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.