Yellowstone in a Day

Short Version:
We visit Yellowstone National Park.

Long Version:
Yellowstone Day dawned cold. Really cold. It was the cold that woke us, and kept us awake despite all efforts to the contrary. When we eventually succumbed to bladder imperative and exited the Reaper we found a frozen white riverscape. Delicate traceries of icy leaves adorned frosted branches on plants sprouting from frost-rimed ground. The Reaper was whiter than it had been for a long time; patterned ice covered windows and side panels and doors and mirrors alike. Too cold to break our fast there - we'd tried, but the water bottles were iced shut - so we packed up camp. Fingers froze despite more than one pair of gloves; it's a tough call whether to leave them on and take longer, or take them off and get colder but for less time exposed. In the end we got away with all digits intact, and left the icy-cold Polecat Creek steaming in the even colder air as the sun threatened to rise over the eastern hills.

We'd done some maths in between animal encounters the previous night, and had figured out that our plans to hit not only Yellowstone, but also the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, Yosemite, Arches, and various other National Parks meant that we were better off buying an Annual Pass for all USA National Parks and Monuments than paying at each one. So we forked out eighty bucks to the unfortunate-looking but very pleasant ranger and set off into the park. Straight into a low cloud. We were fearing the worst for our one day of sightseeing, but as we hauled higher and higher up the wall of the huge caldera that contains the bulk of Yellowstone Park the cloud grew thinner and finally vanished altogether. We crossed the Continental Divide (a feat we were to repeat several more times throughout the course of the day) and then dropped down into the crater proper, where we stopped to have a look at the Kepler Cascades; a series of waterfalls in a canyon, viewed from a platform high above, which was covered in ice and just a wee bit slippery.

There were a number of deer grazing at the roadside. We nearly hit a couple of them. We also nearly hit one or two of the cars which had stopped in the middle of the road to take photos of several cow elk which were meandering about. We'd seen plenty of elk in California*, so carried on around the bend... where we in turn stopped in the middle of the road, confronted by a bloody big bull elk with bloody big antlers**. All four hooves were planted firmly on the asphalt as he eyed us suspiciously. It felt like we sat there for much longer than it could really have been, and then he snorted, shook his enormous head, and wandered off into the trees. Then he started roaring. It was without a doubt one of the craziest noises either of us had ever heard. No-one else had so much as glimpsed the beast, which made us feel kind of special.

Not long afterwards, we rounded a bend and found ourselves braking hard to avoid plowing into the back end of a traffic jam. The Reaper's not-so-aerodynamic front end came in handy at this point, affording us views over the top of the cars in front of us to the cause of the blockage: a herd of buffalo, standing on the road. They were huge. The big bulls, particularly, seemed to dwarf the smaller vehicles***. There were several calves in the herd, and even they seemed to emanate a sense of power despite only being the size of a large motorcycle. The buffalo seemed completely unconcerned about the proximity of even the biggest RVs, moving either minimally and at the last moment or not at all. Eventually enough of them moved far enough aside to allow one lane of vehicles to start moving, and we were underway once more, towards Old Faithful and the geothermal hotbed it spearheads.







* = Dirty wapiti!

** = Not nubbins****

*** = Not that there were many smaller vehicles about - we're in Amerika after all

**** = All together now; (E) A nubbin, a nubbin, a nubbin, a nubbin, (A7) A nubbin, a nubbin, a nubbin, a nubbin! (REPEAT)