Day 11 – Tuesday : Yellowstone (254 km) And so to the notorious Colter Bay Tea Party. A friend of Brian’s, on learning he would be camping with an English guy, said “Hey, you should steal his tea and dump it in the lake”. I get wind of this plot, and in an effort to improve US / British trade relations, donate a carton of tea. It was decided that polluting the lake with tea, though historically more accurate, was not ecologically advisable. We settle on a toilet instead. I decide to leave Brian to it when a maintenance man enters the bathroom to unblock the shower drain. Walking in on two bearded men giggling in a toilet cubicle would have been interesting.
Excitement over, Brian, LaDawn, Sally and I grab a farewell coffee and sit in our camper dinette before going our separate ways.
We head off north to Yellowstone; Brian and LaDawn head south, homewards.
It has been a lovely few days spent with friends, although it was unfortunate that Bryan Appleby was unwell. Somewhere there is probably a sheet listing crimes perpetrated by this strange group of guests, including those relating to unknown women hijacking park employees and strange acts in a government staff toilet.
At the entrance gate to Yellowstone we use our America the Beautiful pass yet again and head up into flurries of snow.
We stop a couple of times to admire bubbling mud and steaming pools. We have already seen the bison in Badlands, so I guess there is less of an interest in those on our part, and we have seen a lot of volcanic activity in New Zealand. Maybe the weather isn’t helping, but for whatever reason Yellowstone isn’t pressing as many buttons as we had expected.
We pull into the parking lot on the south side of the Yellowstone river in order to visit the falls. We have to circle the lot a couple of times to find a suitable parking space; it is very busy despite the weather. However, it isn’t difficult to see why.
After a quick look from the north side too we head to Old Faithful. This is an extremely developed area: huge parking lot, big buildings.
Although I admit, the timber lodge is probably the most impressive thing there. We go inside to shelter from the rain and buy the obligatory fridge magnet, and are amazed by the timber framed atrium running the full height of the building. What a wonderful building.
The deck on the second floor would be a fantastic place to watch Old Faithful from. It reminds me of those old pictures of meetings of Roosevelt and Churchill when they would hold wartime meetings at similar locations.
I guess we could wait until the estimated time for the next eruption, but the weather isn’t really with us and we aren’t in a mood to stand around staring at a hole in the ground.
Passing the Grand Prismatic Pool earlier we had seen a big queue to get into the car park. But on passing we had also noticed a possible parking place a few hundred yards on; so now returning from Old Faithful we pull off the road and walk up to see if the pool is anything like the famous multi-coloured aerial pictures you see in glossy coffee-table books. It’s not – or at least today it isn’t. The mist and steam, despite the wind, obscure most of the pool, and the grey sky and lack of sun don’t do the colours any justice.
We exit the park at West Yellowstone and decided to try the nearby Bakers Hole Campground. It is $15 which seems reasonable for the location.
It is again cool, and the Plat Cat still won’t fire up despite trying to restart it 7 times. I decide it is time to open a bottle of wine to take my mind off propane, although this is complicated by the bottle opener being one of those with a pair of blades instead of a cork-screw. I haven’t used one like it before, although it’s the sort of thing I’ve seen in other people’s kitchen drawers and wondered about them. I just succeeded in pushing the cork into the bottle, which makes pouring rather a hit and miss affair.
We go for a walk around the campground. I always like to see what interesting rigs are on site; sometimes you get a chance to talk to the owners. We spot couple of young guys in a small rental car trying to erect their tent while explaining to the campground host where Oxford is, making reference to Cambridge, boat races, etc. by way of explanation.
We notice that some idiot had brought one of those open frame generators – you know, the really cheap ones you see advertised that you think will be a good idea until you realise it has to run at full RPM all the time and in an otherwise quiet campground sounds like a pneumatic road drill. Luckily they are in another section of the campground from us; our neighbours had a near-silent, and undoubtedly ten times the price, Honda 4-stroke generator.
