Oregon Trail: Yellowstone and Idaho Falls

Saturday was an early morning for us: we were up, showered, dogs walked and fed, and checked out of the Snow King Resort in Jackson Hole at 7:42 am. First order of business: find some coffee. Back at the hotel, an internet search turned up a promising coffee shop on the square downtown, but we couldn't drive right to it: the street was closed for the final farmers market of the year.

Clouds on Ski Runs at Snow King Resort

Ann walked over to it to find that it didn't open until 8am. A passerby pointed her to a bakery just down the street and Annie bee-lined for it. I pulled the car over to the bakery while she went in. A sea of beautiful Patagonia-clad people and what appeared to be soccer moms were coming and going from the bakery. Clearly, Patagonia down puffies are a fashion statement in Jackson Hole. Even Ann was wearing one. I felt so out of place wearing my Montbell ultralight down vest, like a country bumpkin come to town, but I rocked it anyway: it was 28 degrees. And if you believe a word of that, then you know me not in the slightest.

I could see Ann through the front window as she loaded up her coffee. Me, I like mine black. Ann, not so much. She's more of the milkshake kind of person. So it takes her a while, especially when she is busy chatting up everyone around her. Her hands were going in true Italian style as she was conversing most animatedly with the woman beside her. Do you have any idea of the torture it is to be in the car dogsitting, fiending for coffee, while watching your cup of coffee sitting on the counter, all alone and neglected?

While she was inside, though, she did discover the reason why we couldn't find a reasonably priced hotel room. There was a huge invitational soccer tournament in town. We had already driven by one field that was loaded with kids and just around the corner from the bakery, hence the continual flow of soccer moms, we drove by another larger complex wall to wall with kids and soccer balls.

Our first stop out of town was to have a glance at the wetlands on the National Elk Refuge, a 25,000-acre sanctuary that borders Jackson Hole on the north. Elk are migratory, moving up into higher elevation in the warmer months in search of food and coming down from the brutally cold heights in the winter. Our timing was not good: the elk were still up in Yellowstone. But still, I had seen a lot of ducks on our way in the day before and I wanted to have a brief glance at them. It is prime time for waterfowl migration.

Bordering Jackson Hole to the North

Ducks and Wetlands in Context

The light, staring due east into the sun rising over Bridger-Teton National Forest, was not good for either photographing or identifying what birds had stopped in for a rest on the waters of the refuge. But still in the photo below I see several Ring-necked Ducks, Aythya collaris (white rings on bills, upper left and center), a Red-necked Grebe in winter plumage, Podiceps grisegena (with the needle bill, lower left), and perhaps five American Coots, Fulica americana (lower center and right), the ones that look a bit like floating chickens.

Duck Soup,National Elk Refuge

We didn't linger over the ducks. They're not Ann's thing and she was great to humor my wish to stop for a moment. So we headed north for the 60-mile drive into Yellowstone, all the while keeping our eyes peeled right for elk. We did not see any elk. But we did see a very dark animal larger than a horse with massive horns and a dewlap: a bull moose! I'm guessing it was a young bull that had never been on the refuge before. It seemed to be trying to go west through the fence that establishes the western boundary of the refuge and keeps the animals off the busy highway that runs along the refuge. Neither of us had seen a moose before so it was quite thrilling to be in exactly the right place at the right time.

Holy Bullwinkle Batman!

I had been trying to get a photo of a magpie for several states in a row. They're pretty wary of humans and don't want to hold still to have their portraits taken. Ann spotted this one on a fence as I was filling up with gas and I was able to get a photo, not a great one, but a photo. Speaking of gas, I couldn't figure out why the Jeep was sucking wind going up the mountains until I finally spotted the octane ratings on the gas pumps in Wyoming. Regular gas comes in at only 85 octane which sucks compared to 87 octane for conquering mountains. Once I figured this out, it was only mid-grade (87 octane) for us.

Black-billed Magpie, Pica hudsonia

Once we had gassed up, the ground fog was dissipating and the sun was coming on strong in stark contrast to the crap weather of the day before. The Tetons were stunning in the morning light and we stopped several times just to admire them. I had to wait a couple minutes for the last shot of Grand Teton below. The cloud cover was changing rapidly. I put on a 4-stop polarizing filter and waited until a shred of a cloud passed in front of the summit of Grand Teton. The dumbed down JPEGs in this post don't do the photos justice. No photos of this glorious place do it any justice at all. This is another must-see place that should be on your bucket list.

Tetons,  Grand Teton Far Right

The Tetons are Stunning

Grand Teton, Ground Fog Over Snake River

North of Jackson, the road splits and the left fork heads north past the entry gates for Grand Teton National Park and then following the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Highway, into Yellowstone National Park. If you're following this route, you're going to have to ante up entrance fees for both parks. It probably makes good sense to purchase an annual parks pass for $80. I know we probably would have incurred $125 of entry fees on this trip alone. Because we do so much hiking, we buy an annual pass each year.

Ann Waited in Line for Two Minutes to Take This

We finally hit the south entrance gates to Yellowstone at exactly 10am, two hours and fifteen minutes after we left Jackson. That tells you how much time we spent looking at things along the way, including beautiful Jackson Lake. Our first long stop was in the West Thumb (of Yellowstone Lake) Geyser Basin to check out the geothermal things going on.

We were not alone. We encountered tour bus after tour bus of Asian tourists who spoke no English. I believe they were Koreans. In any case, they didn't seem to operate by American rules of politeness and had no problem blocking paths, shoving you out of the way if they wanted to see something, or planting themselves in your frame just as you were shooting a picture. It's probably a cultural thing but it came across as rude to us. In any case, hordes of people are not our thing and we moved along fairly quickly.

Chipmunk Eating Grass

I expected to see much more diversity of birds in Yellowstone than we saw. Other than a handful of ravens and a couple of raptors, the most commonly spotted birds were Mountain Bluebirds, flashing brilliant blue in the morning sun, and Brewer's Blackbirds.

Female Mountain Bluebird, Sialia currucoides

So here's the thing about most of Yellowstone's thermal attractions, especially in cold weather and it was cold with snow all over the ground except on the warm spots: the steam from the various things obscures any reasonable photo. And a lot things look liking boiling mud, flat and uninteresting in a photograph, in a word: ugly. But the juxtaposition of snow and steam did make for some interesting photographs.

A Thermal Pool

Another Pool, Boiling

Mini Geyser in Aquamarine Pool

Steam and Snow in a Geyser Basin

A Fumarole

Many of the great sights in Yellowstone are the (for the most part) tranquil rivers flowing through the valleys. East of the Continental Divide, the Yellowstone meanders through the Hayden Valley where we saw a few buffalo grazing up and off the river. The Gibbon River is quite a spectacular trout stream with falls and rapids easily visible from the road. The continuation of this river going west is called the Madison River and it was dotted every few hundred yards with fly fishermen. On the way into the park from the south and west of the Continental Divide is the Lewis River shown below just before it dives off a 30-foot ledge at Lewis Falls.

Snow and Rivers

Lewis Falls

Lewis Falls are pretty much small potatoes compared to the main attraction, the 308-foot Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River located in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

Lower Falls of the Yellowstone

Love the Spray From the Falls

Rapids Below the Falls

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

At Canyon Village, we turned west towards Norris to start completing our loop through the southern half of park. Frankly, miles and miles of snow-covered spruce trees was doing nothing for us and we were getting hungry. We had no desire to subject ourselves to further hordes of tourists by dropping down to see Old Faithful and it would have cost us another couple hours to do so: not enough bang for the buck.

Feeling a little let down at the whole Yellowstone experience, we decided to exit west out of the park and find some lunch in West Yellowstone MT. It was looking like we were going to be shut out in seeing elk, but finally along the Madison River on the way out the west entrance, we spotted six does lying down in the field along the trout stream. Despite this, neither of us found Yellowstone to have lived up to what we thought it would be.

Because the snow the day before killed our time budget and road closure for construction in the park limited our route, we couldn't get to the parts of the park that we really wanted to visit. We just could not get to Idaho Falls by evening and still see the north and northeast parts of the park, where apparently the elk and therefore the wolves and grizzlies are holed up. We were limited to cruising the southern loop road through the forest for miles at a time with no view. And when we did stop, we were overwhelmed with tourists, even at the end of September. We never really had the chance to get out of the car, get away from the road, and experience the place.

The Only Elk We Saw in Yellowstone

West Yellowstone was a bust. We saw a deli where we could get some sandwiches, but they were closed for the season. Alas, it was McDonalds and some really crappy and tasteless chicken sandwiches. Not having fast food as any part of my diet, I was unaware how awful McDonalds food really is. From West Yellowstone, US-20 is a straight shot through the southeast corner of Montana that goes directly into Idaho Falls, a relatively easy drive after climbing up and over the Continental Divide once more on the Idaho-Montana border.

Show Us The Potatoes!

As we came down out of the mountains in Idaho, we descended onto much flatter ground. What surprised me is that we were often traveling through old lava flows. I've never seen that before. As we drove through the increasingly agricultural landscape, we were fortunate to see a prairie falcon flying alongside the road. We did not know it at the time, but on our drive on Sunday through Idaho, we would see hundreds of raptors of all kinds.

It was about 4pm when we got to Idaho Falls, having sat in traffic for a half an hour because of a horrendous accident: a box truck looked like it had exploded. The closer we got to town, the more potato-oriented businesses we saw selling all manner of potato handling equipment. We started seeing trucks hauling both potatoes and onions.

While we were stuck in the traffic jam, we decided to visit the falls in Idaho Falls before heading to a brewpub for dinner. Unlike in Sioux Falls, we couldn't get a decent address: in Idaho Falls there is a long strip park along the river with apparently no central destination. Ann put an address into the Garmin, but it clearly took us to the wrong side of the tracks and so, frustrated and hungry, we bailed and went to Idaho Brewing.

The beer wasn't bad but it wasn't exciting either and the tasting room was really sterile, so we had a beer and left for Snow Eagle Brewing which turned out to be right on the falls that we wanted to visit in the first place. I guess our good karma was working.

Idaho Falls

The Kids on the Snake River

Idaho Falls, LDS Temple

Snow Eagle Brewing

Snow Eagle Brewing is unusual for a brewpub in offering sushi. Now we love sushi more than most food, but "brewpub" and "Idaho Falls" didn't inspire confidence despite the bartender's claims that it is really good. We were seated right by the sushi bar and the product that we saw being served made me think that we were justified in passing it up as much as we might have wanted some sushi after 9 days of road food. After an early dinner, we walked the dogs along the river before heading to our hotel for the evening.