July 17, 2006

July 17, 2006

Last night in our campground we listened to a ranger give a slide show talk on the grizzly. He talks about how the park used to feed the bears and how the bears begged tourists for food as they drove thru. This is what I remember from childhood TV and what I sort of expected. Many years ago they stopped this practice and the bears have returned to feeding in the wild making them unlikely to be seen.

This morning we return to the springs and follow the boardwalk along the lower tier. Water is bubbling up in several places making different kinds of weird chalk architecture. The boardwalk although nice, has few interpretative signs and is constructed with nails that are popping up. Private deck construction switched to screws many years ago but apparently not our nation's showcase park.

From Hot Springs we head south and come upon Indian Creek campground. It has a nice stream running thru it and I want to try out my newly acquired fishing license. I strike up a fishing conversation with a guy who is preparing to enter the water. He is heavily tattooed but looks really familiar. I get my fly rod out and put on a caddis fly imitation. While Aimee reads streamside, I work the deeper section along the opposite bank. I am getting lots of surface hits but I can’t hook any. Further downstream I finally bring in a couple brook trout and I realize the problem. My small fly is too big for the small mouth on these midget fish. It is still fun as the environment is beautiful and I rarely get to watch fish attack a lure on the surface. While we are eating lunch by the stream, Aimee tells me my fellow fisherman is Lex, from the TV show Survivor. I thought I recognized him!

After fishing, we head farther south and arrive at the Norris basin area. Norris is a flat chalky white valley with geothermal activity everywhere. Some spots have hot water bubbling up into large blue Jacuzzi-like pools. Elsewhere there are jets of steam hissing from holes in the rock. This is also the location of several geysers including Steamboat, supposedly the tallest in the world when it occasionally erupts. Most of the time it is spitting water some 10 to 20 feet in the air. This is an eerie place until you realize that Yellowstone is the top of an ancient but very much alive Supervolcano. This is what you should expect on a volcano. Yellowstone erupts every 640,000 years and of course it has been 640,000 years since the last eruption.

The wildflowers are still getting to me making it difficult to do long walks. Very frustrating! I need to get in some air-conditioning so we head out the western gate in the early afternoon and stay at a private campground with electricity.