As we settled in for the evening, the very first day we arrived at Yellowstone, and specifically our little campground in West Yellowstone, just outside of the west entrance to the absolutely ginormous park, we noticed that it was starting to get a little chilly. A quick look at the forecast for the evening and Ann was headed to the thermostat to crank up the heat, put on seven more layers of clothes and she even put the two extra down comforters on the bed. The temp dropped to 34 degrees over night, which of course started to wreak havoc on Ann’s body, so we hunkered down, kept the furnace cranking, and hit the hay.
Suffice it to say, we thought that perhaps sleeping in a bit and letting the temps warm up before we left for the hike would be appropriate. And since it was Ann’s birthday, that is exactly what we did. It was a nice slow morning, and by the time we left, it had started to warm up outside and it was just crystal clear and sunny. A perfect day ahead!
One thing we learned quickly; this is a big national park. We had a 80 minute drive to the Canyon Village, where we planned to get a map and then head to the trail head for the day’s hike. Before we left however, we knew that we wanted to give a certain someone every opportunity we could to take care of possible trail side incidents. So we gave ourselves time, let the temperature warm up, and then hopped in the truck and started our 80 minute drive toward the canyon area. Today was going to be an incident free day!
One thing we had heard about in advance about Yellowstone was that you need to plan for drives to take a bit longer than normal, both due to the heavy traffic with all of the visitors coming to enjoy the park, but primarily for the wildlife that mostly ignored road signs and designated crossing areas and just did whatever they wanted. They call these unpredictable delays “Bison jams.”
As long as you know this is going to happen, and drive cautiously, especially around corners, it’s just part of the experience.
We still have not seen any awake bears , living moose or wolves, but the baby bison were pretty cute!
We were blown away today but just how beautiful the park is, even on the main roads headed toward the center of the region. Slow, wide, winding rivers curved and meandered through lush green prairies, with steep hillsides and jagged mountains lining the sides of the valleys. We would see fly fishermen in waist high waders on the edge of the river, slowly working their flies over the water, hoping to land the elusive native cutthroat trout. Actually, I don’t know how elusive they are, but there was a picture of one on the Yellowstone map, so I’ll just assume they are elusive. I think people who fish like elusive fish. What fun would it be if they just kind of hopped into the bucket? 🪣 🐠
After a pretty drive with only two or three bison jams, we made it to the visitor center for Canyon Village. By the way, we have yet to see a building in this park that is anything less than well designed, well staffed, clean, organized, with easy parking. They did a great job designing the infrastructure and support buildings and they’ve done a great job keeping everything up. Very impressed.
Ann decided to inspect the bathrooms one more time just to make sure we would have an incident free day. We got a little advice from one of the helpful rangers, picked our hike, and motored a few miles down the road to the trailhead for the hike from Artist’s Point to the end of the trail at Point Sublime. As usual, the map showing the red starting point and the blue ending point is shown below.
Since it is Ann’s birthday, we will let the map speak for itself today as to whether or not it was incident free.
What was really neat about this hike was that it followed the south rim of the absolutely beautiful, but frighteningly deep canyon for about 2 miles. At the very bottom of the canyon was a raging and frothing river, swollen with snow melt and just roaring through the canyon 1000+ feet below our narrow ledge. The trail wound along the edge of the canyon, with most of the trail only a few feet from the very steep descent to the canyon floor far below.
Needless to say, we both stayed as far away from the edge as we could, as neither of us like heights very much. More accurately stated, we are terrified of heights. As long as we did not have to make direct eye contact with the drop off, we were just fine thank you very much. It was a pretty setting and a challenging hike, with very few other people on the trail. It felt like it was just us alone out there for most of the two hours it took us to hike the whole four miles.
By far, our favorite part of the hike was a little side loop recommended by the ranger, which took us about a third of a mile away from the canyon (thankfully) and down to a quiet little lake, where we took a couple pics and then headed back the way we came. It was on this little side loop that a curious little squirrel took an interest in Ann and came in very close to check us out, like he’d never seen a human before. Ann named him “Pepper The Yellowstone Squirrel.” He followed us along the path, hopping from dead tree to dead tree, so we stopped walking to see what he would do. When we stopped, he really laser focused on Ann and came within about a foot of us before the hikers coming up behind us scared him off. We got a couple of really cute shots of him posing for us before he scrambled away. This was Ann’s favorite part of the day. She also swears Pepper The Dog just keeps reincarnating into other critters, to keep up with Ann. 😍
We made it back to the trail head, where there were no facilities of course, and decided to go back to the visitor center to test the facilities again, and then we made the long trek back towards our campground in West Yellowstone.
Along the way, we whipped off the road to a little parking/stopping area and went down to the meandering creek. It felt like “A River Runs Through It” as we listened to the river murmur across long ago worn down granite rocks, churning little whirlpools around sunken logs, and looked over the stony shore of the Yellowstone river bed, looking for nuggets of gold or flint arrowheads. We also watched the other side of the river for large wildlife coming down to get a cool drink, but we must have caught them on break.
Back in the truck, we headed back down to town, where we picked up a cheap pair of binoculars (likely guaranteeing that we would not see anything at a distance, thus we would not need them), and a few grocery items. Back to the camper for a steak dinner, made by Ann for Ann’s birthday, although Ben did turn on the grill!
While grilling, Ben ended up talking to another airstream dude a few doors down. A younger guy with his 10 year old son along for the trip. From Nashville, the were going take it out on a father son three day weekend in east TN, but the son, a few days before they were to leave, said, “Dad, lets go to Yellowstone!”
So, they did.
Two weeks after leaving TN, they were here in Yellowstone, same day we arrived. Mom is flying in tomorrow, and they are continuing on to Bamff, British Columbia, then to the Pacific and down the California coast.
That’s pretty neat that they did that!
While Ben was talking to the dad, Ben noticed some trim hanging down. He just can’t help himself, even on an almost 10,000 mile road-trip he’s still looking for a project. Ben tried to contain himself and tried just giving him some advice as to how to fix it, and it was about then that the dad leapt up out of his chair and excitedly said “Do you know how to do some of maintenance on these? Come inside!” Before you could count to three, Ben was back at our Airstream grabbing his toolbox, rivet gun and our little Dyson stick vacuum. The itch to do a small project was scratched by replacing a handful of rivets that had popped out and fixing a piece of exterior trim with adhesive that had failed as well as a few more exterior rivets, a few fuses were blown, a latch had come unscrewed. The guy was ready to trade it in on a new airstream because he just had no idea what to do. Thanks to Ben, now this guy knows how to fix things.
Ann took the opportunity to check out their airstream, mostly because we are kind of nosy about them, and also because there are just so many configurations, trim levels, and features, and ultimately, we still know very little about these trailers, as we have only had two and they were fifty years apart in technology, so when we have the opportunity to nose around a bit, we do so with gusto!
Knowing this guy’s wife was coming in the morning, Ann showed the guy how to work a Dyson stick and at least vacuum all the crumbs off the floor. Ann and I then took the opportunity to bow out and head back to our home on wheels, where we had an outstanding steak dinner for Ann’s birthday and we called it a night.
The plans for tomorrow are to hit another completely different section of the park, about a 2 to 2.5 hour drive from here, so we already know it is going to be a 4-5 hour driving day, however, without a trailer on the back, and in freaking Yellowstone, we already know it is going to be such a pretty drive with lots of pull offs, that the drive itself will be an adventure, let alone Lamar Valley, home of the large wildlife ranges. Excited!
Oh, we just got the word a few hours ago about conditions being right for us to see the aurora borealis tonight, and since we are out in the middle of nowhere and pretty far north, we have a shot at seeing them tonight and tomorrow night! Will report back if we are able to see them tonight!
TaterTotTales 