Yellowstone

Welcome to Yellowstone!  There are buffalo on the road. The elk and antelope and moose were not so bold and stayed in the meadows.

We started the trip swimming in Pagosa Springs with Sam and Pearl and ended it swimming in Yellowstone.  I really wanted my kids to get to swim in a hot spring, because it is such a memorable experience. There is a hot spring within walking distance of the place we stayed in Taos, but we turned right instead of left and couldn’t find it in the undergrowth, even though it is supposedly the size of an Olympic swimming pool. Plus half the places we stayed were named for hot springs: Pagosa Springs, Colorado Springs, and Rock Springs, for example. Supposedly at Yellowstone, there is one spot way up north where a hot spring meets a cold river.  We never found it.  Correction: there are dozens of places where hot springs meet cold rivers, but swimming is not allowed. It IS allowed in the lake if you like that Nordic cold dip experience.  Our book listed the Firehole River as the only other swimming spot.

Up-river are the rocky rapids.

Downriver was a glassy pool, dammed by a natural rock ridge.

In between was a cleft between two deep, deep rocks where the current shoots through with hardly a ripple on the surface.  Wyatt’s first project was to find a log and make a bridge. You can see the current trying to rip it out of his hands.

I laughed so hard as that log inched its way across the rocky landscape, dragging its tail like Jabba the Hut.

Success!  There were two 30-something–year-old guys shooting the gap.  They swam up against the current and then rode the current back.

Those guys jumped off a low cliff, too, which would have been fine in Oman, but I asked the kids not to since there were signs up everywhere saying not to. That is Wyatt  in orange and Tristan at the far left.

Once they had exhausted the fun to be had with the bridge, and gotten over the reluctance to swim in their underwear, they went in.  Wyatt first, of course, then Tristan, then Winston.  The water was not as cold as you would expect, having had thousands of gallons per minute of boiling water pumped into it by the Grand Prismatic Spring. But for a rainy day in October, it was still cold.  I don’t have pictures of the Grand Prismatic Spring, probably because it actually was raining at that point.  It is the famous brilliant blue one with red streaks running out like solar flares.  It was almost completely obscured by steam, but the steam glowed pale blue from underneath.  Link to gorgeous photo

Where was I this whole time? Nursing the dog bite and realizing just how much you need two hands in rocky terrain. I couldn’t even use it to steady myself. The injury is better, by the way, with just two scabs and skin peeling from where it swelled.

We stayed in West Yellowstone at a hotel because of the rain, and had breakfast at Ernie’s bakery.  The wi-fi was OK and the bear claws were great.  They had slivered almonds stuck in like claws.  Thank goodness for on-line school, because I would have felt guilty asking to stop in every town at the coffee shop, but this way, we had to. The last place we stopped was “The Fix, Espresso and Basque Food.” The Basque Country is a northern region of Spain, and the girls there said their dad was Basque.  They had every flavor imaginable of Italian Soda, which was a nice break from hot chocolate for the boys.

Like the Grand Canyon, the Yellowstone Gorge doesn’t look like much in pictures.  Even in person, you can’t tell how big it is.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Close-up of the terraces at Mammoth

And of course, Old Faithful.  We saw a nice video about the pocket of magma under Yellowstone that acts like a giant boiler. They said, “Here at Yellowstone, you are closer to the forces that shape the earth than anywhere else.”  How’s that for adding drama to your sight-seeing!