Totem Café,
Buckaroo Bill’s Stew and Soup,
Dairy Queen.
It was very quaint.
We went back in the west entrance and headed north to the Mammoth Hot Springs. On the way, we passed a spot we’d seen the night before in the dark that Dave wanted to take a better look at. This was a boiling hot spring that had vents that release under the bridge that we drove over. When we were scurrying to leave the park before the road closed the night before, we came upon this bridge. Since it was after sundown and the temperature had dropped significantly, the steam was even more intense. It billowed out from under the bridge and spilled over the road in a stinky mist that startled us both. We were glad to see that we hadn’t imagined it.
From there, we came upon the Artists’ Paintpots, a series of hot springs and gurgling mud pits that reveal different colors of mud, water, and bacteria. Several looked like bowls of water in which one might have rinsed a paintbrush—that milky, watery look.
This one looked like boiling white clay that would dry and crack and then get pulled back into the mixture to start again.
This one was part of the Artists’ Paintpots as well. In the summer months, it spits little spouts of clay into the air.
From the picture, you can see where the pot will send a large blurp of hot mud high into the air and the wind will blow it over onto the wooden bridge the tourists walk on. This little hill I am looking at was probably about four feet high at its highest point—entirely built from little blurps of mud coming out of the earth. Incredible!
Here was a very iron-heavy paint pot that created this rust color.
This is also around the time that I had to finally admit to myself that Dave has a MUCH better eye for photographic composition that I. I am much too impatient for that. I want to run along and see the next sight. Here is some of his handiwork.
This was a place that either had clearly been a small Paintpot at one time but through some change in the earth stopped being one or had not been one until recently and was about ready to spill above the surface. It was truly difficult to tell.
The Paintpots were set in the side of a large hill. This is the view from the top looking down.
Another beautiful hot spring.
Another amazing little geyser that was just boiling out of the earth. Does that make it a hot spring? We didn’t stick around long enough to figure it out.
As we drove around a mountain, we came across a beautiful waterfall that we had seen in the shadows the previous night.
It was accompanied by this lovely view.
This time, when we stopped, there were only three other cars there: two tan vans (just like ours) and a giant Korean church van filled with people. We were behind the Korean church passengers for a good while that day, but they never all got out of the van. They would pull up beside a beautiful vista, take pictures from inside the van (or one person would jump out and take pictures), and then struggle to get that behemoth to continue on up the hill.
On our way to Mammoth Hot Springs, we found this crazy place which was like nothing we’d seen yet. It’s called Orange Spring Mound.
Apparently, water gets heated by the lava underground. Then, that water pushes up through a layer of limestone where it picks up particles of calcium carbonate. As it flows out of the earth, it deposits the calcium carbonate, called “travertine,” creating this giant mound.
Once again, many trees perished in the building of this mound.
Poor little trees. They couldn’t stop it. Actually, what happens is that the tree soaks up the mineral-rich water into its little tree veins blocking it from getting any food or water and it hardens. Essentially, the tree is petrified there, and it could stand like that forever. It will not likely disintegrate like a normal dead tree would.
Here, you can see the TINY little fount of water coming out of the top of this mound that must be at least 12 or 15 feet high.
We then came across a series of terraces that may have been created the same way as Orange Spring Mound; however, through some process of nature, they looked like layers of ice with places where it had broken clean off like a shelf.
Another mound with its victim still attached.
By the time we reached the upper level of the Mammoth Hot Springs, it was starting to rain. Dave wasn’t really digging the scene because his allergies had started acting up the night before. He was a trooper, though.
Here are some of the many amazing scenes that we saw at the Mammoth Hot Springs area. All of these terraces are built from that travertine build-up caused by cascades of water flowing out of the calcium-rich rock.
We went into the Visitor Center near Mammoth Hot Springs to sit down and relax. While we were there, we found the weather forecast. Compare THAT to Durham in July! In your FACE, Bull City!
Again, this is the little village in the Park where the employee dorms are. It was a beautiful little place.
After a National Park-priced lunch, we decided to start heading out of the park and on to our next destination: South Dakota. As we drove through the mountains, we saw these great rainbows.
The rain stopped, and we FINALLY had our first "bear jam." It was a baby black bear that I could hardly see at all. Somewhere in this photo are some tiny bear ears.
More important is the traffic jam that ensued.
Before long, we came across Bear Jam 2009, part 2. The traffic stopped, and no cars were coming in the other direction. I didn’t think it could be because of construction because there had been no warning signs. This was some sort of wildlife jam. The guy in the car in front of ours got out of his car and started walking ahead in traffic with his camera, so I did the same. After we passed about six cars in the stopped traffic line, the guy in front of me started running forward and so did the guy in front of him. Always afraid to miss something exciting, I, too, began running. That’s right: I ran. OK, I jogged. But I jogged fast for a long tine. I must have passed 25 stopped cars in the lane before getting to the source of the commotion. There was a little brook that ran parallel to the road about 40 yards out. Between the road and the brook was a different baby black bear who was completely unfazed by the people standing around. I, however, was quite nervous because the rangers tell you to stay a football field away, and I don’t think we were more than 20 yards away. When we came upon it, it was scratching into the tree for bugs. He would scratch into the tree a little with his claws (it’s a SIGN people—back up), then lick the tree a little, then scratch again. After finding very little, he started looking around in the grass for something to eat. Then, he really showed off.
He climbed this tree only for a second, then slid back down and walked into the woods toward the brook. I took a million bad pictures of his backside and then ran back to find Dave. By now, I had been out of the car for about 10 minutes, and I wasn’t quite sure where the car would be. Had the traffic crept by fast enough that he had passed me? Was he still way in the back of the line? Why does everyone have a tan minivan?! I finally found him still in the back of the line, and he decided he wanted to check it out, too, so I sent him up there with the camera and I drove the car for the first time on the whole trip. Unfortunately, I was only able to go about 30 feet. Oh, well. Other than that, I haven’t even moved the car in a parking lot.
Anyhow, these are some of the snaps Dave was able to get.
It was so invigorating to see that little bear out there. I’ve never seen a bear that wasn’t in a fake cave in captivity. It was fantastic.
So we moved along and traffic dispersed enough that we could pick up a pretty good clip on the road. After a while, we had another very small buffalo jam. We spotted a huge herd of them in the distance.
Up to this point, we had only seen them in groups of one or two, so this was a bit of a revelation. Dave counted them and estimated that this herd held somewhere around 150 head of buffalo.
Then, we hit another Visitor’s Center. I guess I should explain that, last year, I purchased a National Parks Passport, in which one gets rubber stamp “cancellations” from the National Parks around the country. So every time we have gone to a National Park, I’ve hunted down the Visitor Centers to get my stamps. Usually, I see children getting them, but I enjoy the challenge and I LOVE stamping the paper. It’s almost as fun as pushing buttons.
Anyhow, this was part of our Visitor Center adventure.
As the sky cleared from the earlier rain showers, we passed Yellowstone Lake, which, for the record, is pretty enormous. There were legitimate waves on this coastline. It is certainly not as big as Lake Michigan, but it had true waves that crashed on the rocks and it was very lovely. We marveled at it for about 5 minutes and moved on.
Then came Bear Jam 2009, part 3. This time, it was a baby grizzly bear romping around looking for lunch on the side of a huge grassy hill.
A park ranger was on the scene quickly to keep traffic moving and tell the gawkers to move their cars completely off the road. She informed us that this grizzly was a “sub-adult” and was likely about 2 or 3 years old. She clearly wanted to keep people from running up the hill because its mother was likely not far away. The little bear kept looking behind him in a little thicket of bushes and dead trees, and some surmised that the mother might have actually been in there.
In this photo, he’s doing a little shake-shake-shake.
After about 20 minutes, I was starting to lose interest, so we kept moving. We came across this amazing sight:
The side of this mountain was almost completely covered with dead trees. I don’t know how that came to be, but it made for a terrific picture.
Next, we had our first moose jam. We had not seen a moose the day before, but we had been told that they were out there somewhere. We’re not sure if this is a female moose or a juvenile moose, but he was pretty to watch. He was just wandering around eating grasses enjoying his day.
After all of those wildlife jams, we were ready to move on. After leaving the park, we headed west through Wyoming toward South Dakota. However, at around 9:30 pm, we happened on Cody, WY. This meant nothing to me, but Dave was quite excited when he saw this:
It was time for the Cody Nite Rodeo. They held a rodeo every single night in Cody. We parked as fast as we could and headed to the box office. However, there was a sign on the box office window that read “Sold Out.” That’s not possible, I thought. We noticed an open gate, looked at each other, and went for it. We strolled right on in, walked up the bleachers, and sat our little selves down for an evening at the Rodeo. I had never been to a rodeo, so this was entirely new to me.
The segment that was beginning when we walked in was the girls’ barrel races. Teenaged girls would attempt to race their horses around a series of barrels and back in the shortest time to win some kind of prize or recognition. This got the crowd roaring! It was great fun. Next were the little girls’ barrel races. Little girls between 6 and 12 would race ponies around a smaller series of barrels. Many were disqualified because they couldn’t get their horses to go around the barrels in the right direction, if at all.
I noticed that the crowd could tolerate only so much quiet when the girls screwed up; at that point, they would begin cheering very loudly to give the little girl encouragement. It was very sweet. After that was the tiny tots barrel race, which was a little 5-year-old boy “racing” his pony around the barrels. First, there was no racing here for the five-year-old. Second, that horse didn’t know what the hell that kid wanted him to do. The kid might as well have been commanding that horse to take a letter or name the states in alphabetical order. He was going to go wherever he darn well pleased.
Next came the actual bull-riding. I’m not very fond of this on an animal rights level, but I was already at the Rodeo, which was weird enough, and I certainly didn’t pay any money for it…until I went to the gift shop at the end and bought a t-shirt, but still, it was really a bit disturbing. There were about 10 contestants from all over the country. Each one is in a little paddock sponsored by some local business. He mounts a bull that has a rope wrapped around him in significant areas that clearly piss him off. Then, when the gate is opened, the bull comes out bucking trying to get himself free of the rope, and the young man has to remain on the bucking bull for a minimum period of time, like 8 seconds or something, in order to qualify for a score. If he gets bucked off, there are some creepy rodeo clowns (“bull fighters”) who try to distract the bull, so that it doesn’t trample its thrown rider, and guide it into a tunnel where it disappears into a steakhouse or something. If the clowns can’t do that, there are three guys on horses with ropes at the ready hoping to lasso the bull.
I took lots of video clips, but I’ll only present two here. The first is a ride in which the young man was bucked off almost immediately.
This second video is of the only young man to qualify that night.
After these 8 or 10 guys rode their bulls, the Rodeo was over. Dave and I went to the gift shop for a little while, and then we headed out to where the rodeo clowns were signing autographs. They had these cheap black and white 8x10 collages of pictures of them. We had one made out to our nephew Robert in Chicago who has a recent fascination with cowboys. We were also able to get a signature from a little 7-year-old girl who is some kind of a barrel racing champ and was the rodeo flag-bearer at the beginning of the night. Here she is with two of the “bull fighters.”
Cody, WY, entry in the Theater of Weird Signs:
After the rodeo, we headed into Cody for dinner. We were starving. The only place that we found open was a late-night diner called Granny’s.
The food was…diner food, but the rodeo clowns were there being loud and creepy. Everyone in the place was dressed like a cowboy. It seemed almost like a joke of some kind. Was Alan Funt going to jump out from the corner somewhere and tell me I was on Candid Camera? Nope, this was the real deal, y’all. When we left the restaurant, we spotted the rodeo clown’s car in the parking lot. We tried to be stealthy about these photos so that they wouldn’t come out and yell at us.
We then headed to Greybull, WY, for another KOA night. This particular KOA was very weird because it was in the middle of a neighborhood. I guess there’s not much choice when Greybull is only about 5 blocks long. It was a tiny, TINY town. Tomorrow, we would head to Deadwood, SD, to see what new things they could offer us.
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