Vacation 2004

I fully intended to be in Mexico again at the end of the rainy season but I am still not ready to go. So, I went back to Yellowstone Park. I really don't know how long I have been going there but it has to be on the order of 57-58 years. When I was a kid, we used to spend a week at Fishing Bridge and a week in the fall at the Cave Falls campground on the Bechler river. We did most of our fishing from Steamboat Point, which you will see later. The week in the fall was the most interesting because there were a lot of moose around and I think that they have a temperament that is more nasty than a grizzily bear. I would walk down a trail behind a black bear but wouldn't get very far from a tree if a moose was around.

Last year I started to walk around more and watch geysers that you had to walk to see. I wanted to see Grand or Castle go off. They were relatively close to the parking lot at Old Faithful but it didn't work out because of timing.

I knew the trip was going to be different because I couldn't stay in any of the top 3 motels that I was interested in. I could stay in one with 2 queen size beds for $100/night but that would have been a waste of money. So, I ended with a reservation at the "City Center Motel". It wasn't a ***** star motel but was more than adequate.

Things turned nasty the night before I left because my computer that I do all of my emailing from had a HD crash and I didn't have access to my email system until I had been back for 4 days. I was going to try and meet a friend but lost her information. The only hope was she would call me on my cell phone.

I had problems just getting there. I stopped in Missoula, Montana because it lets me break the trip into 4-5 hour stretches. This lets me get to my destination without being tired from driving 8-10 hours. There is a Microtel Inn just off of I-90 on exit 101, which is Reserve Road. For an out of town boy, Reserve is a handy street. You don't have to drive very far and you have the following stores: Barnes & Nobel, Best Buy, Costco, and a WalMart Supercenter. There is a yogurt place across the road from the supercenter but their choices of non-sugar added flavors is really limited.

I stopped by each store to see what was new and nothing popped out until I got to the WM. They have a pitiful música latina section but there was the Rodriqez album "Mexico and Mariachis". This amounted to almost torment because I wouldn't play it in the car until I had copied it. The car CD player scratches the CD and then you can't extract the audio digitally. I get back to the car and think I have lost my key ring with a credit card on it in the WalMart store or parking lot. When you are planning on using your debit card for money, this is a very inconvenient situation. The first thing you do is place a hold on your credit card account. You can't cancel because you won't be able to pay for the room in the morning. Fortunately, it had fallen out of my pocket in the car and just wasn't that visible.

In the morning, I have breakfast and get my stuff packed in the Bonneville. It was acting weird because the keyfob would not open anything. After I check out, I go out to the car to leave and the starter just made a fast clicking noise. I have a run down battery. I call for a jumpstart and find out that my Pontiac travel insurance doesn't cover that. So, I have a $60 jumpstart and he follows me to the nearest Les Schwab store. I purchased the battery at the Richland, Washington store but the warranty is good in any Les Schwab store. They try to charge it for an hour and find that it won't take a charge. They install a new battery and I am on my way. It is just 2 hours later than I planned on.

I get to West Yellowstone around 3pm and check into my motel. I get the room right next to the office and everyone wants the first parking spot. It affected my whole trip. If I had a shot at the closest parking spot, I parked the car for the evening and walked around town. If you park close to the center of town like I try to do, there almost isn't anything that you can't walk to in less than 20 minutes.

Even if it is close to sunset on the first day, I go see Old Faithful erupt. This has been part of the ritual since I started staying in West Yellowstone. I joke that I never have to wait more than 20 minutes for Old Faithful to erupt but that luck died when I had the battery problems. I take a few photos with my new digital camera and head back to West Yellowstone for dinner.

I look out of the motel room a few times and it is really raining hard. I don't think much about it because it is the same storm that I had been driving though on Sunday and it wasn't cool by Old Faithful. It shouldn't cause any problems. I get up in the morning and when I look out, I can see snow perhaps 200 feet up from where I was located.

I get everything loaded into the car and head for the West Entrance. They tell me that the park is closed to incoming traffic. WOW!! That is a first. They claim there is zero visibility from heavy snow and rain but to come back in an hour and check again. I go eat breakfast, which I hadn't done because I was running late. Then, I ask the motel people what you can do in West Yellowstone when the park is closed because of weather. No one could come up with an idea, so, I headed for St. Anthony to see if I could meet some cousins. I only make it to Ashton when the clouds open up and you can see the sun. I turn around and the sun basically follows me to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. I didn't intend to go there but the Madison Junction Ranger said the canyon would be $1M shots. I don't know if the view was worth quite that much but he was close.

I compose through the view finder. The problem with this is that you can miss points such as the tail end of the bison. You also have to print the whole frame. Commercial printers trim the length of a 35mm shot. Think of widescreen versus fullscreen on your TV. If you are lucky, they cut off an unimportant feature. I don't think I was ever that lucky.

The following are some photos of the first day visit. All I had time for was to see Old Faithful erupt. All of the photographs were shot with a new Canon Digital Rebel in 6.3M pixel mode and optimized for web page viewing using Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1. Using the Rebel is still a learning experience. For example, a battery is not good for 400 shots in cold weather. You may only get 100 and if your batteries run out, your photo journey for that day is done. You need mulitple batteries if you shot very many photographs. I started out thinking that the 2 I had were enough for all of the shooting for the entire trip. The reality was that they were just enough for one busy day in cool weather.

Note: If you don't see the message "Click on image to close window", you can leave your mouse pointer over the image and when you click the fullsize image, your browser will close the pop up.

I find views like this of a geyser basin interesting. It is the only way that you can see the whole area at one time. You don't see very much but you realize that something hot is in front of you.	This is a view of one of my follow sites. It was burned treeless by the 1988 fire. The 100's of little trees are the replacements growing from the seeds freed by the fire.
This is Old Faithful with the storm clouds behind it. This seems to be the view that most people like. I have numerous shots that I printed and most people didn't like the view of all of the people between the geyser and me.	I still don't have a close up of Lion Group erupting but at least, this one wasn't in a snow storm.

The following is the photo journey into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River on that stormy day in September. It began at 11 am instead of 8 am because the park was closed to incoming traffic. I was wearing a fairly heavy coat and a baseball hat to keep my head warm.

Mt. Haynes with the top almost in the clouds.	A ridge to the west of Mt. Haynes.
Madison Junction Meadow from Museum. After I shot this, I went inside and heard the ranger tell some people to go to canyon.	This is Gibbon Fall. It is really hard to take an interesting photograph. The sun is usually such that one side is in the shadows and the other is in bright sun. With the snow clouds blocking the sun, you get a shot not possible on a normal day.
The sun only popped out for a short time and then, it began snowing again. A few hours later and you didn't have the same view. You had to be lucky enough to be here with a camera because it wasn't long until the view changed.	I zoomed in a little bit for this shot. This view was from the Artist Point. You are probably 50 feet towards the river from the shot on the left and 10 feet higher.

I really prefer the view of the Lower Falls from Lookout Point. You have a higher perspective than at Artist Point and are much closer to the falls. The following photos are from Lookout Point on 14 September 2004.

I walked by this view and then came back. It reminded me of the the Curier and Ives Christmas Cards.

On a normal day, this view would have been much less interesting. By this time of day, parts of the falls would have been bright white and the shadow rocks would almost disappear. It is still an awesome view. You just can't do the falls justice in a photograph.

On 15 September, the 3rd day in the park, I revisited places from the 14th. I did this for a couple of reasons. I don't like shots of the Lower Falls when the falls is in the shadows. All too often, I can't show a view that has the shady side of the canyon visible. In a bright sun, it just disappears into the black. One of the reasons why Ansel Adam's photos are so great is that he maintains detail in the shadows. He had zone photography down to an art. All of his photos had a bright white and the darkest black. You really can't compensate like he did with color film. The range in contrast simply exceeds the capability of the recording media. The fall snow storm reduced the contrast and I had photo opportunities that wouldn't exist any other way. I also had a goal of seeing a pack of wolves or a grizzly. Wolves had been feeding on bison in the Hayden Valley. They had killed a bison on 2 different days in the past week. I really want to see a wild pack of wolves. I just don't want to spend several weeks getting the shots. Time becomes a factor because it was windy and that caused it to feel colder than it did in the snow storm.

The photos that I thought were interesting from 15 September 2004 are the following:

This is Punch Bowl Spring. I was getting bored waiting for Daisy to erupt and walked up the hill to see what this feature was.	Daisy Geyser

I had decided that the Daisy Geyser was going to be my new geyser to photograph. I had never seen it go off and it was predicted to be at a convenient time from when I got to the Old Faithful Geyser area. Daisy really didn't cooperate and went off close to an hour late. After sitting there for 3 hours, I was ready to eat dinner and headed for West Yellowstone. When I drove past the first parking area west of Madison junction, I came upon this totally PO'ed bison standing on the bank of the river with its tail sticking straight in the air and looking at 2 stupid fisherman standing in the river just below it taking photographs. I guess they didn't understand the bison was telling them that they were in its space. I find a parking spot get out of the car and trade lenses. I figure that I will need a longer lens and swap the 18-55mm for the 75-300mm. The next thing I know is that the bison is almost across the river and intending to come out where I am standing. I start to back up and take a couple of shots and start backing up some more towards the car. The bison comes up on the bank and turns to my right and other people start backing up. At least the people on this side of the river didn't cause the bison concern because its tail never flipped up.

The shots of the bison were the last ones I shot on my 1st 512MB compact flash memory module.

The next day, September 16, 2004, I headed back towards the Lower Falls, the Upper Falls, Hayden Valley, and Steamboat Point area of Yellowstone Lake.

This is my favorite view of Lower Falls. Lookout Point is the closest viewing area downstream from the falls. You can take the 500-700 steps and hike down to just above the falls but the view is similar to the one of the Upper Falls and isn't as good as this one.	Upper Falls from the viewing area just over the falls. If you dropped anything, it would fall 80 feet or so.
Stormy view of Hayden Valley	Pond below the Mud Volcano
Mud Volcano	Dragon's Mouth Spring

Once I left the Mud Volcano Area, I headed for the East side of Yellowstone Lake. I spent many days in my youth fishing near Steamboat Point. The road to the East Entrance was closed when I got to the blockade. A lady ranger asked me where I was going. I told her that I wanted to take photographs of the burn area visible from the observation point. She tells me that the road is closed well beyond where I want to go and to watch for the grizzly jam. I perk up because I had never seen a wild grizzly in Yellowstone.

I have spent many days fishing in this area. You would park by the clump of trees on the right edge and follow the trail down to the lake. A typical fish catch was longer than 12 inches.	A grizzly jam caused by sow and cub. I shot 3 photos but the wind was blowing hard enough that my heavy video camera tripod wasn't strong enough to allow a sharp photo to be taken. This was my first grizzly encounter.
Steamboat point from the observation area. There are no living trees in the area. It will become increasingly dangerous to walk around the dead trees because you can easily be killed by a falling snag or dead tree. When they decide to fall, it is usually quiet and a 75 foot snag can do a lot of damage to soft tissue.	This area was devistated by one of the fires of 2003. In 2003, when I first saw the area, the fire was still burning a mile or so to the south. FWIW, I am not that far above the grizzly from the "grizzly jam" photo. So far, they are content to munch on the grass near the road.
This flower represents one of the first steps in the recovery from the fire of 2003. Next year, there will be more flowers and pretty soon you will see 100's of little lodgepoll pines popping up. They have to grow for serveral years and suddenly, you will see this carpet of new trees.	The observation area looking down at Old Faithful provides an interesting view. I have more shots from the observation area but the sun was shining on the lens and caused flare. I normally have a lens hood with me but lost it some where around Gibbons falls on the visit in the snow.

The next stop was at the Lower Geyser Basin. Probably the most recognized objects here are the Fountain Paint Pot and the Fountain Geyser. The LGB has everything from a fumerole to a geyser. It all depends on how much water is available. The fumerole by the walk way is hissing from escaping steam. The paint pots have just enough water to create mud. If you have more water and no contriction (nozzle) to create a geyser, you have a spring. The Fountain Geyser erupts almost continuously. Geysers can be really fragile. All it takes is a simple seismic event, which can break the fragile geyser material in the nozzle, and the wider nozzle may not erupt. At that point, you have a new spring.

Fountain Paint Pot

Fountain Geyser

After walking around the Lower Geyser Basin, I went back to West Yellowstone. I got the parking spot in front of my motel room, so, it was walk around West Yellowstone time. By then, it was time to eat dinner and after dinner, I walked the half block to the Imax movie theatre and watched the Lewis and Clark movie. Afterwards, I saw there was a movie on Alaska and decided to see how Friday went. If I made it into town in time, I would watch the 4pm showing of Alaska.

Friday, the temperature is supposed to be warmer. Late in the afternoon, it is close to 69 F., which was warm for them. In fact, it felt almost hot because the rest of the week had been running in the 30-40 F. range. The photo journey begins on the Madison River where a pair of swans were swimming and feeding.

Yellowstone 17 September 2004

This little bump was included because you can see the damage and recovery from the 1988 wildfire. It seemed like half of Yellowstone was burned that year.	I called this the "real Mt. Haynes" because you can see that the mountain is just the broken tip of a ridge.
There were several groups of bison in the Hayden Valley. I don't know which group was being targeted by the wolves.	Hayden Valley used to be a lake bottom. There is a description that the fine material that makes up the soil keeps features such as trees from growing.

Images Copyright Kent Stewart 2004