WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. – This hamlet of 1,000 residents is said to have 4,000 motel rooms, but I don’t have time to count. There’s a park to be explored.
This is our first trip to the world’s oldest national park (established 1872), a rectangular tract of some 3,500 square miles that, at first blush, appears to be wholly in Wyoming. However, small chunks are in Montana and Idaho.
The itinerary is simple. We fly into Jackson Hole, Wyo., on Wednesday, spend Thursday through Monday exploring Yellowstone and Tuesday through Thursday in neighboring Grand Teton National Park.
For the former stint, we’ve chosen West Yellowstone’s Kelly Inn as headquarters.
In the winter of 1807-08, John Colter (who’d left the Lewis and Clark Expedition a year earlier) saw geothermal areas that he said were fraught with “fire and brimstone.” Believing him to have been delirious, others nicknamed this unseen place “Colter’s Hell.” For decades after Colter’s travels, reports came in of boiling mud and steaming rivers.
There’s a 60-acre area, known now as the Midway Geyser Basin that Rudyard Kipling wrote of in 1890, saying others had called it “Hell’s Half Acre.” He said it “smelt like the refuse of the pit.” But I digress.
Yellowstone has more than 300 miles of paved roads, including the 140-mile Grand Loop Road, which provides access to the park’s major features. Everyone is there to see wildlife. A driver must be prepared to stop at any time.
The maximum speed limit is 45 mph. In some spots it’s 35 or 25. (In a mid-size SUV we average 35 mph and 35 mpg!) We pull over often, seeing a bald eagle, hundreds of bison and elks, a couple of coyotes, some pronghorn sheep and an osprey.
No bears.
We walk the outskirts of the geyser basins. We see the Grand Prismatic Spring, Dragon’s Mouth Spring and Mammoth Hot Springs. The smell of sulfur smacks my lungs. Boiling mud assaults my eyes. Steam from the rivers fogs my glasses. Hello, Mr. Colter!
We see Old Faithful erupt three times. We hike around the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and its upper and lower falls, including Uncle Tom’s trail, which features an iron stairway that goes down 500 feet (700 steps, no elevator). We hike to Mystic Falls and back (two miles), and we tackle the aptly titled Elephant Back Trail, which rises 900 feet over 1.5 miles from the parking lot, with great views of the Yellowstone River.
There are over 1,100 miles of hiking trails in Yellowstone. I cannot imagine a more picturesque time of year than fall for enjoying them. The bright yellow of the quaking aspens and the dark green of the lodgepole pines is offset by something else that is burnt orange in color.
Written words don’t do the place justice. There are video tours online, as well as photo galleries. Better yet, go visit in person.
Next week: Grand Teton.
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Ark., where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at [email protected].