The First National Park on the Planet!

Elk crossing!
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This visit to the singular geologic wonderland of this National Park was unfortunately before the winter had cleared enough trail and road to open the entire park. As I visited in late April, a mere segment of the car-accessible roads was open from the north to portions south, and no hiking was possible without crampons. However the route to Old Faithful had recently been reopened, which is always a treat.

The drive south to Yellowstone at dusk was more beautiful than at dawn. The sun had cleared a heavy fog as best it could with evening nigh, when a misty white layer hovered on the peaks but had not descended to the valley, and I saw more deer in as many miles as I can recall. For the curious, there must have been over a hundred and fifty deer scattered along the road within about ten miles.

And I barely saw half of this great park!

Elk river crossing!
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The next morning I approached the park just after dawn. The area surrounding the park houses the same species as inside, but the park itself is marked by a grand Arch at the northern entrance. Yellowstone was the first national park in world history. Dividing the land between public and protected backcountry, the arch was a reassuring decoration: the territory through Idaho, Montana and Wyoming is as populated with precious wildlife as the miles within that arch.

The bounds of the park are official, but symbolic. I hoped that the hunted game know to run inside the invisibly border for safety during appropriate seasons.  Upon driving through the ranger’s booth I noticed that a half dozen buffalo were grazing around the employee buildings. Looking back at the great arch, standing there without fence or gate, I realized how decorative it really is, and determined to bear in mind my presence as a visitor. The rangers seemed accustomed to the same. Posted on the small entrance booth were notices for tourists to avoid endangering not the animals, but themselves. Do Not Molest The Animals made me giggle at my first visit to the park, but today the sign was posted, next to Tourists Are Gored Every Year By Bison, and the effect was sobering.

Mammoth Hot Springs
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I drove in, through the after dawn mists, which would take another good hour to

clear. The road turned, carving through a hillside opposite a narrow river, and on my left were a dozen elk slowly descending the hill towards the road. I found a pullout and parked. To my right, two dozen more were separated, half crossing the icy waters one by one, the other half ascending a game trail up the opposite bank. Some stopped and watched me, and I knew that meant I was too close, so I went back to my car to bundle in the cold, and slowly exited a few minutes later, hoping to snap some good photos of the herd.

Bison!
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Along the road new grass was up, and the main attractions were the hot springs and hideous growths that the chemicals from this caldera create. Yellowstone itself sits on a volcanic caldera (actually called a supervolcano), and is rising. The caldera is a hot spot, the word derives from cauldron in Spanish, and it covers the area collapsed after a volcanic eruption- in this case, there have been numerous eruptions in the long history of the region.

As I noted the attractions in the Park, the amount of passive volcanic activity here is staggering: not only does Old Faithful exhibit the awesomeness going on below ground, but dozens of other springs and intensely sulfuric spots are scattered around the park. The only open road led me to the lower and upper terraces of spewing sulfuric bubbly nastiness (hot spring) that had gradually caked into plateaus of ashen muck, veined with yellow bacterial streams. Next, Roaring Mountain steamed a bit fainter than its name suggests, as the wafting clouds above dark rock gave a beautiful contrast, like an old black and white film.

Roaring Mountain
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When the sun was breaking through the cool morning clouds, I took a stroll along the boardwalk at Norris Geyser Basin. A Spanish-language documentary about the park was being filmed at the entrance to the walkway, and a large field trip was also deciding which geyser to start with. I chose the route away from the children, and ambled long towards geysers that are actually more interesting than Old Faithful. If memory serves me right, my first visit here did not include the Basin walk due to the strength of the sulfuric perfume filling my smaller and more persnickety lungs. The air has a thicker quality from it, and almost an hour later when I emerged from the basin, the fresh air that met my nostrils was quite appreciated. Along the route is the tallest active geyser in the world, Steamboat Geyser. I say tallest instead of biggest because it’s the reach of the eruptions that make it famous.

In Norris Geyser Basin
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While I watched, within a twelve minute period or so, there were three eruptions, each about ten to twenty feet tall. When this baby really shoots, the water reaches about three hundred feet. The big ones can’t be predicted, so Old Faithful gets the glory. Plus Old Faithful has a large skirt of protected earth around it, which is helpful to those who don’t like getting sprayed in sulfur water, which is what Steamboat offers.

My plan this day was to complete the park by early afternoon and head south to Grand Teton National Park for some isolated camping. When I entered the park, the ranger nonchalantly answered my query for the route, showing me on a nice winter map that the only way to Teton is out the west exit, then a detour farther west, south, then north at Jackson Hole, to reach the neighboring park. I set off contentedly, but it was around the time I was happily breathing in sweet piney air outside the Norris Geyser Basin that I took out my own map and calculated that the recommended route is an extra seventy miles or so, whereas the usual route from southern Yellowstone to Northern Teton is a mere five.

Yellowstone Canyon
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Bear in mind my determination to get these parks accomplished and head east, as I was behind schedule already, and you understand, I hope, that I took the scenic drive route for the rest of the park (save for an isolated detour to gape at the Yellowstone Canyon, a beautiful trench that can probably be accessed on expertly designed trails, and a look at the grand Old Faithful. After Steamboat, the eruption was tall, but not as special as it had once been. And that’s a good thing. There are something like a couple thousand hot springs in the Yellowstone Geothermal Region).

Rebirth of the forest- after the fire
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And it works well as a scenic driving tour. The open plains, dotted with playful bison, elk, and divided by streams and rivers, all in the early green stages of very late winter. I missed Yellowstone Lake and much of the territory, but it’s a grand view, to look out at the exemplary geography of American countryside, and know that this scape was the one that inspired the founding of the first National Park Preserve, first cared by the army before the department of the interior created the national park service. And with that thought, happily, I drove through Idaho, over the short rolling hills, dipping and rising to watch the Grand Teton range grow before me, in a more monstrous scale.