During my road trip, I had about 5 days to explore Grand Teton and Yellowstone, which is really no time at all.
Getting There
It seems like karmic justice that, in order for Wyoming to be endowed with the diverse beauty of Yellowstone and the Teton range, it must make up for it by filling the rest of the state with the most boring flat lands you can imagine. That way it balances out.
On the drive there, I was careful not to let my gas level drop below half a tank, given that the nearest gas station can easily take half a tank to get to.
Seeing the flat landscape turn to hills on the horizon filled me with excitement.
And before I knew it, I was surrounded by them.
As I made my way towards my campground for the night, I encountered completely stopped traffic. I was concerned that there’d been an accident, but delighted to see that traffic had stopped to let several bison cross the road.
With that, I arrived and set up camp, but slower than I would’ve anticipated. You see, in the past day, I’d climbed over 3,000 feet in elevation, to around ~6400 ft above sea level. I didn’t expect elevation change to have much of an impact, but I found myself feeling sluggish and distractable. Setting up camp should’ve been easy, but I had to take frequent breaks just to re-focus, breathe, and relax. It took until the next morning before I felt that my body had adjusted to the elevation.
Also, my tires were a bit over-inflated due to the high elevation, so I had to let some air out. If you’re ever traveling with changes in elevation, remember to bring a tire pressure gauge. It’s normal for tires to be read at a higher pressure after the heat from driving so it’s good to check your tire pressure before leaving.
Grand Teton National Park
Fun etymology fact! “Grand Teton” is derived from the French for “Giant Breast”. (source)
One theory says the early French voyageurs named the range les trois tétons (“the three nipples”) after the breast-like shapes of its peaks.
— Wikipedia
As such, below you can not see the points (from left to right) Nez Perce, Grand Teton, and Teewiont Mountian.
All further images will be uncensored.
”I want to be like you when I grow up!”
— The Boulder to the Mountain
As you can see, I visited while the snow was melting, ensuring the rivers were flowing quite high.
I do love a bit of environmental storytelling. For example, there’s a path that splits off for barely a moment, which I wanted to title “The Illusion of Choice”, but is perhaps more aptly titled “Oh, you can tell where it’d be muddy when it rains”. Additionally, I like seeing people’s footprints in the snow, as it’s a clear illustration that more compact snow takes longer to melt.
This quote from the visitor’s center really stood out to me. I don’t think I could have set it better, or put a better disclaimer on why the person quoted is apparently an awful person.
Yellowstone
Yellowstone was designated America’s first national park in 1872, with Grand Teton following much later in 1929. While Grand Teton is incredibly beautiful, I found that Yellowstone matches this beauty with greater diversity, fully deserving its first-place spot in history.
Yellowstone’s draw includes seeing hot springs and geysers (like Old Faithful), which are fueled by the magma of the supervolcano underneath the park.
I really like the way Bill Bryson tells the story of geologist Bob Christiansen’s work in analyzing this supervolcano:
“[There] are volcanoes so explosive that they burst open in a single mighty rupture, leaving behind a vast subsided pit [called] the caldera (from a Latin word for cauldron). Yellowstone obviously was of this […] type, but Christiansen couldn’t find the caldera anywhere.
By coincidence just at this time NASA decided to test some new high-altitude cameras by taking photographs of Yellowstone, copies of which some thoughtful official passed on to the park authorities on the assumption that they might make a nice blow-up for one of the visitors’ centers. As soon as Christiansen saw the photos he realized why he had failed to spot the caldera: virtually the whole park—2.2 million acres—was caldera. The explosion had left a crater more than forty miles across—much too huge to be perceived from anywhere at ground level. At some time in the past Yellowstone must have blown up with a violence far beyond the scale of anything known to humans.”
…
”Yellowstone wasn’t the site of an ancient supervolcano; it was the site of an active one. It was also at about this time that they were able to work out that the cycle of Yellowstone’s eruptions averaged one massive blow every 600,000 years. The last one, interestingly enough, was 630,000 years ago. Yellowstone, it appears, is due.”
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
So, just keep that comforting thought in mind as we see the hot springs and geysers firsthand.
Also, any time you see a hot spring, assume that the hydrogen sulfide in the air makes everything smell like farts and rotten eggs. Just be glad your device doesn’t support Smell-O-Vision.
West Thumb
(The Continental Divide is quite far from West Thumb, but I visited them back to back)
Riverside Geyser
The website GeyserTimes.org maintains regular predictions for many of the geysers of Yellowstone.
The Riverside Geyser is particularly impressive, in that its eruptions can last as long as 20 minutes! In the beginning, there was a crowd filled with anticipation. By the end, most people had gotten bored and wandered away.
I was lucky enough to see both the Riverside Geyser and Old Faithful erupt back-to-back. It may be hard to convey in pictures, but I felt like each eruption was a really unique and stunning experience.
Old Faithful
Around the Geyser Basin
Lewis Lake
Dragon’s Mouth Spring
I met a grandmother at the Dragon’s Mouth Spring, who impressed upon me the importance of coming back in the future, because Yellowstone will change in my lifetime, as she’d seen it change in hers.
Second Bison Traffic Jam
Sitting next to the adult bison, I got the unnerving feeling that he could tear right through my car if he wanted to. The calves are so cute though! I love how the adults hold the cars back to let the calves pass.
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
I really enjoyed the hiking trails near the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
I’ve included some seemingly duller photos of the meadows to emphasize the incredible diversity of having meadows, mountains, canyons, and geothermal mudpots all next to each other!
In the end, finishing my hike on the snowy path, I encountered a tour guide telling his group that the trail was unsafe due to the snow, and that they’d be taking a safer route. I’m glad I didn’t do many nature tours, due to sentiments like this. I felt like a lot of the best experiences I had were because I was somewhere raw and unfiltered, rather than in a curated tour environment.
Wade Lake
So, during the time that I was at Yellowstone, one of my campgrounds was at Wade Lake Campground. Now, as with many of my locations, I booked it based on availability, location, and price. I had wanted a place slightly North of Yellowstone, to make my drive towards the Pacific Northwest a little easier.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that this campground was only accessible via about 5.8 miles of dirt and gravel roads. I’m not going to say my car is awful for off roading, but it certainly wasn’t a comfortable experience.
When I arrived, the campground host was politely waiting for me. He let me know that that there was a bear sighting near my campground, and I should be on the lookout.
So, I immediately decided to go for a nightime hike to explore the area. Technically, this was during the period I was vising Yellowstone, but it was significant enough I think it’s worth seperating here.
Oh! I guess I know the bear he was talking about.
In the end, I’m happy to report I was not mauled by a bear.
Conclusion
Overall, every place in Yellowstone is stunningly beautiful, and I’m glad it didn’t explode massively while I was there.
However, during my time on the road, I did get a check engine light
This told me that my vent valve and fuel solenoid were experiencing an intermittent failure, which we thought might be related to my previous one-time loss of power, rough idle, and inability to start my car.
Join me in the next chapter to see how this goes!
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