Yellowstone Photos

I have some things to say about Yellowstone, our oldest national park. But I'm still thinking about how best to sum up what I learned about this 2.2-million acre preserve.

And that's the problem. Supposedly the average American vacation is 3.8 days long, according to the U.S. Travel Association.  Let's be generous and assume that one spends 5 days in the park. That's about 440,000 acres to cover per day.

The Grand Loop, the 142-mile road that works a figure-eight through the center of Yellowstone, makes it easier to cover the park's expanse. But at 45 miles an hour or less, with often bumper-to-bumper traffic, and so much to see and do along the way, the Grand Loop deceives. It makes the traveler think that Yellowstone is easy, and it most certainly is not. Seeing it by car is hard work—harder and less rewarding, I think, than seeing small bits of it at a time.

Rex and I stayed at Fishing Bridge campground on the northern tip of Yellowstone Lake for the entire 10 days of our visit. It was a good home base and the only one available to rigs of our size, but if we could do it over again, we would move to a different campground in a another part of the park every third or fourth day. That's what the Grand Loop planners had in mind when they designed it, I think. As it was, we really didn't even get to know Fishing Bridge, a very pretty, birdy, historic area of the park, because we were always driving to hike somewhere else. 

In our ten days, we barely scratched the surface. I didn't know anything about Yellowstone before we arrived. Sure, I knew a bit of the history, and everyone knows about Old Faithful, and friends warned me about the annoying crowds that carry one along—as well as the near seclusion just seven or so miles down the trail. 

And yet, I was completely dumbfounded by Yellowstone National Park. I at first found it off-putting. The wildlife didn't seem wild at all, but just grazed nonchalantly next to the road. The traffic was heavier, earlier in the day than seemed possible, considering that we were more than 500 miles from the nearest metropolitan area. There was an ecstatic exuberance in the air that often made it feel more like an amusement park than nature viewing ("I saw a pack of wolves! We petted a grizzly bear!"). 

But the longer I was there, the more I got used to all of this and realized that it was part of the Yellowstone experience. Humans are nature, too, and endlessly interesting. Most importantly, I realized that there is so much more to the park—as if it exists in multiple dimension—partly because of its sheer size, partly because of its subtle beauty, partly because of its wondrous geothermal features. Yellowstone brings out the kid in you, and Yellowstone is dangerous and awe-inspiring, too. It is a very complex creature that would take years to fully understand.

For now, I'll leave it at this: Yellowstone is perfectly American. It is a big, loud, wild carnival with freakish things to see and freaky people seeing them. It is also peaceful and sublime; strong and very fragile. All this adds up to Yellowstone being incredibly diverse and much, much bigger than you could ever possibly be. And it is yours, because it is a national park, and it is not exclusively yours. And you get out of it exactly what you put into it. You really must experience it for yourself. 

See it as we did— Top 40 photos of Yellowstone, posted on Picasa. Please enjoy.