It's Sunday evening, June 6, as I write this, but I won't be able to post it before Tuesday because "there's no Internet in the whole park" as the hotel clerk told me. Well, my laptop says there are two wireless LANs here at Mammoth: "Yellowstone staff" and "Bull elk," both password-protected.
I got a leisurely start from Billings at 9:30; my GPS said I'd be at Yellowstone about noon. I actually entered the Northeast Entrance at Silver Gate, MT, after 1 p.m.; the trip took 50% longer than expected. Most of the difference was due to the GPS database having all 115 miles of U.S. 212, the Beartooth Highway, with a 70-mph speed limit; actually, most of the last 50 miles was posted at 45 mph on the few straightaways; the rest of the time was at 20-25 mph for countless hairpin turns and switchbacks as we worked our way up to Beartooth Pass and back down again on the other side. Does this picture look like 70 mph to you, especially with a pretty steady drizzle falling?
On the way up I even eased past four bicyclists chugging gamely up the endless climb. These were the fast kind of bikers with racing bikes, fancy racing outfits, and without backpacks, but my hat's still off to them.
Finally, above the treeline, we re-entered Wyoming and climbed a bit more to the top of the pass. As you can see, it's a lunar landscape of a different kind than the Badlands. But that's not all: U.S. 212 is being repaved in Wyoming. It is the width of a narrow country road. Where the new asphalt has been laid, as in this photo, it's smooth and the many sharp curves are carefully banked. But there are no painted lines, no shoulder, and one wheel over the edge would have left my low-slung Penny hung up, unable to move.
Even worse, the first few thousand feet of descent on the other side of the pass were in near-whiteout conditions. The road was clear but was at times a tunnel between 12-foot walls of snow carved out by giant snowblowers I saw parked on both sides of the pass. The clouds visible over the mountaintops in the two preceding photos were now sitting directly on the mountainside; curves and the rare approaching vehicles appeared out of the mist without warning. Fortunately, the temperature never got below 34°.
I made it down, and eventually even dropped below the snow line, crossing back into Montana briefly before entering the park and Wyoming for the last time. And you know what? I'm glad I did it, that Penny and I performed well at over 10,000 feet, and that I didn't come in by the easier route that I hope I'll find Tuesday as I head to Missoula via the nearby North Entrance (Gardiner, MT).
The park entrance wasn't the end of the story, of course. I discovered I still had 50 miles to go inside the park, and that included lots of slow driving as folks ahead of me rubbernecked (a large damp molting deer and a few elk) and some stops of my own to ogle this black bear on the banks of the Soda Butte Creek (I learned afterward that s/he'd been there for hours, hiding out from the rain and maybe enjoying the attention) and photograph some bison lying down in a field of sagebrush. So by the time I was checked in here at Mammoth Hot Springs it was 2:30. I'm glad I came before the busy season!
Most of today's 115 photos and five videos were shot after I got here, despite the constant clouds and persistent drizzle. Even this one small corner of the park is amazing, and I haven't even seen Old Faithful yet! Here's Penny beside my duplex accessible cabin (the only kind they had left), which is very comfy inside.
Here's one of the wild but human-accustomed elk in this area that caused me to change my mind about a planned 3-hour hike: they stared me down and I decided the trail was more theirs than mine.
Instead for three hours I clambered up and down the large network of boardwalks, stairs, and paved paths and roads rising hundreds of feet above the park headquarters complex here at Mammoth, giving access to the weird terraced multicolored structures built by the minerals in the steaming springs and the microscopic life that is adapted to the hot mineral-laden water. Out of the multitude of photos I took, all different, I picked this one for you: a new steaming pool near the top of the formation that has drowned, cooked, or poisoned the trees in the foreground. The striped wall in the background is a mountainside far away across the valley where the Mammoth complex is situated.
I'll end with this view from about halfway down from my climb. The large white building in the center with the portico is the hotel. The restaurant is the building in front of it with awnings. You can just seen the first cabin through the trees near the upper left edge of the photo. The park headquarters is the series of red-roofed buildings at the right, built in the 1890s as part of an Army base to police the newly created park.
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