Sunday, September 7, 2014

Shoshone National Forest

The hotel in Cody provided breakfast, and we were directed to an old-time hotel/saloon on the property that has been turned to gift shop and dining hall.  I felt as if we were on the set of “Gunsmoke”!  A nice breakfast buffet was laid out,

and we enjoyed all the relics of the Wild West before we set out on the next leg of our trip.

Buffalo Bill poster on the wall of the dining room

Cody really is a wild-west sort of town, although I have yet to see a cowboy or cowgirl.  Lots of tooled leather boots though.  We did see the location of the Buffalo Bill Rodeo Stampede.

  Going from Cody to Yellowstone is about 50 miles, and it is a beautiful trip through the Shoshone National Forest, along the Shoshone River   

and through its canyon. The river weaves through immense boulders that, in some areas, have tunnels blasted through the rock—it was reminiscent of the Alps. 

Yellowstone at last!  And it was worth the long journey!

After our first day in Yellowstone, the two things that stand out are bison and steam! 

The bison are not bashful about mingling near the travelers all day long. 

And steam is everywhere!  Yellowstone Lake is a surprise—a vast body of water with steam streaming from cracks in the rocks where waves slap against the shore. 

This was just the beginning of steam.  It carried throughout the park in mud volcanos, paint pots, geysers, etc. 

Steamy view of a mud volcano

Our first stop after Yellowstone Lake was the mud volcanos.  Heated by magma from the volcanos, these pools of boiling mud are thousands of feet deep.  The entire area that underlies Yellowstone National Park is a very active volcano itself.  Someone told us that the mud volcanos are 140 degrees at the surface.  The fact that the bison like to take a dip in these little bubbling mud pots puzzles me.  I question how would they fit into the pools, how would they get out, and why would they do that.

We also visited the artist’s paint pots, “thermal features” that are similar to mud pots, except they have different colors of mud—turquoise, white, black, orange.

We hiked over a mile to see these beauties toward the end of our first day here, and then we drove across the park to West Yellowstone to our hotel and found ourselves in Montana.  What a surprise!

Tomorrow we plan to head back into the Park and to Old Faithful and its environs before driving south to Grand Teton National Park.