Over the years I have been to Yellowstone NP four times in all seasons but the dead of Winter. We camped at both ends of Yellowstone Lake and in the middle of the park on the east and west sides. In these four trips we have spent a little over a month in total in the park and have not come close to seeing it all and we never will as the Park is always changing. So Unless Covid-19 does me in, we will go back a couple more times before I check into that final RV park.
Entering Yellowstone from the Tetons is a gradual process. You slowly climb from the cottonwoods and aspens into the lodgepole pines. The road takes you by a huge waterfall, grand cliff vistas and Lewis lake which is absolutely stunning. There is a campground at that lake, but the spaces are not that RV friendly. A lot of this area was burned in the fires of 1988 which ended up consuming about 45% of the whole park. Some of my conservative friends were absolutely livid when it was happening. I even had one of them say that the park was ruined and that I might as well not bother going. I have usually found with conservatives that it is best to listen, nodding your head once in a while, but paying no attention, as they are almost always wrong. Such was the case with the Yellowstone fire. Fires can be good and lodgepole pine forests need fire.
For two summers (1975 and 1976) I worked as a fire guard for the Forest Service in the lodgepole pine forests in North Eastern Oregon. They were magical summers. We lived in Forest Service cabins 15 to 20 miles from nowhere without electricity, TV, or even a decent (i.e. non-country western) radio station. The major fear was that the mother-of- all-fires would occur. The Forest Service had controlled fire in these areas for many decades, putting them out as soon as they found them. As a fire guard, that was part of my duties. I patrolled the roads with my pickup tanker truck looking for people being unsafe with fire, occasionally checking on the campgrounds, but mainly familiarizing myself with the maze of dirt roads so that I could get to a spotted fire almost as quick as a smoke jumper and save the day with my trusty 175 gallons water tank. In two summers I never was able to do this but I was ready, willing, able and more than gung ho. I, along with my other Forest Service cronies, felt that fire was bad. We needed these trees for lumber and other uses of which I had no idea. Unfortunately, for the coffers of the Forest Service, lodgepole pine was not much good for lumber. It’s pitchy and never grows really big enough to make more than a few two by fours out of each tree. It may be good for making pulp, but is it worth hauling out of the woods to the mill, especially when you can grow cottonwoods in a plantation faster and closer to the paper mill. About the only real commercial use for lodgepole is for teepee and hop poles. I doubt that there is much of a market for teepee poles now-a-days. Although I love beer and think that more beer and fewer guns would solve a lot of the world’s problems, there is little market for hop poles either.
But the Forest Service’s biggest error was in not recognizing that a lodgepole pine forest needs fire to stay healthy. Old lodge poles are prone to pine bark beetles. This little guy burrows under the bark where it eats the living part of the tree. Young lodgepoles push out mild bark beetle infestations with their sticky sap, but if they are too old they, like their human counterparts, they have a hard time fighting infection. Add lots of pine bark beetles hatching out of acres and acres of older lodge poles and even the healthy younger pines can’t keep up. This was the case in Northeastern Oregon where I worked those two summers. Miles of standing dead trees just waiting for the right conditions to explode into an apocalyptic fire. Those conditions finally happened in the area where I used to work in August of 1996. The Tower Fire eventually burned 60,000 acres. It would have been far better if the little fires that the Forest Service, myself included, had been suppressing were allowed to burn a little bit of the forest every year rather than a whole lot all at once. I suspect that much the same thing went on in Yellowstone. And when they finally wised up to letting the fires burn themselves out, they almost lost the whole place.
When we entered Yellowstone NP we found that even in areas where the fire had done its worse a few trees survived in isolated islands. In the spring of 1994 even the most heavily burned areas were alive with wildflowers and little trees were growing to replace those that were lost. On our second trip to Yellowstone these little trees were now chest high in many areas. Maybe it was not a liberal, tree hugger, mistake to let it burn.
I was so excited to see my first geothermal area, the site of the mud volcanoes. Some people when they get excited pee, I crap. Judy is of the other biological type. Thus my first priority after arriving at the mud volcano was to reconnoiter the vault toilet to make sure it was snake free and then to pinch my cheeks as Judy always gets to relieve herself first. This is apparently in the fine print of the marriage contract, the part I skipped over to get to the sex clauses. When I finally got to go, I was amazed. It did not have flies or smell like my mother’s tuna fish casserole, and there was a warm breeze coming out of the hole. Outside of a slight sulfur odor, it was the nicest shitter experience I had ever had. I was so enamoured of that outhouse experience that on our third trip to the park I insisted that the friends we were camping with had to try it. However, with many things in the park, things change over time. The outhouses were gone, replaced by flush toilets. Although I did not have to check out the shitter for snakes, progress in this case was extremely overrated.
One of our favorite geysers is Echinus in the Norris geyser basin. In 1994 this geyser erupted about every 45 min. Right next to the geyser was three tiers of wooden seating. Seating so close that when it erupted we got refreshed with a splash of pleasantly warm water. This was one of our first stops on our second trip to the park. However that time we sat for two hours waiting for it to erupt only to find out that its activity had slowed over the years such that it only erupts about four times daily. On our forth trip it had slowed even more and the tied seating was in cracked disrepair. Changes in activity like this are the norm in Yellowstone. This is one of the dilemmas of the park. Wait for an eruption or go somewhere else. Although some of the geysers have signs next to them predicting the very approximate time of the next eruption, be prepared for a long wait with a good book and lots of sun block. Unlike Judy, I have no patience, and reading a good book is an activity reserved for the toilet and only then because she refuses to allow me to have a TV in the bathroom. We soon get into this stupid argument about when the geyser is going to erupt. She points out to me that the Echinus Geyser pool is starting to drain, a sure sign that an eruption is imminent. I bring up that fact Mt. St. Helens has been continuously erupting for the past 30 odd years but the only way to tell is to use time lapse photography. OK so maybe that is not a rational argument, but I’m bored and want to go.
At that moment a couple of hot European chicks sat down close to us and as it was a reasonably warm day, they did not have much on. Judy whispers for me to check them out, which I have been doing surreptitiously long before they sat down. This is one of the ironies of mine and probably most marriages. Wives like to point out hot chicks to their spouses, who must pretend that they have not already spotted and ogled them, and then after being informed of their existence you are expected to glance but not look and then find something nasty to say. Take it from me saying “Holy Shit! Are those tits for real?”, does not cut it. Following that faux pas, Judy gave me a look that would wilt a cactus and said “OK, if you really want to go, lets just go”, to which I replied “You want to leave now, just when my favorite geyser is about to erupt!?” I am a little fuzzy on what happened next.
An absolute must see in Yellowstone NP is the upper geyser basin where there is the greatest concentration of geysers in the world, which includes Old Faithful. But before we went to see the plethora of geothermal wonders we went into the Old Faithful Inn. While the exterior of the building reminded me of a giant forest service cabin, the interior is open-mouth amazing. The main lobby of the Inn is a four story indoor tree house. As a kid, I always wanted, but never got a treehouse. In my wildest dreams, I could never have come up with the reality of this place. It is the kind of palace that Tarzan would have built for Jane if he had Bill Gates’ money and wanted a summer place away from the jungle heat. But no matter how wondrous the interior of the inn is, the real wonders are outside.
First is Old Faithful. This is the Carl Ripkin of geysers, not the biggest nor the most exciting but it is always there and working. However, after seeing one of its eruptions we were ready for the bigger, better, and less predictable. We aimlessly wandered down the concrete and wooden walkways past hot pools of amazing colors, little geysers that continuously erupted with gurgle-fizz noises and sulfur steam. We had bought an inexpensive digital camera before the trip and Judy was taking picture after picture of these features. A lot of these turned out postcard-nice. What was funny was the guy stalking her. She would come up to a feature and tell me why she was taking a shot, all of which was being overheard by this younger guy toting around at least 3K of photographic equipment complete with multiple lenses, a tripod, and spare cameras and he wasn’t even Japanese. Judy would take a picture and as we walked off he would be setting up to take the exact same picture, then catch up with her before her next explanation and shot. This went on for about an hour. Eventually we just stopped at the Lion geyser and stared at him till he got embarrassed and moved off. Turns out the Lion geyser was about to erupt as we were lucky enough to sit next to a Geyser Guy. This is a very patient person with a geyser fetish and lots of time on his hands. The Geyser Guy was pretty sure that within the next 30 min or so that Lion and the associated vent next to it, known as the Cub, were about to go. At 35 minutes I started to get antsy but somehow managed to stay and see the show. I felt so smug as there were only four of us sitting by that monstrous geyser when it blew compared to the hundreds waiting for Old Faithful a mile or so away. This is how the elite must feel when the owner of an exclusive dinner club whisks them past the crowd of people waiting behind the velvet ropes then sets up a table next to the stage where some sultry singer in a strapless dress is about to perform. “This way Dr. Boese.” “We are so glad you could dine with us tonight.” “Drinks are on the house”. After that experience whenever I arrived at another geyser, I spent a bit of effort trying to find the next Geyser Guy or Gal. But all I ever found after that were dumbass tourists like myself.
(to be continued)
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