Wallace ID
Missoula MT
Missoula MT University of Montana
Helena MT State Capitol Building
Yellowstone National Park WY Old Faithful Inn
Yellowstone National Park WY Mammoth Hot Springs
Yellowstone National Park WY Grand Prismatic Spring
Yellowstone National Park WY Steve
Yellowstone National Park WY Lake Yellowstone
Yellowstone National Park WY
Grand Teton National Park WY Jordan & Rusty
Grand Teton National Park WY
Jackson WY
Craters of the Moon National Monument ID
Craters of the Moon National Monument ID
Boise ID
Boise ID
Boise ID State Capitol Building
Pendleton OR Pendleton Woolen Mills
It was raining & windy when we got back from our Yellowstone trip on Saturday, October 10. It had been dry for the previous 8 days during our travels, with the exception of a bit of snow as we crossed a mountain pass into Helena MT on the 2nd day. That evening we arrived in Yellowstone. We spent 4 nights there, which amounted to half of the nights we were away. We spent much more time with feet on the ground in Yellowstone. We were in the car traveling through Washington, Idaho, Montana & Wyoming the rest of the time, with few stops. By the time we reached the cities where we spent the night, it was nearly dark. We covered 2,200 miles.
The most obvious & abundant things in Yellowstone were pine trees, Asian tourists, steaming thermal vents & bison. When we first approached park, the rising steam looked as though the forests were smoking with fire. The fumaroles, geysers & pools of boiling water were most plentiful in the area around Old Faithful, the most famous geyser of all. We stayed at the Old Faithful Inn in a plain & cramped room with 2 large beds, a wardrobe, small table & chair.
Tourists were abundant at the inn & the viewing area for the geyser. They were of all sorts, but the largest number were Asians who arrived in large tour buses. Most were Chinese, but some were Korean & Japanese. The next largest group were Americans, then a few Europeans. We heard Finnish, French, German & Russian. Tour buses full of Chinese moved from one natural attraction to another. We found buses in almost every parking lot. Chinese girls in oddly fashionable attire & heavy makeup became one of the most interesting sights in Yellowstone. They took photos of themselves, alone & in groups, with cell phones mounted on sticks. They giggled loudly at the photos.
We spent a lot of time driving inside the park. Yellowstone is quite large & the speeds are limited to 45 mph or less. In addition, traffic was sometimes stopped by herds of bison crossing the roads. They are very slow-moving creatures. There were instructions to stay at least 300 feet from wildlife & also videos at the information center which showed tourists being attacked by bison. And yet there were always a number of tourists within 10 feet. We saw no bison attacks.
Tourists also ignored the rule to stay on the paths & boardwalks. There were frequent & obvious signs, in 6 languages, spelling out the danger of breaking through the crust of ground & falling into boiling hole to be seriously scalded, possibly to death, as had happened more than 100 times before. Armed with their selfie sticks, many Chinese left the path to cluster nearer to these dangerous & common features. The ground was alive with steaming & gurgling water.
Steve became ill on the first day out. He blamed it on lunch in Moses Lake WA. He managed to walk around picturesque Wallace ID later in the afternoon. We had to leave him at the hotel in Missoula MT while they went out to dinner. We ate at 2 different restaurants, one that served stylish multicultural tapas & another that served basic Mexican food. The tapas were not enough for Jordan. We found the Pray for Snow Party in a park beside the Clarks Fork River downtown. It was mostly filled with students from the University of Montana. But it was billed as a party for all ages. There were 2 bonfires, a live band, booths & a free tote bag from REI.
We returned to Missoula in the morning for breakfast, which Steve didn’t eat. We found the farmers market & walked around the university campus. Missoula was lovely. Steve stayed in the car & rested. We drove to Helena MT to visit Rusty’s nephew Travis. He met us for lunch, which Steve didn’t eat. Helena was almost completely lacking in charm. We saw the state capitol building, which was nice enough. We went out to the house that Travis had rented, in a development on the side of a mountain at 6,500 feet, outside the city. Then we encountered mountain passes & endless valleys along the way to Yellowstone. We entered through the west entrance at the town of West Yellowstone MT. Most of the park in in Wyoming.
We stayed at the Old Faithful Inn, the first inn at Yellowstone, which opened in 1904. It had several wings. Ours probably built in the 1930s. One night, we sat in the balcony overlooking the massive stone chimney with fires in hearths on 3 sides. We stood out in front of the hotel, on the longest deck you have ever seen, to watch the Old Faithful Geyser erupt at least 3 different times. There were many more geysers & other geothermal features in the surrounding area. We saw a much less frequent geyser erupt the next evening as the sun set.
On the 2nd day in Yellowstone we drove to Mammoth Hot Springs. There were several areas of geothermal activity along the way. We didn’t stop to see them. We did stop to see some huge rocks in the pass above Mammoth. It took us all afternoon to drive there & back, including the stop for bison on the road. The hot springs were not very full of water. But the white terraces that the boiling water had built of travertine were very impressive.
That night Jordan was sick with the stomach virus Steve also had. He was up most of the night, then spent the next 24 hours mostly sleeping. Rusty & Steve went out to see the sights the next day. We all went out again on the following day. It was difficult to breath at altitudes as high as 8,000 feet. We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in West Yellowstone, which was easy on my stomach. There were 3 Chinese restaurants & each one had 2 busloads of Chinese tourists eating in them.
We saw more of the park as we left from the south entrance on the following day. It was the 7th day away from Seattle & the 5th day in the park. We stopped at a geyser basin on the shore of Lake Yellowstone. That was one of the more impressive sights. We found bison in the parking lot at Lake Village. A ranger chased them out with his truck. After we left Yellowstone, we almost immediately entered Grand Teton National Park.
The Grand Teton Mountains were much more beautiful than the mountains in Yellowstone. We lingered by Jackson Lake & again at Jenny Lake. Then we entered the valley of Jackson Hole to spend the night in Jackson WY. All of the buildings in Jackson are built with a western theme. It’s tacky in an interesting way, because the construction is of good quality & design. We sauntered through stores at the center of town after dinner. Steve bought a carved bison figure.
It was a long drive from Jackson to Boise ID. We stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument in the Snake River Flats about midway. That was the most amazing thing we saw on our trip. We never expected it would be. After driving for several hours across the barren flats, we came to the edge of the mountains, where we found ancient lava flows in a hilly area sparsely covered with pine. Like Yellowstone, this place was once alive with volcanic activity. Yellowstone erupted 3 times in the last 2 million years. The last time was 630,000 years ago. Craters of the Moon erupted 60 times between 15,000 & 2,000 years ago. There are fields & formations of lava, as well as 25 volcanic cones.
We liked Boise. We stayed in a tall downtown hotel. The streets near the hotel had many restaurants. We ate excellent upscale Thai food at Mai Thai. There wasn’t much to see in Boise outside downtown. We left fairly early the next morning on our drive through the slim remainder of Idaho & on through eastern Oregon. We found a historic downtown by chance at Baker City, then had lunch in La Grande, then toured the woolen mill in Pendleton. We spent our final night in Kennewick WA. There was nothing very interesting there. We went out to dinner & a movie (The Martian) at a mall complex near the hotel. It took only 4 hours to get home from Kennewick the next day.
