Letters from...Yellowstone (part 2)

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Yellowstone Lake

   On the second day we headed back south from Canyon Lodge to the Lake Area. (Even though we have planned and reserved everything for this trip in May, many of the lodgings were already full and we had to chess out the options of our stays within the park.) 

 

   So, our route in the park was: day 1: Canyon Area, day 2: Lake Area, day 3: back to Canyon Area, day 4: Roosevelt-Tower Area, day 5: Mammoth Hot Springs, day 6: Old Faithful. Although each area is less than 1 hour drive from each other (of course, without stopping for animal watching), it was fun to stay in different lodges. The roads are well maintained, mainly straight and the view is clean enough to drive with 45mph (70km/h). Also in many places you can find driveways taking a loop from the main road where you can enjoy wildlife or the scenery is nice enough to take a stop. As we couldn´t hike, we took these driveways every time we encountered with one.

   But let me get back…so, we left Canyon Area in the morning to head back to the Lake Area which – as it name says – is located around the Yellowstone Lake. The lake is huge (even so only about half the size of the Japanese Lake Biwa) and its quite surface is beautiful as it reflects the surrounding forests and mountains. However (unless you rent a boat) there is not much to do in the area, so this day we decided to go to the southern tip of the lake, to the West Thumb area. This area is famous of the hot springs found on the shore. 

bison herd in Hayden Valley

   Although I knew we would come back in the same direction again, I couldn´t miss stopping at Hayden Valley and watch the herds of bison starting their day. There was a bigger pullout at a higher ground from where the valley could be well seen. Most of the bison were in the valley, quite far away, but with the camera´s zoom, we could observe each individual bison´s movement. Not only the wallowing, but the calves sucking milk or adults swimming across the Yellowstone river to reach new fields for grazing. It was heartwarming to see as 2 bison crossed the river, one went ahead, the other waiting to reach the other shore. When the first arrived, it looked back as it to make sure the other would reach the shore without problem, and walked further on together. 

    Just when we were to leave Hayden Valley, a smaller herd of bison started crossing the road (i.e. dashed down from a small hill next to the road) just to continue their way down the valley at the pull out. There were about a dozen people there, but these bison are so got used to people, they never even looked at us. As for us, of course everybody was just astonished watching these ton-weighed animals crossing in front of us.

   

   After the herd was gone, we headed towards the lake with a short stopover at “Sulphur caldron”, which is close to Mud Volcano and the Hayden Valley. Sulphur caldron is again an area of some bubbling and steaming ponds. As it name says, the area here is filled with sulfuric acid, so you can imagine the smell around there… also, a plaque said, the water around here is pH2 (10 times more acidic than a lemon juice). Although my spa-loving Japanese husband was longing to get in these warm (hot) ponds every time he had seen one, I warned him that he might come off as a skeleton soaking in such acidic waters… however, it seemed that the bison don´t mind the acid and smell. I guess the ground is nice and warm around these places, because we´ve seen bison (or their trace – sh…t or footprints) everywhere at these spas, caldrons or geysers.

Sulphur Caldron

bison and hot springs

    After Sulphur Caldron, the Lake Village was only a short time. We took an early lunch: my husband had a fish sandwich (a specialty of the Lake Area as we haven´t found this type of sandwich anywhere else) and I quickly regretted to order chicken as the fish was so fresh and tasty, it was very very delicious. After lunch (or brunch) we headed east, towards the East entrance. The road goes here for a while just next to the lake giving a divine view in summer days, such we had in August. Not far from Lake Village there is a small pond to the north of the Yellowstone Lake, called Indian Pond. 

The Indian Pond trail

   The guidebook said there can be found a colony of marmots, so we took a stop to take the trail around Indian Pond. The trail passed the small pond, heading to the woods just to come out shortly to the shores of Yellowstone Lake. Then the trail continues along the sandy shores of the lake taking the hiker back to the woods and to the parking lot at the pond. The air was cool and fresh along the shadows of the trees in the wood and was filled with pine smell. Through the thick underbrush of the wood, we could only find squirrels, two of them chasing each other so fiercely that one of them almost bumped to my leg, just missing it with centimeters.

we also saw many colorful wildflowers and butterflies as well

    Just after the trail came out to the shore and we were about to give up the hope to see marmots, I spotted out something strange. On a rock there was something that seemed like an old bucket with some brown on top. As we had come closer, it turned out to be a log and the brownish thing was a marmot on top of it! The marmot seemed like it was on guard, standing on a high viewpoint standing still on his hind legs immobile. Therefore, it took us a few minutes to realize that brown thing was indeed an animal. 

 

the highlight of our trekking: the marmoth

  With another trophy in our camera, we followed the trail back to the Indian Pool refreshed. In the final part of the wood, we saw two squirrel babies playing around close to the trail but so into the play that they hadn´t notice us, so we could observe them for several minutes before they climbed up to a tree to continue their play there.

   Coming back to the car, my freshly operated husband was hurting his legs. Turns out the trail that we had guessed as about 3 kms was actually 3 miles! No wonder, his fresh wounds were hurt as the doctor said not to walk long distances… so, finally this was the only hike we´ve done in this trip.

   After the painful but fruitful hike, we drove a bit to relax my husband´s leg. The road from the Indian Pond took all the way to the East entrance, so we just drove along this road.     

   Unfortunately, we only found kilometers of dead forest; turns out, there was a huge forest fire in 1988 when large areas of the eastern part of Yellowstone was burned down. However, after 25 years, life finds its way back; in many of these parts we already saw fresh green trees which (by the signs around) grew back naturally. Apparently, there are 2 types of a pine cone: one that opens and ripens to start new buds from its seeds, and another that is closed and sealed with wax so when a forest fire comes, it would melt the wax and let the pine cone open once the fire is past.

dead trees after the 1988 forest fire

   Going back on the way we came on, we went a bit further from Lake Village to the south to visit “West Thumb”. This “hot spring-complex” is on the south part of the Yellowstone Lake, close to the first center (Grant Village) if one comes from the south. West Thumb is also trailed by boardwalks – as we couldn´t stroll much, we just walked around one circle. The most impressive spring here was the ones actually inside of the lake – there were three of it: “Lakeshore Geyser”, “Fishing Cone” and “Big Cone”.

black pool

   As the temperature in these geysers is hot, the legend says, you can just throw the fish you just caught in one of these cones and you´ll get back a fully prepared meal. (Actually, in a restaurant we found a vintage photo showing a cook at the side of the cone with a fishing rod - I don`t know if it was for real or only for the picture, but I can image that 50-60 years ago people still have done such things.) 

  There was another impressive geyser, the “Black Pool” which actually was beautiful sky blue. It seems that before it was pitch black due to some kind of microorganism, but as these creatures are sensitive to pH and temperature, by some change in the water killed off these microorganism. Now other kind of microorganism is living on the edge of the pool making it vivid orange, and the pool inside is sky blue as this is the only color the pool doesn´t absorb.

seismograph pool

   
  For the night we stayed at Lake Village in a lodge again. Compared to the one in the Canyon Area it was a bit smaller but cosy and cuter. We even had a coffee machine inside, it was good that we didn´t have to drive to the general store in the morning for a cup of coffee.

our room in Lake Area

 For more pictures, click here!→ Yellowstone (part 2)