After doing a frou-frou Alaska cruise last year, Carole and John decided to rough it for this year’s vacation. We flew into Jackson, Wyoming and tried to rent a hand-pumped rail cart to propel ourselves up to Yellowstone National Park, but there were none available. So, we rented a car and drove the 100 miles north and looked for a camping site at Yellowstone.
But, those were full, too – so we settled for staying at the 125 year old Yellowstone Lake Hotel.
It had a decent view of Lake Yellowstone and the snow-capped mountains of the Absaroka Range– these were pretty much the only clouds we saw all week.
Bison are to Yellowstone as politicians are to Washington DC – you see them everywhere but they never seem to accomplish much.
Our first full day in Yellowstone we drove around the 70 mile loop of park roads starting with breakfast at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge and then on to various geyser and hot springs areas north of that. This is really a unique area and by 1141 am we had reached one of the most unusual geysers at Yellowstone, the Digital Clock Geyser.
Continuing north, more geysers – like Easter Eggs, all different colors but they all smelled like eggs.
This is the White Dome geyser on Firehole Lake Drive. For some reason, little Scottie doggies are not allowed on the boardwalk near this one.
Here's a geyser doing what a geyser's gotta do - geysing, I believe it is called. This was one of many in the Midway Geyser basin.
We had intended to do a 7 mile hike to Fairy Falls, but the area was closed for renovation, so we continued north. We encountered an immense traffic jam, as a herd of bison decided to slooowly clomp up the road south from Mammoth Hot Springs, luckily going in the opposite direction from us. We continued north, viewed Gibbon Falls and the Mammoth Hot Springs and many other scenic wonders too numerous to mention. That night, we had a very nice meal at the Old Faithful Inn restaurant.
Huge fireplace with clock in the 114 year old Old Faithful Inn.
The next day was a hiking day – we did 4 different hikes adding up to a little over 11 miles. Carole was very happy that I rented bear spray (the UDAP canister above), even though the only bears we saw all week were small plastic ones filled with honey at the restaurants. If a bear charged you, the theory was you wait until the bear is 20 yards away and then start spraying a cloud of noxious vapor towards it. I told Carole that since I was carrying the spray, and since Carole is much faster than I am, I would probably just spray Carole and then run like hell.
Two of the hikes were on the North and South Rims of the Yellowstone Canyon, with great views of the Upper and Lower Falls. More construction here shut down some loop possibilities, so we had to do separate shorter hikes. The picture above is the iconic shot of the 308 foot Lower Falls as seen from rim level at Inspiration Point on the South Rim.
This is the Lower Falls as viewed 500 feet down into the canyon, from the end of Uncle Tom's Trail - which is mostly 328 steps that take you down. The escalator back up was closed for renovations.
The Upper and Lower Falls get all the attention, but during a hike on the North Rim we had a great view of Crystal Falls, kind of the poor cousin the Yellowstone Canyon waterfall clan.
Another hike was at Dunraven Pass, hiking three miles (gaining 1,500 feet in elevation) up to the Mount Washburn lookout. There was a lot of snow on the trail and at the two mile mark we hit a set of switchbacks that was iced over and decided to head back down, as did many others.
Beautiful views from as high as we got - the picture above shows Yellowstone Canyon in front of the Absaroka Range.
That night we had dinner at the Lake Yellowstone Hotel and packed up for the next leg of our trip – Glacier National Park. That entailed about a 400 mile, very scenic drive north to West Glacier where we decided to really rough it and just sleep in the woods – but bear warnings were everywhere so we stayed at the Great Bear Inn – and roughed it from our patio.
The next day we hiked the Avalanche Lake trail, about 6 miles. I did not show Carole this news item beforehand, mainly because I had decided not to take the time to rent bear spray.
The trail was beautiful with many views of waterfalls in the creek.
At the end huge waterfalls feeding glacial silt into Avalanche Lake turning it a beautiful shade of green.
We then headed back and did a 3 mile loop along Macdonald Creek and over to John’s Lake – where we passed a sign warning about grizzly bear sightings and dangers. Carole alertly noticed every single other hiker had bear spray, and turned to me and calmly said something like “?@@#%&&!!!?##!!%%!!!??”
That night we had a great meal at the Three Forks Grill in Columbia Falls (and ice cream at Sweetpeaks in Whitefish) and rested up for the next adventure – biking up to Logan’s Pass on Glacier’s famous 50-mile-long Going to the Sun Road.
Glacier had well above average snow fall this past winter, and the week they arrived they were still plowing the higher elevations which meant Going to the Sun Road was closed to car traffic for the 21 mile section from Avalanche Creek (mile 16) to something something (mile 37) – but the closed section was open to car-free biking!
We rented bicycles and took a shuttle up to the start at Avalanche Creek. The first 5 miles was a gentle uphill, gaining a a few hundred feet in elevation to what is called “The Loop.” From there it was a steady 6% grade up, with stunning views of waterfalls on the left and amazing views of the valley and other peaks to the right. Carole made it up another 5 miles and the decided she would turn around and enjoy the all downhill glide back to the start. This shot is from about 5,000 feet elevation.
John slogged it out for the final five miles up to Logan’s Pass, after detouring around a few mountain goats in the middle of the narrow road. Turning around there it was a 15 mile downhill swoop on a cloudless, 80 degree day – fantastic.
Here's a route map of the ride from Avalanche Creek where we started at mile 0, up to Logan Pass at mile 17.
Not a very exciting elevation profile, but here it is. From mile 7 to mile 17 pretty much a constant 6% slope. That was pretty much the maximum grade cars could handle back in 1933 when the road was built. Going to the Sun Road was an amazing engineering feat back then - interesting write-up here.
That night we had yet another great meal, this time at Loula’s Café in Whitefish, and headed back to the Great Bear Inn to pack up for the next days 200 mile drive to Couer d’Alene, Idaho. There we did a 4 mile walk around the lake area and out to Strada Coffee and back and had a nice lunch at the Couer d’Alene Resort restaurant overlooking the floating boardwalk and unique bridge.
From there, we had a night at a Spokane airport hotel (the KOA campground was full) and two United flights (we were going to bicycle back home but just ran out of time) and an Uber ride brought us back to Upper Ashton Heights Mews and a lawn just crying out for a herd of bison to nibble it back down to suburban standards of lawn grooming.
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