Part Five: The Excelsior Geyser, Grand Prismatic Spring, and Old Faithful

Is that an amazing blue or what? That's what I'm talking about. And I ask again, why does this blue touch the soul in such a way? Okay, maybe I sound nuts, but just go spend some time staring into Yellowstone's hot springs - here, at the Excelsior Geyser, the water temperature is 199 degrees Fahrenheit - too hot to support any lifeform - and you'll know what I mean. Or go to the other extreme, to the glacial alpine lakes of the High Sierra, devoid of life for the same reason, and see if the color touches your soul. There aren't enough ways to describe that blue. Well anyway, the Excelsior Geyser was once the largest geyser in the world but hasn't had a major eruption since the 1880's, when it erupted up to 300 feet. It did erupt from 20 to 80 feet for two days in 1985, and since then has been quiet. It is a thermal spring, the hot waters flowing into the Firehole River.

And now behold the following photos of the Grand Prismatic Spring, the largest hot spring in Yellowstone, and the third largest in the world. Unbelievably awesome to look upon. The steam from this spring actually rises up in that brilliant aqua color. And then with the juxtaposition of the ochre-red outer border, it's a jaw-dropping sight, unlike anything I've ever seen on this earth.




Hey, it's a hot waterfall! Yeah, that's where the hot spring and thermal waters flow into Firehole River. This was an amazing spot. I found a little trail at a nearby meadow and walked downstream a bit, then sat right by the river for as long as time would allow, listening to the distant waterfall and the river rolling by.



This shot was taken by one of my compadres earlier in the day, when we were way up river at the Firehole Falls.


And I've lost track of which geyser this is, but it's erupting in the background as the photo is taken of me with four of my favorite new Sierra Club Pals, from left to right: Carole (my bus and roommate), Sanford, Annie, moi, and Della.


This is a double show at the Grotto Geyser group, about a 1.5 mile walk from the Old Faithful Inn. It was really hot that day, so Carole and I sat in some nearby shade and before too long, the fountain in the background started to blow. A guy nearby then said it wouldn't be long before Grotto, which blows on average of every eight hours, would start to blow from its sinter cone. Nice timing!


And last but not least: Old Faithful, from the second story deck at the Old Faithful Inn.

Part Four: Sights In and Around Pelican Creek Nature Trail at Yellowstone Lake

This photo is one of my favorites from the trip. Every time I look at it (it's my new desktop background), I feel transported to that beautiful place of wide open spaces, blue skies, and grey mountain backdrop. We had done so much exploring of geysers and mudpots and boiling aqua blue hot springs by this point that this slice of lovely nature and broad dramatic landscape was a soothing feast for the eyes. I shot this from the trail out over the lush meadows along Pelican Creek towards Yellowstone Lake and the mountains beyond.


I took this one just after the trail opened up from a forested area to the spectacular sight of Yellowstone Lake. The lake is about as big as Lake Tahoe, if I'm remembering correctly, but whereas Lake Tahoe is something like 1500 feet deep, Yellowstone Lake is about 200 feet deep. I couldn't capture the Lake in its entirety in any visually interesting way, so I decided to frame it in the edge of a beach and driftwood shot.



I love this shot of a small bison herd not far from the shores of Yellowstone Lake. Some of them may be responsible for a subsequent traffic jam that happened when they began crossing the road for fields on the other side, then stopped for no apparent reason. At first we didn't know what had caused our delay, but as we began to creep fowrard, we saw that a mama bison and two calves had just crossed the road enabling us to cautiously proceed, but a bull bison remained stubbornly blocking the other lane of cars. In fact he was looking at them like, "What are you going to do about it?" He was practically as big as the first car! As we drove on, I counted 147 cars at a standstill, but most of the drivers appeared unconcerned about the delay. People were shouting "Bison! Bison in the road!" to let them know what was going on, and that information seemed to make it all okay.

Part Three: Norris Geyser Basin, Mud Volcano Group, and Bison Mating Season

I have to admit, I had no idea that the Norris Geyser Basin even existed until I went on this trip. Sure, everyone has heard about Old Faithful and maybe they even think that seeing it blow once or twice is a representative sampling of all the park's geysers. They would be mistaken. On my recent trip to Yellowstone, we turned into the Basin and stopped in the midst of a pleasant but unremarkable forest to have a bit of lunch before making the two-mile tour via an extensive network of boardwalks. The forest is quickly replaced by an unvegetated expanse punctuated by steam, geysers, white calcium deposits, boiling ochre-red streams, and unexpectedly striking aqua-blue pools. These boiling pools were so precisely the color of the glacial lakes in the High Sierras that I knew that gorgeous color was due to complete absence of life. A ranger later confirmed this, and also explained the pools refract all colors in the spectrum except blue, which is why they seem to be reflecting the color of the sky. What is it about that color that is so beautiful to the soul? Later in the trip, we saw far more dramatic examples of these rich deep awe-inspiring blues on a vaster scale, but I was very excited to see my first one here.


The smell of sulphur in the basin is at times overwhelming, especially when hot drafts of noxious steam sweep in on the slightest of wind. More than a few times, I found myself reeling and gasping for the first fresh of patch air I could find. In the 19th century, people would roam too close to the edges of these pools or on the deceptively firm-looking white calcium deposits nearby, only to fall in and be boiled alive - or burned badly enough to live in great suffering until death mercifully relieved them soon after. Though we did not see any, you might occasionally spot the skeletons of deer or bison that roam too close to the edges. Humans are now safeguarded by the boardwalks. This is one of the boiling streams as it flows away from the geyser basin.


And this is one of the larger steaming geyser pools.



We visited the Mud Volcano group on a different day, but I'm including it in this entry because they were fascinating in a completely different way from the aqua-blue pools of the Norris Geyser Basin. This was a small region of boiling brown and black and hissing pools and fumaroles. Again, boardwalks protect humans from falling into the mudpots, fumaroles, sulphurous springs, and odorous pools. The area is too dangerous for trails and the volcanic heat underneath constantly eats into the nearby forest, so that an area that is green and verdant one year may be quite dead and eaten up a few years later.

I have to admit I'm particularly proud of the next photo, which neatly shows the boiling Sulphur Cauldron in the foreground juxtaposed with the serenity of a forested hill and blue sky with white puffy clouds. Add in your mind the sounds of a fierce gurgling boil and fizzing sounds, plus the smell of sulphur, and you'll have the idea.


And here are some other shots.




Just before we visited the Mud Volcanoes, we encountered a herd of bison on either side of the road. We stopped and watched them for a long enough time to realize that it was mating season, and that the males were establishing their turf with the females. Here's my favorite one - note the bison couple in the distance, and in the foreground, a male coming up close for a sniff of his prospective mate.



This is a close-up of the hopeful male making his approach.



And here's a solitary bull who hasn't found anyone yet! He's thinking of moving in on someone else's action and picking a fight. Seriously. That's what rutting bulls will do.

Part Two: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

A bulk elk decided to check out our little gathering about saving the grizzly bears at the Canyon Lodge Amphitheatre on Monday evening. I think he also sniffed out the catered dinner, courtesy of Canyon Lodge where we stayed for two nights. Yeah, Sierra Club trips aren't all about munching on granola bars or picking at trail mix!


Here's a shot of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone from Inspiration Point just before we began our five-mile hike along the North Rim for views of lower and upper Yellowstone Falls.


While hiking an easy two miles to the 300-foot descent down to Grandview Point, the increasingly symphonic sound of the river gushing through the gorge and crashing down 300 feet of volanic rock whetted our appetites for what would no doubt be a spectacular view. We weren't counting on the rainbow, though! Here's my favorite shot of lower Yellowstone Falls. You can click on the photo to make it larger, too.

And here are some of my new Sierra Club friends at the Grandview Point. I'm the one in the front with the Dogtown t-shirt (that's Dogtown in West Marin near Point Reyes National Seashore, for those who want to know). As I made the steep 300-foot ascent back to the rim, some guy, noting my t-shirt, said, "'Dogtown' - that's what you'll feel like once you finish this climb!" I laughed, little knowing that I would indeed feel like I was in Dogtown a mere two days later when I came down with a sudden fever at the Old Faithful Inn. But that's another story.


I was really inspired by the older women on this trip. You can see some of them in the shot - women in their late 60's and early 70's who mostly kept up with the youngest of us. I hope to be emulating that 20 or 30 years from now myself! Sadly, however, one of our younger companions fell and sprained her elbow, so she was in a sling and some pain for the rest of the trip. To her credit, she never once complained.

Meanwhile, most of us carried on hiking for another mile or so before making another steep descent down to the mouth of the falls. At this point, we gained some views of upper Yellowstone Falls - not as dramatic as the lower falls, but still beautiful (and loud) from a distance. If you look closely, you can see the red speck of our enormous Utah Trailways bus on the north rim in the distance.



And here, dramatically, is the mouth of the falls. Yellowstone River is a beautiful emerald green flow until it comes crashing over 300 feet of volcanic rock in a churning white fury. You wouldn't want to be haphazardly canoeing upstream at this point.


And here's a view of the gorge facing towards Inspiration Point from the top of the falls.

Part One: Mammoth Hot Springs and the Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park

So I signed up in March for this August Sierra Club Bus trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Although I could make a living at designing trips myself, it's nice to have someone else do the planning for a change, so I took a chance with a leader named Fred Dong who'd made the journey before. The outcome did not not disappoint! I likely wouldn't have seen as much if if I'd done the trip single-handedly. For one thing, it would have been a lot more expensive, and I would have had to do all the driving! I might have missed seeing that grizzly bear roaming in the distance in Lamar Valley, or that bald eagle near Tower Falls, or the silhouette of a buck elk with rack by the riverside against the evening sky near the Montana border. I might not have had the patience to stop as often as our big bus did for all of Yellowstone's hot springs, mud pots, geysers, and wildlife.

Or maybe I would have. I mean, come on, it was all fucking amazing.

But what's great about Sierra Club trips is the built-in companionship. There are invariably interesting, upbeat, fit, and enthusiastic folks to hang out with, and that's nice for a single gal like me. As much as I also enjoy solo travel, the Sierra Club has been a godsend in my post-Jan singlehood. Our group of about 55 folks met at the Salt Lake City Airport and boarded an enormous Utah Trailways bus. I never thought I'd be one of those bus tourists, but perhaps there's environmental benefit in carting dozens of people in one gigantic vehicle rather than one or two people in dozens of gas-guzzling SUV's or 4x4's.

The bus was helmed by a good-lucking Dutch guy named Adriaan who splits his time between Holland and Salt Lake City with his American wife. Now there's a gig I could go for! I asked Adriaan if he had any single Dutch friends (yeah, I'm ready to take a chance again, even with a Dutch guy), and he said as a matter of fact he did - someone named Harm who lives in Amsterdam and wants to settle down with an American woman. But, "Harm?" I asked skeptically. Adriaan assured me that Harm is a common Dutch name, while also joking about "staying out of Harm's way." Something tells me maybe I should.

The long drive from Salt Lake City to the northwestern park entrance in Montana was the most grueling of our trip, but worth it in order to get all those miles covered and work our way down to Grand Teton National Park over the course of a week. I highly recommend that strategy. In the town of West Yellowstone, I located the one bistro with regional wines by the glass and one of the best bookstores I've ever encountered in my travels - the aptly-named Bookworm Bookstore, with new and used stock I could dive into forever, and good regional literature. Of course the owner knew his history as well as his trade. He talked me into an out-of-print copy of "Old Yellowstone Days" which turned out to be well-worth the $30 price tag.

We stayed at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel cabins, where I paired up with a total stranger named Carole with whom I'd be share both room and bus time for the remainder of our journey. She turned out to be a delightful piano teacher from Diamond Bar, a reader like me, and a true lady. She was inspiring and wise, didn't mind that I read at night, didn't talk too much, and above all, was wonderfully considerate. She never once got on my nerves (well, maybe her perennial night-light did just a bit).

We explored the fascinating Mammoth Hot Springs on Sunday morning. The snow white travertine terraces were unlike anything I've ever seen, giving me a new perspective on what some forms of active volcanic activity look like in a landscape. I'll borrow here from the American Southwest site, which describes it better than I probably could: "the formations here are different to all others, with no geysers or large springs; instead the warm, subterranean water has created large areas of beautiful terraces; staircase-like structures made of deposited travertine, stained a variety of bright colors by bacteria and algae that live in the acidic waters." The photos do justice to it, if I do say so myself.





I love this shot of the white travertine terraces in the foreground, with the Gallatin National Forest in Montana in the background, somewhere within which is the small town of Gardiner and the historical Roosevelt Arch which we did not visit on our journey.

On Sunday afternoon, we toured through the verdant Lamar Valley, its open grassy expanses lined by the distant dramatic peaks of the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Gallatin mountain range in the north. The Lamar Valley is a good place for spotting wolves, grizzly bears, and bison. Though we did not see any wolves, we did see a grizzly bear plodding through the meadows in the far distance. Further on from Mr. Grizzly, we reached a small bison herd and made a photo stop. I walked through the rain to get as close as was wise - which turned out not to be very far due to a boundary sign that warned of grizzly bear danger. So from that vantage point, I took the following photos. I'm afraid they give only the barest idea of the majestic expanse of this mountain river valley. In this spectacular place, it was especially thrilling to pay homage to the bison - descendants of those that once numbered in the millions on our prairies and were sacred to the Lakota tribes.



And here are some pronghorn deer in a lovely foggy meadow near Lamar Valley.

Snake River Overlook, Grand Teton National Park!

If I look happy, it's because I finally reached one of my dream destinations. This photo was taken after two days of hiking and exploring in the park, and before that seven days exploring and hiking in Yellowstone National Park. Heaven! I will follow up with another blog entry as soon as I have time to do it all justice.

Douchebaggery

No, I didn't make up that word. The honor goes to my nephew, Erik, whose coining of it made such an impression that I promised to post about it. He just turned 20 and will start his junior year at UCLA this fall. Although he started out in a dorm for his freshman year, he also did something that surprised everyone in the family except his father: he pledged at a fraternity. We skeptics shook our heads in disbelief. Did he understand what he was getting into? Would he have to swallow live goldfish? Would he be irreparably influenced by materialistic beer-guzzling phonies?

And what about the more serious pranks? A fraternity man I knew at Berkeley claimed to have taken the grand piano from the Claremont Hotel. The prank apparently placed him at the top of the manly heap at Delta Upsilon. But what if he'd been busted? Well, he would still have inherited his father's multi-million dollar business so the silver spoon wouldn't have suffered many scratches. I'm afraid Erik isn't in that silver-lined position.

I guess what surprised us most is that Erik has never seemed like a conformist, which would be my basic stereotype of a frat boy. Erik is a sharp, thoughtful, and creative spirit who appreciates alternative music and whose best friend in Savannah Georgia is a Deadhead. It didn't seem like a fraternity would exactly be his scene. But maybe he wanted an instant social network, kindred spirits or not, and figured he could swallow the goldfish.

By his sophomore year, was had moved into the fraternity house, a once-proud colonial replica with green shutters and white columns, now shabby and faded. I never had the courage to go inside, but on occasions when I picked Erik up, I noticed that someone had painted a green shutter back onto the house to make up for the fact that the real one had somehow gone missing or been destroyed.

Somehwere along the way, Erik was turned off to the whole scene. I didn't know how bad it was until I learned he'd made arrangements to share an apartment with two other students. Since my nephew isn't particularly forthcoming, I hadn't gotten any of the backstory. But I did get a smattering of info while driving him home with my mom after lunch at CPK in Westwood earlier this summer.

ERIK: (Silence)

CATHERINE: (Driving, trying to make conversation) You must be excited about moving into your first apartment.

ERIK: Yeah.

CATHERINE: You really don't like your fraternity, do you?

ERIK: I fucking hate it.

GRANDMOTHER: (Gasp of horror from backseat due to Erik's use of f-word)

CATHERINE: Wow! It must really be bad. I've never heard you use the f-word before.

ERIK: They're a bunch of douche bags.

CATHERINE: I'm not surprised to hear that. But in what way, exactly, are they douche bags? If you don't mind saying.

ERIK: They just are.

GRANDMOTHER: If you knew they were douche bags, why did you sign up in the first place?

ERIK: Because the douchebaggery was masked. They weren't up front about what they were when I signed up.

And there you have it. The discrepancy between appearance and reality. It was one of my first painful lessons in college, too. "The douchebaggery was masked." How sadly true. The phoniness of human beings still surprises me after all these years. And in large groups like fraternities where social politics conquer and divide, I think the worst of it flourishes. I'll be tempted to press my laconic nephew for more details in the future, but I doubt he'll reveal much. I'm sure he swore some secret oath not to reveal the deep dark secrets of fraternity douchebaggery. It doesn't matter. I'd love him anyway, but I love him even more for his authenticity and integrity. That's him below with my sister's dog Rufus after spending the night at the family compound before moving into his apartment.