Active by Nature

 September Road Trip

Oh my, oh my.  Our September road trip was a two week trip that included Yellowstone, Grant Teton and Glacier (Montana) National Park and stops in between.  I took several hundred photos and I would loved to have shared my top 50, not my top 5.  The five I selected means I did NOT include a photo of Old Faithful, Mammoth Hot Springs, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, the close up of a bison we came across face-to-face, nor the second of two old barns much photographed by the pros on Mormon Row.  Ah well!  Here we go.  The top five I spent a loooong time selecting.

1.  Colin exploring the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Yellowstone it a big national park.  VERY big.  The road system in the park consists of an upper loop and a lower loop or basically, a big fat figure eight.  I had wanted to reserve us a campsite in the middle, either in the Madison or Canyon campgrounds. But as you might guess, it is very difficult to reserve campsites at this most popular of all American National Parks.  So we had to settle for Grant Village campground, at the bottom of the lower loop, which made for a lot of driving.  For example, when went to check out "the Serengeti of North America" - the Lamar Valley, we got up at 6:30 am and took our picnic breakfast with us, taking 1.5 hours to drive up there.   The closest geothermal feature to us was just a short drive away - the West Thumb Geyser basin, on the shore of Yellowstone Lake.  It was the first one we visited on the day we arrived in the park, exploring it just before sunset.  The pool in the foreground is a hot spring.  So many of them are crystal clear and so inviting that they have to post a lot of signs warning people that should they venture in for a dip, the will fry and die!  Yellowstone is a photographer's paradise.

2.  The Grand Prismatic

There were so many highlights in Yellowstone National Park.  It is truly a fascinating place.  I would go back in a heartbeat!  The Yellowstone caldera is massive in size.  It is home to the world's largest super volcano which last had a massive, massive eruption over six hundred thousand years ago.  This caldera is about 30 x 45 miles in size and is home to most of the park's geothermal features.  One highlight is the Grand Prismatic hot spring.  It is best viewed from above, from the overlook on the hiking trail to Fairy Falls.  This was my most favourite hike.  First we viewed the Grand Prismatic from above.  Then we hiked on to Fairy Falls (sorry, have some great photos of Fairy Falls but one didn't make the top 5).  After that, we left the crowds behind and hiked on to the Imperial Geyser, where we came almost face-to-face with a lounging bison beside the geyser.  We quickly backed up to a safer vantage spot where I pulled out my Canon camera with 200 m zoom to get some great shots of the bison and the geyser.  On the way back, we climbed up to the overlook of the Grand Prismatic for another look.  I am so glad we did as in the mid-afternoon sun, the colours were so much more vibrant than they were in the early morning light.  And, voila, straight out of the camera with no photo editing......

3.  Lonestar Geyser

As much as we enjoyed the popular and super busy major geothermal basins, we really liked hiking to backcountry geysers that we had just about to ourselves.  Lonestar Geyser was one of these.  The guide book said it goes off once about every three hours.  But unlike Old Faithful, there are no posted times for the eruption of this one.  You just have to time it right and be prepared to wait.  We arrived at the trailhead and asked some folks who were just finishing a bike ride along the trail if they knew when it had gone off. They replied an hour ago.  We anticipated it would take us about 1.5 hours to hike in, so our timing was pretty good and we had brought books to read and snacks to eat so off we went.  It was a delightful hike and when we got there, we found a perfect log to sit on.  About forty minutes after we got there, the show began.  It was impressive and the steam from the geyser created a lovely rainbow.  We shared this experience with a three other people, a very different experience from the several hundred that gather to witness the eruption of Old Faithful every ninety minutes.  We did see Old Faithful go off twice during our visit to that extensive geothermal area and it was very good.

4. Jackson Lake, Grand Teton National Park

Jackson Lake is a large lake in Grand Teton National Park.  There are a number of places along the shoreline where you can stop to catch the Teton Range reflected in the waters of Jackson Lake.  Like this one, we searched out at sunrise:

Just like Yellowstone, this park was very, very busy even though we were there in mid-September, just days before campgrounds started to close for the season.  We experienced bumper-to-bumper traffic, overflowing pull-outs and overflowing trail heads and the biggest, baddest bear jam we have ever witnessed.  It so happened that "the world's most famous grizzly bear, bear #399" (they obviously haven't heard about the "Boss" of Banff) crossed the main road.  This famous sow is mother to more cubs than any other female.  She is getting on and they have her micro-chipped so they always know her whereabouts as they want to keep her safe.  So we passed a hundred or more cars pulled off the road, with many photographs out of the car with their big telephoto lenses.  There were at least a half dozen park rangers on hand to make sure none of the photographers followed her into the bush.  We did not stop for this, but drove straight on through.  We did, however, see some gorgeous photos that other people took of this bear as she crossed the road and as she grazed just off the road.  You can see them on this Facebook page.  The busy-ness of these parks makes us really appreciate our mountain parks!  

5. Old Barn, Mormon Row

Mormon Row is one of several spots in Grand Teton National Park that professional photographers flock to from around the world, to capture iconic shots of these old pioneer structures framed by the Grand Tetons.  I was eager to have my go at this spot, along with Schwarbacher's Landing, Taggart Lake, and Ox-Bow Corner.  I was pretty pleased with my shot taken at sunset.  Yes, we made a habit of visiting the super popular spots early in the morning and late in the day and doing the less popular, longer hikes during the middle of the day as they see a fraction of the traffic. 

I realize I have been a bit of tease, with mentioning the epic shots I could not post due to the five photo constraint of the photo blogging challenge.  So, here is the link to my edited collection of 300 photos from our two-week trip, down from about 800 or so.... LOL!   I will get around to doing a greatly pared down top 50 or so, but I haven't had the chance to do that yet, so, here you go, an endurance contest for you: Full Album