Canyon, Lake and Jackson

On Thursday, June 6th, we got up early and I found Nancy in the kitchen.  I told her that we had changed our plans, deciding to get an early start in order to get to the Canyon area in time to take the 10 a.m. ranger walk.  She was kind enough to get together a breakfast for us at that short notice.  So we ate and said goodbye to her and Richard and headed back to Yellowstone, backtracking the way we had come on Tuesday, until Norris Junction, where we turned east toward Canyon Village, instead of continuing south toward Old Faithful.

After a toilet stop at Canyon Village, we got to the Uncle Tom's Trail parking area in time to join a group of people around Ranger Mary,

who was accompanied by Ranger Brian.  She mentioned that she was the same age (25) as many of the trees in the park.  However, the petite ranger added, they were a lot taller than she was.  We had noticed how many of the thousands upon thousands of lodgepole pines that covered most of the park were relatively young.  They had grown from seeds dropped at the time of the extremely massive fires that had swept Yellowstone in 1988.  The Old Faithful Inn had been saved only by setting up a defensive ring around it and keeping it doused with water.

Lodgepole pines, by the way, are less massive than the ponderosa pines found around Grand Canyon National Park.  They get  their name from the fact that, straight as ramrods, they were used by the Indians to support their dwellings.

Ranger Mary took us on a walk along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, explaining to us that the river was able to cut so easily through the rock here because it was weakened by geothermal activity.  She also talked about the forests and the animals.  She carried a can of bear spray and pointed out where bears had clawed the trees,

also showing where bison had rubbed off bark.  Along the way, we had views of the Upper Falls (109 feet high)

and the Lower Falls (308 feet).

She ended with an impassioned plea for the continued protection of this area, so that just as for the past 97 years the National Park Service has been providing here for the "enjoyment and  benefit" of our grandparents, parents and selves, so may it continue to do so for the next 97 years, for our children and grandchildren.

After giving her a hearty round of applause, Mary Joy and I continued walking to Artist Point.  The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is certainly grand and awesome, with its golden color, thousand-foot depth and spectacular waterfalls, as the artist Thomas Moran (after whom Mt. Moran in the Tetons is named) showed in his famous 1872 painting of the Canyon and Lower Falls as viewed from Artist Point or its proximity, a painting that helped persuade people back east that the Yellowstone country was something very special.

 But compared to the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is about as grand and awesome as a farm drainage ditch.  That is not the fault of the Yellowstone.  It is just because the "real" Grand Canyon is so huge and spectacular as to be practically beyond belief.

We walked back from Artist Point to our car, then drove to another parking lot, and from there made the short walk to the brink of the Upper Falls.

 Above the Falls there is a cascade, leading to a sharp right turn, then the river makes the hundred-foot leap over Upper Falls.  Impressive.

We drove south, stopping for a snack at the Otter Creek picnic area, a pleasant spot beside the Yellowstone River.

We then came to the Hayden Valley, a wide, wet area across which the Yellowstone meanders on its way from Yellowstone Lake to the falls.  This valley is as almost as famous for wildlife viewing as the Lamar Valley.  However, we weren't nearly as lucky in our animal watching here as there.  Certainly, there weren't nearly as many bison, and most of those we did see were isolated bulls.

After leaving the Hayden Valley, we stopped to see Dragon's Mouth Spring and Mud Volcano.  Dragon's Mouth is more fun than most of the park's geothermal features.

 It's a dark cave, emitting clouds of steam and a constant loud thumping noise.  Every few minutes, it sends out a wave of water.  Mud Volcano is a big pot of bubbling gray mud.

Finally, we arrived at Yellowstone Lake, the largest alpine lake in North America, with a shoreline of 141 miles.  We stopped for lunch at the Yellowstone Lake Hotel, a large, yellow, colonial-style building, built in 1891, then revised and added to in the following years.

 The dining room was pleasant and the food not bad--again, I don't remember what we had.

Then we headed west along the north shore of the lake.  We stopped at one or two places around West Thumb, to look at and across the large lake.

 By now we were in something of a hurry, because we wanted to get to Jackson in time to check in before our dinner reservation.  So we came to West Thumb Junction and headed toward the South Entrance along the road where we had come into the park on Tuesday morning.

There was still road repair, slowing us up a little between Colter Bay and the Jackson Lake Lodge.  Once we had gotten past that, we pulled off at the Willow Flats overlook,

for another gorgeous view of the Tetons.

On Teton Park Road again, south of the dam, we stopped to take a look at the Log Chapel of the Sacred Heart,

which is a functioning Catholic Church.  It is, as you would expect, rustic and woodsy.  As we went in, someone was playing the piano.  It turned out to be a British or Australian tourist.

We continued on the now-familiar road, out the Moose entrance.  As we crossed the Snake River by Dornan's, we saw cars lined up at the side of the road and people taking pictures.  I caught a glimpse of something big and brown, probably a moose.  We didn't bother to stop.

We drove on into Jackson, to our wonderful B&B, the Inn on the Creek.

We checked into the Heron Room, a delightfully comfortable room with a balcony looking along the creek.

We then walked the two blocks to the Blue Lion for dinner.  As Lonely Planet says: "In a precious cornflower-blue house, the Blue Lion offers outdoor dining under grand old trees on the deck."  We had to settle for a pleasant-enough inside table.  The food was good, but not great, and Mary Joy had the disappointment of not having their signature dish, the rack of lamb.  She doesn't eat New Zealand lamb, since there are much better local sources that haven't sent their meat halfway around the world.  Surely a classy restaurant in a place like Jackson could find a local or relatively local (say, Colorado) source of lamb.  Apparently not: New Zealand lamb it was, so Mary Joy had something else.

We walked around downtown for a while, but were not impressed.  Then we went back to our Heron Room and ended our day there.