Yellowstone Yonder!

Today Linda and Wood took me to Yellowstone! This was a big day trip. It takes roughly 2 hours just to get to West Yellowstone. We drove to Ennis the way I should have come on Sunday (instead of forking off the wrong way on Rt. 287). We made a quick stop at a small homestead that is preserved as a small park. It reiterated for me that living out here in the 1800's would not have been my thing -- not in the 1900's either, for that matter. Big skies aside, when I say I would love a house of my own I don't mean something like this:



From Ennis south we were driving over the same road I took coming over from Idaho on Sunday, Rt. 287, which meaders alongside the Madison River. We cut over to West Yellowstone. I got to see the damage caused by the 1959 earthquake, which killed about 60 people. Hard to believe after all this time there has been little correction by mother earth. At this point we were still riding alongside Madison river, which is rushing along very quickly right now because the damn at Hebgen Lake was damaged and water was pouring through. When we saw the lake, Wood noted that the water line appeared to have dropped by about 6 feet. In a lake the size of Hadmer, that is a LOT of water.



West Yellowstone was a small, but big, tourist town. We didn't stop, just continued on into the park... Yellowstone, here I am!



We hadn't been in the park long before Wood spotted our first Bison! I was excited. Okay, I was more than excited... I was in awe. Most of you probably know the warm spot I have for our Golden Gate Bison. So, I'm sure it is easy for you to imagine how I reacted when I got to see Bison in the wild. Just over there in the trees. I could barely contain myself. Then, as we drove further down the road, MORE BISON! One sitting right by the side of the road, for heaven's sake!!!! Look at him... he was, like, just outside the door of the truck!





I could have watched him for hours. But I would have stayed in the truck... I'm no dummy... distance between me and the Bison... good... me being flung through the air by agitated Bison... bad.

I also so Elk... lots of them...
And a coyote off in a field...
And for pity's sake, I saw a freakin' MOUNTAIN GOAT up on a rocky mountain side!!!!!!! A beautiful, big, fluffy white mountain goat just chomping away on the side of the mountain!!!!

Given how excited this spattering of wild life made me, I'm not sure I'd be able to handle a safari... I'd explode with joy and happiness...

Then there was Old Faithful. I'm not into the whole rock thing and science behind all this volcano hot-springs hydrothermal stuff... so I wasn't sure how much I was going to like the geyser. But, being that I'm in Yellowstone and right there it seems pretty silly not to sit it out. Well worth it... There is something so primal about watching that water burst into the air amid all the steam that's hard to explain. Just imagine all the heat building up under the surface as the time passes until finally it just goes up like that... I mean, look at these pics...







(Make sure to ask Linda what she though of Old Faithful on this visit -- I'm sure she'll try to avoid mentioning that she was on the phone with some lame work-related conference call the whole time!!!! Poor Linda.)

After Old Faithful we headed north through the park up to the Madison Hot Springs. It was on this leg of the drive we saw the coyote and mountain goat. We also stopped so KoKo could take a walk and I got this beautiful shot... the only thing that would have made this picture more perfect would have been if there was a moose in it... but I did get to see another Bison here... and he was all cute and chill in a copse of trees across the creek. I'll be happy with what I get!

And wow to Yellowstone. This is a beautiful park... even though a large portion of the park had burned about 20 years ago, it's still an amazingly gorgeous piece of nature... just look at some of these pictures... and they don't even begin to do justice...











By the time we left the part via the North Entrance, we'd had a big day. We drove through Paradise Valley back to I-90. Paradise Valley is big and beautiful. Apparently it is an area much sought after by movie stars. The word is that Russell Crowe has a house there and plays with his band at a local bar. I can understand why they'd floak here... look how pretty...



We ended the night with pizza and beer before finally getting back to Three Forks. A long and rewarding day, topped off by some star gazing from Linda's front porch. The big dipper never looked so big before... even when up in Tahoe...