Okay, forget what I said about “writing about this trip differently.” I thought I was going to just do a few posts, covering two or three days per post, rather than a separate post for (almost) each day…but I keep finding more and more to say. 🙂 So, this post is about Monday, the first full day at the park (well, for me, and for Carl and family; Mom & Dad, of course, got there several days earlier).
Also, I neglected to mention the conversation that happened Sunday night about plans for the 20-mile hike that I was determined would happen sometime during this trip—so I’ll start there in this post. Pre-trip, my brother had told me that he’d decided he wanted to join me on my big hike, and we had tentatively slated it for Tuesday (i.e. our second full day in the park). But with the flat tire calamity on Sunday night, and him facing the prospect of sacrificing a whole day of vacation (Monday) to a trip to Cody to deal with it, he was now unsure whether he still wanted to devote another whole day to the hike. I suggested that we postpone it until later in the week (Thursday, maybe), though, and this seemed to restore his enthusiasm.
So, Monday: While Carl and Cassie were off dealing with their tire woes, I spent the day with my parents & my two nephews, showing them the wonders of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone—or trying to, anyway; frustratingly, a couple of the spots that we intended to visit turned out to be closed for some reason. But we started on the Chittenden bridge, then proceeded to the north rim to check out the upper falls, and then eventually made our way to the brink of the lower falls. I took fewer pictures than usual since I already have so many, and the ones that I did take mostly featured the nephews:
Zane, remembering our adventures over creeks (tame MN ones, not Yellowstone-in-the-canyon-style ones) on fallen trees from past camping trips, kept pointing out to me areas where he wanted to go “adventuring” down steep slopes to approach the river, but I had to quash most of these suggestions, unfortunately. I did repeatedly offer to throw both him and Bram INTO the river (or suggest that they jump, as my photo captions above document), but apparently these ideas were too “adventurous” even for them. Hmph.
At the brink of the lower falls, I made the bold assertion to my mom that this was probably one of my two personal favorite spots in the entire park. I mean, it IS one of the most overwhelming (and iconic) sights in Yellowstone, so I wasn’t too far out of line here—but later, I both remembered other spots that I’d been forgetting about, and added at least one new one to my list of “favorite spots.” Still, I couldn’t resist snapping a couple photos of the canyon winding its way onward below the falls, even though I’ve taken virtually identical photos every single time I’ve been there:
Once everyone made their way back up the steep trail from the brink of the lower falls (me asking myself why I couldn’t seem to stay away from steep uphill climbs lately), and Mom was done knocking over sections of the railing and almost getting old ladies killed (sorry, Mom—but that’s a totally accurate account of what happened, right? 🙂 ), there was talk of checking out Inspiration Point next—but alas, the section of the North Rim Drive that leads to it was closed. Also, it was getting on toward lunchtime. So, since I was staying at Canyon campground—making my campsite closer to where we were then any of the park’s many picnic areas—we went there to have some lunch.
My suggestion for after lunch was to head over to the south rim and see if we (or at least the boys and I) could find the spot along the rim trail where, two years ago, I’d been able to actually get right down to the river and wade in a few steps, a ways below the upper falls. This, I thought, ought to give the boys the “adventure” that they were looking for. But unfortunately, this area also turned out to be closed. Augh! Very frustrating. So many areas around the canyon being closed meant that we were out of things to see and do there much earlier than anticipated, and a bit at loose ends…so Dad decided that we would leave the canyon area and go check out the Mud Volcano area, which isn’t too far away. So we had fun checking out the smelly, weirdly bubbling and steaming mud puddles, and I regaled the boys with my tale of having met a buffalo on the boardwalk in this area when I was there as a boy scout, only a year or so older than Zane. The presence of numerous buffalo pies all around the boardwalk (and at least one actually ON the boardwalk) added some credibility to my story.
Here’s the one and only picture that I took in the Mud Volcano area. I’ve said it before: this is a cool area to visit, but it really doesn’t photograph all that well.
After the Mud Volcano, we called it quits on sightseeing for the day (rather earlier than we likely would have, had fewer things been closed) and Mom and Dad dropped me off back at my campsite. But first, of course, the rough outlines of a plan for the next day needed to be sketched out (or confirmed, rather, since a general idea had already been floated earlier). Broadly, the plan was to head over to the west side of the loop road and have a day focused mainly on geysers and hot springs (and fumaroles!) and such—although, every time I mentioned the idea of tomorrow being “geyser day,” Zane kept replying—with a mischievous grin—that TODAY, which we had spent with (from his point of view) grandma & grandpa, already qualified for that descriptor. Eventually I figured out that he was punning on “geyser” and “geezer.”
In any case, I spent the remainder of this day (late afternoon and evening) relaxing, reading, and enjoying my campfire. The previous night had been surprisingly not-cold—indeed, it was probably the least freezing cold night I’ve ever spent at Yellowstone—but it got quite a bit colder on this night, so the fire was nice in the evening, and when it came time to hit the sack, I bundled up good. Which kept me warm, all right, but it didn’t help me when the battery powering my C-PAP machine went dead in the middle of the night. I have two batteries, so I was able to switch the dead one out for the fresh one and was okay for the rest of the night, but this merely postponed the problem. They normally each last through four nights, and here this one was, running out of juice after only two and a half nights! I was clearly going to run into trouble before the end of the trip, even if #2 lasted as long as it ought to (since the trip was to last 8 nights). I’d have to figure out some kind of solution to this problem (equipment-related challenge #2 of the trip, after Carl & Cassie’s flat tire the previous day), but more on that later…