Yellowstone

It's been almost three years since I've pre-blogged about a destination. I figure it's about time for one of those posts in advance of next month's travel plans.

In 2011, I spent two weeks with my friends Mike and Bryan driving across the United States from my home in Arlington, Virginia all the way to Portland, Oregon. It was the first time I'd ever driven across the entire continent and it's a kind of trip that I won't likely ever make again. 

I actually probably shouldn't make statements like that. If there's one thing that 2020 has taught me, it's that things I never expected to happen will happen whether I like it or not. So yeah...never say never or even won't likely ever.

One of the highlights of that long distance drive was a two night stop at Yellowstone National Park. We arrived there in the afternoon from the east after traveling 12 plus hours from Deadwood, South Dakota, and left maybe about 40 hours later to the west en route to Seattle. With so far to go in just two weeks, there just wasn't much time to linger, but we did think it was important to get in a whole day in the Park. That meant two nights.

In our one full day there, we set out first thing in the morning from our hotel in Lake Village and headed north and counter-clockwise around the Great Loop, hitting the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Tower-Roosevelt area and Mammoth Hot Springs, before heading south to Old Faithful and then back around to the hotel. If there's one thing to be said about our time in Yellowstone, it's that we didn't run out of sights to see. 

The main reason we didn't run out of stuff to do in a single day is Yellowstone National Park is massive. At almost 3,500 square miles, it's bigger than the entire state of Delaware by about 40% and it's more than twice the size of Rhode Island. Maybe you don't think of Rhode Island and Delaware as being big but we're comparing the size of an entire state to the size of a single National Park. This place is big. Too big, in fact, to cover in a single day. One day I figured I'd have to go back and do it right.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

2020 has been littered with cancelled trips. Costa Rica in March. New Mexico in May. California in June. Maine in July and (again) in August. England later in August. And most recently we made the decision to give up on a trip to Rwanda, Uganda and Zanzibar in October. That last one hurt, but there was really no other option.

It hasn't all been doom and gloom this year. We have both been healthy all year long and we've been able to transform some of those cancelled trips into reasonable facsimiles of the original intent. A national parks trip to California got morphed into a national parks trip in Utah and Colorado. Maine got replaced with Vermont, although Maine was really a substitute for Costa Rica so Vermont didn't stand a chance of coming close to the original deal there. New Mexico and England? Well...some other time maybe.

But when it came time to think about if we should even try to replace a trip where we'd be trekking into the mountains to see gorillas in the wild, driving around Queen Elizabeth National Park on safari and walking through the jungles of Zanzibar looking for monkeys, we were a little lost. We thought about a trip up to Churchill, Manitoba to see polar bears but the fact that Canada is not admitting Americans to their country right now killed that one pretty quickly. Ultimately, we decided if we were going to replace an animal watching trip with something similar that had to be in the United States, we should head out to a place where we could see the greatest collection of wild wildlife in our country. And that meant just one place: Yellowstone. Looks like that return trip I thought about in 2011 is happening this year.

This time we are doing it right. No 40 hours in the Park this year. We are dedicating three whole days plus whatever time we can squeeze in from a fourth day driving up through Grand Teton National Park starting early in the morning. We'll be hitting parts of the Park like the North and South Entrances, but most especially the Lamar Valley, that I didn't get a chance to visit in 2011. I have to say I'm pretty excited about that last part.

When I visited Yellowstone in 2011, my greatest hope was that I'd see a bison. Just one would have been enough. At that time I knew precious little about the Park, including that seeing a bison was pretty much a sure thing. We saw one strolling down the middle of the road in front of our car within the first half hour we were in the park. After that, we saw them everywhere. Our car was even surrounded by them on the way out of the west entrance. I need not have worried about seeing a bison. 

I was incredibly casual about looking for animals back then. I didn't make a deliberate effort to find the spots with the greatest concentration of wildlife or go out looking at dawn or dusk when I now know the chances of spotting creatures is the greatest. We just roamed at a time that was convenient for us. And honestly, while we saw a grizzly bear and tons of bison, we really didn't see much else. There are supposedly more elk in the park than any other mammal species and we saw one. And at a great distance at that. I'd forgotten we spotted a coyote until I looked through my pictures from that trip while writing this post. The 2011 trip to Yellowstone was all about that one grizzly and the many, many bison.

This year will be way different. I'm certain. Or at least I'm hoping since I'm way, way more prepared. There's no way we aren't seeing much, much more wildlife this time around. 

2011 in Yellowstone: grizzly bear, elk and coyote. And a whole lot of landscape.

Wildlife wasn't the only reason I put Yellowstone on our 2011 westward journey. I also went for the scenery and for the volcanic action, including a stop to watch Old Faithful geyser erupt surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of other people. Here again, we just scratched the surface nine years ago. I was impressed by the colors and landscape at our stop at Mammoth Hot Springs and the Rockies are amazing. But in the last month I found out we missed as many impressive spots as we saw, if not more, including Grand Prismatic Spring. No way are we missing that this year, not even if its guarded by a few grizzlies and a pack or two of wolves. 

I might chalk the animals and the geysers and hot pools we missed up to a mistake or two. But honestly, we didn't have any time to spare in our one day anyway. Three whole days seems much more sensible. 

2011 is a long time ago. I've changed so much in the way I travel since nine years ago, from the knowledge I carry with me, to my travel habits, to the technology that I've embraced. I've gathered together the most spectacular photographs from nine plus years ago that I could for this post and I'm not thrilled. My photos of animals likely stretched the capabilities of my Blackberry to the max and my landscapes aren't much better. I even managed to cut the top of Old Faithful off with my beginner camera skills. 

There were also fewer than about 30 total pictures to choose from. If there's one definite improvement I've made in my picture-taking habits, it's to take pictures in bunches. If I come back from this trip with fewer than 500 pics of Yellowstone I'll be surprised.

I'm lucky to be able to have a second shot at Yellowstone, even as I continue to whine about being (mostly) confined to the United States. I get that our country's government has badly bungled the response to this global pandemic and by the time it's all over or close to it, I'll have abandoned international travel for 12 months or probably more. Yellowstone won't be Rwanda, Uganda and Zanzibar but it will likely still be an incredible natural showcase. I'm excited to see it again and for a lot longer and in a different season. And not just for the wildlife. I know we missed some incredible sights or made short stops at others in 2011 which are now on my list for this year.

Yellowstone in an American icon. And I think it's going to be spectacular the second time around.