August 10, 2006: Cody & Yellowstone

Just west of Cody is a narrow canyon blocked by a dam, which an informational sign in our hotel room labeled the Buffalo Bill Damn. I’m sure Bill uttered the expletive often, never realizing that the hydroelectric project he worked to have built would one day bear his name. But the Buffalo Bill Dam was first called Shoshone Dam, after the Native Americans whose land was expropriated to erect it. (Sacagawea, one of Lewis and Clark's translators, was born a Shoshone.)

The visitor center presented a video that recounted its construction, an epic that stretched from 1904 to 1910 and created, at 325 feet, the tallest dam in the world at the time (it was later raised to 350 feet). Floods, subzero temperatures, and other incredibly challenging conditions killed seven men and drove three successive contractors into bankruptcy. (You can bet they called the structure “damn” many, many times.) Another video explained that more than fifty dams now provide water, electricity, and flood control to the Western US, making possible our agriculture, our industries, and the very cities in which we live.

We resumed our westward movement through the parched landscape, on course for Yellowstone.

From time to time, a distinctive rock formation would catch my eye.

When we spotted this strange log house on a hilltop, we stopped and inquired. Locals told us that the man who built it died before it was finished, whereupon his family sealed it up and left it as it was.

Just down the road was this massive pile of antlers and skulls in front of a shop selling “antler art.”

Yellowstone National Park was the world’s first such park, established by President Grant in 1872. It covers nearly 3,500 square miles and encompasses the caldera of an ancient volcano, whose still-active interior provides entertainment as it pumps steam through sulfurous fumaroles, geysers, and mud pots.

Thank goodness for the thermal features and the bison, since otherwise the Yellowstone scenery is so much like that of the Northwest that it might be hard to interest the boys in it.

We drove past the east entrance, through a major road paving and reconstruction job, and then through an area recovering from a recent forest fire (though nothing even remotely as extensive as the many terrible fires that devastated large swaths of the park in 1988).

As we traced the shoreline of Yellowstone Lake, stopping now and then for photos, the boys announced they were hungry. A diner in the settlement of Fishing Bridge provided our lunch. The diner is part of a huge store where we also did some shopping for gifts. As one would expect at a national park, fishing is no longer allowed from Fishing Bridge.

When you think of Yellowstone, you think of geysers, pre-eminent among which is Old Faithful. Less spectacular but more beautiful to my eyes are the colorful pools of simmering water whose temperatures range from 100 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit. (That's Debbie reflected in this pond.)

A ranger at West Thumb explained to the boys that the colors in the water are Yellowstone’s smallest wildlife, microorganisms that thrive in heat, the brown and orange ones in the cooler water and the green and blue in the hotter.

We left the lake and drove over the Continental Divide to Old Faithful, which went off on schedule.

I must admit it wasn’t as spectacular a performance as I expected.

I saw it in 1968, so I’m sure it seemed larger then, but I had forgotten how quiet it is.

At the distance we were kept, it was almost silent.

After the eruption, Debbie took a photo that I think gives an accurate impression of what I look like when I'm about to lose my temper. Our boys, who were clearly homesick, sorely tested my patience today. (OK, so steam wasn't literally coming out of my ears.)

We followed boardwalks to see some of the other pools and geysers in the area.

This one, Castle Geyser, has built up one of the largest sinter cones in the world.

I found a professional photographer taking a picture of this scene with an antique 5 x 5 camera, the kind that has a bellows to facilitate focusing.

By the time we got back to the main lodge, the main attraction was spouting again, so it’s safe to say that our excursion lasted approximately 90 minutes.

We toured Old Faithful Inn, sometimes called the jewel in the crown of National Park lodges. This monumental timbered building was designed by architect Robert Reamer and erected in 1903 and 1904.

It has a magnificently spacious lobby – a cavernous six stories high – and small details like this writing desk that indicate the care with which it was constructed.

We got four dishes of ice cream in the smallest size available (at least three scoops each) and as the sun set, we ate them on the wide second-floor balcony that overlooks the hotel’s namesake. The kids really were enjoying their dessert much more than their expressions seem to indicate.

Our $50 National Park Annual Pass has turned out to be an excellent value. Just two of the parks, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone, together added up to $50 in admission fees, but we also went to Bryce, Zion, Cape Cod, Badlands, and Devil’s Tower, all free. (We only had to pay for the tram ride up Gateway Arch, the tour of Mammoth Cave, and parking at Mount Rushmore.) And if in the next year we go to other national parks – those in Washington State, for instance – or to any of the same parks again, those visits will be free as well.

We left Yellowstone through West Yellowstone, Montana, and headed north to find a room for the night. My passengers quickly fell asleep. At 1 a.m., we pulled into the casino town of Butte, gassed up at $3.05 a gallon, checked in with a friendly night clerk at the Days Inn, and carried the boys up to bed.