Journal Entry: Yellowstone in a Day

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We woke up early that morning, before the sun had risen. I rolled out of bed, grabbed the clothing I set aside the night before and pulled it on. After brushing my teeth, I braided my hair to prepare it to be stuffed under a bulky winter hat all day. I packed my backpack with my nature journal, water bottle, binoculars, and gloves before I slung it over my shoulder and left the room. We hopped in the car as fast as we could. It was cold outside.

My mom and I were in Montana. The previous morning, our plane landed in a town about ninety miles north of Yellowstone National Park. We were visiting, just for a few days, and after some discussion we knew we couldn’t miss our opportunity to see this beloved National Park. What would normally be a fifteen hour drive from our home was now a mere two hour drive from the hotel. So we set an alarm for six, rolled out of bed, hopped in the car, and started on our way.

The sun rose while we were still driving. Its welcome return slowly revealed purple mountains towering above a vast golden valley of frost-bitten grass. The scene rolled on for miles. Every turn in the road brought into view a new snowy peak, and a new field that was occasionally interrupted by a few naked trees or a winding river. We passed pastures filled with brown and black cows, each one equipped with a fuzzy winter coat. Later, herds of elk told us we were getting close.

It was just about ten-o-clock when we reached the entrance. The park ranger handed us a map and commented on how great the weather was. Though it was just above thirty degrees, we agreed with her; the sun was shining on the entire landscape, there were a few clouds on the horizon to give the sky a bit of texture, and the icy roads were already thawing. After a quick look at our map to located the dot representing Mammoth Hot Springs, we thanked the ranger and continued on our way.

I had never been to Yellowstone before, so I didn’t really know what to expect, besides the numerous hydrothermal pools and geysers I had seen in pictures. That’s why the mountainous landscape surprised me. I expected it to flatten out at some point, revealing a huge, empty plain that would stretch out to the horizon. But the mountains didn’t recede, and the park was far from empty.

We started at the hot springs. A boardwalk had been built all around the spring system, so that tourists could observe from a safe distance. As we approached the first set of springs I noticed a black-billed magpie walking in the steaming runoff. Before, where the snow hadn’t melted yet, I noticed a line of tracks. Each print had three toes in front and one long toe behind. Now I saw where the tracks had come from. The magpie occasionally bobbed its head down to dip its beak in the water. Was it drinking the water, or was as it eating something? I'm not sure. After watching the magpie for a few more moments and talking with some ladies who were photographing the springs, I spotted another magpie down the slope, standing in the runoff, just like the first. Maybe hot spring runoff is a popular hang-out spot for magpies, I thought.

I turned around to see a huge wall of pools with steam rising from them as if each pool were a pot of hot noodles. Some of the pools structures were tooth-like, a similarity that my mom pointed out to me. The mineral structures that formed each individual pool were flat on top and tapered down below to resemble the root of a tooth. It was as if many slender pillars jutted out from one central point below the pool and fanned out into a cone-like shape to hold it up. I wondered how those

“pillars” were formed. Were they like stalagmites, which form like sorts of mineral icicles from the ceiling of caves? Or were they caused by erosion? Either way, the shapes and textures charmed me. I had never seen anything like it. I heard water slowly trickling down form pool to pool as I tried to sketch the view. It was surprisingly hard to capture, but I managed to get a simple sketch down before we moved on.

We spent about an hour walking along the boardwalk exploring all the springs. Some were dormant, others active, and some were a mixture of both. We wondered how and why some hot springs died. Was the flow of hot water stopped and redirected? But to where? One dormant spring we saw was an entire mound, cold and white, with no water at all. The water hadn’t been redirected; it appeared that it just stopped all together. The signs told us that these springs were in a constant state of change. Certain pools were blocked, so the water found a way around and created new pools. These changes are always happening. The next time I visit, these pools might be entirely different than when I first saw them. The sketch in my journal might never be sketched the same way again.

Our walk was accompanied by tracks in the snow that line the boardwalk. Most were human tracks, where the snow was packed down, suggesting that most tourists had taken the same rout. But one set of tracks was entirely different. It appeared to me to be dog tracks. Maybe a coyote? The paw prints were too small to be those of a wolf (thankfully, as they looked relatively fresh), but too big to belong to a fox. Later, in a park museum, we found a mold of prints that looked nearly identical to the ones we had seen in the snow. The sign read “mountain lion tracks.” We laughed, both with anxiety at knowing one had been in the area, and with relief that there hadn’t been an encounter.

Though we didn’t see any mountain lions, we did encounter some other, less frightening wildlife during our time at the hot springs. I noticed a certain animal track several times in the snow beside the boardwalk: two large, parallel imprints behind two small, close imprints. I thought these might be the tracks of a rabbit or hare, and as I looked over the railing and saw a frightened rabbit staring up me, my hypothesis was confirmed. He had just run up when I looked over the railing, and when he spotted me he stopped dead in his tracks, staring up at me with big, black eyes. His ears pointed straight to the sky like two antennae, occasionally twitching or rotating when I spoke or moved a foot. After a quick sketch, we left him alone to continue down the trail.

I was still pre-occupied with the adorable rabbit when we rounded a corner and looked at what appeared to be an empty road. I gasped and pointed towards something in a small parking lot beside the street. There, just off the pavement stood a silently grazing bison! It was the first of hundreds I would see that day, but to me, in that moment, it was my first time ever seeing a wild bison. I frantically pulled out a pencil and threw down a quick sketch on the corner of my page, right next to the sketch of the rabbit, noting the small, pointed horns that sat on either side of the bisons head. As I sketched, my mom noticed another bison, then another, then another. There must have been at least ten bison in that group beside the road.

In the past, unfortunate tourists had to learn the hard way that bison like to have plenty of space. Now, a sign in the park museum documents several deadly bison encounters to give current visitors ample warning. Bison injure and kill more Yellowstone visitors per year than all other wildlife in the area combined. So we kept our distance, remained quiet, and left a few moments after first seeing them.

Back in our car, we prepared to begin an eighteen mile drive deeper into the park. We would have driven farther if the roads beyond weren’t closed due to snowfall, but despite the limited distance, these eighteen miles were some of the most beautiful of my life. Mountains rose before us and fell behind us, vast fields swelled and deflated as we drifted forwards, and groups of bison kept us company the whole way. We saw elk and bison use their heads to shovel the deep snow aside, perhaps to reach the nutritious vegetation hiding below. Black billed magpies sometimes darted across the sky, streaming their long tails behind them like the tail of a kite in the wind. I was surprised that we encountered only a few other birds during our entire drive.

We adapted quickly to the style of exploration everyone else seemed to use: stop and go. Though

it felt strange to park our car in the middle of the road, we learned that this was the way to explore the park, at least in the empty season of winter. Wherever we saw any other car stopped, we stopped behind them to have a look. As a ranger told us earlier, stopped cars most likely indicate exciting wildlife in the area. So when we saw a couple of cars parked near a bridge, we followed their lead.

Looking over the side rails of the bridge revealed islands of snow dotted with tracks that might have belonged to a resident river otter, as we learned from the photographers we had parked behind. We lingered on the bride for a few minutes, hoping to catch a glimpse of the otter, but he never appeared. We did, however, find a couple of stealthy American Dippers bobbing in the ice-cold river. As I watched one dive down, penguin-like, to peck at the river floor, I marveled at their ability to withstand such cold temperatures. Whenever it dove under, it’s body shimmered silver as tiny air bubbles sat in each feather, some escaping to float to the surface, others remaining in place. Their feathers must be especially dense or water-resistant, I thought, to enable them hold enough body heat to survive.

After watching the dippers for a few moments and talking with the photographers, we hopped back in our car and drove on, admiring the breathtaking view. We stopped wherever we saw other cars stopped or wherever we saw something that grabbed our attention. Once, we parked behind a Custom Yellowstone Tours car that stopped to look at a napping coyote off the road and down the hill. A few moments later, it woke up, but it wasn’t in any hurry. It yawned and looked around, blinking in the bright sunlight. Once when it turned its head away, the bright rusty color of its ears caught my eye. As I sketched the coyote and scribbled some notes, the man standing by the tour car said, “It’s nice to see you sketching. We see a lot of cameras in the park and not a lot of pencils.”

This stop-and-go pattern continued into the afternoon. We ate lunch by the road, and paused wherever we wanted. A feeling of peace dominated the day; Neither of us had anywhere to be except where we were headed. The only goal of the day was to explore, at any pace and in whatever place we found ourselves. With nothing on our calendar and nothing on our mind except for the view, we snaked along the slowly winding road for miles.

But all good things come to an end. My mom wanted to be on our way home before dark, and the sun was steadily creeping towards to horizon. Hesitating, we turned around and began the long drive back out. But even though we were coving the same ground, we still saw many new things. Wildlife in is most active during early morning and late afternoons, so it should have been no surprise that all the calm herds of bison we had seen on our way up were on the move on our way down. To my delight, we were stopped by bison in the road at least five times. This gave us a chance to view these great beasts closer than would normally be safe. I snapped pictures through by binoculars to whole time, and marked in my journal every time we were stopped. It was amusing instead of frustrating, though the dimming sky did give us each a sense of urgency.

The drive back was dark. We both strained our eyes to watch for elk beside the road. By the time we made it back to town, almost every business was closed. After we grabbed a quick dinner at Chipotle, we both threw our exhausted bodies onto our beds and slept till morning.