Day 10: Grand Teton and Yellowstone
We started the day by picnicking at Glacier View Turnout. We began our breakfast outside but found our fingers becoming a little stiff and our bottoms a little cold, so we relocated to the car and tried to not make a mess. For the rest of the morning, we made a loop around Grand Teton, following the 191 northwards, Teton Park Road southwards, and then the 191 again all the way to and through Yellowstone. While we were walking along Jenny Lake, I found a berry that looked like a blueberry and decided to try it. It did not taste like a blueberry, so I thought it better to spit it out. As I would learn the following day, what I had chewed on was actually a huckleberry, so I might as well have swallowed.
It being
Friday, traffic at Yellowstone was quite heavy. We did not mind this much at
Old Faithful, which has an enormous parking lot and an entire array of massive
buildings to accommodate hordes of tourists. We waited for it to erupt (which
it did on the dot) before driving to some more geysers, where the parking
spaces were considerably more limited, and cars had to queue up waiting for
them. At one point, it started to hail just as it had the day before, which
made for an interesting contrast: on the one hand was the ice falling from the
sky, on the other the hot springs blowing hot, sulphurous air.
Our final
destination of the day would be Mammoth Hot Springs, which are located at the
tip of Yellowstone’s northern loop. The landscape on the way differs
dramatically from the rest of Yellowstone; it is dominated by jagged rocks,
pinnacles, and steep cliffs. The springs themselves are unique in that they
form terraces which, as I overheard from a local guide, change every few years
as deposits are built up and swept away. Evidencing the ephemerality and
changeableness of the landscape, many dead trees stuck out of the soil, clearly
blanched by the warm water full of minerals and algae.
Since the
northern passage from Yellowstone was closed owing to massive mudslides earlier
this summer, we had to drive south again and then west, ending our three-hour
long drive in Bozeman, Montana. The journey was exhausting, so we finally
agreed to switch our bodily clocks from Central to Mountain Time (a
consideration strengthened by the fact that we would have to change to Pacific
Time the very next day). We also got hit by a stone kicked up by a speeding
truck, leaving a gash on our windshield.
Our drive
today was 339 miles, bringing our total mileage up to 3810.
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