The Witches' Cauldrons of Yellowstone

Bubbling, plopping, belching, spurting and burping! Yellowstone's magnet, the witches' cauldrons. Old Faithful leads in popularity but all the 'hot and steamy' hot springs, mud-pots, fumaroles, travertine terraces and geysers are visitor magnets extraordinaire. Because of these curiosities-of-our-earth, Yellowstone was established as the world's first national park in 1872. It claims 10,000 hydrothermal features, more than the rest of the entire planet. One-quarter of the world's geysers are visible from the Yellowstone visitors center.

Old Faithful did not meet my expectations 50 years ago, and it didn't again today. Lots of steam and fuss and waiting with too little show. But, Old Faithful is faithful and that alone is an attribute to be honored. Today it was cold and windy and the clouds were a pour backdrop but, hey, a must-do is a must-do and honoring a tradition is, well, faithful.

From beginning to end...

Norris was our favorite thermal display with beautiful colors and the endearing sounds of gurgling and bubbling and sizzling. The whole place hissed, growled, gushed, spurted, plopped and splashed...

Viewing Mammoth Hot Springs is a stinky and dramatic stair climb on boardwalks built in and among and over bubbling, flowing, steaming, other-worldly wonders. Unsettling for me as well as awe inspiring.

The boardwalks are impressive...

Liberty Cap...

Minerva Terrace...

And, up the road a few miles, the Roaring Mountain...

Views to wow...

It all leaves me agape.

~~~

"Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble!"

~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth

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Yellowstone National Park

Wildlife

Yellowstone in Wyoming, but also Idaho and Montana - a park of many personalities. It presents one with hundreds of dilemmas. It can take days, weeks, years, and return visit after return visit to see it all as the ways to be enthralled are limitless. I'd guess, the most popular pull for visitors are the hydothermal features, like Old Faithful. But that's just the beginning with 1000 miles of hiking trails, vast wildlife viewing opportunities, plus the usual lineup of wonderful park activities like camping, biking, boating, fishing, scenic drives...

Yesterday was our first day in the park. We drove from Mammoth Village, where we are camped, to Cooke City. Although I have been to Yellowstone before, my visits were only "drive throughs". We saw the obligatory bears, buffaloes, moose, elk and Old Faithful. Hello-goodbye and off we went. This trip is different. We're here for several days and although it's cold, with a number of roads  closed due to snow, we are exploring wherever we can.

Ice on Thistle's skylight...

Last night I couldn't sleep because of the animals. My excitement for the wildlife, our close encounters, the camaraderie of the moment, all of it! A friend we met in camp, Matt, studying wildlife management at Montana State University, told us Yellowstone is the nation's largest collection of large-scale wildlife. He's here for the weekend to locate bear, and he has.

There are people lined up along side the roadways, at key locations, with high powered binoculars and telescopes so they can watch the sandhill cranes dance, observe big horn sheep or antelope, locate coyotes, deer and fox, spot grizzly and black bear, but especially to study the wolves, introduced back into the park in 1995.

Early in the day, as we were looking at Pronghorn antelope on a hillside, I saw a movement with a different shape and color. I studied it for just a moment and then exclaimed, "it's a wolf!" We watched for about 10 minutes, as the wolf traversed the hillside, before he dropped out of view. No photos. In our array of cameras, not a one has adequate telescoping capacity for wildlife.

Our excitement aroused, we continue on. Buffalo are thick in the park, with a population of about 5,000. 5,000 or five, seeing free range buffalos is quite a thrill. This morning there were five in our campground.

 At one of our stops two photographers, well outfitted with top of the line equipment, pointed out a group of sandhill cranes across the marsh and showed us a photo of a mating  dance they had captured. Then they told us a little about this spot, where the soil is sink-soil that can trap the large animals. Once an animal is stuck he's the next animal's dinner. The wolves and cougars feed freely.

Along the route we also saw elk (although according to park personnel most of the elk are outside the park right now) and big horn sheep.

 But the most exciting part of the day was stopping to watch the many, and very knowledgeable wolf watchers (all having the same enthusiasm and knowledge as the Northwest's Salish Sea Orca whale watchers). The wolf watchers can identify the individuals, know which of the eight packs they belong to and are happy to talk wolves.

They showed us the location of a five-wolf den, and pointed out one wolf, which Ed and I were unable to spot.

The wolf den is in the grove of trees, center and to the right....

Then a cougar yell rang out. On the opposite hillside from the wolves a cougar was spotted. You could just feel the level of excitement elevate as the big scopes swirled to catch the cougar in their lens. With our underpowered binoculars, we didn't see him, but the excitement was quickly embedded into everyone standing there. The cougar stayed in view for about ten minutes before he wandered over the hill.

The cougar is up there...

And, that's why I couldn't sleep last night. Partly because of the excitement of seeing this amazing wildlife but also for feeling so very grateful we have these parks. Parks that provide safe havens for these wondrous animals.

~~~

"Wolves belong in Yellowtone, and most people want them back here.

The motivation for the recovery project is aesthetic and moral...the impulse to have

a complete ecosystem again. The debate over wolf recovery really comes down

to one question:

Are we ready to share the earth with another top predator?"

~ Norm Bishop, Yellowstone Research Interpreter

.

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Wyoming!

The Flaming Canyon Recreational District was our destination. Our route to get there was a red line-green dot road and we found it to be beautiful...again! This nation's stunning scenery keeps unfolding, mile after sweet mile...

Flaming Canyon is a beauty too...

Although we'd dreamed of camping at Flaming Canyon all the campgrounds were closed for the winter, so we kept right on moving -- into the storm.

Our new destination became Fossil Butte National Monument, but we arrived after the visitor's center closed.

But, just look at this visitor center beauty...

There's a wealth of information at the Monument, evident from the displays outside the visitors center we were able to view. Unfortunately, we missed much, as our unfolding day continued to have  bad timing.

The center was closed for the day and the scenic drive closed for the season.

Now we're boondocked, next to a a charming little creek, outside the town of Cokeville, on Highway 204 (Nothing more than an unpaved muddy road. We've been here 2 hours and only one car has passed by.). There are patches of snow along the road's edge and up on the hillsides. A storm is predicted tonight. Our fingers are crossed that it will be rain and we don't wake up to 6 inches of snow in the morning. It could easily be snow as our altitude is 6500 feet.

Both Ed and I were rummy from too many miles of sagebrush driving today, but now we're tucked in for the night, warm and cozy in Thistle. Potato soup, with floating avocado (a trick we learned in Ecuador) satisfied our appetites quite nicely. Internet -- nope!

~~~

"Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning."

~ Gloria Steinem

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