Day 13 and 14 - Omaha to Chicago, Chicago to Syracuse via Amtrak

Wildlife tally: none, wildlife is scared of moving trains

Odd photo isn't it? Read on.

The hotel was good enough to put out breakfast at 3:30 for us. The shuttle got us to the train station at 4:15. Once again sleeping on the train was a challenge. But we managed it. We got into Chicago on time and so we got to spend a few hours in the city. We missed that on train ride out because the train was 3 hours late. We found a locker in the station to store our stuff and headed into the City.

Chicago's downtown does not seem to be as clean as some other cities I have been in recently. But there were a lot of people and it was vibrant. We decided to walk from the station to Millenium Park. It was hot - 93. David was not happy. He is not comfortable in cities. The first thing we found at the park was an unusual water fountain made of a pair of glass block towers known as Crown Fountain. Nicole and I took off our shoes and caught some spray. David played curmudgeon and sat on a bench with a frown on his face. 

The Crown fountain was refreshing

We checked out the Lurie Garden, some of the art installations and the band shell. They had a neat installation called Cloud Gate with looked like a giant polished metal misshapen egg. It was hollow and curved underneath. So when you got under it, your reflection could be seen many times, with the exact number depending on where you stood. We tried to count them all. We got as high as 8 but I am sure we missed some. The picture at the beginning of the post was taken there. 

It is tough to distinguish the mirrored surface from the reflection of the city, but this is Cloud Gate. You can see us reflected in the upper part of the photo. Look for the pink shirts.

A better shot I stole from the web

After poking around the park for a while, we were hot and you know what sounded like a good idea? Ice cream. Google maps failed us twice though. Both shops that were supposed to be near the park were no more. We were now even sweatier from the extra walking. So dinner instead. And maybe we could find ice cream on the walk back to the train station. We tried a new experience, a noodle restaurant called Noodles and Company. It was excellent and inexpensive to boot. The best part for the kids was the soda machine. Coke has a machine out called Freestyle that can make a blended soda. They claim it can make over 125 combinations. David in particular likes to mix his drinks even at a regular soda machine like you find in Burger King. This was like heaven to him! 

David - vanilla root beer

Nicole - raspberry ginger ale

Glenn - raspberry lemonade

Susan - lime & raspberry and normal diet coke

We found a Baskin Robbins on the way back to the train station so we did get our ice cream fix after all. Susan desperately wanted a Starbucks coffee or any good coffee since the midwest did not seem to know about Starbucks.  She did have one good coffee in West Yellowstone, but for those of you who know Susan's coffee habit, she was definitely feeling deprived. Unfortunately it was around 7PM and apparently downtown Chicago rolls up the sidewalks after the office workers leave for the day. We tried 3 different Starbuck locations and they were all closed. We finally saw some guy on the street with a Starbucks iced coffee and asked him where he got it. I am sure he thought we were crazy. It was one block away. Susan had her hot coffee safely in hand within a couple of minutes. Keep in mind we are all sweating because it is in the high 80s still. Go figure. We boarded our train at 9:30 PM and were on our way to Syracuse. 

Have I mentioned sleeping on the train stinks? Once again we were reminded of this. The guy behind us snored loudly. And a baby who screamed most of the night was about 8 rows in front of us. Add to that the sudden motions of the train. You get the picture. 

We were a little late into Syracuse but the smiling faces of the Ives were there to greet us and take us home. Thanks!

We are now safely home with a lot of memories and some sleep to catch up on.  Susan has a case of motion sickness that she's dealing with today.  I guess the Dramamine she took on the on the train ride out actually worked.  She didn't take it on the way home. The kids have one week of summer left before school starts so they have some time to rest up. Hopefully they will remember this trip the rest of their lives.

Should I wake her up for dinner?

I'll have one more wrap up post tomorrow including some suggestions if you ever do something like this yourself.

Day 12 - Cheyenne WY to Omaha NE

Wildlife tally: pronghorn antelope, lots of cattle

Today was a rather long and somewhat boring ride on I-80. The most notable thing was the steady progression from arid to reasonably wet. And the increase in temperature. It was in the mid 50's when we left Cheyenne. It was 102 in the middle of Nebraska and 97 in Omaha at 8 PM. 

Omaha is a neat little city. It has a very vibrant downtown area and everyone we met was really friendly. I'd like to explore it more someday. The kids and I got dinner and brought it back to the hotel. They swam in the pool while I took the rental car back and Susan did laundry. We were all in bed at 10 PM. But we had to get up at 3:15 am to catch the train. Ugh.

Some random observations from the trip so far:
Gas
Prices ranged from $3.39 in Nebraska and Iowa to $4.59 at a remote gas station in the Tetons. Oddly, the price of regular in some Midwest states is 10-15 cents more than mid grade. 
The brands are totally different than the east coast. The only one that was familiar was an occasional Exxon station.

People
I was surprised to find that at least half the people in the national parks are from foreign countries. I've had several times when someone stopped me to take a picture of their family and the communication consisted of a thrust of a camera toward me and a heavily accented "picture please". Japanese, Chinese and Germans seem to be well represented but I have heard Italian and many other unidentifiable languages. The Japanese seem to favor large SUV rentals and are usually well dressed. Nothing like dress shoes, kahkis and a polo shirt for a hike around a boardwalk in a geyser field. The Germans tend to be young and properly geared for serious hiking and camping. 

There are a lot of Americans on Harleys. Maybe because the Sturgis motorcycle rally was a couple of weeks ago? Standard attire for them is jeans or leathers and a black t-shirt emblazoned with their local bike shop. Must be a challenge to pack light enough to fit all your stuff on your bike somewhere. And a real bummer when it rains. There are obviously no helmet laws in the Midwest and Western states we were in. Very few people wore them. 

Electronics
In the first post I mentioned that we were charging a fleet of electronics. That was a nightly ritual. I'm almost embarrassed to list the devices we had:
2 iPhones + bluetooth headsets
1 garmin
3 kindles
2 still cameras
1 video camera
2 gameboys
1 iPod Touch
1 laptop

Keeping them all charged was interesting. We had a dual usb charger for the car and a 12V to 120V inverter for the car. Only 1 place we stayed had enough outlets to charge most of the stuff at once. The rest of the time it was done in shifts. 

There are sizable chunks of the Midwest and West that have no cell service. Some much for Verizon's commercial: "Can you hear me now?" No. 

On the coasts we take 3G data service for granted and look for 4G. In most of the Midwest and West it is 2G in areas that are not cities. 

Every place we stayed had free Wifi.

I sprang for one month of iPhone hotspot. That turns your iPhone into a wifi internet connection using cell phone data service. It was extremely handy for me on the train and on the longer car rides. I got some work done that needed to get done. I know I am on vacation but the business still needs to get run. I would not call this mode of operation reliable though. The connection dropped pretty regularly and I had to reboot devices a few times. AT&T and the iPhone 4 limit the number of devices connected via wireless to 3. Sorry Dave. No iPod Touch on wireless for you. 

Food
Expect to pay 25% to 50% more for groceries and restaurant food around the parks. 
Fast food - pretty much non-existent in most Midwest and Western towns except for Subway and DQ. 
The Urban Spoon and Around Me apps are really handy for locating decent places to eat. 

Navigation
Don't put all your trust in the Garmin. It was outright wrong on a couple of occasions. On several others it probably would have gotten us there but certainly not in the easiest or fastest way.

Susan brought along paper maps. I brought along the Google maps app in my iPhone. Guess which one wins when there is no cell service?

Cops and speed
Many of the roads are 75 MPH, even 2 lane roads. 
National parks are 45 MPH and they do have cops patrolling.
Outside of the national parks, I saw 3 speed traps the entire time. I see that many on my way to work most days. 

Day 11 - Sinks Canyon State Park - headed for home

On a footbridge over the Popo Agie River - Sinks Canyon State Park

Wildlife Tally: pronghorn antelope, mule deer, magpie, trout

We have been heading steadily west for 10 days and we are now 2100 miles from home: two-thirds of the way across the US. It is time to head for home. It will take 3 1/2 days to get home. Today we travel across Wyoming with a stop at Sinks Canyon State Park. 

The cabin Susan would like to have - forget the kids!

Once we left the cabin, we climbed up and over the Togwogtee Pass. This is our highest elevation on this trip, 9600'. I don't know how those guys on the bikes did it. They must be in serious shape. 

The pass. I wonder what it looks like in the winter.

We decided to stop at Sinks Canyon to break up the trip. It turns out this state park is a little gem. It had a great visitor center. The kids really liked looking at a display of the skulls of a whole range of birds and mammals, including those we had seen in the past couple of weeks. There were also some of them whole - stuffed of course. 

We get a lot of snow in Syracuse - 128" a year in an average season. I asked in several places during our trip how much snow they get. It always made our total here look small. In talking to the park ranger here I found out they are in the third year of a drought. They only got 200" of snow the past couple of winters and the norm is 300". Our horseback guide plowed snow in Jackson Hole. Last year they had almost 400". 

Sinks Canyon is formed by the Popo Agie river. It has a very unusual feature. The river disappears into a cave. It travels underground somehow and It rises out of the rock floor of the canyon about 1/4 mile after it disappears. They don't understand where it goes but they have done dye tests and know that it takes about 2 hours to travel that short distance. They also know that more water rises than went in. There are trout that migrate up the river to spawn. Obviously they hit the end of the line at the rise. There is a big pool there and people feed them. They can't be fished so they just hang out and get huge - 2-3' long. We threw in pieces of bread. It was just a thrashing of fish the moment it hit the water. Feeding frenzy would be the proper term. A whole piece lasted just a couple of seconds before it was gone. Any pieces that missed the water and landed on shore were quickly snagged by magpies.

This is the rise taken from about 50' up. Most of these fish are 2-3' long.

Looking down the canyon from the rise of the river.

We had a nice picnic lunch here. The kids ate on the rocks in the middle of the river. 

Everything tastes better when you feet are wet and cool

Typical David - stressing his mother out

Unfortunately we had to cut this stop short and hit the road since we still had 4 hours left in the drive. I still am amazed how arid Wyoming is. Once you are out of the mountains, there are no trees unless there is a stream, lake, river or a house where someone waters the yard. There are incredibly huge spaces filled with sage brush, dry grass, rocks and dirt. With cattle sprinkled around. Ranching is it out here. It starts out being pretty and ends up being monotonous after driving through it for hours. 

They must get a lot of blowing snow on these roads because they are protected by snow fences. Not the piddly kind we have out east. These are big wooden structures 10-20' high, depending on where they are located. Sometimes there is only one row of them but in some spots they are 4 rows deep. They remind me of sentries doing guard duty.

Despite the winter, these roads are in fantastic shape. Not a pothole for hundreds of miles.

We arrived at our hotel about 7:30, got dinner and got some sleep to prepare for another day of driving.

Day 10 - Grand Tetons and horseback riding

Notice who can't sit on his horse straight?

Wildlife Tally: sandhill crane, magpie, golden eagle, osprey, bison (lots)

A 3 hour horse ride in the Tetons was going to be one of the highlights of our trip. We were up at 5:45 AM because we needed to be at the horse riding place by 7:30. This place was so remote we had to put in GPS coordinates in order to map it. Turns out it is a summer camp in National Forest land that they set up in June and take down in September. The guides are basically camping for 3 months. The camp consisted of a bunch of platform tents, a large mess tent, a horse coral, a couple of generators, a his and hers bathroom/shower located on a trailer and a work area to shoe horses. The best part was that the mess tent was surrounded by a solar powered electrified fence  - to keep bears out. They had a lot of rain over the last few days and the place was a sea of mud and horse poop. It was interesting to watch them shoe the horses. The had a vertical table that they maneuvered the horse next to, then they strapped the horse to the table and rotated the table horizontal. So the horse was lying on this big table and they could easily work on the shoes. 

Remember all that rain? We had wanted to take a high altitude ride to get some really nice views but were told the trails were to slick to do that. So we had to do a relatively flat ride with some creek crossings. It still had some hills though. I'll let Nicole pick up the story from here. 

I Get Bucked Off A Horse

 Hi readers! Guess who! If you guessed Nicole then you are correct. But if you are wondering about the title, then you’ll have to wait for an explanation. We woke up early in the morning and drove off to the horseback riding place. Let me tell you this, it didn’t look like I expected it to. It was just a clump of small hut-like buildings and a big pen for the horses. We went up to admissions and paid for a three hour horseback ride for four and they showed us our horses. Dad rode a horse named Cricket (a girl), Mom rode Cocoa (also a girl), David rode Gringo (a boy), and I rode Pedro (also a boy). Cricket was reddish-brown, Coco was black, Gringo was white and had weird markings on his neck saying when he was born and where he was found because he used to be a mustang, and Pedro was black and white and kind of looked like a cow.

We mounted our horses and had a brief lesson about riding. Then we set off on our journey. I was in the lead (besides our Guide) and Pedro misbehaved for me. He wouldn’t do as he was told and when I tried to stop him or slow him down, he would toss his head and try to get the reins off his head. Once he was successful and tossed the reins off of his head and I spent at least three minutes trying to get them back over his ears, so while everyone was enjoying the beautiful scenery, I was having a difficult ride.

A little while later we happened upon a fallen tree and we were told to steer our horses around it, but Pedro wouldn’t go. Our guide got down from his horse asked me to hold onto his reins, pulled out a hatchet, and started to chop the tree in two. At every chop of the hatchet, Pedro whinnied and freaked out. The guide eventually realized that I was having a hard time holding onto Pedro's reins, and an even harder time holding onto Pedro's and his horse's reins. The guide took his horse and tied him to a tree and continued to chop the downed tree in two. About forty five minutes after we passed the tree, we were on some sand. The minute Pedro touched it I was on his neck. Next thing I knew, I was on the ground. I had been bucked off! Not fun, trust me. Sand in my  eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Still, something to brag about. After a few minutes Gringo sat down, with David still on him! After I got the sand off, Dad and I switched horses. I now rode Cricket, and Dad switched to Pedro.

I'm now on Cricket. At least we're both smiling!

Back to Glenn again. When Nicole took flight I was ahead of her and the first I knew of it was hearing that "worried parent" tone in something Susan said. I didn't actually hear what she said but the tone caused me to turn around and look. Nicole was sprawled in the sand and Pedro was to the side and rear of Nicole. Susan was behind Nicole and said that as soon as the horse hit sand his rear legs shot out, Nicole was on his neck and then he bucked again. Nicole went over his head and did a somersault before landing in the sand. She came very close to getting stepped on as she rolled to the side of the horse. Nicole came up spitting sand from her mouth and blowing it from her nose. She had enough sense to get off to the side and out of harms way even though she couldn't really see because she had sand in her eyes too. She dealt with it very well. It took a few minutes to get the sand out and get cleaned up a little. She was happy to switch horses with me. We were pretty lucky because if it had happened in another 50 feet the landing would have been on river rock. It was one of those scary things that happens very fast and you have no control over and no ability to change the outcome of. Fortunately all that came out of it is a good story that will be retold many times.

For whatever reason, Pedro did not give me any problems the rest of the ride. But I made sure to hold on to the saddle horn tightly with my free hand as visions of a being in a rodeo danced around in my head.  It was really funny when all the other horses had gone around a large bush, but not my Pedro.  He decided to straddle it and then have a 30 second scratching session before moving on.  I wasn't going to argue with him after what had happened with Nicole.

Susan's horse was a good horse. She did have one odd behavior though. At times there was a split in the trail and Cocoa wanted to go her own way and not follow the other horses. It is a good thing Susan has ridden horses before. It took a bit of convincing to get Cocoa back to the proper trail. In one water crossing she took the deep path. Susan ended up with soaking wet feet despite picking them up in the air. 

Crossing a mostly dry riverbed

Time for a drink

We took a bit of a break after the ride and went back to the cabin for lunch and some down time. Nicole and David wanted to sit in the hot tub for a while. A three hour ride leaves you a bit sore. I never realized that horses are not the most comfortable mode of transportation.

You never know where you are going to meet wildlife. A pair of marmots had taken up residence under the ramp into the building with the hot tub. For those of you who don't know what a marmot is, think high altitude groundhog:

A very pudgy Yellow Bellied Marmot

We spent mid afternoon on driving a 42 mile scenic loop in the park. The Tetons are young mountains. As a result they have not been subject to as much of the rounding and softening effects of erosion. They are all sharp edges and towering rock, complete with glaciers. They seem to erupt from the base of the lakes and thrust skyward to 11-13,000 feet. Indescribable. Pictures don't convey it but here are a couple. 

Tetons and Jenny Lake

Jackson Lake is the source of the Snake River, which winds its way across the West, eventually making it to the Columbia and the Pacific Ocean. Along the way the Snake has carved some big canyons that are very pretty but here at its source it is flat and peaceful, at least in the summer. 

Tetons reflected in the Snake River. We stopped here to look for Moose. No luck.

While the scenery was stunning, we did not have much luck with wildlife. In particular we were looking for moose and eagles. We did see one golden eagle in the distance but not much else. I gassed the car in Moose, WY and we headed out on the northern leg of the loop. By the way I was happy to pay $3.99 to fill the tank. The 2 stations in the vicinity of our cabin were charging $4.29 and $4.59. Anyway, we had another of those chance moments. I had read that this one side road sometimes had wildlife. It was late and the kids were hungry but we decided to make a quick turn down this road. It was worth it.

Hundreds of bison happily munching away! No way to capture the entire herd in one photo.

Bison are big and have no reason to fear humans, at least not in the parks. They are happy to stand at the edge of the road or in the road. In fact pretty much anywhere they want. They have no fear of cars either. 

Taken out the windshield of our car. I would not want to run into one of these on the road in the dark.

"We are tired of grass. You guys have anything good to eat?"

Bison use their head as a snowplow in the winter to clear snow and get to grass. Which explains the big hump of muscle in their shoulders.

Mom and baby

One more pretty shot and we headed for the cabin. 

Time to pack up all of the stuff. Tomorrow we head for home. 

Day 9 - Yellowstone to Grand Teton National Park

Wildlife Tally: elk, bison, magpie, clark's nuthatch

Today we made our way south through Yellowstone to Grand Teton National Park. We stopped at the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake (B in the map above). The thumb was formed by a much smaller volcanic explosion some time later than the original explosion. Notice how the thumb is circular like you might expect from an explosion? There are 2 other places on the lake where similar explosions added to the lake. At West Thumb there is an extensive geyser field, including some right along the shore of the lake and a couple in the lake. One, known as Fishing Cone geyser, has an interesting history. It sits out in the lake a little ways. In the early days of the park people would catch fish and then dunk the fish in this geyser to cook them. 3-5 minutes was the proper time in the geyser.

Cooking fish in Fishing Cone geyser

Geyser with Yellowstone Lake in the background

We ate a picnic lunch in West Thumb and then headed south to Grand Teton National Park, which is about a 90 minute drive. The scenery is great, but at this point we have seen so much great scenery that I think we are all a little numb to it. We got to Grand Teton just in time to watch a thunderstorm roll over Jackson Lake and the nearby Tetons. I can't tell you how many pictures we took trying to catch a lightning bolt streaking from cloud to lake or cloud to mountain. You have to be really fast or really lucky to catch one so you'll have to imagine the lightning bolt yourself. Now that I think of it this would have been a perfect time for a video. Hindsight ...

The picture does not show the scale of this. It is miles to those mountains!

We stopped at the Coulter Bay visitor center so that David could get his National Park passport stamped. His cousin gave him the passport, which has a section for each different region in the country. The National Park Service has cancellation stamps at all of their visitor centers and you can stamp the passport. Everywhere we went David was looking for the stamps. Smart people at the NPS. While we were getting the stamp at Coulter Bay, another thunderstorm rolled in and he and I made a full sprint back to the car, getting pelted with rain the whole way.

We rented a small log cabin about 15 miles east of the park. When we got there it was very wet and a couple of guys on bikes (the pedal kind) pulled up while we were checking in. They had all their gear on the bike. I talked to one of them. They did 10 miles that day, which is not a lot right? I thought well they are riding in mountains so that probably cut their distance down and the rain could not have helped either. I found out later they had come across a 9600' pass! In thunderstorms! Anyway, they started their trip in Fort Collins, CO and were biking to Missoula, MT, about 900 miles, most of it through mountains. Crazy dudes. They were not the only ones. We saw a good number of people on bikes loaded with gear slowly chugging up grades that made our car grunt. 

The cabin turned out to be perfect. Susan started talking about how nice it would be to have one of them in NY on a lake. She started thinking about small alterations in the layout and pretty soon the small cabin had doubled in size. Dreams.

Early to bed tonight because tomorrow we get up at 5:45 for our horseback ride. 

Day 8 - Yellowstone - Hayden Valley and Yellowstone River Canyon

Wildlife Tally: bison, otter, elk, golden eagle, American white pelican, loon, mule deer, sandhill crane, osprey, bald eagle

In yesterday's post I told you to keep in mind the late nights and early mornings. Then I forget to tell you why. So I'll back up to yesterday for a moment. Our plan last night was to go to our condo, eat dinner and then head into the town of West Yellowstone to browse the stores and get ice cream. It was not to be. The kids hit the wall around 7:45 PM. We have been traveling for days and packing in a lot of sights on less than normal sleep. The attitudes came out to play. They were each other's worst enemy. We called a family meeting and it was early to bed for all and sleeping in a little bit in the morning.

Back to today. The best place to see wildlife is Hayden Valley. When we entered the park the road in Hayden Valley was closed due to a wildfire. When I left the park last night, I checked with a ranger and the road had been opened back up. So our plan for today was to focus on wildlife and also to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. 

You might think that wildlife spotting is a challenge. In Yellowstone it is easy. You just look for a bunch of cars parked every which way and a throng of people. You know there is something there. There are so many people in the park that any animal within 100 yards of a road is going to be spotted. And then craziness ensues. The roads are all 2 lane roads. Some have a shoulder and some don't. There are numerous turnouts but the animals don't seem to realize that they should only appear near the turnouts. The result is that people pull over anywhere, sometimes only halfway off the road. You can imagine the traffic jams as this happens in both directions. For the most part people are either patient or more interested in the wildlife than they are in getting to where they are going. But I have heard a couple of people losing their cool and screaming at other drivers. At least they did not honk their horns and scare away the animals. 

In addition to the traffic jams, people do crazy things when they see a bison 10 feet from the road. They hit the brakes and dive into a pullout spot with no warning, jump out of cars right into traffic, and pull back into the road without looking. You have to be extra alert when you are driving and ignore the temptation to look at the animals. The best one I saw today was a van that was parked in the middle of a turnout, engine running, doors open and no one in it. It stayed that way for the entire time we watched a bald eagle, maybe 15 minutes. Here are:some shots of what we saw:

This young bison crossed the road about 10' from an idling Harley just after this picture was taken. No fear there - at least on the part of the bison.

An American White Pelican looking for lunch

A pair of ospreys in their nest on top of a 500' pillar of rock

Sandhill Cranes - big birds at 3-4' tall

Some of the animals don't like to hang by the roadside waiting for the tourist to snap their picture. We saw a group of people a little way off the road and we stopped to see what was going on. A couple of people had set up telescopes and were patiently scanning the terrain about a 1/2 mile off the road. They had seen a wolf or coyote a few minutes before we got there, but all we saw looking in that direction was a lone bison. Meanwhile, Susan was looking in the opposite direction, where there was another bison and she looked up to see a golden eagle soaring about 100' above us. So we watched him work the thermals and look for lunch. 

When we got to the end of Hayden Valley it was lunch time for us so we drove a little way around Yellowstone Lake and found a nice quiet picnic spot. There was a rock beach and the kids did some wading and explored a cave right next to the water. I did not realize this but Yellowstone was formed by a super volcano that blew its top 640,000 years ago. The caldera, the depression left by the explosion, is about 35 miles wide by 45 miles long. Imagine an explosion powerful enough to remove that much earth. Yellowstone Lake fills about 1/4 of that area and it has thermal vents and geysers all around it. Some of them are actually in the lake. There was a steam vent about 100 yards from where we ate lunch and every once in a while we got a good whiff of rotten eggs while we were eating. 

During lunch thunderstorms rolled in to the north of us. We could see the lightning and rain up in the Hayden Valley area. We planned on going back up to the north end of the valley to see Yellowstone Falls and the canyon carved by the Yellowstone river. We got out our raincoats and headed up there. We got lucky. Most of the storms had cleared out by the time we got there.

There are actually 2 falls, referred to as the Upper and Lower falls. The Upper falls are only 85' high but are really cool because the entire river gets channeled into a gap between two stone walls. The gap is only about 30' wide so there is a huge flow through there just before the river goes thundering over the falls. 

The Lower falls are 300' high and the river tumbles into a canyon carved by the river over the millennia. This area is known as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

View looking down the canyon from above the lower falls. Notice the slight rainbow in the lower left. That mist is from the falls. It is hard to get a sense of scale here because it is so big. Take a look at the size of the trees to put it into perspective.

Looking back up the canyon at the lower falls. The falls are 308' high.

David had been asking all day to go north to a cliff face that had a lot of obsidian, which is black volcanic glass, in the rock. So before we headed home we drove north and found the cliff. It was somewhat of a bummer because they have restricted access to it. Tourists have been chipping away at the rock for souvenirs. Apparently the Native Americans also loved this cliff. Obsidian makes really nice arrow points and the local tribes obtained it and traded it. The sign said Yellowstone obsidian was traded all over North America by various tribes. Fortunately for us they put big blocks of rock along the roadside to prevent cars from parking there. They got them from the closest source of rock: the cliff face. The rocks were full of obsidian and David got to look at it up close, despite the best efforts of the National Park Service. 

On the way out of the park Susan spotted another golden eagle and a bald eagle. We watched the bald eagle fly across the Madison river and land in a tree about 30 feet off the ground. Very impressive. 

Since the kids were in much better moods we stopped in West Yellowstone and  had dinner, browsed the stores and had ice cream. A much better end to the day.

Day 7 - Yellowstone Geysers

Wildlife Tally: bison, elk, osprey, marmot, ground squirrel, mule deer, ruffed grouse, moose, western bluebird, turkey

The reason Yellowstone is so popular is that there is a large variety of things to look at. Wildlife, 210 waterfalls, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and today's quest: geysers. It is a pretty easy quest actually. They are all over the place. They come in different flavors. Some, like Old Faithful, erupt on a fairly regular schedule. Ground water gets heated by molten rock near the surface and after a while it explodes out of a hole in the ground. Others are simply pools of boiling water. No kidding. Just like a giant pot of water ready for the spaghetti. There are the mud holes burping out steaming goop, the steam vents that roar and the large springs that generate a babbling brook of 200 degree water. Some of them stink to high heaven with sulfer. They come in all colors too. Clear as can be and sapphire blue. Milky white. Green. Black. Believe it or not, there are little beasties that like to live in the warm water around the edges. These bacteria form mats in shades of yellow, orange, red, green and blue. The net result is that no two are alike. Enough words:

Looks inviting but it would be instant death at 200+

The boiling spring kind

Closeup of some bacterial mats

Old Faithful doing its thing

The boiling, burping mud kind

We actually started out the day with a hike to a waterfall led by an 81 year old ranger. The guy was quite a character. An example: what should we do if we see a bear? Everyone gather in a circle with him at the center. The hike started from the Biscuit Basin geyser field and gained elevation until we arrived at Mystic Falls. Very nice. We watched an osprey fish the stream below the falls. Susan and Nicole saw a marmot on the way back down. David and I took a different route back but I'll let him tell about that. By the way this hike started at 9 AM and it was about 40 minutes into the park. Which meant that we were all up about 6:30 after a late night. Keep that in mind.

Mystic Falls

Hi this is David.  As dad said I am telling about the hike back.  It was long and treacherous, not really.  The hike was uphill a lot and tires you out quickly.  We sometimes didn't even notice the switch backs.  We saw lots of animals including a red squirrel.  Then we got to the top and took a rest and pictures.  Going down was easy and fun, although we had to brace ourselves for some steep downhills.  Then we finally got back to the boardwalk and saw the geysers again. 

Little squirrel

Back to Glenn again. Even with all the variety, there are only so many geysers you can look at before they become a blur and the kids start to get bored. They hit the wall in the early afternoon and we decided to head north and find something else to do. That turned out to be a side trip to a small river where the kids lost their shoes and socks and did some wading. I played lifeguard and Susan read a book. I think they would have waded all afternoon but parents get bored too sometimes. Back in the car. But we went barely a mile and found Gibbon Falls. So had everyone else. As with most of the popular spots in Yellowstone, parking is a bugger. Sometimes you just have to look for some family walking to their car, wait for them to pull out and then snag their spot. 

Nicole contemplates Gibbon Falls

By now it was late afternoon and we still had an hour ride just to get out of the park. The exit road turned out to be one of our better wildlife spotting areas. This day I saw a moose and in another mile or two we were treated to a mommy Elk trying to convince baby Elk to wade across the Madison river. You would never guess the sound an elk makes. It's a big animal. You'd expect a low loud call, not a short high pitched chirping thing. 

Part of the horde watching mom elk persuade baby elk to cross the river. Mom is on the left almost hidden by the trees and baby is directly out from the rock.

Come on Junior, the water is not that cold