Yellowstone National Park: 245.4 miles, 11hrs drive time

In the interests of furthering the proliferation of absolutely pointless top-ten lists, I humbly offer:

Peter's Top Ten Things to Do in Yellowstone

10: Discover that the best speed for your car to travel in order to get the best mileage is 45 miles/hour, which, conveniently, is the speed limit for all of Yellowstone.


9: Climb a lot of stairs to see a hot spring that is relatively dormant. Immediately turn around and go back down the same stairs.
8: Drive along a stretch of road at 25 miles/hour for about 25 minutes. Begin to slowly go nuts as a result.
7: Wander through the Yellowstone General Store three times in three places and see almost the exact same stuff at each, with minor variations.


6: Wonder what Old Faithful would think of all the millions of visitations if it were a cranky old man.
5: Remember why you have a fear of heights as you look straight down sheer cliffs at wondrous sights.
4: Attempt to figure out why there are gas stations marked on the National Park Service map where there are, in fact, no gas stations at all.
3: Breathe in deeply as you step out of the car to look at a sulphur pit; immediately regret same.


2: Contemplate the relationship between distance from a bison and the likelihood that said bison eats you for lunch.

And the top thing to do in Yellowstone:

1: Be thankful you aren't traveling through the park before or during Labor Day weekend.

If you have a choice in Yellowstone between following the lower loop and following the upper loop for a drive, follow the upper loop - there's a lot of amazing, amazing sights. Unfortunately, Yellowstone isn't the kind of park that you can cover comprehensively in a day

We followed the Grand Loop Road all day today, heading up first thing in the morning to see the geyser eruption of Old Faithful. We arrived very close to the eruption time (which was predicted as being within ten minutes of 9:38) and only had to wait about ten minutes. Unfortunately, one poor soul stumbled up as Old Faithful was spurting its last gush and asked whether the show was just starting. The next eruption was somewhere around 11:30 - ouch.

A quick breakfast later, we found ourselves wooshing along north towards Mammoth Hot Springs, encountering nary a single bison obstructing our route. There's some very beautiful scenery as a result of the 1988 wildfires along this entire loop - there are stands of dead trees mixed with regrowth that are absolutely stunning and sometimes eerie. The picture at right shows some of that scenery heading towards Mammoth - this was apparently one of the hardest-hit parts of the park, having just burned several years previously in 1976.

Just before Mammoth Hot Springs, there is some very steep 6% grade, which is vertigo-inducing even when in the car driving 25 miles/hour downhill. Coming out of the twists and turns, we got out and took a walk around the hot springs, which have some beautiful views - alas, there wasn't much water running (in fact, the only water we saw was in pools and perhaps a very tiny, miniscule stream). This might be a place to revisit in another season to see what it looks like then. We had lunch, did a bit of shopping, then headed southward once again. We stopped at Tower Falls, the subject of many paintings of Yellowstone, including one that helped inspire the need for Yellowstone to become a National Park. As we continued back towards the lodge, we encountered a couple herds of bison milling along the road - these are beautiful creatures, but the want to enjoy that beauty can put you in danger very quickly, especially if you're too close. Thus, we never lingered very long.


If you listen really closely, you can hear the mud burbling something along the lines of "Who dares disturb my slumber?!?"

We stopped at the Sulphur Caldron, a big, bubbling mass of mud (as a lot of sulphur-based volcanic features seem to be). This particular Caldron had a pH level of 1 - its acidity is ten times worse than lemon juice with a pH of 2 and better than battery acid with a pH of 0. For a point of comparison, water has a pH level of 7 (or neutral).

Science lesson: pH is the scientific notation for "power of hydrogen" - acidic pH levels indicate a release of hydrogen ions, while alkaline levels (at the other end of the pH scale) remove those ions. Yes, I read it off the sign conveniently located at the Caldron, but it's also basic high school lab science. So there!

Gas in national parks, you would think, would be a very important thing to mark properly on a map. Not so, apparently, for Yellowstone, where there are two gas stations indicated on the map along the eastern part of the Loop road that actually don't exist. I should note here that we were using the map printed as part of the most recent park newspaper. The older map that was also given to us (which notes things happening in 2004) was actually somewhat more accurate in that regard.

Yes, the older thing was more accurate. I was flummoxed! (No offense to those getting along in age.)

Our final stop of the day was in the West Thumb Geyser Basin, where I managed to capture some spectacular scenery, partly because of the time of day and partly because of the weather. One such shot looks like this:

I also managed to catch some nice shots of the Grand Tetons as we returned to the lodge:

We'll be seeing far more of those mountains tomorrow as we explore Grand Teton National Park.