End of our Yellowstone Summer of 2009

We have finished our summer in Yellowstone and it seems like it just started, but fortunately we are now in California visiting our sons, daughters-in-law, and grandson. I still have a set of pictures from Yellowstone intended for the blog, so I will show you them now.

First, a picture of me working as a Dining Room Host at Mammoth Hot Springs. My cohost (hostess) is good friend Megan from Manassas, VA. I really enjoyed working with her and getting to know her.



The Bighorn Sheep were herding on the cliffside between Mammoth and Gardiner.



We took a trip through the Northeast Gate to the park and spent a night in the town of Red Lodge, MT. The historic Pollard Hotel there has hosted the likes of Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, and William Jennings Bryan – and now us! It was a really nice experience.





Our good friend (and sous chef) Christina was married to Nick, our bartender, the day after we left the park. The week before we left she invited Lorraine to see her wedding dress, which made Lorraine feel quite honored. Both Christina and the dress are obviously beautiful. I wish we could have been there for the wedding.



Since I had bad laryngitis and couldn’t sing for the talent show, we set up a mini-concert to convince a few of our friends that I didn’t just freak out for the show.



To illustrate that the animals own the park, and we are just the visitors, I’ll show a picture of one of our Mammoth elk on the porch of the old court building which is next to our dorm, and a bison through the window of the Old Faithful Inn gift shop.





I figured out how to merge pictures to make panoramas. I’ll show you four of the examples. There are two views of the Mammoth Village, a picture of Mt. Everts, and a panorama of Gardiner from the mountain behind the town. It shows, from left to right, Mt. Everts, Bunsen Peak, Mt. Sepulchur, and snowcapped Electric Peak.









Lorraine again organized a group picture of residents of Aspen Dorm (and friends). As you can see, we had great participation.



We stopped at the Pine Creek Lodge in Paradise Valley a short while ago, and happened upon an outdoor concert by a good cowboy band. Most of the audience were locals, who wore there dress boots for the occasion.







On a recent trip to Bozeman, MT, we had lunch at The Garage, which at one time was a real gas station garage. The town of Bozeman seems to be surviving the economic problems just fine and you can see by the flower basket photo that they take great pride in dressing up and enjoying their thriving downtown.





As an example of what we do for fun while at Yellowstone, a large group of us “seniors” gathered recently at The Rail, a typical western cowboy bar/restaurant in Gardiner. I think it was a going-away party for a couple, but the reasons don’t really matter. We obviously had a good time. You see the group taken from the business side of the bar, me encountering a large bull elk that was just hanging around, and friends Lucy and Carl. Lucy was at Mammoth with us in 1963 when Lorraine and I met. It has been great reconnecting with her and getting to know Carl.







On our last trip to the Lamar Valley we were greeted by huge herds of bison and a black bear close to the side of the road. Lorraine got a good picture of him as we passed. We also saw a large bull elk between Roosevelt and Mammoth. I’m sure he will be an important player in “the Rut” (mating season), which we hate to miss.







Lin’s birthday was another good excuse to meet friends at the picnic table by the post office for wine and B-day cake. [By way of explanation, we can’t have alcohol in the public areas of the dorm, so we have taken to enjoying our wine at the picnic table outside, which is perfectly all right. We tended to do this at the slightest provocation. Lin’s B-day was one of our more important provocations.]




Lin & Ron

As our remaining time in the park shortened, we worked to fit in all the adventurous things we wanted to do. Two of those were a horseback ride and white water rafting down the Yellowstone River. As you can see, we did both. I’m on Tex, and Lorraine is on Bashful – which he wasn’t. Bashful wanted to keep his head in the butt of the preceding horse, so she had to keep holding him back. Since he didn’t like that, he turned and bit her on the leg. Nothing serious, just a surprise! In spite of that – and the fact that we could hardly walk afterwards – it was a fun ride.

The rafting on the rapids of the Yellowstone was also fun, and wet, and a little cold. The rapids are a lot bigger when you are in the river than they look from the adjacent highway.









We took the 6-mile loop from the road to Roosevelt over the Blacktail plateau. This was an important route for the Indians who traversed the park for years, but is now a dirt/gravel road that not many people use. The flowers were in bloom and it was truly beautiful.





On one of our last days in the park, Lorraine and I climbed the hills behind our dorm and found the old Mammoth graveyard dating back to the late 1800’s right after the park was established. We had happened upon this when we brought our sons to the park back in the 80s and the book Deaths in Yellowstone gives detailed accounts about who is buried there. Only one of the graves had a real headstone. The others were just outlines of stones. Some of them had wood markers that had almost disintegrated.





We having a great time in CA with grandson Jake, his mom and dad, Brooke and David, and will see son Evan and his new wife Linda this afternoon. I hope to add another entry or two to the blog before I finish it for the summer, so don’t quit checking it yet.

Upper Geyser Basin

Lorraine and I took a trip to Old Faithful and toured the Upper Geyser Basin for the first time. Our timing was perfect because we saw 4 geyser eruptions that occur no more than a few times a day as well as several beautiful hot springs. Unlike the hot springs at Mammoth, those in the geyser basin are (apparently bottomless) pools that vary in color depending on the temperature of the water in them. They are usually ringed by orange which is the color of the bacteria (thermopiles) that live in the cooling - but still very hot - water. I’ll show you the pictures of several of them. The only one whose name I know is Morning Glory Pool, which used to be one of the most beautiful. Over the years the water in Morning Glory has cooled because of all of the trash that tourists have thrown into its throat. This has made the water at the center turn from a beautiful turquoise to the much greener color that you see now. It is still beautiful.

As we started to walk the trail toward Morning Glory Pool, we saw that Castle Geyser was beginning its 20-minute eruption. It comes from a built-up mound, which probably accounts for its name. Its long eruption is followed by many more minutes of pressurized steam, which makes for a most impressive display.

As we left Castle Geyser, we saw Giant Geyser beginning its eruption in the distance. The first picture is framed by some of the pure white dead trees that had the misfortune to grow in the middle of a geyser basin. As we approached Giant, we saw another small geyser erupting from a hot spring. Giant seems to come from several different sources and go in several different directions, rather than straight up, like Castle and Old Faithful. The last of the pictures is of the trees behind Grand which get sprayed by the hot, mineral-rich water when the wind blows in that direction.

On our way back from Morning Glory Pool, we saw an eruption of Grotto Geyser which was quiet when we passed it the first time. It gets its name from what are apparently old tree trunks that were growing where it formed. The last geyser picture shows another view of Grotto, still erupting, with Riverside Geyser in the background. Riverside spews hot water and steam into the Firehole River.

Indicative of the diversity of sights here is the field of flowers blooming in the middle of an otherwise barren geyser basin.

I’ll close with the obligatory close-up of an impressive bull bison and a picture of the intent players at our first Bingo night in our dorm. It was a huge success, since I won one of the games!

Hike to OTO Ranch

The OTO Ranch is a former Dude Ranch – the first in Montana – a little north of Gardiner. Lorraine and I had heard about it last year as a good place to hike. It is now deserted, but is undergoing a renovation by the Forest Service to its former glory. It was built in 1912 and active in the early part of the 20^th century but closed in the late 30’s. There is a road that takes you there, but it has been closed because parts of it are washed out and are very dangerous for automobiles. It is still safe for hikers, however, so Lorraine and I jumped at the chance to hike there with friends Ron and Lin.

Ron and Lin are more experienced hikers than we, so they seemed to be breathing easier than Lorraine and I as we did the initial climb over the Yellowstone River valley. Since we were on a (former) gravel road, the walking was easy, - or would have been easy if we weren’t climbing the sides of mountains for the first mile. We made it to the top, with a few stops to try to get some oxygen into our systems, and were rewarded by beautiful views of the Yellowstone in the valley and of the surrounding hills.

Once we reached the top (more or less) we passed a few beautiful pastures and followed a rushing stream to the ranch. Some of the cabins had already been restored and looked like they could be occupied any day, and others had not been touched since the ranch closed. The contrast was really interesting.

We were able to walk through the main lodge building, which was in the process of being restored, so we could see parts that were untouched as well as parts that had partially updated. We entered through one of the red doors at the rear of the building and found a large dining room, a kitchen with wood stoves, other meeting rooms, and small rooms for guests, along with very small bathrooms for men and women. The front room was all logs – even the ceiling. The ranch will be beautiful once restoration is complete, but it is probably more interesting to see now in its partially-restored condition. Note the cast iron pool table leg holding up one of the porch rails.

I’ll close this posting with a picture of Lin, Ron, and Lorraine as we started our return hike to the car. At this point we were all craving beer!