American Road Trip 1: Idaho to Yellowstone

Day Nine: Idaho Falls to Yellowstone

Part of me expected to reach Yellowstone (and flee Idaho) by mid-morning, but I knew better.

First, the only T-Mobile dealer in Idaho (because all that exists here is AT&T and Verizon) was in a Wal-Mart. So began my very first trip into a Wal-Mart Superstore, much like a glorified Target, but prettier. I dodged the insipid grin of the greeter and walked quickly (I thought running might be a give-away and you don’t want to scare them with sudden movements) to the Electronics section.

Kirby helped me, though he knew absolutely nothing about the phones before him or what to do about them. He had a very difficult time just recording my information so that he could look up my account. While he did, an AT&T rep tried to sell me a phone: I let her try, because that gave me some bargaining power with T-Mobile later (though as it turned out, Kirby could not call them). “What? You won’t replace my phone? Did you know that AT&T is standing right here with a Blackberry Curve ready to sign me up for $0.00?” (They were.)

Kirby did tell me that there was a T-Mobile store in Idaho Falls, despite what the website failed to list. I recorded the address, got directions, and set off, finding that indeed Kirby was dead wrong. The address he gave me didn’t even exist. In frustration, and seeing that it was approaching noon, I walked into a nearby Target and looked for their cheap phones. An amazing girl named Abby, not far out of high school would be my guess, not only helped me find an easy phone to use, she went to customer service, located the T-Mobile customer service numbers (I had them, too, but they were on my broken phone!), and let me use the store phone to call T-Mobile myself.

T-Mobile tried to sell me their I-Phone Wannabe, but I stayed with the upgraded version of my new model. They waived the fee I would have had to pay because I was just short of 24 months from my previous purchase, and mailed the new phone to my home where it will be waiting when I return. In the meantime, they credited me $20 for the cost of the cheap replacement phone I bought at Target, kept me as a customer, and everyone walked away happy.

Except that escaping Idaho Falls was not to be so easy. No city maps, and I was caught deep in the city, thinking only to go north to pick up US-20 (my route for the rest of the trip). That plan failed, and a nice woman at the gas station—did you know that Twix had an ice cream bar?—set me straight.

Driving to Yellowstone (taking a quick dip into Montana again) was completely unremarkable, save that I was surprised that West Yellowstone (the main tourist drag for the park) had hotel rooms available. Taking a risk, I figured to run into the park to see if anything was left: just one campground had openings at 4:30 pm, Lewis Lake, and it was 60 miles deep into the park near the Tetons southern gateway.

With hardly a pause (and once again the only car going in my direction), I drove 90 minutes to the far side of Yellowstone (park descriptions later!) and made it into the campground where I now type this. Beautiful, quiet, rustic site and I will stay here three nights. I’ll spend most of my time concentrating on the southwest and central parts of the park for the next two days. Good night.

Days Ten and Eleven: Yellowstone

My sleeping bag is rated at 32 degrees; I chose it for its lightness and reliability—and, after all, who is ever going to camp in places of freezing temperatures? Last night the temperature dropped to 37. I now have to “papoose” myself into the bag (using its little attached hoodie) to stay warm. I say this favorably, however, since the daytime temperatures here have been between 60 and 78.

I’ve spent the past two days shooting over 400 photos and exploring everything geyser- and falls-related in the southwest corner of the park. Better to see a few sections in depth than to try everything (so much for Mammoth Springs).

To describe Yellowstone as beautiful is to avoid its impact. Academically, I know that I am literally sitting on a super-volcano which Discovery Channel reports could blow again any minute, sending me and the ashes of thousands of bison and RVs to Texas. It’s quite another to feel it. The ground is constantly bulging and dropping (so say the scientists), but I literally see the geysers and mudpots, springs and fumaroles, altering landscape. This is because (for those needing a quick bit of geology) the magma of one of the most active volcanoes in the world is just a few miles below us (as few as two) whereas it’s over 30 in the rest of the world. Here at the Continental Divide, I’m sitting on the baking crust of the world’s largest pie. Between this factoid and seeing the rebirth of the forest after the 1988 fire destroyed over 1/3 of the park, it’s been a fascinating two days.

Elk in the morning, bison in the afternoon, pelicans in the evening, but the bear have mostly moved to higher ground for the summer. Stalked by marmots on my way to Mystic Falls the first morning. The little vermin perched on the ridges and logs above me, looking down, watching. They would run and scamper back and forth, communicating to each other about my presence, whispering, and then appear again around the next corner. I would raise my camera and they would vanish. . . .

Yes, Old Faithful is cool, and since it is now surrounded by a plasti-board grandstand, the crowds which gather in the evening (there were only three of us to see the 6:30 am eruption) are equally interesting. They carry their espressos from the lodge a few yards behind them and applaud the geyser; I chuckled aloud, I’m afraid. Who or what exactly is being applauded here? Hurrah, the seismic plumbing and venting beneath them has once again released the right amount of gastric pressure from the subterranean pockets as it has for hundreds of years, completely dumb to whatever mammals do above. I suppose that by doing so, the release of pressure has somehow delayed the upcoming mega-eruption, so perhaps the crowd was applauding the fact that they will be alive a few more days to see another moose.

[My favorite part of the geyser trails was the warning signs—the idiot child (though I did in fact see an older woman run out onto one of the hotbeds) and better, the completely uninterested man walking away. Um, that would be me.]

I was more impressed by the other geysers, those far older than OF. Sawmill and Castle, I think are my favorites, both for their random violence (the former) and their subterranean growling (the latter). Castle’s eruption can be felt over a mile away (I know because that’s when I knew it went off). The rumble through the venting of the surrounding geysers sent smaller trembles through the thinning crust. We talk about deep sounds like freight trains and lowering thrums of artillery, thunder even, but this was the sound of millions of pounds of sulphuric pressure thrusting through the rock and forcing thousands of gallons of water into the sky as steam and river. Please, don’t let me be anywhere near this place when the big caldera bursts again, Discovery Channel. (The geyser here is neither of these. It’s an old one, though, perhaps as old as Castle, called Great Fountain.)

My first full day in the park was 15 hours of driving and hiking. My second day was calmer, exploring the areas from West Thumb east through “Please Whatever You Do Don’t Go” Fishing Bridge. The park allowed tourists to fish the cutthroat trout for years and, combined with the invasion of the Great Lakes lake trout (which enjoy cutthroat for brunch), the cutthroat are failing fast. Worse, they are primary food for bear, which will impact their population (or eating habits. . . ). So the new law is, no cutthroat may be killed, but every lake trout pulled from the lake must be immediately executed without debate. The park management pulls over 70,000 a year from the lake in deep-water nets, but it is not enough.

Finally, I should write about something that I guess I never learned or forgot in biology class: there are bacteria and such which can live in extreme acids and extreme heat: consequently they are called extremophiles, or more specifically, thermoacidophiles. No kidding. And we are using these for all kinds of interesting science. For instance, our basic knowledge of how DNA works came from this research, new research into medicine including HIV, and even in waste erosion and management. Oddly, this is just the kind of research which John McCain often cited during his campaign when he talked about “pork” spending. Needless to say, the rangers were none too happy when they listened.

Tomorrow I will venture farther north to see the Great Canyon and the Upper and Lower Falls. I’ll do an early morning there and then with regrets leave Yellowstone for the rest of the “Wild West” of Wyoming. If I can make it to Casper, I’ll be doing well!

It’s a series of hard calls, this trip. I will miss Jackson Hole (no great loss for my tourist dollars) but also the Tetons (that’s a problem). I know I cannot see everything in the 400 mile zone of each stop I make, nor can I stay for great lengths of time at any stop. Nevertheless, the cross-section of this country I’ve never seen has already made this well worth it! Yeah, America is pretty great, even if Americans sometimes aren’t.