So you are going to Yellowstone, what can you expect?

Welcome back everyone.  We have discussed the planning phase of making a trip to Yellowstone National Park (YNP) and so I thought it might be fun to relive a couple of trips I made this year and see what kinds of exciting things you can expect to see. We made a trip in the spring just before the park opened and then another trip back in the fall after the park had closed.  When I say it was closed don’t think of unable to enter.  Just imagine that all/many of the park services (stores, gift shops, hotels and motels and other tourist support businesses may not be open because they are open with the tourist season and close when the horde has headed back to school and work.  So we headed west and north in mid-May for a couple of weeks of touristy fun.  We came up from the south through Colorado hitting Pikes Peak and coming up through Jackson and the Tetons entering YNP through the south entrance.  The scenery  coming up through the Tetons is truly breath-taking for a flat-lander.

 

Wild life was not as abundant as I had expected but the scenery will leave you speechless. Your travel will bring you ever higher in elevation north through the Tetons and finally into Yellowstone Park. As you enter you will purchase a pass from the ranger station for (I think) $25 for 7 days entrance to the Grand Tetons National Forest and YNP. We were headed for Old Faithful Inn so our excitement was pretty out of control and with the exception of several elk our wildlife spottings were nil.  Not to worry the best is yet to come.

After getting settled at the Old Faithful Inn we did a little exploring and sat for a while and watched the Old Faithful geyser spewing steam and acting like it was about to blow.  The schedule is posted in the Inn and at the rangers information office and it was not going to blow for quite a while, we just did not know any better.  Basically it spouts about every 90 minutes and a quick web search will give you more information than I can provide plus a live streaming video camera feed of Old Faithful. So seeing it in person might probably be anti-climactic, no way.  This is a truly beautiful event and do not leave the park without at least one eruption on camera. What you will learn is that you are in the midst of a gigantic volcano and this is just one of many many geysers and they are all located within fairly close proximity to where you are standing watching Old Faithful. So get a good night sleep and let’s get started in the morning heading to the Paint Pots and fumaroles so we can finally get to see some critters.

So where do we eat in the park?  We ate our evening meals for 3 days at the Old Faithful Inn dining room.  Pretty pricey but an easy meal and then a stroll and head off to bed. Make sure if you wish to eat there, that you make reservations early (like before you leave home!) The Inn has NO television in the rooms. So everyone will have to find their own ways of amusing themselves. Get up early and grab a bight or nosh on some of the stores you brought with you and get ready for a day that will live in your dreams for ever.

The geysers and other volcanic landscape features will keep you busy most of the day so pack a snack and plan to be out until evening. As you leave the Inn parking lot you will see critters and that will remain the predominant theme all day long.  Buffalo, elk, mule deer, black bears, maybe a grizzly and lord knows what lesser sized creatures you will happen upon.  If there is one thing I encourage all to purchase before heading to the park is more camera memory than you can imagine you will use. If you have a photo storage device (I use a 30gb FlashTrax drive and love it) then you are set, if you have enough memory for a long days shooting.  If not them buy twice what you can imagine you will use or borrow it and prove me wrong.  I bet one in three folks I talked to had been out for 2+ weeks and were only taking low res pictures on a “once in a lifetime” basis because they did not have any more memory. My problem is I can’t tell a “once in a lifetime” photo op from an “ah forget it” photo op until the next day so I take it and go on.

Tomorrow we head up into the Hayden Valley and will likely see bears (maybe a grizz?) and there is an outside chance we will see a wolf! Have I suggested that optics are a topic of serious consideration?  You cannot be overly equipped with optics for Yellowstone.  You have terrain that stretches to far off mountains and valleys that seem to go one for miles (well actually, they do.) Binoculars and spotting scopes are really something to be seriously considered.  If you have the finances and several trips are in your future then do the research for a good quality spotting scope ($500 – $2500) and get hooked up.  Without it you will need to be prepared to ask to look through a scope of one of the many watchers.  They will be glad to let you look, by the way, so do not be too shy to ask.  Part of the fun of owning a good spotting scope or a good set of binos is letting others see what you have “found” in some far off mountain plateau. So now you have been forewarned.  Gals this is generally a “guys” topic.  Guys enjoy the gear side of things.  But that, like all other generalizations is proved wrong more often than not so gals if you are gear heads then listen up and spend a couple of months searching out the web sites that will give you plenty of good information regarding spotting scopes and get your credit cards ready for that purchase.  I think this weeks’ post might be on spotting scope selection and optics and why they are important, or at least why I think they are important. In my travels they are repeatedly an important topic of discussion. While I am at it maybe we can discuss digiscoping.

Another good night’s sleep and tomorrow we will head into the Hayden Vally and have a better chance of spotting grizz and wolves, bald and golden eagles and who knows what else. G’night……………..