Yellowstone Day 1: Hot Springs

Its rather strange how an extra day of holiday can boost your spirits of vacationing. On a regular weekend nobody moves outside a 300 miles radius. Throw in an additional 24 hours to that weekend, and people are ready to fly off more than half of the country. My visit to the Yellowstone National Park was a result of the same strange feeling of 'one more day of holiday = infinite time in hand'. 

 

Asish da, Sukanya di, Soumen and Moumita were kind enough to allow me in the trip as the fifth person. And being the kind of person I am, I did not think of backing out for a second. After all, were going to see the mighty Yellowstone National Park (YNP). We took a quick night's nap at a motel in the outskirts of the Salt Lake City after we reached there via Houston at about 1:30 am. A fresh start the day next at about 6 in the morning and we were on our way to the South entrance of YNP, but we had decided to take a detour and so witness the view of Teton National Park. The splendor of the white and blue mountains in front of the serene lake on that slightly overcast day - it was truely breathtaking.

Although, our GPS was saying it would take us 6 hours from Salt Lake City to reach YNP gates, we made it in a little more than 4 hours (including two stops in the scenic Teton).Once inside, we were gradually getting fed up of using the word 'beautiful' and were looking for something mind blowing. It was the beginning of summer (end of May) and the place still had snow with sharp conical green trees protruding the whiteness with their sense of freshness. Once you stop your engine at such a lookout point, and choose to stand near the cliff, the sounds of nature start appearing so clear and loud. It certainly has that instant rejuvenating qualities.

With the energy level back to its high, we went for the most punctual hot spring in the park - The Old Faithful. Sadly we reached the place just when the geyser had finished blowing up. We had exactly 90 mins before it will put up its next show. We waited (with food, drinks and obviously on the best possible spot I could find). And it was so worth it. The might of earth's internal heat (read anger) being vented out with water. Unstable grounds, risk of burns, yet majestic!

Driving on (a duty taken up by the skillful hands of Soumen and Asish da, especially after my famous incidence with a single lane road, a tree and a horse), we went to see how picturesque the combination of heat and minerals can be, if given the right opening on earth's lithosphere. The color of the Sapphire Pool was what we could only perceive as the purest of turquoise blues any of us had seen. Top it with a clear sunlight and the some smoke and Swoosh! you loose the track of time looking at it.

[Image NOT clicked by the author]

After this, it was like a series of hot springs all day. Once we were in this part of the park, it was difficult to remember that we had seen snow not very long ago. And it was not just the heat from these hot springs, but the smoke and not to mention the pungent smell (possibly the sulphide gas of hydrogen). But in spite of these, the crowd was considerable to see the Rainbow Pool.

Moving on the same single lane road, every hot spring pool was surprising us with its power and capacity to hold heat. In fact, it was so catchy that by the end of the day (and the vacation), we were seeing everything as "exploding!" ("phaatchhe!" as in Bengali).

 

The untamed rage which one witnesses in these rare geological features, is enough to last an awe-struckness for a long long time. It connect you very closely with the fact that you are merely a piece among a million more in the system called Earth.

But it was not just the geo-thermal activities of this part of the word which makes in noteworthy. The wildlife here is quite diverse too. The road being only one lane one way, there was a stagnancy in the its entire traffic whenever any animal was spotted. In our two day exploration of the park, we were lucky enough to see the always grumpy bisons, lone wandering brown bears and also a black bear family. And everytime anything was spotted, there was this silent but hard-to-control excitement in everyone on that stagnant traffic.

The raw earthiness of this place instills a crippling feeling in the most knowledgeable of beings - how less we know, how less we have seen, how idiotically happy we are with our puny quantity of freedom in our small closed worlds. If life has to be a race, why not make it a race to a beautiful destination, or at least with some memorable pit-stops to halt and look around for a while...

West Yellowstone is a lovely town for the park visitors. In the state of Montana, all this small town has are hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops. Surrounded by hills, the violet sunset behind the town's silhouette was absolutely charming. But before we went out to get some Chinese food for the night (and almost had it for free, an honest mistake!), all of us had to spend at least 30 mins in shower to get rid of the daylong accumulation of  the hydrogen sulphide smell. The rest of the evening was laughter and cherishing the vacation so far. We all went off to sleep soon, we had another day of YNP coming up.

See you on the next day.
G'night.

Yellowstone Day 2: Falls

The best part of going out with equally crazy people is that everybody does their best to stick to the plan. Nobody shows the attitude of "being only 5 minutes late". The sunrise in town of West Yellowstone was certainly not that colorful as its sunset, but was definitely had an air of rise-and-shine-dear-travelers.

After a heavy breakfast at a log house McDonalds, we started off for further north. The day previous was from south to north, via west (and then rest at west). Today, we had the north, the east and then finally the south and then exit from the park. The first stop was the grand Mammoth Spring. A huge heap of dazzling limestone with smoking hot water cleansing it everywhere. This is one of those places where you actually feel the need of wearing a protective sun-glass. The disturbingly white reflection at that time of day only made me think how it must be to look at this on a full moon cloudless night... only heavens know.

As the day progressed, we got habituated with the openness of the place. Other than the pitch road and a few sign-boards on its sides, nothing else artificial was to be seen for long distances. The effort is not just for the preservation of the natural beauty, but also the preservation of the natural habitat of the native animals.


The list of things-to-see went on and we were finally on the surprisingly small two tiered wooden platform to see the Tower Falls. The first tier was not offering a good view (not sure, if it was due to my own height!), but the second (the higher one) was just perfect. A waterfall in the middle of all the green. It was barely visible where the fallen water was landing. As a matter of fact, Yellowstone National Park is still not completely known. The rangers still survey the land (sometimes from the sky) to look for anything which is still unknown - a hill, a waterfall, a hot geyser, anything. I guess, this possibility of the unknown has kept mother nature fascinating and full of wonders since the beginning of mankind! Its difficult to imagine what the human will do when it will assume to have known everything about nature.


I was expecting to run into that smell from the last day somewhere or the other, but there was not a hot geyser anywhere to be seen. Instead, it was cold in the extreme north of the hoop called Yellowstone Highway. And it seemed very thoughtful of the management to have built pullover points at those perfect bends and altitudes of the hilly road (cannot appreciate enough how skillfully our vehicle was driven on these roads). At places like these you somehow evaluate your existence, or may be the cause of it. You know you will drive away from this place in next 11 minutes, but for every second you remain there standing, you ask what is more worth of collecting in this life - paper and metal or some pure air in your memory.

The next point was the one to which I personally was looking forward the most. The Artists' Point. Undoubtedly, it looks like some serious painting effort by the creator. A picture perfect waterfall in the heart of grand welcoming arms of  the canyon walls.

Standing there and looking directly at the eye of the fall gives you a feeling that it is looking back at you (although, it looks more like the stuck out tongue of Rolling Stones, but still...). And the moment you realize that the most beautiful thing present there is looking at you, it is needless to explain that overwhelming feeling of joy. And this place is not called Artists' Point for without a reason. Artists literally come to this place and paint their version of this fall.

There were more places where the group stopped just for the sake of getting out of the car and standing, there were many more pictures taken of the depth of the canyon, and also of the sharp bends of roads cutting through snowy forest grounds, but I probably wont be able to fill up the spaces around those pictures (not enough adjectives in my vocab), but one thing I can say - by the late afternoon that day, all five of us were not at all tired, but were neck-deep cheerful to have seen what we had seen in last two days. We now knew how we wanted our future trips to be like.

We came out of the park gates when the sun was still there and started to drive back to the Salt Lake City airport. We could not have thanked the sky enough to have remained cheerful throughout the weekend and occasionally putting on fashionable clouds with magnificent colors and shapes. We stopped at the town of Idaho Falls, had a really nice dinner at a local Olive Garden as mark of the accomplishment of our Yellowstone mission and finally at the airport, we got ourselves framed in a single shot: shoe-less, exhausted, sitting spread legs on the floor ...but gloriously cheerful!!

Huhh!! Till next time,
Cheers!

Ruby Falls and Rock City

Anamitra, Agniswar, Sananda, Suman, Ipsita, Arup, Joyeeta, Vidya

Thanks guys, for bearing me on that weekend.

Other than this amazing bunch of friends, I had my new DSLR camera with me on this trip. Yes, my old Sony Cybershot (with me since 2008) has now decided to take some rest. It was the time of my 5th entry in this blog Bitten by the ClickBug, when I had started to call this blog, a photo-blog. And it was my Cybershot for which I could do it. This is the 50th entry and as much I owe it to the wonderful readers of this dusty page on the internet, I owe it to my little cybershot as well. It has helped re-defined a lot me in a last few years.

Now, back to the trip. It is very truly said - the combined excitement of a group of excited people is more than the sum of the individual excitement of the individuals of the group (although, I have no idea if someone has actually said it or my brain just made it up). The physical measurement of the entity called 'excitement' was not a problem in anyway when Agni was driving down the Volkswagon Jetta at more than 90 mph (more than 95 actually, if I remember it correctly) in that slippery rain. Thanks to the custom made mp3 disc we both had made the night before (before going to Walmart at midnight with Ana, Sananda and Ipsita to buy for-the-road snacks).

Frankly, nobody talks about visiting Ruby Falls or Rock City (not 'rock' as in music but 'rock' as in the solid geological formation of minerals). Nobody. But the group was too much excited to sit back home on yet another weekend (and my new cam had to had a test outing!). So, when we reached the place, we were (at least I was) looking for reasons to convince myself that it would have been a regret had I not come to this place. And by the end of the day, I sure was convinced.

This picture here (this one, just above the word 'above' here) is from the top of a castle-ish structure the management there had build and called it The Lookout Mountain. No historical significance whatsoever. But, the roof top of this showoff castle sure had grabbed one hell of a view for itself.

The main attraction, however, was not over the ground, but under it. Yes, Ruby Falls is a one of a kind underground waterfalls. A 145 feet tall waterfall (almost a 15 storied building), discovered by a cave enthusiast named Leo Lambert and he named it after his wife, Ruby (apparently, a beloved wife!). The place has no natural light, so the governing body here used this chance to decorate the interior with whichever colors they could imagine. Getting near the fall meant sprinkles and staying a little away meant rest your back on the rocky wall of the cave and admire. I did both! Even on our way to this spot, were offered by some signature cave-like structures (including the cliche stalactites and stalagmites and coin pools etc etc).

Few more miles ahead was the Rock City. Now, this was the most happening place that day. Here is how it goes - We all got the tickets and entered the premises completely decorated by rock (at places naturally, at places artificially). Before we were less than 100 steps in, it started to rain cats and dogs (more of tigers and wolves!). With no shelter on our heads, our only chance of relative-dryness was this rock here - The Mushroom Rock! All nine of us ran and squeezed ourselves under this rock... It felt like finding the last missing piece of a very annoying jigsaw puzzle - correct time, correct place, correct shape. It sheltered us for close to 20 minutes in that everything-looks-white heavy rainfall. "Guys! Can we have salute for this..." . There were a lot of "my shoes are ruined", "my hair is ruined" "hey! don't push! I am already half outside..." that day, but I am sure that more than everything else on that trip, we all laugh the most about this mushroom rock episode.

With our enthusiasms washed down, we came out of the rock city gates without going further in. But, once the rain stopped, the fire resurfaced and this time with twice the heat. All of us dried off (under those rest room hand dryers) and convinced the security at the gates to let us in one more time holding the same previously torn tickets in our hands. And guess what, he did! He knew it rained.

"When we have come this far (close to only 300 miles, though), we will go till the end (of the cliff)". This is the kind of text-book energy you actually get, when you travel with a band of equally charged up people. And, honestly, sometimes it takes a lot of this kind of energy to rise above the sense of rational thinking and step onto pieces of flat wood hanging hundreds of feet above the ground with only two pairs of ropes (Okay! I totally knew that it was safe... just wanted to justify a need of courage, in case it would not have been!).

After we crossed this (inspired by quite an aged lady who walked over it without a pause), we were on the cliff that was the last rock of the place. After a postcard photograph (thanks to that random guy from that random group) with all of us smiling in it, we went for the last thing to see in that place - the beautiful little waterfall coming out of a gap in the top most rock. They call it - the Lovers' Leap (tragically, the name says it all).

After some silent minutes of admiration (by all of us. Yes, I noticed!), we left the cliff, walked over tha hanging bridge, past the Mushroom Rock (salute, again), out of the same turn-wheel gate, smiling and winking at the same security people and directly into the most adorable Starbucks I have seen till today! (yes, the one beside the word "beside" here) Yes, it was time when we had to address the fact that all of us are the last quarter of our twenties and this is the time caffeine actually starts to appear like the tonic which is needed to start our days and end our long walks (its like an unwritten rule or something!).

Later that day, we headed for the city of Nashville (my second trip to the city) to enjoy the thing called Saturday night. I wont take the names here, but some of us did not posses their id cards with them at the gates of the bar and the rest of us were "sensitive" enough to spend not more than 15-20 minutes (only) inside the bars listening to live country music and get some drinks! If I can bring myself to that state of courage someday, I will narrate that story in detail. But not today!

And that's that. Next day, we were back in Lexington, all getting ready for the long weekend in 10 more days.

Till the next one,

Cheers!