Here are some notes and thoughts that I jotted down about the second day of my trip, along with some pictures from the said day. This day basically consisted of the drive from Theodore Roosevelt the rest of the way out to Yellowstone.
I hit the road around 6:30 am (Mountain Time), I believe; shortly after I got under way, I remember noting to myself that I was not yet even 24 hours into the trip, since I had left home around 8:10 (Central Time) the previous day. I had been checking email at various stops the day before via my phone (shout out to Emily Alford for sending me the last non-spam email that I was able to read before going “off the grid”), and I’d wanted to check it one more time—as well as posting a “see you in a week” sort of signoff to Facebook—in Billings, MT before heading into the mountains today. For whatever reason, though, I proved not to have cell service west of Bismarck, ND, so that didn’t happen. Oh, well.
The drive over Bear Tooth Pass was breathtaking as always—and it seemed less arduous/harrowing than on past trips, too (maybe I’m just getting used to it?). Weirdly, I somehow missed “the spot” up top where one stops, gets out, walks the little path, looks out over the valley below, etc. I’d planned to eat a lunch there, but oh well. I did stop at another spot marked as the summit, though, and got someone to take my picture there, as well as taking a few pics of my own.
My fallback plan was to stop in Cooke City for a picnic lunch, but when I got there, I didn’t see any obvious spots. Plus, being now only 5 miles from the park, I figured it’d be easy enough to find a picnic spot in the park—so I pressed on. This was the correct decision. A scant mile or two inside the park boundary, there was, sure enough, a picnic area (“Warm Creek”). It was on the left and I drove past it before it fully registered, but there was a pulloff on the right just a few feet down the road at a hiking trailhead, so I used that to turn around. But first, I stopped and got out of the car just to walk around for a minute (mainly to get my bearings, and verify my impression that the picnic area was the spot that I had just passed on the other side of the road). This was when it hit me that I was back in Yellowstone, and I actually had a profound experience: a sudden surge of ecstasy, and what I can only describe (however corny this may sound) as a moment of pure joy. It was weird how much this little moment of arrival in the park felt like a homecoming!
It also planted the seed of a crazy idea that would keep growing in my brain the whole time that I was out there. Given how much I obviously love Yellowstone, might there be a way for me, at some point in the future, to spend a summer working or volunteering out there? After all, once I’m a teacher, I will have summers off from my regular work… I have no idea if this is something that I’ll ever be able to do—and even if it is, it would involve some difficult sacrifices—but like I said, the idea lodged itself in my head within minutes of arriving in the park and it still hasn’t left.
Anyway, I got back in the car, turned around, and headed back to the picnic spot that I’d passed, where I finally ate what had turned out to be a rather late lunch. Afterwards, I walked down the little path from the picnic area proper to the creek, into which I waded. The “Warm Creek” moniker struck me as somewhat dubious, but the cold water felt great, so I wasn’t complaining.
Then it was time for the long drive through the park down to Bridge Bay, where I would be camping for the week. I saw buffalo in the Lamar and Hayden Valleys, of course—but as usual, I was also, by this time, tired from hours of intense driving and ready to “get there.” Eventually, get there I did. After registering and all that jazz, I drove into the campground to initial dismay as I passed loops where the sites were very open and crowded together. My own loop was further in, though, and when I turned off the campground’s “main drag” onto the short E & F Loop road, the sudden vista of Yellowstone Lake that I saw spread out immediately ahead of me took my breath away. My loop, F, proved to be far nicer than the earlier loops that I’d passed, and my site—while not one of the ones directly facing the lake—was just on the other side of the loop. Glimpses of the lake were visible through the trees, and it was only a (very) short walk down to the shore. It did involve crossing the main park road, but that was no big deal. Before even setting up, I walked down to the shore and waded into the lake—a first, despite having camped near it two trips here ago as well (at a different campground).
The rest of this evening was pretty much as one would expect: set up tent/site, build a fire, grill up some brats and corn on the cob, dine, walk around the campground to get the lay of the land, spend a little time reading, & hit the hay!
