Wyoming - Day 9 - Old Faithful and the Tetons

Fireside Resort/Jackson Hole Campground, Jackson

Thursday, 9 September 2021

It was 45° in the cabin when I got up so I quickly closed all those windows and skylights I'd opened the day before, and turned on the heater, which Dexter parked himself in front of.

Because the only electricity in the campground was at the few bathrooms and the office, I got a view of a million stars on our early morning walk.  It was great, except the abundance of trees kept me from seeing a horizon.  I'm guessing maybe lodgepole pines?

On the first walk, I started wondering what an elk's bugle sounds like, wondering if I'd know it if I heard it.  Well, I can tell you the answer is no, because I actually found a National Park Service link that offers a recording of one.  Here's the link.   https://www.nps.gov/sounds-elk  Now I wonder who decided to call this sound a "bugle"?

On our 2nd walk, I passed a couple of parked vehicles that were noticeable to anyone who's ever lived in Alaska.  One had an Arizona license plate and a bumper sticker from the Red Dog Saloon (a fixture in Juneau); the other had a Hawaii license plate (unusual) and a license plate holder from Mendenhall Motors (the Mendenhall Glacier is another Juneau fixture).

shows more Tetons detail

On the road

We left the campground at 6:24 this morning, a half hour before sunrise but it was already daylight so I wasn't worried about driving before dawn.

I took that same road I'd been too sleepy to drive yesterday, seeing stunning views of Yellowstone Lake in its pre-dawn blueness over the tops of pines; crossing the Continental Divide again, twice; passing several bison.  In fact, I pulled into a small pullout to let a car pass us and found myself just a few feet away from a bison grazing there.  I didn't take a photo of him, wanting only to get away before he decided I was a threat.  But here's one I saw.

Picturesque, huh?
That smoke isn't exactly smoke but instead steam from nearby geysers.

Old Faithful

When I saw the nearly empty parking lot, I figured either I'd picked the wrong time to come or I'd picked exactly the right time to come.  The problem is that, though they can predict when it'll erupt, they make the predictions based on the previous eruption.  Coming to the first eruption after dawn meant I couldn't take advantage of the staff having made calculations from the one before.

The ranger yesterday told me they not only note when the eruption takes place but also its duration.  The longer the previous eruption lasted, the longer it'll be before the next one.  There's a good video, about 4½ minutes, that not only explains clearly how they calculate them but also shows the crowds I was trying to avoid by coming early.   https://www.nps.gov/geyser-activity  At that page, click on the video labeled "In Depth - Predicting Old Faithful."

Their videos of the eruption are, of course, much better than mine, but I still want to post mine because this is what I saw.  

First, some ambiance:

That video is only 29 seconds long and shows how few people had arrived and how much volcanic activity is in just this one area, which I think is called the Upper Geyser Basin.

I walked to the other end of the boardwalk 
and noticed this plume of steam coming from Old Faithful,
suggesting to me it might be working up to an eruption.

By the time I'd walked back to a point much closer, other people told me a bison had sauntered into the area, climbed onto the boardwalk, walked across it and into the area next to Old Faithful, and was now grazing peacefully just a few feet from this steaming geyser.  I thought maybe when it went off he'd move, but I found later I'd guessed wrong, as my photos will show.

This video lasts 1 minute, 29 seconds; the video I actually took lasts 3 minutes, 17 seconds, but this program told me it was too long and I had to trim it.  I'm sorry that I haven't been able to figure out how to rotate the picture, so you'll have to rotate your screen to see it right-side up.  Still, here it is.

In that Park Service video about predicting the eruptions, they say a duration of 3½ minutes is considered a long one.  Well, I hope they were seeing this one, because even though my first video lasted almost that long, I noticed after I stopped the camera that it was still spewing out water, so I started filming it again.  This take is 1 minute, 11 seconds, and you can still see water coming up inside all that steam.  Incidentally,  you can also see just how bothered that bison was by the eruption.

Actually, this video was 1 minute, 12 seconds, but the program here told me it was too long.  But since that's shorter than the one it accepted above, I cut only 1 second off and it accepted it.  Why do people think technology makes sense?

I was interested that the videos I took of this eruption combined to 4½ minutes, and that doesn't include the period when I wasn't filming between the 2.  So what I saw was apparently much longer than the one the Park Service shows in their video as being a long one.

As I was leaving the area, I saw several signs that were interesting.  First, there's this one that explains this stuff (the geysers, not my computer program).

This is the overall sign, with enlargements below.

top portion

middle portion

bottom portion

Next to it was this one, equally informative but from a different point of view.

note this sign is in 6 languages -
detail enlarged below

The moral of that story is, despite the Park Service providing safety measures,
there are still idiots who think they're invincible and end up paying a pretty steep price.

And there was this sign on a completely different subject.

The sign under the tree says:
Notice To Visitors
This group is expressing First Amendment Rights.
These activities are not connected with nor endorsed by
the National Park Service.

So okay, I'm curious.  What on earth do you think these folks (I guess it was too early for them) were being First-Amendment-y about?

Back on the road

I left the Old Faithful parking area soon after 8 AM.  The dogs and I walked around the area a bit, but I was nervous that that bison might have friends who'd be coming to join him, not to mention other people walking their dogs, so we didn't go very far.

I'd intended to go farther along the road to the Grand Prismatic Springs that I mentioned yesterday, but because the crowd had greatly increased in the short time I was here at Old Faithful, I was afraid it was getting too late to see the springs without more competition than I wanted.  I know the Old Faithful boardwalk is outside, but I also know folks were getting pretty close together and I wore my mask the whole time.  So I decided to save that polychrome sight for another trip.  But I found this website that gives a lot of interesting information about it, including its use by NASA and by crime-solvers.   https://www.yellowstonepark.com/grand-prismatic-hot-springs

On the way to Old Faithful, I'd noticed a sign and pull-out for Kepler Cascades, and on the way back I dutifully pulled out.  And found a really nice set of waterfalls.  This video is only 15 seconds and, once again, you'll have to turn your screen to see it right-side up.

I had 2 problems taking any photos at this cascade: one is that the sun was just showing over the mountains and the glare meant I couldn't even see the top cascade in my camera viewer; and second is that to get this video, I had to walk out on a viewing platform suspended above the cascades, and I had a problem with the height.  But I got this.  It was really pretty and really peaceful there.

And for one last video.  I saw a bunch of cars pulled on the sides of the road and figured there was wildlife around.  There was.  A mama bear and her cub.  I had to zoom the lens so much to pick them up that the picture's a little wobbly, but it's still okay.  I missed most of the show but managed to get 51 seconds before they disappeared.  Turn off your sound for this one or my blinking blinker will drive you crazy.

Tip for visitors to national parks: when you see a bunch of folks pulled to the side of the road, stop and see what they're looking at, because you might want to look at it too.

And then we headed for the south end of Yellowstone and the north entrance to the Tetons.

On the way south, we crossed the Continental Divide once again, this time at 7,988'.  

The big attraction along this road is Lewis Lake, which is huge and the road runs beside it for miles.  At one point I found myself dodging more parked cars and found these folks were stopped for Lewis Falls, which are visible from the road.  I didn't stop but another trip I would because they're beautiful.  This photo I found online doesn't show how picturesque they actually are.

Lewis Falls

From the Continental Divide we kept going downhill (duh) and my ears were popping again.  I could see the Tetons in the view in the south.

And we came to the South Entrance to Yellowstone National Park (elev. 6,886' - I told you my ears were popping), which was the dividing line with the Grand Teton National Park.  I'd expected to find an entrance booth there like I did with Yellowstone but nope.  I was curious if my Senior Pass would work there too, because I knew they charged an entrance fee, and I'd hoped to get a map and information from them like I did at the Yellowstone entrance.  But no entrance station.

So tip to visitors to Grand Teton National Park: if you're going to Yellowstone too, enter there first, pay the entrance fee, and that will take you to the north entrance for Grand Teton, which will let you in for free.  I'll say now that, when I got to the south entrance, I saw an entrance station and a long line of folks waiting to pay their fee.

A sign told me I could get information at the ranger station near the entrance, but I kept thinking I'd find a booth somewhere farther on so I didn't stop.  That meant the only tourist materials I had was the booklet I got at the Wyoming Visitor Center on Day 1.  Still, it's a fairly complete batch of information, and I was only going to be here 1 night, so I left it at that.

The park sensibly provides a number of turn-outs with parking areas, because they know people are going to stop and take pictures anyway so it's better to give us someplace safe to do it.  Unfortunately for me, there weren't enough informational signs to tell me what I was looking at.  I only found 2.  This is the first:

some detail enlarged below

What I actually saw from that pull-out area is this:

From here, I was too far north to get a good view.

And at a turn-out for Mt. Moran I found this sign:

detail enlarged below

And the mountain this sign is focused on is this one:

Mt. Moran

According to the guide book, this is the farthest north of the Teton range.  I guess I should have taken a video to try to show these mountains, but use your imagination to string the following photos together.

I think the tallest peak in this photo is Grand Teton itself
at 13,770'.

You can see where the photo above leaves off and this one begins.
I think the tallest peak in the batch on the right side is
Teewinot Mountain, 12,325'.

And again, you can see where the photo above leaves off
and this one begins.  I think the mountain just to the
right of center is Mt. Moran, 12,605'.

The only other time I came here was in July 1977.  There weren't many people then and I remember it being a casual kind of place.  Even the town of Jackson seemed pretty laid back.  I have a vague memory of the beauty of the mountains from our campground, but I have no idea where that was, and I spent a little time trying, unsuccessfully, to find some place that fit my memory.

To that end, I took what was billed as a scenic route down Jenny Lake Road, intending to stop at the Jenny Lake Overlook.  Jenny Lake is a small lake at the base of Teewinot Mountain and, it turns out, is wildly popular.  At least, I came to that conclusion based on the impossibility of me even getting into the parking lot, let alone finding a place to park.  The drive there was very scenic, but if I ever go back it'll be much earlier in the day.

It seemed that way everywhere: at a place labeled Taggart Lake Trailhead - a trailhead, for crying out loud - the parking lot was jammed with vehicles and dozens of them lined both sides of the road for a long way.  And this isn't a weekend, after all, but a Thursday.  After school's started.  You can't tell me that many retired people wanted to congregate at a trailhead, let alone hike the trail.

As we went along the road, we saw a number of bushes and trees turning red and yellow.  I'm pretty sure some of them were aspens.  Fall comes in a hurry to this part of the country, I guess.

Google had given me 2 choices of route, and I chose the less-traveled road (of course) called Moose-Wilson Road.  I was skeptical because of the name, until I noticed that the road connected the 2 towns by those names, and noticed that the road went right by tonight's campground so was surely legit.

I'd no sooner turned onto it than I saw a sign saying the road was "extremely narrow and winding."  It also said certain vehicles were prohibited, but I didn't bother with that, knowing we'd been able to go almost anywhere we tried.  Well, I changed my mind less than a quarter mile farther on, when I came to a sharp left-hand turn that was going uphill at the same time it turned, on a road that abruptly narrowed to the bare bare minimum needed for 2 lanes.  Fortunately, the road was clearly visible from both directions of that turn, so I stopped at my end until oncoming traffic had ended.

At the top of that sharp incline was a small parking area (though I couldn't see what it was there for) with lots of cars and another sign that was even more urgent than the first one saying, in essence, don't use this road unless you're in a smallish nimble vehicle.  So I turned around while everybody stared at me.  Really.  Everybody.

Then I had to go back down that steep incline making a sharp right-hand turn on a still narrow road, and I noticed the oncoming traffic waited for me to get down.  And yet I saw 2 taxis at separate times coming toward me as I was leaving.  Two from different companies and not apparently traveling together.  Who takes a taxi to no place?  In fact, which 2 people take a taxi to no place?

So I drove back to Moose, which is where the Park's southern entrance is, and turned onto US 191 toward Jackson, pop. 9,577, elev. 6,209'.  Jackson looks nothing like my memory of a quiet western town, I'm sorry to say, and I noticed gas is $4/gallon here.  I drove through and eventually turned onto the Moose-Wilson Road from the southern end.

At tonight's campground, I'd hoped to get there earlier than I did because there, like Grant Village, I hadn't been able to reserve a specific site and I was hoping not to get buried in the campground.  I'd chosen this campground because it was the most accessible one that also had electric hookups that also had a remotely affordable price (about $65/night here).  As with campgrounds around Yellowstone, those anywhere near Teton aren't near but instead an hour or more away from anything I wanted to see.  I didn't even try to stay in the national park this time because I was hoping for an internet signal and I didn't want another night without electricity in this changeable weather.

Anyway, the campground owner happily told me she'd been able to upgrade me from electric only to a full hook-up site.  But since that site was in the middle of the campground - exactly where I didn't want to be - and the electric only site I'd otherwise have was near the entrance - I turned down her largesse.  As it was, we were surrounded by big dogs, but we made it work.

The entrance to this campground was lined with what they called cabins, which looked to me like very upscale tiny houses.  Out of curiosity, I asked the owner how much they charged for those, and she said they start at $500/night.  So yeah, upscale.