John Wise

When you wake in Mammoth Hot Springs you go out and explore Mammoth Hot Springs because that’s the way we do things.

We were travel noobs when we made this trip, no warm weather clothes, no rain gear, just enthusiasm, and these cheap orange plastic rain ponchos from the gift store that, while they worked, also sucked.

And then it had to go and start snowing.

It’s love.

And mud.

It’s grass, water, and algae.

It’s unidentifiable weird stuff that feels like half-cooked chicken.

And then it’s almost over.

We had to drive back down south through the Tetons once more and through Jackson to make our way to Idaho Falls, Idaho, where we flew in nearly a week ago. The impact this trip had on me cannot be understated, as it was enormous and will continue to affect me well into the future.

On our second full day in Yellowstone, we were greeted by this bison next to the trail on the Old Faithful Basin. So far, we’ve not seen any sign of a large herd of these woolly brown beasts, just a random individual or two wandering around.

Geysers, mud pots, hot springs, fumaroles, and streams are joined by the smell of sulfur and the sounds of escaping steam, boiling mud, rumbling cauldrons, birds, and occasionally falling rain. This is certainly the place to be when one wants their senses fully assaulted by nature.

Impenetrable windows into our earth, these hot springs come with plenty of warnings that to enter one is nearly certain death. To look from the safety of the boardwalk is the preferred way of observing them, but still, the imagination begs to see just below the surface and explore the plumbing that is out of sight.

Yesterday we turned right to circumnavigate the park, but today we went straight ahead at the fork in the road and ended up in Mammoth Hot Springs.

Landed in Idaho, drove to Wyoming, and now we are dipping into Montana at the Roosevelt Arch. President Theodore Roosevelt personally laid down the cornerstone of this entryway back in 1903

Around every corner, there is a sight to see. Nowhere in Yellowstone is one going to encounter disappointment.

In Lamar Valley, we spotted a giant herd of elk on a mountainside, but they were too distant to photograph with this particular camera. No matter because we are enchanted all the same.

Staying up north in Mammoth Hot Springs tonight, where everything is perfect for those willing to see the perfection in all there is.

Yesterday we entered Yellowstone National Park for the first and certainly not last time. This was the beginning of something monumental that was going to have repercussions for the rest of our lives. When we drove into the south entrance towards West Thumb, we stopped to pick up a new National Park Pass. While we were driving up from the Tetons, I was busy bragging about how Caroline and I had likely been to the majority of America’s National Parks and Monuments: all 50. As the new annual pass was handed over to us, we opened it to find a map folded around the card this particular year. On that map was emblazoned in a 60-point font: “389 Ways To Enjoy Your Parks and Monuments.” Uh oh, some quick math suggested that we’d need to live to approximately 130 years old to visit them all.

With that realization and humbled by the magnitude of the endeavor, should we take the idea of seeing the entirety of the park system seriously, the only thing I really knew was that I had to stop bragging about how much we’d already seen. Our morning today started at Old Faithful Inn in a room that we would stay in a couple more times as the years went by. In the picture above, Ruby Rieke and I are under the gable in the center guest room of the Inn’s main house. The magic of staying in that room time and again was that any chance we had to see something about Yellowstone, we were nearly certain to spot the room we’d stayed in.

Enchantment would have been an understatement as to where our hearts and imaginations were leading us. Nature was in a kind of bloom and rawness that once again was taking us deeper into the magic that is found in natural areas. While the quality of these photos will always leave something to be desired, they represent our first impressions of this spectacular place. Of the many photos we took subsequently around America, it would be some of these first shots of Yellowstone we returned to again and again over the following months, as we couldn’t believe we’d been that lucky to visit the world’s first National Park.

While the color of the various hot springs elicited oohs and aahs over these days here, as did so many other things, it was during the months following that I couldn’t get Yellowstone out of my dreams which would draw us back up here during the fall.

There are so many up close and personal encounters that can be had here at Yellowstone that don’t require the visitor to try to capture something of the breadth of the Grand Canyon or as vast as the Pacific Ocean. There are millions of dynamic moments occurring every second that ensure that no matter where one looks, one will see something slightly different than anyone else has ever seen in the same spot.

Our visit is going to be too short, and our desire to see it all will likely never be satisfied. With an uncertainty that we should ever be able to return, we must make every moment in this park the kind of quality time we can never forget. This view is of the Upper Yellowstone Falls.

The expanse of this place is not only large but incredibly diverse. No corner we are exploring gets boring, so we keep going looking for the perfect location to just stop and stay in awe.

Geology and hydrology are hard at work, with the evidence of the caldera we are driving through visible everywhere. How will we ever see everything this park has to offer in a single visit?

Upon seeing a bear, we are complete, as we didn’t think we’d actually spot one. Nor did we believe we’d see wolves, and on that account, we did not. By the way, nobody was disappointed that it was a black bear and not a grizzly because we were having a legitimate nature experience that was just delivering non-stop astonishment.

We’ve circled the park to emerge for our second visit to West Thumb. Probably because this was the first encounter with hot springs, bacterial mats, and fumaroles and then the first place to visit a second time, West Thumb forever holds dear to us as the most romantic corner in the park.

Like petrifying flesh and bone, the bacterial mats are extraordinary to see firsthand. Those you might encounter on one visit may very well be long gone on a subsequent journey into Yellowstone. The environment here is forever changing. Take, for example, the massive fire here in the park back in 1988: evidence of its destruction is nearly everywhere, so vast was the blaze. But just 12 years later, the green is returning in 4 and 5-foot tall trees. A ranger pointed out how lucky we were to see the park with the major loss of trees, as many of the views we enjoyed from the roads had never been seen before: they had been hidden behind a thick layer of trees since the park was founded back on March 1, 1872.

We didn’t waste a minute of available light, and though tired from the intense travel, we just kept going.

We fell in love with this rustic room in Old Faithful Inn, and after sitting in the lobby by the fireplace, we reluctantly headed to it, but still, we weren’t ready to call it quits.

This photo remains one of the strangest images I’ve ever taken of Caroline. While not the most flattering, it is special in that I remember asking her to “Just try to look natural.”  This is her idea of looking natural.

About that earlier statement on finding the perfect location, the entirety of Yellowstone is that place. From morning till night, we remained in constant awe.