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.
1 comment:
Good post.
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