Author Archives: Jill and Bud

There is one road that crosses the whole of Glacier National Park, the Going-to-the-Sun Road. On either end of that road there are visitor centers with large parking lots. In the center, at Logan Pass, there is another visitor center and parking lot. For the rest of its length there are numerous turnouts that can accommodate one to fifteen or so cars and a few small picnic areas. There are thousands of people trying to use these areas. You need a vehicle pass to drive the Going-to-the Sun Road, I couldn’t get one when I made our reservations which is why we took the Sun Tour with the Blackfeet tribe. That is a great introduction to the park.

A ranger told Bud that 900 vehicle passes go online each morning at 8 AM and are gone by 8:05. The next morning I was ready and by about 8:02 I had secured a three day pass, but it started the next day. So that day we went up to Many Glacier Road, which goes in on the northeast side as far as the Many Glacier Hotel. The hotel was built in 1914-1915 by the Great Northern Railway and is a National Historic Landmark.

Adler and I walked into the lobby and were treated to this hiker playing the baby grand piano. It was so typical of the rustic and the grandiose of the National Park Hotels and Lodges.

These places are truly national treasures.

The setting of the hotel, on Swiftcurrent Lake surrounded by the peaks, was equally grand.

As you can see, the parking lots here were also full. In fact, as we left at about noon we saw that people were being turned back at the entrance gate as the area was at capacity.

In the afternoon Bud and I decided to take a hike at the Cut Bank Trailhead, which is accessed by a gravel road that goes in along the North Fork Cut Bank Creek not far south of where we were staying at St. Mary.

It was about an eight mile drive back through a lovely valley with open stock pastures.

When we reached the end, the small parking area was so full, with cars lining the road and parked in every level spot, that not only could we not park, we couldn’t find space to turn around and Bud ended up backing out to the entrance sign, close to a mile!

We then drove further south to the only other entrance on the east side of the park, Two Medicine. Fortunately there was parking available there and Bud and I took a short hike.

We walked out to Paradise Point. Not only was there a beautiful view…

we saw that this place is still wild, despite the crowds.

And we saw this moose!

She wouldn’t pose with her head up, so you can only imagine how thrilling it was.

On our last day at Glacier we drove across the Going-to-the-Sun Road to this lovely trail along Lake McDonald.

These lakes are clear and blue and the setting is always beautiful, no matter which direction you look.

Lake McDonald is famous for its colored pebbles. The beach at the picnic area where we ate lunch had them, though they were not nearly as vibrant as images we had seen online.

Even so, the lake was stunning.

There were two other hikes we had considered taking, but not only were we tired, there was no parking in either of those lots! Glacier National Park is definitely worth seeing, but you better arrive early at any of the most popular spots, and definitely consider taking a tour!

We have been moving steadily north. But we have been staying on the east (dry) side of the Rockies. And of course summer has been settling in, so it has seemed that we could never escape the desert.

Our previous stop was Choteau, Montana. It was a bit more green, and not quite as hot (highs in the 90’s), but still the trees only grew where they were planted and you didn’t want to do much outside in the middle of the day.

Now we are in St. Mary, Montana, on the east side of Glacier National Park, the days are in the low eighties or high seventies and we are surrounded by cottonwoods and conifers.

Yesterday we took a tour with Sun Tours, operated by the Blackfeet Indian tribe. We went from St. Mary Lake…

up and over Logan Pass. Not only did we cross the continental divide, we saw Triple Divide Peak. If you could pour a bucket of water on the very top of that peak some would reach the Pacific Ocean, via the Columbia River, some would flow to the Missouri, the Mississippi and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico, and some would flow to the Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean.

Our group was small, just 10 of us on this small bus.

Our tour took us along the famous Going-to-the-Sun Road, which was dedicated in 1933 after years of planning and construction. This tunnel, on the east side, is 408 feet long. Only small blasts were used in the road construction to avoid damage to the landscape and all the rock from the tunnel had to be hauled out by hand as no trucks could reach the site. The contractor could bore 5’4” of tunnel in twenty four hours.

On the west side of Logan Pass we drove on parts of the road where the roadbed had to be built. Only local materials were used in the masonry supporting the road and in the guardrails, which are either stone or logs. The log sections of the guardrails are taken down each winter and reconstructed once the snow plowing in the spring is done.

The road only opened for its full length last week. The last section to be cleared was the path through the huge drift in the center of this photo. The snow on the road here was forty five feet deep!

Along the way we made several stops to take pictures of this beautiful land. Our guide, a member of the Blackfeet tribe, explained that this land was always part of the homelands of his tribe. The tribe signed a treaty with the U.S. taking this land from their reservation to make the National Park. Part of the persuasion for the treaty came from the starvation winter of 1883-1884 when one fourth of the tribe died. The bison all over the west had been exterminated in a deliberate attempt to control and “civilize” the Indians. In the case of the Blackfeet, adequate provisions were not allocated by Congress. The results were devastating. The official census of the tribe went from 7,500 in 1881 when half their sustenance came from hunting and fishing to 2,000 in 1885, when only 8% of their sustenance came from hunting and fishing. This suited the white ranchers who successfully argued that the size of the reservation should be reduced. Perhaps to protect this most sacred part of their homeland from their greedy neighbors the Blackfeet ceded the land to the U.S. and the park was established in 1910.

The Blackfeet retain hunting, grazing, timbering and mining rights to the land, but to all of our benefit choose to keep this place pristine.

We saw the snowfields at Logan pass,

and Adler got to walk on snow again.

We saw big horn sheep, which were too far away to photograph, and these mountain goats, whose image I captured as we drove by slowly.

We saw Jackson Glacier, one of twenty five glaciers remaining of the 150 that were here in 1850. At the present rate of melt, all the glaciers will be gone sometime in the 2030’s, so if you want to see this place, come soon.

Our last stop on the tour was a short hike. Bud is ready with our binoculars and Adler is carrying our new bear spray. We saw no bears, but we hiked back to a point on St. Mary Lake…

where we got some picture postcard views.

A fitting ending to a cool, green day.

We are camped at Great Falls, Montana, for two nights.

Although it’s rather pretty here along the Sun River near its confluence with the Missouri, it seems really big and bustling to us. I realized that the last time we were near a city of any size is when we left Bernalillo, on the northwest side of Albuquerque, on May first.

More typically we have been staying in small towns like our last stop at Reed Point.

Not much happening there…

and it looks like not much has happened for decades.

But that suits us just fine.

Even more striking is the route we’ve taken. Since we started on this life last December we have towed on an interstate highway only six times, usually for an exit or two where the only alternative is either a gravel road or a long detour through mountains. Our total interstate mileage is around 150 miles. We will usually take the back road, like this alternative to I-90. We lost less than 10 minutes on this route and passed about 5 cars. A great trade-off to us.

In 1872, when Yellowstone was made our first National Park, there were other places with scenery as beautiful, and there were certainly other places with abundant wildlife, but there was nowhere else with the numbers of geysers, hot springs and boiling mud pots.

The first place we visited when we came to Yellowstone was Old Faithful. Old Faithful is just one of 500 geysers in the park. It is neither the largest nor the most frequent geyser, but it is the largest regular geyser and has become the symbol of Yellowstone. It erupts every 90 minutes or so and can be predicted within 10 minutes. The National Park Service puts the upcoming predictions online. The morning we drove in there was no posted prediction until we were in the park. When I got phone service back and could access the prediction it was 9:29 AM +/- 10 minutes. Our ETA after a two and a half hour drive was about 9:15. We were right on time and so was Old Faithful. This photo, at the height of the eruption (over 100 feet) was taken at 9:33 AM.

After Old Faithful’s eruption we walked the trail through the upper geyser basin.

There are a number of boiling springs,

small geysers,

and thermal pools along a boardwalk that takes you safely up close.

We took the boardwalk and trail north and passed Giant Geyser, which erupts irregularly to 250 feet and steams and boils constantly. It hasn’t erupted yet in 2022, but was fascinating even in its “cooler” phase.

Our goal on this side trip was Morning Glory Pool, a beautiful hot spring about 20 feet in diameter. Adler captured this picture of the vibrantly beautiful pool.

We returned just in time to see Old Faithful erupt again in the distance.

The next morning we went first to see the Grand Prismatic Spring. The oranges surrounding its deep blue pool are from heat loving bacterial mats. It is the third largest hot spring in the world, at 370 feet in diameter and 160 feet deep.

There are other beautiful pools along side it,

and their discharge flows rather dramatically into the aptly named Firehole River.

From there we drove north to the Artists Paint Pot area, one of my favorite trails.

Not only do you get to look down on the multicolored pools and springs below,

but at the top of the ridge you get to see and hear a boiling mud pool!

Our last visit of the day was the Norris Geyser Basin, the hottest and oldest basin in Yellowstone. There we saw the Steamboat Geyser.

If you can’t read the date, we missed the last major eruption by 19 days.

We did get to hear the roar of the Black Growler Fumarole, a steam vent in the Porcelain Basin and one of the hottest thermal features in the park.

On our last day we visited Mammoth Hot Springs, the largest travertine terrace in the world. Parts are dry and others are still wet and growing, gradually changing this immense feature.

Seen up close the flowing springs are intricately beautiful.

With its stunning scenery, abundant wildlife and more than 10,000 hydrothermal features Yellowstone truly is like no place else on earth.

Yellowstone has been protected as a National Park for 150 years. Every effort is made to let the animals be wild, even around the visitors. There are signs everywhere to not approach the animals and to not feed the animals, even the birds and squirrels. The result is that most visitors get to see wild animals on their visit. We did.

Yellowstone is rightfully known for its bison. The only continuously wild herd of bison in the United States lives in Yellowstone. Adler was pretty excited the first afternoon when he took this picture of a big bull resting in a wallow close to the road.

The next morning, on that same stretch of road along the Yellowstone River, we saw whole herds of bison.

Adler got this shot of cows and calves.

I took a photo of this bull who wasn’t the least concerned about the traffic passing.

It was quite evident that Yellowstone’s bisons are not at all afraid of people in vehicles.

The other animals you’re almost sure to see are elk. If you don’t get a shot of one grazing in one of the meadows…

just drive to Mammoth Hot Springs where they feel perfectly at home grazing on the lawns…

or relaxing in the shade of the buildings. Make no mistake, these are wild animals and everyone keeps a respectful distance.

We had Matey with us and he ignored the elk, but was totally enamored with these little guys. I think they were ground squirrels. They lived in holes in the ground but were only half the size of prairie dogs.

Then there are the less seen animals.

Like this bear. Adler got this photo. I thought it was a brown bear but Yellowstone has only black bears and grizzly bears, so this must be a grizzly. It was easy to spot the bear, because people were parked along both sides of the road watching as the bear foraged at the edge of the meadow.

I got this shot of this black bear. Again, traffic was stopped. You can see that iPhones are not the ideal instrument to get these photos.

Adler did a good job capturing this pronghorn antelope; and there wasn’t even any traffic there to alert us to an animal sighting.

You’ll have to take my word for it on our favorite sighting. The small, whitish blob between the two small pines closest to the front is a grey wolf. We spotted him early in the morning as we came to Lake Village.

Other folks who were there at the brink of the upper falls overlook identified this as a yellow bellied marmot. I just liked the way he would pop up and pose for a few seconds, then disappear only to pop up again a couple of feet away.

We were all happy with the numbers and variety of animals we saw.

You might think that since this is our second visit to Yellowstone within a year (we came last August) that this time would be less exciting. Not so; there is so much to see we could visit several more times and still be discovering new things. Plus, seeing it with our grandson, Adler, was a special delight. He loved everything.

This trip we went to see the falls and canyon of the Yellowstone River. Last year, when we got near the area there were so many cars we were discouraged. An advantage of coming in on the east side was getting there early enough to beat the crowds. This is a view of the Upper Falls.

This is called the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and you can see why. This is a view along the path to Artists Point.

Walking out to Artists Point I caught this view of the Lower Falls framed with trees.

From Artists Point itself you get an unobstructed view of the Lower Falls and the canyon below.

We then drove around to see the brink of the Upper Falls from the other side of the canyon. I loved the mist in the morning light. I think all the mist was from the falls, but being Yellowstone there could have been thermal features there, too.

Our final stop in the area was Inspiration Point for a panoramic view of the canyon. There were other overlooks and other trails we could have taken, but we had a full day of touring planned. Next time.

Last August the part of the Grand Loop Road from Canyon to Tower-Roosevelt was closed, so we wanted to drive that this year. The area was very different from the other parts we had visited. This was an Alpine environment. The road went up and over Dunraven Pass, where I took this picture. It’s at 8859 feet above sea level.

We drove up Chittenden Road, a gravel road that takes you up towards Mount Washburn. There Adler was delighted to find snow, so he got to throw a snowball on July 10th.

Looking north from there the wilds of Yellowstone stretch as far as the eye can see.

We then headed west to Mammoth Hot Springs and drove along this section of the highway where the road bed had been carved into the cliff. We missed this last year because we took a side road looking for animals. Always more to see.

As we approached Mammoth Hot Springs from the east we were treated to this stunning view that shows how huge the travertine terraces are. We didn’t see this before, just because we were traveling the other way on the loop! I don’t know if or when we will return to Yellowstone National Park, but if we do I know that we will find new wonders.

We have just spent three days visiting Yellowstone National Park. I was going to post our visit day by day, but issues with the internet have changed my plans. I took a number of short videos of the thermal features but none of them will upload here. So I am going to tell you about other things first, and post about the geysers and pools once we leave.

We were surprised as we approached our campground just west of Cody, Wyoming on the east side of Yellowstone. I had expected the broad valleys and rolling mountains like on the west side. But our approach was along the Shoshone River and the valley narrowed to a canyon as we left Cody. Here it was so narrow that we went through three tunnels. There was a reservoir and a State Park after the tunnels.

I didn’t think there would even be room for an RV park, but the valley did get wider, and that’s where the park is.

The mountains on either side are quite rugged and the whole area is beautiful.

This post is just about going into and out of Yellowstone. Yellowstone is huge, the distances are great. We were in one of the closest RV parks to the East Entrance of Yellowstone and it was still 30 miles. Then it was another 27 miles from the East Entrance to the junction of the loop roads. The main roads in Yellowstone form two loops with the entrance roads running out from them. The northern loop is 70 miles around and the southern loop is 96 miles around, so there is a lot of driving involved in visiting Yellowstone.

Fortunately it is beautiful driving. Here we are on our way in the early morning traveling west along the Buffalo Bill Scenic Byway, which is the North Fork Highway and was the road from our campground to the East Gate of Yellowstone.

The morning sun makes the astonishing rock formations stand out in sharp relief.

The mountains are beautiful and so is the Shoshone River, which you follow well past the entrance.

Going in or out the views are always beautiful.

An advantage of being on the east side is that there is less traffic here. This is the East Entrance gate seen as we were leaving. Even with the North and Northeast Entrances closed because of the flooding in June we saw only one or two lanes of the East Entrance open and no waiting lines.

As you go into the park you come closer to the snow capped mountains.

You travel up and over the Sylvan Pass, going by several beautiful springs along the way.

It is a long trip, but never monotonous.

Wyoming is the least populated and least densely populated of the lower 48 states. We are now in Lander, Wyoming, which is close to the center of the state and it seemed we drove through miles and miles of open terrain to get here. We traveled 130 miles from Green River, on the southern border and went through one small town.

Yesterday we visited Sinks Canyon State Park. It is along the canyon of the Popo Agie River (puh-PO-shuh). This beautiful little river carries snowmelt from the Wind River Mountains, which are high enough to support glaciers.

But the most remarkable thing about this river is that the whole thing disappears into a cave with cracks and crevasses (the sinks).

It’s a lot of water, moving fast, and it all just disappears underground. During the spring snowmelt it overwhelms the sinks and part of the water does flow overground.

We were standing at the mouth of the cave when I took this picture. To overflow the water would have to be about 20 feet deeper than it was, hard to imagine.

A quarter mile down the canyon the water re-emerges into this relatively placid pool. Dye studies have shown that the water takes two hours to make this trip. No one knows what the underground portion looks like to make that part of the journey take so long.

The Popo Agie is a trout stream. The pool at the rise is full of Rainbow and Brown Trout whose journey upstream ends at the underground portion of the river. Many of these fish are two feet long or more. I took this photo from a platform about 25 feet above the pool. There is a dispenser for fish food and people feed the trout from the platform, but Bob Alexander, there is no fishing allowed in this section of the river.

It is a beautiful canyon…

in a beautiful state.

Now on to Yellowstone.

We are now headed, in short hops, towards Yellowstone National Park. Our first stop on the way is the tiny town of Jensen, Utah, just southwest of Dinosaur National Monument. To get here we took Colorado Route 139 which went up through Douglas Pass. This is looking back at the route just before we crossed the summit. Happily, the new brakes on the Tundra performed well on the several mile long, very steep downhill on the other side of the pass.

This area still has desert hills, but the valleys are all green. This is looking towards Dinosaur National Monument from the campground. The white mountain is Split Mountain. The Green River cuts a zig-zag path right through the mountain. The geology is similar to that of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River. Many layers of loose material once covered the area. The Green River had cut a course through these layers. Then the land was pushed up. The river was confined and so continued to erode down through what became Split Mountain.

This afternoon we drove out along the Cub Creek Road following the guide book for the Tour of the Tilted Rocks. A side turn took us to where the Green River emerges from its canyon through Split Mountain.

It rolls past this huge rock wall before continuing its journey.

We stopped at several sites with petroglyphs. Some, like these were petroglyphs with coloring added. These are called pictoglyphs. We had never seen those before.

These images are about 1000 years old. I used the color enhancing program on this one because it brings out the way some images are made of a series of pecked dots. I had not seen that before, either.

My favorites were this huge lizard (close to 6 feet long) and…

this flute player.

Up on the ledge with those images was this Ephedra. It was covered with brownish buds and very striking blue beetles with red lines between their dorsal and ventral sides.

So much beauty, big and small!

We jogged east to Montrose, Colorado to see The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. It was on our itinerary last summer when we took our 72 day trip to the west coast and back. We didn’t get to see it because US Rte 50 between the park entrance and Gunnison was closed. We were staying just west of Gunnison and the trip to the park was close to three hours one way due to the closure. It’s still closed Monday – Thursday, 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM and 1:30 PM – 5:30 PM. This time we came from the west and the road is open from Montrose past the park entrance. The trip to the park was 24 minutes.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is one of the steepest, deepest and narrowest canyons in the world. In the park it reaches depths from 1800 to 2700 feet deep. At its narrowest point on the rim it is only 1100 feet wide and at the river, just 40 feet wide.

We drove to the end of the main park road at High Point, 8289 feet above sea level. We then hiked about three fourths of a mile to Warner Point, the place where the gorge reaches its greatest depth. Not only were the views of the canyon stunning,

the views to the south and west, over the valley to Montrose, were also captivating. At mid altitude there are a number of beautiful ranches. We think the white hills between the ranches and Montrose are volcanic ash, but I can’t find a specific reference.

Along the way we came across these two Western Collared Lizards. They hung around for several minutes while we watched.

This is looking upstream from Warner Point. The point is named for Mark T. Warner, a Presbyterian minister who came here in 1917 from Ohio. He worked for years to have this canyon preserved. He was instrumental in getting the Lion’s Club to build a road to the south rim in 1929. In 1933 the canyon was made a National Monument and in 1999 the protected area was enlarged and made a National Park.

This is the equally impressive view downstream. This canyon is so deep and narrow that there is no historical evidence of Native American use below the rim.

On our drive back out we stopped at the overlook for the Painted Wall. The rock is black gneiss with intrusions of pink pegmatite. Molten pegmatite was pushed up as magma into cracks in the gneiss. These rocks are 1.8 billion years old. About 2 million years ago the river, which is confined by mountains to the north, east and south, started cutting into this old, hard rock. The steep canyon gradient of 43 feet to 95 feet per mile created tremendous water power. Compare this to the 7 feet per mile gradient of the Colorado in the Grand Canyon. In spring floods the water has enough force to propel four foot boulders.

In 1972 Bill Forrest and Kris Walker were the first to climb this 2,500 foot wall. I just couldn’t picture it as I gazed at this expanse.

We were all glad we made this trip to see this amazing river and canyon.