The Grand Tetons
Hello one and all.
We made it to the Grand Teton Nations Park early yesterday morning. Xavier was still in bed as we drove, much to his delight. How fun it is to be in the back of the van on the bed while driving through the forest!
The campgrounds in the Tetons were first come, first served, and there was a line. We had met two men in Yellowstone two days earlier who told us it was crowded. They advised us to go to one particular campsite: Colton Bay Village. Boy are we glad we ran into them!
That was the right call. We hit a line of people waiting before daybreak. The site host asked us "Are you sleeping in this van?"
When we answered "yes," he replied "That's the right answer! You have a site."
We set up our camp and had breakfast. As the Village had a general store, a laundry and showers, we spent a few hours bathing and washing clothes and picking up a few items we realized could use.
We hiked a two mile loop around the bay. There were two sow bears with cubs, one bear having three cubs with her according to the park ranger we met along the way. We never saw the bears, but as we walked in the dense forest, both Rebecca and I were wishing we had remembered to bring our can of bear mace.
On Sunday, we headed for Jenny Lake, a very popular place. We wanted to take the ferry across the lake and do some hiking. This time, we remembered to bring along our bear mace.
As we approached the ferry, a tree across the stream was shaking and a crowd of people were staring and holding up cameras. A black bear and a cub!
We never saw the cub other than the tree shaking. We did get an action shot of the mama bear standing on her hind legs, but neither Rebecca nor I could get our cameras ready in time.
After watching the bear a while, we purchased three round trip tickets for the ferry and started across the lake. This was Xavier's first boat ride.
We hiked up to Hidden Falls and had a snack, then decided to head up the rocky goat path of a trail to Inspiration Point.
Xavier did not like this plan and explained hiking was not his idea of camping. The view from the Point was not what we hoped, but still a nice view.
After a little discussion, we decided not to hike further into the canyon.
At the top we met a chipmunk bold enough to nearly hop into your hand trying to get something from unsuspecting people's backpacks.
On the way back, Xavier got to wade in the glacier-fed stream water coming from the Hidden Falls and crawl on some rocks. That was his reward for hiking up to Inspiration Point. It was a good way to refresh your feet from the hike as well.
Yellowstone, Day 2
Greetings to you all.
Today we did a tour of the Lower Loop, including the Norris Geyser Valley.
We were up early, drove to a site near Yellowstone Lake and had a fast breakfast. Oatmeal is easy to fix when your kitchen travels with you in the back of the van.
It took some time, but Xavier did eat his chocolate oatmeal. I was skeptical, but it have a good flavor.
Once Xavier finished and hit the restroom (or "drop vault" as they are oft called), we hit the trail—another boardwalk around several springs and paint pots.
The paint pots were small, but met Xavier's expectation. Later on the path we came upon a hole where a new paint pot (or mud puff) was forming. This one became Xavier's second favorite feature in the park after the Dragon's Mouth. He talked about the new paint pot the rest of the day.
He made sure I took a picture of it for him. It's the picture to the left.
The trail had a number of interesting features, including several boiling springs. Some of the springs had the crystal blue water in them. We learned later that the crystal blue colored water is at 165° or so.
One of the features Xavier found fun was a spot where, in the 1800s, people would fish Yellowstone Lake, hook a trout, then drop the trout into a steam vent to cook it without taking it off the hook.
Xavier thought the idea of that amusing and pretended to cook an imaginary fish over the vent area.
The walk held many other features that kept Xavier's attention. At the start of the walk, he was not all too happy about another trek across a boardwalk, especially after yesterday at Mammoth Hot Springs.
Xavier eventually told us that this was not his idea of camping. Apparently, his idea was to load up all the supplies, have a camp, but not go anywhere away from the camp.
We finished our tour of the features just as the crowds began to arrive. It was approaching 10:00 AM, the time the crowds descend to see the sites.
When we arrived, less than ten cars were in the lot. As we left, the lot was full with a hundred or so cars.
Our next stop was Old Faithful. We made use of the facilities once more, then headed down the road.
We arrived at the Old Faithful site and found a place to park. That was not easy even with our van. We ended up fitting ourselves in between two large RVs.
The geyser just started going off as we arrived and we saw part of its steam plume above the trees.
Being hungry, we decided to look around the lodge area and have lunch first, then pick up the next eruption about :90 minutes later.
As it turned out, the place we ate our lunch at was perfect for watching Old Faithful. As we ate, other geysers in the area erupted.
Old Faithful erupted more or less on schedule to a large crowd of onlookers, Xavier being one of them.
After Old Faithful went back to peculating, we walked the rest of the geyser trail.
At one point we had to decide which way to go, left or right. we chose right, but we should have chosen left. Less than a minute after we went right another geyser (on the left path) erupted. It shot higher than Old Faithful and lasted longer. Its spray fell on the boardwalk and the crowd of people standing there. They all shouted with joy for the experience.
We found another geyser, one of the several "most predictable" geysers in the park. We sat and watched it until a visitor passed by and said it had already erupted. We did not want to wait another two and a half hours for its next eruption, though it would have been spectacular. The geyser was large, it's vent about twenty feet in diameter.
We did come upon another geyser about to erupt, another predictable geyser named Daisy. It's schedule put it minutes away, so we hastened out pace to make the time.
We did make it in time. Daisy erupted spectacularly. In the background, Old Faithful was going off again. Fortunately, Rebecca got a picture of Daisy with Old Faithful in the background.
Yellowstone, Day 1
Greetings to all.
Our first day in Yellowstone. Our plan was to see the Obsidian Cliff and Mammoth Hot Springs. As we set out (thinking we were going counterclockwise around the upper loop), we found the Mud Volcano site. Of course, we had to stop.
Xavier was excited to see the paint pots, which we had planned for tomorrow's trip around the lower loop; the Mud Volcano turned out to be a single, giant paint pot. We did see some small mud puffs along the one mile loop.
The path passed several springs, but nothing too impressive for Xavier. We had, as part of a class assignment in April, done a virtual vacation and Xavier chose Yellowstone. We had watched YouTube videos and researched some of the volcanic features of the park back then. Apparently, the mineral springs and pools on the surface of the ground did not interest Xavier.
We eventually found a few pools and features to his liking, one being the Dragon's Tail.
Walking along, we enjoyed the colors and the thermophiles in the pools and streams. Xavier showed some interest. It would be when we started reading how the ground several years ago heated to 200° and killed the trees that he took renewed interest and started asking questions about how the heat caused the trees to die and fall over.
After circling back to where we started the walk, we took the loop in the opposite direction. This lead to the Dragon's Mouth, and Xavier's favorite feature of the park.
The Dragon's Mouth was a cave with a boiling vent of water. The sloshing of the water in the cave made the sound of a roar and then steam would belch out.
Though we thought we were going counterclockwise around the Northern Loop, we were, in fact, going clockwise—a fact we would not realize until the end of the day. The mistake kept us from seeing the meadows and wildlife on the northeast side of the loop.
But the error in our navigation did bring us to Mammoth Hot Springs much sooner than we planned.
This turned out to be a blessing, as Mammoth closed several hours after we left and did not reopen again for at least three days due to a broken water main that closed the entire west side of the upper loop and part of the northern side.
We drove through town and had our first encounter with big wildlife: a herd of elk, all does and young ones.
We fixed hamburgers out of the back of our van in a park not far from the elk, who had obviously been in the park not log before us—lots of elk droppings in the grass to avoid.
The hike and walk along the hot springs was long, about a two mile circuit. Xavier was not too thrilled about the walk. Ironically, he said as we started out "Let's walk to the end of the boardwalk, then come back." He had no idea just what "the end" meant; he thought it would be a few hundred feet.
We got about three hundred feet from the end of the walk, Xavier wanting to turn back at that point; in fact, he dug in and refused to go any further. I reminded him of his earlier statement with "Don't you want to get to the end of the boardwalk? I'm going to!"
That challenge stirred in him a passion to get to the end, touch the fence, then begin the walk back. His attitude greatly improved on the walk back after we raced to the end of the boardwalk and completed the goal.
Our next planned stop was the Obsidian Cliff. This is when we learned we navigated the loop backward from our plan. We had passed the Cliff on our way to Mammoth.
We found the Cliff. Xavier found the obsidian really interesting. After a brief sorte from the van, we headed back to camp.
When we arrived back in camp, Rebecca wanted to take a walk down to the marina, but neither Xavier nor I were up for the walk.
As Xavier and I prepped the camp for the night's fire and for dinner, one of our neighbors told us about a five-point elk that had settled in at the end of the road.
Of course, Xavier and I walked down to see the animal. The buck was impressive and well worth the walk to see it.
Xavier Goes On A Real Vacation
Greetings to everyone.
Back in early May, we planned on attending a wedding of one of Xavier's cousins in Idaho. We scheduled the days off from work and rented a camper van. Our plan was to drive to Idaho in the van and attend the wedding, then spend three days in Yellowstone on the trip back.
Due to the insanity around the COVID pandemic, the wedding turned into an elopement, but we still had the time off and the van reserved. We decided instead of three days in Yellowstone, why not the whole ten days on a family vacation.
Xavier has wanted to do a camping trip for more than a year now, and we've had several backyard COVID camping experiences. Now was the time for a full-on real camping experience in the wild, with bears and lions and wolves, albeit a few tweaks due to various states' regulations to manage the spread of COVID.
We did not start planning our trip until two weeks before leaving. Rebecca called Yellowstone and got a campsite for two nights. That put a pin in our until then fluid plans. This morning, as we left, Rebecca called to see if we could extend our stay by a day. To our surprise, the answer was yes, albeit a different campsite.
We decided to start out in Thermopolis (our Yellowstone site was for Wednesday and Thursday). We spent two nights there splashing in the hot springs and visiting the dinosaur museum.
The museum was more than a journey to look at bones. We forgot to pack clean shirts for Xavier, so we hoped the gift shop would have something. PTL, it did, and the shirts had clearance prices!
You'll see in the days to come Xavier wearing his new shirts.