Right so here it is, I have had absolutely nobody nagging me to do this. But screw it, you’re getting it anyway!
Click on the pictures to enlarge
Background
Being so close to 2 national parks I just had to see them both! I saw Glacier National Park in the early weeks of my Montana adventure, there was a similar opportunity to go to Yellowstone National Park (Yella’Stone) with the international office; I was going to sign up half an hour after sign ups opened, but word got out there was already a waitlist. I was disappointed, but then I heard there were only 2 English speaking people on the bus. Adding to the duration and nature of the trip, a whirlwind trip with a 3 hour stop to get your own dinner and visit the gift shop I wasn’t disheartened any longer. A number of weeks ago there was convoy of RV’s going to check it out for a weekend, I was invited to join the “reject RV” which I was going to accept until an offer to go a few weeks later, in off peak season with a small cluster of amazing people came up. I did the honourable thing and rejected the “reject RV” in favour of the more attractive offer. The group consisted of Dave (Ireland), Elliot (Ireland), Fiona (Ireland), James (New Zealand), Kate (England), Shannen (Ireland), and Siobhán (Ireland).
Friday 24 October
We were delayed in our set off. I had an economics quizz (100% thank you very much) while Siobhán had last minute uni work to complete. Given we didn’t really have time to explore the park on the Friday it was of no significant consequence. We embarked on the 4 hour or so drive to Yella’Stone in our tiny RV. 3 meters high, 3 meters wide, 9 meter long, just a typical town runabout aye!? Shannen took the first section of the driving for the first hour and a half or so. She managed to overtake 2 cars on the way to the rest area. I was upset at that, it was my goal to overtake just one car in the RV and I was worried that she got the only 2 overtakes of the entire journey. Furthermore Shannen and I, being the only 2 drivers, decided to hold a competition for the most legal overtakes over the weekend. It was going to be tough overcoming 2 car deficit. At about 1800-1830 we pulled over, had a stretch of legs and switched driver. My turn in the beast! After about 3 minutes I approached a small convoy of 3 cars. Boom! I’m winning 3-2 within 5 minutes! There were a few more overtakes over the rest of the drive, but not too many. The roads took us past Butt(e), Helena, Manhatten, Belgrade, Bozeman with Livingston the final town before we reached the campsite. The final stretch of road was a long, uphill slog using much of the petrol we filled up in Bozeman. An owl jumped in from of the RV which I was unable to avoid, we also passed a deer on the side of the road which was struck down earlier. Furthermore it was single laned the entire way and I was unable to add to my slender 33-2 lead in the overtake competition.
We arrived at the campground at around 2100. We plugged in the power, got out the camping stoves we bought and awaited the arrival of dinner. Dinner was in the form of hot dogs and buns. While the dogs were heating, people explored the campsite in the dark. Some went down the precarious hillside to check out the Yellowstone River, while others did not. After dinner we prepared for bed. I don’t know why everyone was so tired, 5/7 did not contribute to the driving at all, laziness at its finest. “I’m tired from sitting all afternoon and watching 2 people concentrate.” Typical!
Saturday 25 October
We left the campsite at exactly just after 0900. We would have left earlier but had to pay our bill from the night before and the office opened at 0900. A busy day which saw us through a bunch of attractions. First up on our stops was at the roadworks going on. We were stationary for about half an hour. Not much was achieved in that 30 minutes as you can see below.
However once we got moving we made our way to Norris which was a McFlurry of colour, smells (apparently, I was once again stricken with man flu so was left with no sense of smell) and action. Small geysers were exploding, smoke was errupting from the soils and the colours were running wild! We walked the Toilet Bowl Porcelain Basin Trail through the middle of the action!
However before we made it Norris we had to admire Roaring Mountain! Approaching the mountain is not allowed as the earth has a habbit of randomly killing ya! We also saw a bison, the first one of the trip!
We went to Artist Paint Pots, and like all great ‘art’ was total shite, so we moved on before any wild hippies turned up! Lunch was next on the agenda; Shannen and Fiona had gone all out and made tater salad and mashed taters. So we ate the potatoes along with some of the leftover sandwich stuff from Friday.
Some more driving later we came to Fountain Paint Pots, much betterer than the so called “artist” pots. Basically there was bubbling, rich red mud, and in the distance some spraying water, shooting out like a geyser. Maybe it was a geyser. Just another of this word’s mysteries that will never be solved…
The colours throughout the park were astonishing. Even pathetic little streams were transfored by majetics rainbows of colours from within.
Next on the agenda was one of the main attractions of Yella’Stone: Grand Prismatic Spring. A huge natural spring full of bateria that changes the colour of the water and the soil beneath… or some jazz like that. I’m not a scientist.
After battling our way through the many Asians that were covering the entire boardwalk, and navigating blind when the steam raced across the planks we mushed onwards to possibly the most famous attraction: Old Faithful. A geyser which errupts every 90 minutes of so, give or take 20 minutes. We arrived just after it exploded, so we decided to wait an hour for the next erruption. We killed time by giving patronage to the gift shop on site. Many items were purchased. Many items, however, were left unpurchased.
The time arrived and we claimed our front row seats to watch the show. The man walked over, poured a few kilos of baking soda and many litres of vinegar into the hole in the ground and the geyser errupted. Steam and water shot meters in the air, maybe even at least couple dozen of meters, at least. As we about to get in the car Dave and Elliot pointed out a dog about 20 meters away. Fiona screamed that it wasn’t a dog, but a coyote. So they chased it into the bush and followed it to try and snap a picture. I value my life so decided not to follow.
We then made our way to base camp via the Canyon Falls, however we arrived just after sunset and it was too dark to see much. Back at camp we had burgers for supper, followed by smores for our post dinner snack. 5 out of the 7 people had some drink as well, I wasn’t one of them so see if you can guess who did… I knew we had an early start the next day so decided against any alcohol and instead joined in the stargazing, Shannen saw a handful of shooting stars which no one else saw so she’s probably lying! Another early night suited us all just fine!
Sunday 26 October
Today I took the lead and got all the lazy sods up at 0600, planned departure time of 0700 to be well in the park for sunrise which was scheduled for 0749. On our way we had to pass through a herd of bison on the road, a taster for what was to come. We pulled over for sunrise which was spectacular given the heavy cloud cover.
We drove along to Pebble Creek at the Eastern border of the park. I witnessed the majority of the group watch a grizzly bear. I could not see it for the life of me. I did manage to see the pack of wolves a few minutes down the road however.
We took a U-turn and stopped for brekkie at Slough Creek, the scene of our darkest moments. Slough Creek is down a dead end gravel road. On the way down we hd to pass through a herd of bison which took a long time. After eating we headed back to the park entrance. However there was an incident which I won’t go into detail about. However it involved the song ‘Mi Mi Mi by Serebro’ and us being initiated into huge herd of maybe 200 bison. The 3km road took 45 minutes to navigate. However at the end we all thrilled that I had driven us to safety. Also we still like the song as demonstrated below
While on our way back to Mammoth to see the hot springs we encountered the outskirts of a storm. In it was snow. Our plans for the rest of the day were in limbo as we were not driving in a snow storm. We aren’t suicidal. However the snow was light and didn’t settle and 30 minutes later we were in sunny Mammoth, walking the hot springs.
After a hasty lunch we decided the storm approaching looked bad, and we didn;t have enough time to make it to Yellowstone Lake anyway, so we said our farewells to the park and began quick, but safe and uneventful departure from the park.
Or so we thought…
As we fled north, away from the incoming storm we turned past a large hill and lowe and behold, another storm ahead. We were boxed in. I couldn’t turn the RV around as he storm behind us had snow. I had to continue through the storm. Heavy rain, strong winds with even stronger wind gusts buffeted the RV around like a rag doll. The sheer size of the RV meant any wind had a strong impact on the RV’s ability to drive in straight line. It wasn’t until a couple of hours later when we emerged at the other end of the storm. Left ahead was the mountainous roads I had driven two nights earlier in the dark. The Montana landscape is simply stunning. Im glad I got to drive the mountainous, windy section of the freeway! The competiton between the drivers was still on, and I managed to increase my lead to 51-2 before handing the reigns back to Shannen for the final stretch home. A couple of hours later we were unpacking the RV, cleaning the inside, emptying the waste water tank and the excrement holding tank. A top up with petrol and a 20 minute hop to Lolo and the RV was returned. Our adventure was over, friendships were made and strengthened. We had seen sights from out of this world. We stared death in the face. 7 of us shared a single RV, and no one complained about the farting! But we came out alive, we had survived! In fact we had done far more than merely survive, we took on Yella’Stone. We saw, we did, we smelt, we cherished every moment there. Memories to last a lifetime we created. I don’t the trip could have been any better than it was. It was incredible, nye on perfect. I can’t wait to return.
Thank you to everyone to who made the trip amazing! A special shout out to Shannen and Fiona who went above and beyond in planning the trip, organising everything from when we went, what we saw, how long to stay, and they even made sandwiches for everyone and prepared the food, and Fiona infallibly navigated from the backseat.
Legal Overtaking Competition:
Final score: 51 – 4 or 5. James wins in a slender but well admired victory.
Quote Of The Trip:
“Awww, I don’t want to disect bison balls” – Fiona
Highlight Of The Trip:
It was after our initiation as the runt of the bison litter, in our huge metal bison that we took on the group name, “The Bison Bunch” however that soon changed after some genius Kiwi though of an even betterer name. But “The Bison Bunch” is still a highly respected and appropriate name for the group.
Would I Recommend Yella’Stone?
Without a shadow of a doubt. I will be back there in the future, no doubt about it!