Yellowstone National Park - Day 1

When you visit Yellowstone it’s said that visitors often see less than 1% of the park, and I believe it; Yellowstone is so large you can fit New Jersey and Rhode Island inside its borders with room to spare! This excited me since there would always be plenty to see, but I was saddened by the lack of time I had to do it.
          At the entrance of the National Park my excitement was palpable; I’d wanted to visit this park for some time now and couldn’t believe I was here. With my parents and my trusty gnome Fiddlesticks, we commenced our journey.

          We entered through the western gate, as this is the closest to Ol Faithful. Unfortunately, back in the late 1980s a forest fire ravaged over 2500 acres and the devastation was still around to be seen. Dead and rotting wood just lying around, whole trees scattered here and there waiting for time to finally remove the memory of them. Yet amid the ruin of this once lofty portion of Yellowstone, beauty could be seen. Like a child on Christmas morning, Creation was peaking through the rubble. Pine trees, some no higher than my knee, others cresting ten feet, were making a mad dash for the Sun. Though dispossessed of this catastrophe would have be best, seeing the transition from death to life hits rather close to home for Christians.
            The river, of course, faired much better as it simply continued to snake through this beautiful park, causing its occupants to gaze in wonder. Pulling back and forth across the landscape, we found it difficult to stop taking pictures whenever the river made an appearance. One of our unmet goals was to catch a fisherman in his natural habitat, gleaning the fruit of this river. Then there was the sound, THE SOUND, it’s amazing. Rushing water, babbling water, lazy water, had I days on end to sit and listen it would not be enough to satiate my soul of this ballad.

             The geysers seem to be everywhere, and if you’ve never seen one before, you just can’t take your eyes off them. The first one we stopped at was Lower Geyser Basin; one of the smaller geysers but still cool to see. A major problem we ran into was the 30-40 mph winds. I never thought I would feel vulnerable and unstable on a 5 foot wide deck, but I did that day! It was nerve racking to say the least, you did not want to fall into that slime! Though, the wind interacting with the geyser made for cool pictures.

               Midway Geyser Basin was the largest geyser in the world, with eruptions up to 300ft. That was back in 1880 and did not erupt again until 1985, only reaching heights of 20-30 ft. It was at this geyser that we noticed the spike in humidity. This large pond of steaming water brought the Relative Humidity from 20% to 60%, and constantly fogged up my glasses, not to mention stunk up the place with the sulfur. We thought, at first, that the wind would be an irritant, but it turns out that the high winds swept most of the steam away from the hot springs, revealing the most amazing blue, cavernous well you’ve ever seen.

                Finally, we arrive at THE geyser to see, Ol Faithful. Ol Faithful goes off about every 45 to 90 min. They say ‘about’ because it does sputter before it really gets cranking. You’ll know when the geyser is within 20 min of going off; the crowd multiplies from about 30 people to over 100. We got there early enough to get a good seat. What’s more a little chipmunk trotted over and started nibbling on flowers. This little guy became the center of attention, they are quite cute. And then it happened, the geyser started sputtering and within seconds shot over 150 ft. We were there late in the day and the sun was at the perfect angle, lighting the stream of water for a great dramatic effect.

              After the great geyser went off, my parents and I wondered around to see the other smaller geysers in the area. There seems to be hundreds if not thousands of these small hot springs just bubbling up everywhere. After awhile you feel like once you’ve seen one hot spring you’ve seen them all, so we headed back. On our return trip we did get some good shots of the river and drift wood, and general landscape, though sadly no otters.

               There are several species of animals in Yellowstone, chief among them, or at least the most popular, are the bison. On our way back to the hotel the traffic came to a halt for no apparent reason, little did we know this was code for: there’s something to take a picture of and everyone is stopping to do so. It seems a bison was wondering across the road destination: unknown, speed: that of a turtle! These creatures, so fierce in appearance, are passive in nature. We watched in amazement as the bison strode right next to a vehicle without even a hint of aggression. Don’t let that fool you, visitors are strongly discouraged from interacting with these great beasts.
I you do get a chance to visit Yellowstone make sure to drive around at sunset. The orange light will catch the steam off the hot springs making for some great photography.

        What I remember most from day 1 are the colors, the deep greens, and the blue of the geysers and pools. You need at least a week or two to really enjoy that 1% of Yellowstone.