Tuesday September 6, 2011 On to Yellowstone and Old Faithful

I had made reservations at the Fishing Bridge RV Park in March as it is the only campground in Yellowstone with full hookups, i.e. electric, water, & sewer and I was afraid it would be full. But, wouldn’t you know it? There was a “vacancy” sign every night as we got back from sightseeing. We met some RVers in Cody who said that they tried to make reservations a week before for the same time slot, but couldn’t. Maybe some people just didn’t show up? We had heard that it was “tight” for big rigs, so we were a little worried about fitting in. Check in time was at 11AM and we wanted to get there as early as possible to give us plenty of time to park the trailer in a tight spot and get in some sight seeing. We left the Wal-Mart in Cody before 9AM. It was easy to leave early because the trailer was already hooked up to the truck and all we had to do was retract the slides and we were on the road!

We drove along a 2 lane road that meandered along a stream through a scenic valley that had jagged cliffs on both sides. There were small ranches and some ranch type establishments that offered lodging, probably for Yellowstone visitors who couldn’t find lodging in the park.

Once we got into the park, we noticed that the air was smoky. Jan found out that there were several fires burning in the park and that’s where the smoke probably came from. Going down a hill and around a curve, I suddenly had a scare as I had to slam on my brakes for some cars stopped in the road. Now stopping 21,000 lbs of vehicle is no small matter, but we got stopped in time as we saw a buffalo walking down the road as slowly as you please.

We got to Fishing Bridge at about 10:40AM, checked in, and drove on to the camp site. It was very tight for a rig our size, but the biggest problem was that the road on front of the sight was narrow and across the road, there was a forest of long pole pine trees. The worst of it was that there was a pole planted in the ground about 4 feet high right across from our site that had a night light on it, so I couldn’t swing the truck’s front end around when backing up the trailer. To make matters worse, there was a large pine tree on the corner of the site, so I couldn’t cut the corner. I had to drive around the camp loop at least 3 times as I failed to get the trailer in the right spot. Finally, I got it squeezed in within a couple of feet from my next door neighbors. The trailer just made it not sticking out into the road and when I parked the truck next to it, the truck just made it, too. When we let the slides out, the living room slide banged into a pole and we had to retract it about 2 inches to fit, but that didn’t make too much difference in our living space.

The parking and trailer setup took about 2 hours, so we had some time that day to do some sightseeing. We headed towards Old Faithful and stopped at our first Geyser Basin at West Thumb, which was the only Geyser Basin along the lake. Yellowstone Lake is a very large lake and at 7,700 feet, it must be the highest biggest lake in the U.S. I “Googled” it and found that it is 87,000 acres and has 110 miles of shoreline. For comparison, Lake Tahoe is bigger at 122,000 acres, but it is “only” at 6,200 feet. As we drove along the lake to reach our destination, we could see one of the fires burning on the other side of the lake. I was amused when I saw a sign at one of the turnouts that said “Natural fire, do not report”. Apparently, they get a deluge of calls from concerned visitors who see the fires from across the lake. Almost all of the forests in Yellowstone seem to be at some stage of recovering from a fire and you see many hillsides of burnt out tree trunks. Jan & I wondered which burned out forests were from the 1988 great fire and which were from more recent fires.

Arriving at West Thumb, we saw columns of steam coming from several places. The wind was coming off the lake that afternoon, so it was very chilly. We walked around the loop and watched steam vents and bubbling pools of water. There was one Geyser a few yards offshore that formed a small island and had a hot pool of water in it. I read that in the early days, men would catch a fish from standing on the island and then swing the fish (still on the hook) around and cook the fish in the hot pool!

We drove another 20 miles and arrived at Old Faithful. There must be a lot of traffic around there in the summer because it was the only place in the park that had a 4 lane highway, an overpass, and on/off ramps to get to the Old Faithful complex. We parked and walked over to “viewing deck” around the geyser. Luckily, we were there at the right time as a few minutes later Old Faithful shot up a plume of water about 100 feet into the air as maybe 100 people snapped pictures and took movies. I wondered how many pictures must have been taken of the geyser since it was discovered. It lasted only a few minutes, but was a thrill to see. From there, we took the trail around the geyser basin in back of Old Faithful. Some of them sputtered, most were bubbling pools of water, and others were vents of steam. Some formed tall volcano-like cones. All were very colorful with hues from green, to red, to yellow and brown from the various bacteria that live in the water. Some pools were crystal clear and you could see deep into a pit that seemed to have no bottom. As we were walking along, Old Faithful went off again! It gave a different view of the Geyser from our more distant perspective.

We then took our usual trip to the gift shop to buy a refrigerator magnet and stamp for Jan’s book.