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!