When Jessica’s parents visited us, she arranged and planned several excursions around the US for them, both on their own as well as where we would accompany them.  One place both Jessica and her parents wanted to visit was Yellowstone National Park.   And one of our neighbor, Vivian, who hasn’t been there also expressed an interest to join us, along with her mon and son (Brandon).   Jessica looked into several options – from a completely ‘do-it-yourself’ trip to a packaged tour.   Going on our own would have the greatest flexibility but could also limit the scope of our visit since we had a short time window (5 days overall), and none of us are familiar with the area.   She also wasn’t able to find any package tour that would cover all she wants to see and do there.    After one local travel agent said that they have contacts with tour operators there to help arrange a car with a Chinese speaking driver/guide with an open itinerary for the desired timeframe, she found something she liked.  This package would be a bit pricey for four, but more reasonable for a 7-person group.

Next step was finding lodging.  As it was almost April when we started to plan for a June visit, many of the popular spots near the park in West Yellowstone were already booked. With additional searching, Jessica was able to find availability for a three-room B&B in Gardiner, Montana, near the northern entrance to the park for 3 or 4 nights during the week we wanted.  Gardiner is the town where a lot of the park workers and Army Corp of Engineers stayed during the early days when Yellowstone was established but is smaller than West Yellowstone.

Then it was to work out an itinerary and flight plan.   The closest commercial airport to Yellowstone is at Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  But ticket prices to there were expensive.  Round trip flights to Bozeman, Montana, about a 90-minute drive from the North Entrance was cheaper but would require at least one connection in SLC or Portland.  The cheapest direct flight would be in and out of Salt Lake City.  It’s a good 6 to 7-hour drive from SLC to Yellowstone’s south entrance, but we found out that is popular starting point for a lot of the tours.  To make the best use of our time and also to see as much as we can, we decided to fly into SLC, take a quick tour of the city and drove up to Jackson Hole for the first night.  We can then tour the Grand Teton National Park the second day as we drive toward Yellowstone.   We would spend three nights in Gardiner for Yellowstone.  For our last night, we would stay in Bozeman, from where we would fly back home the following morning.

We landed in SLC just after noon, and our driver/guide picked us up in a Ford Expedition, which accommodated our group and luggage.  As we wanted to eat lunch first, our driver first took us to a local Chinese restaurant.  It was good having a local guide as he could recommend choices for us, which would have taken us a longer time to find ourselves.  (And as we would learn later on, finding a Chinese restaurant turned out to be important item for our group.)

Our first tour of the trip is the Mormon Temple Square area.   The Temple offers free tour guides in multiple languages, and of course we waited for the Chinese one.  The tour covered a few of the main buildings in the complex, with the guide provided some basic background on the Mormon religion and questions from the visitors.  We walked by the Tabernacle Auditorium, Salt Lake Temple, and Assembly Hall, and went into the Visitor Center that had a number of exhibits and a theater.  James enjoyed the scaled model of old Jerusalem in the center.

After the tour, we picked up some food (fruits, salad, beef jerky, chocolate, etc.) at a Costco on the way out of Salt Lake.  Our route took us north on I15 and then went east on highway 26 and then 89 into Jackson. The drive from Salt Lake to Jackson gave us a view of the wide expanse of Idaho and Wyoming.  However, the water and mountain scenery were limited until we got close to Jackson.

 

With a heavy overcast and rain, it was relatively dark by the time we got into Jackson around 8:00PM in the evening.   We could sense the resort town vibe as we drove through the main road in Jackson, with all the unique diners and shops lining the main road and a score of hotels and resorts that sits just off the main road.  We drove by the town square, which had an archway made out of elk antlers at each corner of the square appropriately named Antler Arch.

Our hotel for the night was at Rustic Inn Creekside Resort.  It was during dinner that we first realized that food choice would be a challenge for our group.  After a big Chinese lunch, we all were looking for a light dinner.  Looking at our resort restaurant’s menu, most of us thought it would do.  James and Brandon enjoyed the bison and beef burger respectively.  However, the soup and appetizers we thought that Jessica’s parents and Vivian’s mom would enjoy turned out to be incorrect.   They didn’t eat much.  It was good that Vivian had went with our driver to get ramen and cup o’noodles at a local grocery store to prepare for the next several nights, as we end up start using those provisions that night.  Our second main adventure of the trip became finding appropriate food for everyone’s liking. Our room was relatively large and comfortable, with two queen beds.  However, there was only one bathroom.  Sharing one bathroom with four people is not ideal, but we were able made it through it on the trip without problems.

With the rain subsided in the morning, we were able to check out the resort area before breakfast. The chilly air and overcast weather enhanced the tranquil atmosphere around the small creek and pond at the resort as we took a walk around the area.   But more than anything else, there is a ‘clean and freshness’ smell that seldom can be replicated in an urban area.

 

After having breakfast in the resort restaurant, we started our day’s journey of seeing two national parks. Adjacent to Jackson, there is a wet grassland area that is the National Elk Refuge, an area during winter months would be filled with elks.  (We later picked up a postcard picture with the view of hundreds or thousands of elks there during the winter – it would have been amazing to see it in person.)  The entrance to the Grand Teton off the highway would normally have a great view of the mountain range, but with the overcast sky, the peaks of the range were all under clouds that morning.  Nonetheless, we were able to get a peek or two in spots between clouds.

Our first stop in the park was the park’s visitor center.  One side of the center has a floor to ceiling view of the Grand Teton range.   There was a station where rangers were providing advices to people on questions about the park, such as where to go to see things in the park.  There were also exhibits on the geological condition of the area and the local animals; after viewing the exhibits at least James is not sure that he will ever be able to fully tell the difference between an elk and a moose.

Our guide next took us to a trail he knew where we can see some good scenery without a long hike.   The trail route along the river that leads into Jenny Lake. There were some interesting spots but not any falls by the time we reached the lake.  For people up to the task, one can circle the lake along the trail, and according to the trail signs, there is supposed to be a couple of falls that can be reached a bit further down the trail.

 

 

 

 

 

We then went to Jenny Lake Overlook vista point that has an unobstructed center view of the entire lake as well as the Grand Teton peak on the west side of the lake.  There is also a small trail that leads down to the water as well.  All of us took a lot of pictures during our brief stay there.

 

 

 

 

 

Driving northward,  we stopped next at the Jackson Lake Lodge, which is one of Grand Teton National Park lodges.  The Lodge has a main building with more typical hotel like rooms, and there are also a number of cottages around the complex. It was noted that one has to make reservation at least 6 months ahead to book a space there. We went to the main Lodge, where in the back there is a large patio deck with another panoramic view of the entire Teton mountain range from one end of the horizon to the other across the Jackson Lake, from Grand Teton on the southern end to Moose Mountain to the north.  We stayed for about half an hour taking pictures and enjoying the view as well as looking around the lodge, which has a mid-century rustic look.

As we were leaving Jackson Lake lodge to head into Yellowstone, our guide suggested we modify our plans as it would be more efficient for us to go to Lake Yellowstone Hotel for lunch that day instead of routing back there the following evening for dinner as we had original planned. Lake Yellowstone, at 136 sq. miles, is the largest lake above 7,000 ft. elevation in North America.   The lake is part of the caldera that contains the largest super volcano in North America, the Yellowstone Caldera.   There have been three major eruptions noted:  2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and 640,000 years ago.  The last eruption is estimated to be about 1,000 times stronger than the Mount St. Helena eruption in Washington back in 1980s.  The area impacted by the Yellowstone eruption covered almost all of what would be today’s western half of the United States and Canada   If another eruption occurs, most of continental United States would be impacted.

 

 

 

 

 

The Lake Yellowstone Hotel has a feel of a place from the glided age.  The hotel restaurant is opened from mid-May through mid-October. The dining room is a long room on one side of the hotel, with window facing the Yellowstone Lake.   The menu offered a variety of local sourced ingredients, such as Montana beef, Idaho trout and local vegetables. We ordered the lentil (vegetable) soup for all, and for appetizers some local spinach and kale salad, lamb & lobster sliders, fries and elk ravioli.  As with the previous night, we tried to figure out what the elder members of our party would be able to eat.   We decided on the sautéed trout.  It still wasn’t perfect but with the soup, fries, bread and fish, at least they were able to eat a few items.   Overall, the lamb sliders were especially good, and the fries with some cheese and Sriracha aioli was also good.

Our first stop after lunch was to the Mud Volcano.  On the way there, we drove by a grass land where we saw 4 or 5 bison resting and chewing on the grass.  This was our first sighting of these large animals – bison turned out to be the most common local animal that we would see in the park. Mud Volcano is an area of hot springs and fumaroles that pushes more mud than steam onto the surface.  This area also is very acidic with hydrogen sulfide emitting the ‘rotten egg’ odor that one can smell as soon as they get out of the car.  Many parts in this area has a whitish deposit on the rocks called geyserite.  These are deposits from underground silica rocks that was dissolved as hot waters traveled from below and took some of the minerals to the surface.  From a distance, these looks like white sands.  One of the main features for this site is the Dragon’s Mouth Spring, where boiling water rolls out of a small cave opening that make it look like smoke from a dragon’s mouth.

Our guide then took us by an area next to the canyon where we can see our two distinct periods geological event from the rocks – distinct stratification layers that shows where glaciers had run through the cannons – with one layer on top of each layers that differentiate the two separate period when glaciers has glides through the area.  We also drove by and saw a view of the Upper Fall – which we would get a closer look the next day.

Our final stop of the day was at Tower Falls.  The name comes from the rock pinnacles at the top of the fall from lava flow, although a large boulder near the top of the fall had fallen since when the fall was named. The fall is over 130 feet high and is located about a quarter of mile upstream of the creek’s confluence with the Yellowstone River. After we left the Tower Fall, we started our way to our B&B.  The town of Gardiner is literally just outside of the northern entrance of Yellowstone.  The town center has only a few streets and no traffic lights – just stop signs.

Our B&B (Yellowstone Basin Inn) was located about a 5 minute-drive outside of center of town.  It sits on top a small hill just off the highway.   There is a cluster of three or four buildings in the complex.  The guest rooms and the office were in the largest building.  A smaller building next to the main building is used for breakfast.  The owner and his family lives in a building at the back. Our ‘room’ was a 3-bedroom split-level portion of the main building that the owner used to live in when he first bought the place.  There was two bedrooms with one bed each on the first floor, along with a dining room and living room.  Down in the basement, there is a bigger room with 2 queen beds and another bathroom.

For dinner that night, our guide took James into town to get a pizza (mainly for him and Brandon) to supplement the ramen, egg, lunchmeat, yam that was picked up the prior day.  Despite the eclectic mix of food, we all seemed to enjoy the dinner that evening.   It was still light when we finished.  We went out to walk around the area – across the road, we could see the open grassland behind the houses on the other side of the road with some animals moving around.  Our host said that animals, including bears, does show up in the area.  It was an ideal place to be if someone wants to experience solitude with nature.

Breakfast the next morning included a lot of local organic ingredients made from scratch.  The freshly baked strawberry bread was excellent.  The grapefruit was not too tart and very juicy.  And a local yogurt was something both Jessica and Vivian loved.   Our host also has a high-power telescope in the breakfast room, where we can use to see the animals on the grounds across the rivers more clearly.  Sometimes they hide themselves among the bushes and trees which the telescope can more easily find.

On our way into park, we drove through the Mammoth area, which is a little town inside the park where a lot of the park administration buildings are located and north of Mammoth Hot Springs.  As we drove by, we saw a few bison roaming on the grounds in front of some of the buildings.   We stopped to take some close-up pictures; during our stop, we saw one of them “relieve” himself – an act of nature that some of us probably didn’t need to see.

 

Our first stop of the day was the Artists Paintpots, which is an area with many hot springs and mudpots.  It was not very crowded early in the morning, and it turned into a nice walk through the area for us, which has a nice walking path and very serene pools as the background.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next stop was the Norris Geyser Basin, one of the bigger geyser sites in the park.  There are many trails and hikes in this area – some are several miles long; we took one of the shorter trails.  As our guide dropped us off, he noted the story a couple of years ago of a kid that didn’t heed the warning signs and walked too close to a geyser; the ground gave and he dropped into the hole and was never found.   We all thought we definitely will be keeping our hands out of the holes in the ground. The part of the basin we visited has a number of pools and springs – both large and small.  Some were just calm waterholes, and some has water shooting out from the ground periodically.  There were also some mudpots as well.  It’s instructive for us to know that we are walking on the ground that is essentially still an active volcano, which if erupted can alter the entire western half of the US.

 

 

 

 

 

From Norris, we went to the Upper Fall, where we could hike down close to the top of the fall.  The walk down to the picturesque spot was an easy stroll, with a number of switchbacks pathway winding down to an area where we are on top of the rushing river as it literally drops over the cliff’s edge.   One can feel the amount of water and the force the water generates as it plunges down the cliff. The walk back up (more like a climb) turned out to be much more a challenge.   James end up resting a couple of times to catch his breath.  The high altitude is probably playing a part in making any type of climbing more of a struggle than under normal altitude.

 

 

 

 

 

After the hike, we went to a park café in one of the visitor center area.  The café served typical diner food, which means we have to figure out what would be appropriate for our elders.  We end up selecting the chili, soup and fries for them.  Not ideal, but enough for them to tie them over until dinner.   Jessica had a salad while James had a BBQ sandwich. We spend a few minutes in the shop next to the café after lunch and bought some souvenirs before heading out.

We head next to the Artist Point, a spot where Thomas Moran had used to draw some of his famous paintings of the park’s Lower Fall.  This area is well built out with various viewing platforms, and it was fairly crowded when we were there.  The view of the Lower Falls from this spot, which has a panoramic view of the both the fall and the canyon, was truly spectacular.  A place one can just sit and enjoy the view – and on sunny day, a picnic there would have been perfect.

Before we head back to our B&B for the day, we made a final stop at the Emerald Spring – another hot spring spot.  On our way back, Jessica asked our guide to stop at a small pool on the roadside – she wanted to try to soak her feet in a stream that seem to be fed by the hot springs.  Almost all of us thought that she was crazy, but Jessica insisted that if the water in the stream was clear with life form in it – i.e. fish – then it should be fine.  This stream seemed to fit the criteria, and the spot we stopped was a shallow branch edge of a stream that seem to flow from the hot springs.  Jessica gently put her toes in the water and when it felt ok, she put her entire foot in it.  She said the water felt warm and nice.  Some of us also try the water with our hands.  While we were there another car stopped; a young girl also wanted to try the water – her mother let her touch it with her hand.   This was definitely an out of the box experience.

For dinner that night, in addition to the noodles, vegetables and leftover pizza we had, we also had a couple of salad and sandwiches that we ordered from our host sells mostly for lunch to his guests.  Another food mix that was able to satisfy everyone.

The next morning, our guide took us to the east end of the park area, where the rangers had indicated where we may see some animals during the morning.   We were driving along the road looking for animals that would be in plain sight, which may not have been the best way.  Other than bison and some deer, most of the other animals tend to hide out in the trees during the day.  We probably need to sit in one location with a binocular and just sit and wait, which a few people were doing that on the side of the road.  While we did see herds of bison on the prairie in several spots during our drive, we didn’t see much else from the car.  However, at one of the parking spots on the road, one lady we ran into has been there all morning, and she had spotted a bear up near the top of the hill across the open prairie.   She was gracious enough to let us see the bear through her binocular.  It is something that we would not have been able to see without a binocular ourselves.

From the east part of the park, we went down to the West Thumb area of the Yellowstone Lake, another hot spring site.  This is the only hot spring area near the lake.   With the breeze blowing in from the lake, it was also the windiest.  However, the wind has the effect of blowing the steam off the pool often to enable some clear pictures – as long as you don’t stand downstream of the wind!

 

 

With our next stop being the Old Faithful Geyser near the west side of the park, our guide suggests that we go over to the West Yellowstone for lunch in a Chinese restaurant (The Red Lotus).   That turned out to be a great recommendation after two days of diet on ramen, lunch meat, soup and Napa cabbage.   This meal was especially gratifying for Jessica’s parent and Vivian’s mom.  It almost felt that they haven’t eaten in days.

 

 

 

 

 

Old Faithful is not the largest or the most predicable geyser in the Yellowstone, but it is the largest of the predicable geyser.  The length of the eruption can range from 1 minute to 5 minutes, and shoots upwards to 100 feet.  The longer the eruption, the longer it takes to the next eruption.   The Old Faithful site encompass a large visitor center where one side of the center has a floor to ceiling window facing the geyser where the eruption can be seen.  The visitor center also has a small theater with films of the geyser and a large exhibit that cover geyser geological science.   Near the visitor center is a wooden lodge that was built during the early part of 1900, the Old Faithful Lodge.  The lodge has an interesting design with a large fireplace in the center that served as heating source in the winter originally. Some of us thought this could be an interesting place to stay.

Around the geyser, there is a walkway 360-degree around the geyser. The main viewing stand is on the side toward the Visitor Center.  Around 15 minutes before the geyser eruption estimate time, the area started to fill up. There were a couple of pre-eruptions – steam spewing out – before the actual eruption.  Just about the time of the eruption were to come, we could see a weather front moving toward us in the sky.  We were hoping that the eruption would happen before the rain come.  Happily, Old Faithful erupted before it really started to rain.

Just as our guide picked us up in front of the lodge, the sky opened up.  It rained as we drove toward our next destination, the Grand Prismatic Spring.   The rain started to fade just as we arrived there. The feature spot of this site is a large blue color heated spring that sits on top of a small hill.  The steam from the spring along with the cool weather made the area very ‘foggy’, difficult to get a good clear picture of the spring.  Jessica had a friend that said there is a trail that leads to a hill above the spring which provide a good view of the pool.  She asked our guide if he knew of a way up to the hill overlooking the spring, but he didn’t think there is an accessible road to go up the hill – we drove by a side road that appeared to be blocked.

The weather back in Gardiner was much better than it was inside the park, with nary a cloud in the sky when we returned.  It was still quite light after our usual dinner; Jessica and James took a walk around the area again.  Walking on the edge of the property, we could see some jack rabbits across the highway.  Aside from the occasional passing car, there really wasn’t much sound as we stared out toward the open plains, we could almost feel what the first explorer may have seen here.

 

The next morning, we packed up after three great nights in our B&B.  We decided to go to Old Faithful one more time – this time to see if we can also get to some of the other geysers or springs in the area.   It was snowing in the mountains as we drove into the park, with the evergreens covered in snow.  There is a Christmas feel to the whole scene – except that this was June!

The area around Old Faithful was overcast but there was no rain or snow that morning in the area.   Some of us were thinking of taking the long trail to see the larger geysers in the area, but we end up just taking the short trail across a stream, looking at the hot springs and pools that was within a short distance from Old Faithful.   We spend an hour or so in the area before we head out. For lunch that day, we went to the same Chinese restaurant in West Yellowstone once again, as we would be driving by there on our way to Bozeman.  This made the elder contingent of our group very happy.

We drove through the Gallatin National Forrest along highway 191 on our way to Bozeman.  Along 191, we actually weaved between Montana and Wyoming as we headed north.   We passed a few lakes along the way, as well as many ranches.  In this part of the country, a neighbor sometimes can be a few miles apart. Our guide took us to some of the ski area that was on the way in Big Sky to give us some perspective of what the area has to offer.  Big Sky is a gateway to a number of skiing resorts in the Lone Mountain area.  Our guide said that the memberships to some of these resorts are fairly high-priced, offering members private sky terrain.  (The initial membership fee for Yellowstone Club, in addition to buying a property within the grounds, is $300,000; with an annual fee of $37,500.)

As we got to the outskirts of Bozeman, we stopped at a hot spring pool that Jessica had heard about.  But the complex turned out to be more an indoor swimming pool with a lot of kids’ activities rather than the serene Japanese style soaking bath that Jessica was looking for; therefore, we decided to just head to our hotel.

After settling into our rooms, we started thinking of dinner plans.  We end up having a local Chinese restaurant delivering some take-outs to the hotel room for Jessica’s parents while the rest of us went to a restaurant called 14 North that was recommended by the hotel staff.  (The name is derived from the street location of the restaurant – 14 North Church Street.)   This turned out to work out well for all as Jessica’s parents had something they wanted for dinner while we also get a chance to eat something that is different.

14 North lists itself as a gastropub and has an eclectic mix of offerings, from local sourced meat (such as bison burger) to jerk chicken to ramen.  We tried a number of dish to share:  The daily pasta special, the duck confit toast, curry mussels, the daily halibut special, a salad and a burger for Brandon.   The dishes were generally very well done.

The Bozeman airport is not very large but it has a sleek modern design.  Our flight was either the first or second flight of the day, and we seemed to be one of the first arrivals at 7:30AM for an 8:30AM flight.   It was probably one of the quickest security checks we had – helps to be the only people in line.   The terminal was very quiet at that hour, but the shops were open.  Jessica and James picked up one last souvenir item before boarding to cap off a fast-paced but fulfilling trip.