Day 29

Tower Falls

This morning was bright and clear. We almost got up to see the meteors but screwed that idea—we needed the sleep! This campground is close to the Norris Geyser Basin… a little too close. It’s not pleasant waking up to these smells. Today we are going to see what the Upper Loop Road had to offer but, first, breakfast. We ate at the same place in the Canyon Village. No Mary Tennessee this morning though.

Our mission today: the upper half of the park. We headed north to the Roosevelt Lodge and drove through Dunraven Pass (8,859 feet) and by Mt. Washburn (10,243 feet). This half of the park seemed much more open. More mountains and open meadows of green grass, with fewer trees. We stopped at Tower Falls, part of the Tower Creek which joins the Yellowstone River and flows northeast eventually joining the Missouri River in northeastern Montana. These falls were quite picturesque. The trail down was sort of steep, but these things get you goin’ first thing.

Lamar Valley

Andy wanted to go to the Lamar Valley, which is on a road that heads toward the Northeast Entrance. This was a beautiful, wide, grassy valley.

We hiked up Specimen Trail, which is a trail that proceeds from the road up a mountain and into the trees that blanket the tops of the mountains here. The trail was steep at times but not too bad. Andy really had to push me to get to the tree line. Once there, we rested. A family from Scotland arrived and we had a chat with them. They thought it was “just dreadful” that Americans only get two weeks vacation. “I mean you’re just getting started after two weeks,” the mother said. We went back down the mountain and they continued on.

The petrified tree

Driving a bit farther, we saw a sign for a petrified tree. We pulled in and, sure enough, there was a fossilized trunk of a tree sticking out of the ground. This guy’s four- or five-year-old daughter summed it up best, “Dad, another Kodak moment.” It was fenced in because people cannot resist having a piece for their very own, so I had to jam the camera between the bars. We found out here that the Specimen Trail leads to a petrified forest, oh well, maybe next time.

We turned on the Blacktail Plateau Drive, a six mile dirt road that took us on the plateau and through some valleys too. It was a nice ride but it brought back the horror of dirt roads.

Mammoth Hot Springs

It was a hot day out, much like yesterday at this time. We continued on the Upper Loop Road and finally reached our next destination: Mammoth Hot Springs. There is a nice setup here. There is a visitor center, a hotel, another clinic, a chapel, and stores. All of these are on the site of Fort Yellowstone, built in 1886 when the Army ran the parks. That is why there is grass everywhere. Not wild grass, but a nice lawn with green grass.

We parked on the lower terrace and walked the trails. We started at the Liberty Cap, an extinct hot spring cone that towers out of the ground. Nearby is the Devil’s Thumb, a similar feature.

Next, on to Minerva Terrace. This is the most intricate terrace system of any spring in the park. There are so many levels that it’s impossible to figure out the logic of how they may have formed. Minerva Spring is a flat, blue pool of steaming water. The water runs off the circular terrace, depositing the limestone it picked up underground. This limestone creates the terraces and the “frozen waterfalls,” the white deposits hanging off some of the terraces. Beside Minerva is the Jupiter Spring, but since 1992 it’s been dry. The clouds were moving in now and the rain was threatening again.

We went back to the car and took the Upper Terrace Drive here. We stopped at the connecting trail to Minerva and walked down to Canary Spring and Terrace. This is another incredible system of terraces. The upper terrace seems to be mostly quiet. Not too many active springs. The ground is all light gray from the deposits of the past but it appears, for now, that the activity has moved to the lower terrace.

There are a few springs here—the New Highland, Orange Spring Mound, and Bath Lake—but all of them have a very slow flow rate. The White Elephant Back Terrace is a long ridge, once an active system of terraces like other springs at Mammoth.

We continued on this short excursion when we came across a cluster of cars. Why had they stopped? The only way we were going to find out was to park the car and walk over. It turns out they were looking at three mule deer sitting under some dead trees on the white soil. Odd seeing them just sit there with no food to eat or leaves to hide behind. Last on the route was Angel Terrace and Spring. This one smells particularly bad, but is beautiful in its color variations.

We were on our way back to camp when we pulled over in a turnoff to get some wood that would burn. The forest had burned in the 1988 fire, and there was dead wood all over the ground. We filled the trunk with it and were homeward bound. We got in early tonight so we could relax a bit. Andy decided to tie the tarp to the trees in case it rained and it’s a good thing he did because it rained for about two hours. Dinner was good tonight, could it be any worse than last night?