From geysers to conifers

Day 7
Monday, June 21, 2010
Moran, WY to Coeur d’Alene, ID (via Yellowstone National Park)
594 miles

We were awed by the west twice today, most notably, by Yellowstone’s beauty. In spite of the fact that Yellowstone is bigger than Rhode Island, its beauty, not size is what makes the biggest impression on a visitor. If it isn’t the most beautiful place in America, it must be in the top five.

Against practical advice, we planned to “see” Yellowstone in a half-day. Given that there are many hundreds of miles of roads in the park, this was, to say the least, an ambitious undertaking. Nonetheless, when you’re 2,000 miles from home and 28 miles from one of America’s most revered national treasures, it’s hard to drive by without stopping to take a look.

We awoke before dawn on the longest day of the year and bugged out of our campsite an hour later, arriving at the Yellowstone’s south entrance before 6:30. The roads in Yellowstone are arranged in a figure 8. Based on past experience, Frank knew that the most notable features were on the “lower east side” and “upper west side” with one significant exception; Old Faithful is on the lower west side. We entered through the park’s south entrance at the 6 o’clock position on the lower circle and drove clockwise 17 miles to Old Faithful, parked the minivan and trailer in the “bus, RV and trailer” area and walked toward the geyser. Approximately 60 seconds after we arrived in the most advantageous position for viewing, it erupted for about 3 minutes. A stroke of good fortune given our tight schedule and the geyser’s variable eruption interval of 35-90 minutes. Our total time there: 12 minutes.

After backtracking the 17 miles, we started up the lower east side where we took in West Thumb Basin, Sulfur Pits (stinky-ous maximous!), Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone River and Yellowstone Falls and Canyon. Yellowstone Falls and the canyon below it are breathtakingly beautiful. The canyon is narrow compared to other canyons we’ve seen and its walls are composed of nearly vertical yellowish rock that sports bands of color ranging from beige to yellow (of course) to burnt orange to gold to brown. One Dutch family asked Frank to take their picture and when the mother checked the results, she said “That’s going to be our Christmas picture.” Nice choice. Until he saw Yellowstone Canyon, Bob thought that Big Sur on the California coast topped anything we had seen on this trip. No longer!

We finished off our whirlwind tour of America’s first national park at 11:45 AM in its far northwestern corner in an area known as Mammoth Hot Springs. This was quite impressive, if we do say so ourselves, given that we had driven more than 100 miles within the park and stopped dozens of times to photograph scenery and wild animals including buffalo, elk and mule deer.

Our journey today took us across several notable lines. First, we crisscrossed the Continental Divide several times, next we crossed the route where Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce led his native people in an attempt to escape the U.S. Army, followed by the 49th Parallel, the point halfway between the equator and North Pole, and finally the Pacific Time zone boundary.

The rest of the day was dedicated to driving north and then west. We followed the Gardiner River on Highway 89 to Livingston, Montana, where we joined our old friend, I-90. It was after merging onto I-90 that we were awed by the West for a second time today—this time by its vast distances. After some quick navigational calculations, we realized that our original plan of reaching Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was not going to be easy. We knew we were joining I-90 halfway across Montana, so it was a shock to see mile marker 330 (miles count down east to west) and to realize that it was more than 400 miles from Livingston to Coeur d’Alene. Then we remembered that we would be crossing into the Pacific Time zone, this was summer solstice and we were above the 49th Parallel (longer days in summer), so we decided to go for it.

Within just a few miles west of Missoula, Montana, the grassy, mostly treeless hills gave way to ever steeper mountains with more and more pines, hemlocks, cedars and spruce. The sky gradually went from mostly sun and a few high, broken clouds to mostly cloudy to low, drizzly, patchy fogginess. It was raining atop Lookout Pass at the Montana/Idaho border.

We lumbered into our campground about an hour before dusk. Coeur d’Alene Camping Resort was the first private campground on our trip. Private campgrounds run the full gamut from stellar to scary. You always have to palpate the redneck quotient and be prepared to drive on if necessary. No worries there. CCR was as titled—beautiful, serene, clean and friendly. Just what we were looking for after our 15-hour manic marathon.