Yellowstone Family Trip-4

Milo, the oldest child awoke throwing up and feeling bad. When Sinclair, our daughter-in-law, also felt bad we decided to postpone our usual 7:30-ish departure and see how people were doing given a little more time. Fortunately, after an hour, Milo recovered, but unfortunately, Sinclair did not. So we ended up leaving her in the AirB&B with her books and hot tea, as we drove off to the park.

It was a blue sky sunny morning, as we headed north to Mammoth Hot Springs near the north entrance of the park. Along the way we saw our first bear of the day, a grizzly. It took nearly two hours to drive the 47 miles to Mammoth.

We arrived about 10 and immediately did a drive through of the hot springs upper terrace. The thermal features here are different from the rest of the park in that the underlying rock is limestone. Much easier rock to dissolve than the volcanic rhyolite in the majority of the park. This means that the features here are relatively fast growing. Nancy and I worked here in the 1970’s and in those fifty+ years the springs have substantially change. They grow from 8 to 12 inches a year, unlike their cousins farther south which grow about an inch per century.

After our quick car tour of the upper terrace, we continued down to the hotel area and historic Fort Yellowstone. We found a picnic table and had lunch before embarking on a walking tour of the hotel/Fort complex.

Since Nancy and I had worked there, we had to revisit our old haunts, most of which are the same as they were 50+ years ago. The employee dorm, my old cabin, the gym, and the hotel were all still in place.

After that, we walked over to the Visitors Center, looked at the exhibits, and heard a Ranger talk on Truman Everts, one of the earliest and most unlikely explorers (he was an accountant), who got lost in Yellowstone for 37 days and nearly died.

The talk ended, and we did a short walking tour of the Lower Terrace hot springs followed by ice cream at the general store. Then it was back in the van and off toward Roosevelt Lodge, where we had a Chuck Wagon dinner to attend.

On the way, we made a stop to hike the half-mile trail up to Wrath Falls, a pretty cascading fall on Lupine Creek. Along the way, we enjoyed viewing a large bull elk hanging out safely off the trail.

At Roosevelt Lodge, we checked out the place where our son, Will, had worked 20 years ago after college. Then it was over to the Roosevelt Corrals for the Chuck Wagon Cookout.

There were 9 “covered wagons” and two stagecoaches to take a couple hundred hungry tourists several miles to the site of the old Yancy Hotel from the early days in the park. The “covered wagons” were modern farm wagons with a canvas cover and six rows of bench seats for said tourists. They were pulled by two draft horses out to the cookout site several miles away in Pleasant Valley. At the site were picnic tables, cooking facilities, and a few other amenities, all outside. They fed us a steak dinner with all the fixings cooked over a fire and cowboy coffee along with other drinks. It was delicious. The grandkids all tried their hand at roping, they had an opportunity to meet the horses, and some cowboy stories were told around the campfire. Then we were all back on the wagons for the ride out. We saw two bears on the ride between the cookout location and Roosevelt Corral.

It was a two-hour drive back to our AirB&B in West Yellowstone. The sun was on its way down as we drove up and over the shoulder of 10,219-foot Mt. Washburn. Then down past Canyon and on to home. The sky gave us quite a show as we drove west. We pulled up to home about 9:45 for an end to our long day.