Road Trip, Part X

Monday, May 30: This was by far the best day of my stay at Yellowstone. I drove north and east toward Mammoth Springs and Tower Falls, a route that claimed to pass through wildlife-frequented areas and some of the more spectacular geothermal features of the park. To say that that claim was justified would be an understatement.

Mammoth Springs’ features had fanciful but evocative names like Palette Spring, Cleopatra’s Terrace, Canary Spring, Liberty Cap and Minerva Terrace and each feature more than lived up to its beautiful name. The old Fort Yellowstone, now converted to ranger quarters, is in Mammoth, where a couple of magpies, true to their nature, had made their home near human habitation. Fort Yellowstone also houses a museum where I attended an entertaining talk on G.L. Henderson, Yellowstone’s first interpretive tour guide of the late 19^th century who was responsible for naming many of the features of the park.

Past Mammoth and on the way to Tower Falls I, along with a horde of people that included several ardent nature photographers, spent a happy two hours following one of Yellowstone’s main attractions – a black hear and her yearling cub. Our gradual progress along the road as we followed the bears, and the hushed anticipation and whispered conversations among the spectators gave me the distinct impression of being at some golf tournament watching Tiger Woods prepare for a long eagle putt.

The real spectacle was when the mother headed up the hillside towards us, casually ambled across the road like a bored diva posing for the paparazzi and disappeared in the undergrowth further up the hillside. (I’m convinced she had an awards show to attend.) In all of this her cub was never far behind and was much more inquisitive than his mother, often scurrying up tree trunks to get a better view of us rubberneckers which, of course, allowed us to get a better view of him.

Further on along Tower Road I passed by the remnants of a petrified forest, fossilised remains of trees from thousands of years ago, buried under the ash of ancient volcanic eruptions. Tower Falls itself was every bit as scenic as I had now come to expect but the day was not yet over. There was much more wildlife in store – a beaver sunning himself on some rocks, several deer and elk and another black bear, this time with two cinnamon cubs. (A friendly ranger on hand informed us that the cinnamon colouring is the result of a recessive gene but is fairly common among black bears.)

Since this was my last evening in Yellowstone and I had been living on Maggi and macaroni and cheese for the past three nights, I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner at Mammoth Hotel. I don’t know if it was the view of the sun setting over the mountains, the pair of elk calmly grazing on the front lawn of the hotel or the delicious trout and glass of Chardonnay I consumed but I felt extremely mellow and satisfied as I drove back to Madison that night.