Okay, I am finally ready to post (or at least start posting) my long-awaited account of our trip to Yellowstone! I wrote many pages, so I have decided to break it up into several parts. This first part consists of a general introduction, followed by my account of the first two days of the trip. Read and enjoy. 🙂
Ever since we first started talking, back in the late winter or early spring, about going on a camping trip to Yellowstone for our anniversary this year, I had been looking forward to it eagerly. We didn’t go on any full-week-long trip anywhere in 2008, so it’d been a while since our last “full-blown” vacation trip—and even longer (2003) since the last time we went on a camping trip of that length. Plus, it’d been since all the way back in 1996—for our first anniversary—since we’d gone anywhere out west. I had glowing, but distant, memories of the wonders of Yellowstone from having been there on a Boy Scout trip twenty-one years ago at the age of 14, and I was excited about seeing it all again as an adult and with Jen, who for her part had never been there before.
Of course, for a while, our plans were thrown into flux when I found out that I was probably not going to be able to get the week of our anniversary off of work, due to the fact that the U of M’s fiscal year-end is June 30th (and our anniversary is the 24th). I reluctantly accepted the need to reschedule, but for a while, no one could say whether the week that I actually wanted off or the week after it would be the one when my presence at work would be critically required—so there were annoying delays. Finally, I was officially authorized to take the week after that of our anniversary, so we finalized our plans.
The trip was a blast, even though Yellowstone had its own ideas about the kinds of fun that we were and weren’t allowed to have while we were there—ideas that didn’t entirely jibe with our original hopes and expectations. For instance, from the very beginning of our talk of going to Yellowstone, Jen was enthusiastic (and so was I, but it was especially her thing) about the idea of doing some horseback riding while we were there. Then, for my part, I am normally of the decided belief that no summer vacation experience worth the name can be complete unless it includes swimming—preferably in a lake or river (i.e. not a swimming pool)—so I hunted around on the park service website months in advance to make sure that there would be someplace to go swimming in Yellowstone. As it would turn out, however, neither of these activities—the two things that we most specifically were anticipating doing, aside from obvious things like seeing the sights and cooking over a fire—was fated to be part of our trip (more about this later). Nevertheless, we had a fantastic time. Yellowstone is one of those places, I’ve decided, that I would be content to go back to again and again, year after year, were it not for the fact that there are so many other places that I feel the same way about—and probably even more places than that that I’ve never been to, and still want to visit. Plus, there’s just nothing quite like taking an entire week to just leave everyday life behind, go somewhere far away, and do fun things that you normally don’t or can’t do, taking each day as it comes, and spending pretty much every moment with the one person in the world whose company you most enjoy. 🙂
Day One (Saturday, June 27th)
Our trip commenced around 9:30 in the morning on Saturday, June 27th. We had done most of the packing the previous evening, as well as delivering cute little Andante the tortoise into the care of some friends (we would miss her!), so it was just last-minute details and a stop at the store for things we’d forgotten, and then we were on the road. The route we were taking (I-94) led us through North Dakota, and a coworker of mine had mentioned that we would be passing through the Badlands of North Dakota (apparently all Dakotas have badlands) and that they were beautiful. Some internet research revealed that there was a national park—Theodore Roosevelt National Park—encompassing much of the area, so we decided to make that our first day’s destination, since we were planning to make the drive to Yellowstone in two days. Notable stops along the way on this first day included a stop for gas in the thriving metropolis of Medina, ND (not terribly significant in itself, granted, but I’m setting up the background here for the tale of an adventure we had on the return trip), and a stop for supper in Dickinson, ND (there was a Bonanza, and we used to love going to Bonanza back in our Iowa days but hadn’t been to once since, as there aren’t any in the Twin Cities).
When we arrived in the Badlands area, it was indeed beautiful—and the signal that we were officially “out west.” After setting up camp, we drove part of the scenic drive to take it all in. Jen had really hoped to get in some hiking (there was a trail leading to a petrified forest that sounded intriguing), but alas, the sun was already threatening to set as we began the scenic drive, and there just wasn’t time. We did, however, see some wildlife and take some pictures.
Day Two (Sunday, June 28th)
What with being in the tent and all, we pretty much woke up when the sun rose, and ended up rising around 5:00 or 5:30 in the morning, quickly taking down and packing up, and getting a really early start on our second day of driving. Before long, we were burning through Montana, and hark—we met up with the Yellowstone River, beckoning us to its source in the park! We crossed the Yellowstone a number of times throughout the morning’s drive. As we sped west, I remember wondering aloud at what point mountains would become visible on the horizon. The answer: Billings, Montana.
Everyone had had an opinion of his, her, or its own about what route we should take to Yellowstone. Google Maps had advised going through North Dakota as the quickest route in general, and gave, I think, different answers regarding the final leg of the trip depending on how specific I was about the destination. I believe my mom had wondered if we’d be going through Bear Tooth Pass, and when I mentioned to my dad that the internet had shown me a route that involved entering the park via its north entrance rather than its northeast or east entrances, he’d thought that that would be “going out of the way.” I think the fact of the matter was that the shortest route distance-wise was to go in via the northeast entrance—but of course, that meant Bear Tooth Pass, so the route east to Livingston, Montana, and then down to the north entrance was probably shorter time-wise (albeit also much less scenic). How much of this we figured out in advance, I don’t recall, but for whatever mix of reasons, we decided to head for the northeast entrance—which meant going over the mountains. Wow. Jen drove us most of the way up the first side, and then, after a stop near the top at a scenic overlook place to take pictures and stuff, I drove us the rest of the way up and then back down the other side—in the process dipping down into Wyoming, then crossing back into Montana.
With the steepest terrain behind us, we stopped in the little town of Cooke City for lunch—and none too soon, as I was beginning to feel faint from hunger (or perhaps altitude—or maybe both?). Once we had some food in us, we hit the road again—and before we knew it, we were at the Wyoming border and the entrance to the park!
Of course, we still had two or three hours of driving ahead of us to get to where we were actually going within the park. We’d chosen Grant Campground for its woodsiness and its proximity to the geysers and the (promised) swimming (I think)—accepting, as we did so, that our choice of campgrounds might well lead to our getting eaten by bears during our stay (though to our disappointment, it didn’t). Grant is toward the southern end of the park, though, so there was a lot of park to drive through to get there from the northeast entrance. There was plenty to see along the way, though. We were tired from our early start, long day’s drive, and journey up and down the mountain, and therefore in somewhat of a hurry to just get to our home-away-from-home and get our campsite set up, but that didn’t stop us from getting a thrill from seeing all the buffalo, a black bear, the ubiquitous instances of steam coming out of the ground for no apparent reason, or the gorgeous lake scenery with snow-covered mountains framing the backdrop. (Somehow we managed to get through the week without taking even a single picture of Yellowstone Lake; I’m not sure how we allowed this to happen.)
Eventually, we arrived at Grant, got ourselves registered, and pulled into site J-331. Our campsite was spacious and woodsy, but not at all level. We set our tent up toward the top of a little hill that the picnic table and fire ring were near the bottom of. There was no level ground to put the tent on, so we just oriented it so that our heads would be at the top and our feet at the bottom. The picnic table, also, was on a slant (and we couldn’t find any way to position it so that it wasn’t), so we pretty much only sat on the uphill side whenever we were eating or playing cards at it. In any case, with our tent all set up, we got a fire going and had our first real camping meal—brats, cooked over the fire on our handy campfire grill. Mmm-mmm!
I don’t recall if it was before or after supper, but we also checked out the shower situation on this first evening. The internet had mentioned “coin-operated showers”; I was imagining a scenario involving getting a few minutes’ worth of hot water for each quarter you stuffed in, or something, but in fact, it turned out that a six-minute shower cost $2.00. As it happened, we had exactly 16 quarters—but although oily-scalped Jen scooped up 8 of them and headed in for a shower, I decided that at these prices, I could wait another day or two (and by the time she was done with her shower, Jen had come to the same conclusion as far as additional showers for her were concerned). Meanwhile, I had been perusing the information we’d been given at the park entrance and the campground office, and I was beginning to wonder what had happened to the swimming that I was sure I had verified would be available here. Yellowstone Lake is so cold you can get hypothermia within minutes if you venture into it, I learned, so I inferred that the swimming must be elsewhere—but I couldn’t find anything about it, and I was starting to despair. Had I been mistaken in thinking I’d verified online that there would be a place to swim? While Jen was showering, I went into the little laundromat/store by the shower building and asked the person behind the desk there if there were really no swimming areas in the park. She assured me that in fact there was one, and unless I both misheard her and misperceived the area that she pointed to on the map that she gave me, she said that it was along Firehole Lake Drive. The body of water in question, she commented, is fed by hot springs—but is nevertheless usually on the cold side. Still, if I was determined to get in the water, she said, this was the place. I took heart.