Suddenly a bear woofed about 15 feet (5m) in front of me and I could hear at least two of them run off of the road. I just kept walking. I didn't have any idea where the bear(s) were but I sure wasn't going to RUN. At that point I acted like the alpha creature and just kept walking to our camp.
When I was younger, the local Boy Scout troop visited Yellowstone. We had a black bear sow and cubs walk between the pup tents. There was a electrical storm and you could see them coming. She was talking to the cubs with a whining sound sort of like a cat. I always wondered if she could see the 4, absolutely wide open eyes in each tent. The bottom end of the pup tents were open and we all felt vulnerable. You couldn't tent camp there later because the bears were mostly grizzlies. Grizzlies won't run from you like the black bears did for me. Eventually, the park completely eliminated camping at Fishing Bridge.
When I was a kid, our vacation amounted to spending one week around Fishing Bridge and a week at the Cave Falls Campground on the Bechler River. The name Cave Falls Campground didn't last very long. It was much more famous to us as Moose Camp. I think we were the only people that camped there that hadn't been treed by a moose. For years, I thought a moose was more dangerous than a grizzly bear. I now think a buffalo is more dangerous than a moose. A moose has a nasty temper and looks mean and ugly where as a buffalo doesn't, which is misleading.
If you ask a ranger how long you will have to wait to see Old Faithful erupt, they tell you 70-80 minutes. A typical time is more like 30-40 minutes. The weather was really cooperating. The wind was blowing away from me and I could see the water. Some days all you see is the cloudy vapor from the steam. You move around until the polarizer filter produces the maximum darkening of the sky, which makes the eruption stand out. After Old Faithful erupted, I went into the Visitor Center. The rangers said that the Giantess geyser was getting ready to erupt. Giantess only erupts 2 or 3 times a year. This was an occurrence of major proportions. The geyser book entry for Giantess says the throat of the nozzle is around 60-72 inches (<2 m) in diameter. It erupts for 40 minutes or more and roars like a high pressure steam line had broken. Like I said, this is a major occurrence.
I had to admit that this visit to Yellowstone was really special.