Mud Volcano and Dragon’s Mouth Spring

We traveled to the southern end of Hayden Valley to check out the Mud Volcano area; our first “in-depth” look at geothermal features.

The Dragon’s Mouth Spring was neat.  Lots of continuous hissing steam.

The mud volcano was…muddy?  And hot, boiling, and steamy.

Like good tourists, we stayed on the boardwalk, but several lone bison did not.  We didn’t see any drop through to the boiling springs below, but many posters informed that it could happen, you never know.

Bison, Bison Everywhere

After the North Rim of the canyon, we set out to Hayden Valley, a good place for wildlife.  In Guyan’s words:

“Today we saw TONS! of bison!  It was CRAZY!  I got some good pictures…  I think I saw more bison than I’ve seen rabbits in my whole life!!!  We see even more bison than chipmunks here!!!” 

FYI…Many of these pictures were taken near the Mary Mountain Trailhead.  Three days later, after we left this area of the park, two hikers (out of a group of four) were attacked by a grizzly bear about one mile down the trail.  So much for the idea that grizzlies never attack groups of three or more hikers.  Good thing we got two bear spray cans.  By the way, the hikers used their bear spray (two cans) and were treated and released the same day.

Day One—The North Rim

I thought I would do a post for each day.  Not when each day has 2-3 blog worthy occasions.  So…Day One, Part One.
The Canyon Village area is a pretty busy place.  The campground, where we were staying for three nights, has about 275 sites, and just across the road is a lodge, grocery, sporting goods store, and Visitor’s Center/Museum.  We started the day at the Visitor’s Center and got the boys set up with their Junior Scientist Program (gosh darn, they were going to LEARN something in this vacation if it KILLED me!).  We also visited the gift shop, and I bought a couple field guides to help identify animals and give me hints on where to find them.  I had been watching an app on my phone daily for the past 6 months or so that posted wildlife sightings (YNPWildlife; it’s awesome), but in the park, cell service is sketchy at best…I needed a good old-fashioned guide.  Owen, it turns out, is my natural born shopper—he found a wolf puppet that he HAD to have (two days later, he bought it—I make him think about purchases, so mean).
After the museum visit and getting our bearings a bit, we headed off to our first tourist destination—the North Rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  It was beautiful.

See the osprey nest?  Right in the center of the photo below.
After hanging out with the hordes of tourists at the parking lot, we set out on our first “hike.”  Flat along the canyon rim, a couple miles…no biggie, but at about 7700 feet elevation, I was winded anyway.  It was a bit of a blow to the ego (we all need that sometime, anyway).

See our car?  The white dot to the left of my finger is the “Big Mac” pod on the top of the Mazda.

When we got to Inspiration Point, it was truly less than inspirational.  “Really?” was more the reaction.  A long walk (paranoid about bears the whole time, since it was our first hike), and the real Inspiration Point—a ledge that reached out into the canyon to give a nice view of the falls—was closed off.  Oh well.  Apparently we had already been spoiled by the previous views from the parking lot.

The Cools Arrive in Yellowstone

We made it!  We arrived at the North Entrance, the Roosevelt Arch, at about 5:00.



No more than five minutes into the park, we came across our first "Jam.”  Tons of cars, some pulled off the side of the road, some parked in the middle, pedestrians everywhere…it was a Bighorn Sheep Jam.  They are often spotted in this area, on the rock cliffs of the Gardiner Canyon.  I can see about five in this photo.  Look for a white butt just above the tree, in the center of the photo (I promise, the wildlife pictures get better).

I was so excited!  Two minutes in, and I had already seen large mammals!  This was going to be awesome.
We needed to get to Canyon Village and our campsite before dark.  About an hour drive, without animal jams…so we got back in the car and continued on.
In Mammoth, the elk were EVERYWHERE.  This stop took a little while.

And then more elk after we left Mammoth.  Apparently they were fighting just before we got there. 

Given we had only traveled about 10 minutes into the park by this point, we were thinking it was going to take a while to get to Canyon.  Fortunately, we only caught a couple glimpses of lone bison on the way (no pictures), so we made it to Canyon long before sunset.

The Drive, Day 2

After a nice night with family, we made a quick stop at the Donut House, and after a little impromptu pirate sword fight, and we were on our way.  …Notice the “cousin uniform”—Guyan drew that character, and we had it made into shirts.  All the cousins have one.

We were intent on getting to Yellowstone.

There were all sorts of destinations to distract us on the way, but we didn’t stop…

…except for a couple times.

Getting to Yellowstone

My sister and her family, thankfully, live in Post Falls, Idaho.  This is just over the border into Idaho, and makes a great “halfway” point to Yellowstone from Ferndale.  We make the trip over about once a year (usually for Bloomsday weekend in May), and we were excited to be able to make a second visit on our way to Yellowstone.

Liz and Dustin had a great dinner for us (tri-tip, yumm!) and of course Dustin shared some of his great selection of beers with us…the beers, ummm, not always so great; glad Liz had wine too!

The boys had some great cousin time with Nolan.  He’s 3 1/2 now, and loves anything and everything pirate.

The Yellowstone Commitment

A few years ago, Sean and I were brainstorming on places that we wanted to make sure to visit before the boys were grown up and no longer interested (or forced) in vacationing with us.  Yellowstone was put way up there on the list.

We thought of doing it last year, but that didn’t happen.  Other years had other big vacations, so Yellowstone wasn’t feasible then, either.  Around Christmas of 2012, I decided that if I didn’t just start planning it, it wasn’t going to happen.  So when we had a couple hundred “extra” dollars in the bank, I made our first reservations for a few nights in budget cabins, and we were set.

Other preparations had to be made too.  If it was going to take two days to get there, and two days back, we were going to make this a two week vacation, so Sean needed the time off work.  After many conversations, and quite a bit of pouting from me, that was done.  August 10th through the 25th—that time was ours.

Sleeping accommodations were going to be an issue.  We wanted a two week vacation, but two weeks in hotels was not even a consideration.  Renting a motorhome?  I looked at it for a millisecond; about the same cost as the hotels, not including gas.  Buying a pop-up trailer?  Possible, maybe, but it would require a loan (which could be paid off if we re-sold the trailer), and I just didn’t want to be bothered.  Sean would have loved it…ahhh, camping and a real mattress, what could be better?  Well, maybe not better, but how about a one minute set-up tent with two double-height queen mattresses?  No sleeping on the ground, we have all the rest of the camping gear…  I decided.  That’s what we did—a few nights camping, one night cabin, repeat two times.  Saves on money, and also gets you to the showers in a timely fashion.

We (mainly me) were sure that we wanted to do hiking while in Yellowstone.  No backpacking, just a few five or so milers.  Hiking in Yellowstone means potential wildlife encounters without the security of a vehicle. While some wildlife encounters might be welcome, the type with a mama grizzly and two cubs…not so much.  So we bought bear spray—two cans.  If we only had one can, wouldn’t that be a b*tch if that was the person the bear went after?  Two cans sounded good to me.

And we needed binoculars.  And we needed rain jackets.  And we all needed new/better-fitting hiking boots.  Stocking up for Yellowstone was spendy, but doing it over the course of the year, and with most of those items being things we’d use post-Yellowstone, anyway (except the bear spray, let’s hope), it wasn’t so bad.