The coldest morning yet, and we had difficulty getting going – we all kept having to stop and warm our cold, stiff hands by the campfire.  But eventually we were back in the car, ready to take on Yellowstone’s upper loop.  The advantage of our campground is that it’s in the center of the figure eight, and is therefore on both loops.  (The disadvantage is the high elevation – we discovered that the Mammoth Hot Springs campground was predicted to have balmy mid-forties temperatures tonight!)

We had three main stops today.  The first was the Norris Geyser Basin, where we happened to arrive in time to go on a ranger-led hike.  This was quite a workout for Bob, since Lanie really hit the wall this morning.  She’s been a real trooper, going on two and three mile hikes without too many complaints, but today her cold was really getting to her, and she just wanted to be carried the whole way.  (Luckily she perked up as lunchtime approached – though I’m frankly surprised anyone is able to summon any enthusiasm for lunch these days, since we’ve had peanut butter sandwiches pretty much every day since the start of the trip.  It’s hard to find anything as convenient, non-perishable, and nutritious as a good old peanut butter sandwich.)

The second stop was the Mammoth Hot Springs, a little town on the upper loop that has beautiful rock terraces that have been created by the mineral-rich hot springs.  Today is Saturday, and everything was extremely crowded.  We had trouble even finding a place to park.  However, the terraces were beautiful — like a frozen winter wonderland, even though they were really just icy-white rocks — and we had an up-close-and-personal encounter with a herd of elk that apparently like to cool off in the shade of the buildings in town.

Next came the stop that the kids were most excited about – the Boiling River.  This was the other swimming spot that the ranger had told us about, and I have to say it an amazing place to take a dip.  We had to take a road north just over the border of Montana, and look out for the unmarked parking area off the road.  There seemed to be nothing else for miles around, and we had a long walk from the parking lot to the swimming hole.  The swimming hole was in the Gardner River, with beautiful mountains rising on either side and no roads, cars, or buildings visible.  At this location, the Boiling River, a hot spring, feeds into the icy waters of the Gardner River, in a series of waterfalls stretching down the bank.  Rock walls had been built near each waterfall, creating pools where the hot, sulphurous water could mix with the cold river water.  You could stand just in front of a waterfall, with your back scalding and your front freezing.  Or you could find a little nook off to the side, and soak there in comfortably warm water.  Or, since the current was quite strong even within the pools, you could struggle upstream and let the current carry you back.  It was a unique experience, and the kids would have stayed there all day if we’d let them.  Unfortunately we left the camera in the car, so you’ll have to take our word for it.

                                                                                    

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From Bob:

Try as we might, it’s difficult for us to get out and about before 8:30.  I had hoped to be driving the roads of the upper loop early so that we might be able to see some interesting wildlife.  Not that bison aren’t interesting.  We just saw a cool ranger program yesterday on wolves, and I thought it would be cool to see some of those guys.

                Also, as today is Saturday, there was a little pressure to get out to Mammoth-Hot Springs before large crowds assembled there.  We didn’t, of course.  Mornings are slow when temperatures are low.  It is now important to cook a hot breakfast (today was a hash made from the other night’s potatoes, leftover meat and corn from last night’s burritos, cheese and some eggs cooked over the fire in our cast iron frying pan, in case you’re interested).  We also make tea on the cook stove.  This cold really does make me feel like we’re camping, and it does help to warm us all up.

                We did have a nice drive anyway – even though by 8:45 all the wolves had clearly receded into deepest Lamar Valley and other parts unknown.  Only a large and gregarious herd of elk made itself available today, starting off on someone’s lawn in Mammoth Hot Springs and working its way leisurely up to the edge of massive thermal terrace display.  It looked like the elk were walking on ice.

                I also saw two very cool birds on the Gardner River: one looked like a large goldfinch with a red-splotched head.  The other had a shiny teal body and greyish wings and flew over the river.  There were no fish to be seen on the Gardner, although it is a very nice-looking trout stream.  Of course the gallons and gallons of hot sulphurous water pouring in might have discouraged the trout.   To be fair, the river was also very swift moving at that point, so spotting trout would have been tough.

                We did see a few good-sized  trout in Fire Hole Canyon the other day.  Zoe pointed them out to me.  She’s becoming a very good animal spotter.   There must be fish in the Yellowstone River because we’ve seen dozens of people fishing in it.  I’m not sure what to make of this, because August is usually a slow month for river fishing back home.  Here there are people on the river right in the middle of the day, and it’s 85 degrees out.  To be sure, I haven’t seen anyone catch anything yet.  They may be yahoos from back East or from California. (Californians seem to be the butt of a lot of jokes on this side of the Rockies.)  It does get cold at night, as I might have mentioned, and there are still snow patches high in the mountains so the rivers are  still being fed by runoff.  Who knows, maybe there is lots of trout action here at this time of the year.  I was told that everything is catch-and-release here, except if you catch a lake trout in the big lake.  Those are considered an invasive species that interferes with the native cutthroat population’s breeding.

                Anyway, I don’t think there were many fish at the junction of the Gardner and the Boiling River, catch-and-release or not.

***

From Zoe:

At the Boiling River there are a bunch of little waterfalls coming from hot springs and  they run into pools with rock walls to keep the water in and to make there not be very much colder.  The first one is colder but the second is warmer and if you get too close to the waterfalls it gets too hot. 

Also the second pool has a current and Nadia and I had fun riding the current down, then trying to work our way back up.  We met another girl and she was doing it with us. We were in the warmer water, which is a bigger pool.  Lanie had a little place that was sort of closed off by rock and it didn’t have a lot of current.  It didn’t have a waterfall in it but it was still warm.  She found a friend, too, and they were playing in there.

At the way end there was a big pool without any current. Nadia and I would ride all the way down to there and then try to force our way back up the current.  We went down past the bottom pool a little bit, into the river.  The current was stronger. 

I feel like we only spent a short time there.  I wish we could’ve stayed longer.