Glacier to Yellowstone – Day 4

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

It’s barely daybreak at 5:50 in the morning, but we know the value of every minute today. We must look forward to tomorrow when we need to get home. This plays a large role in how long we get to spend in Yellowstone, as we need to position ourselves tonight in a place where we can drive home tomorrow. At the moment, we are about 1,000 miles from home, and while consideration for those parameters is under consideration, we will do our best to remain in the moment and yet aware of the time.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

As I said, we were entering the park shortly after daybreak. Sunrise was right here at the Canary Springs on the terrace near where we dropped in last night for sunset. The boardwalk trail we had walked a few years earlier has been subsumed and is now impassable as it is disappearing below the limestone crust.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

In some areas, the color of the travertine has faded, and it seems the water is flowing in new areas, while in others, it has stopped. I think it was during our last visit we started learning about the hydrology of the ground below us and how the combination of a heat source close to the surface combined with an ample water supply to cook up a soup of minerals whose flow keeps shifting while the minerals that make up the travertine accumulate and also change the shape and openings of the natural pipes below. Depending on snowfall, rain, and earth movement caused by earthquakes it very well may be that the features of Yellowstone not only change from year to year but from season to season.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

We’d like to stop everywhere that looks familiar to get off the road and explore further than we have on previous visits, but with about 10 hours allocated for this part of the adventure instead of 3 to 5 days, we have to limit ourselves.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

So, you think this looks the same as it did so many years ago? Do the trees look taller, and can you tell how the forest is recovering from the fire of 1988? Come to think of it, when we were first here it was the beginning of the season in springtime when we visited with Ruby and Axel and then at the close of the season during the fall with my mother-in-law Jutta. Here, at the height of summer, I’d venture to say that the greens are greener and the blues bluer.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

To say we are excited to see all of this again should be obvious; what is not so obvious is our surprise at how amazing it all is. There are times we wonder if we’ll enjoy a place on subsequent visits as much as we did on our first or second stop, but seemingly without fail, we are as delighted as we were the first time. Matter of fact our familiarity starts to feel as though we are visiting an old friend who is happy to greet us.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Someday I hope to have all of these photos sorted algorithmically by visual data so I might learn better what exactly it is in these images that is common and if there’s a theme that I cannot see on glancing over them. Then I have to wonder about a man by himself looking into this cauldron of boiling water and steam: what is he seeing and experiencing? I get to squeeze Caroline’s hand and constantly reiterate how amazed I am, and she does the same back at me, but he doesn’t have anyone to share the experience being had at the moment. I can’t say one way or the other is more or less valid, but I do know that with the two of us sharing these days, we have each other to help fill the memory gaps that time and distance create.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

I should probably check my older photos, but I do think that there was a lot more steam obscuring the view of Excelsior Crater here at Midway Geyser Basin on our previous visits.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Looking at Grand Prismatic, it became certain that the view is a lot clearer today. Funny, but it seems like the hillside behind this hot spring is taking forever to start recovering from the fire. I hope we have yet another opportunity in the future to come back to Yellowstone and once again measure where things are in this national treasure.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

From where heads are pointed, it would seem that only the view of the Grand Prismatic behind me and the Excelsior Crater in front of me were worth taking in, meaning that this view in between feels neglected. Nothing should be passed by in Yellowstone, and one should always remember that Old Faithful is not the only thing to see on a visit to America’s first national park.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

The look of rust has more to do with the temperature and chemical composition of these bacterial mats that fan out and away from hot springs and geyser pools.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

We look into the earth in awe.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

For mere moments, we can glimpse a moment in history that has stood mostly still. Evolutionary forces may always be at work, but from our perspective, these things have always been this way, and a kind of timelessness is found.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

The day is not just screaming by. Maybe it’s the familiarity with the place and that we are not trying to commit every detail into our memories but are refreshing things that are back in there somewhere.

Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

The wonderful Old Faithful Inn looks as beautiful and majestic as always. With the bus out front, it’s almost difficult to witness the passage of time, and it feels like it could just as easily be 1955. I hope to never forget that it was the center-gabled roof above the patio that was the room we stayed in on our first visit to this historic hotel.

Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

To stay here just one more time, that would be nice.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

We’d been a little nervous about visiting Yellowstone at the height of tourism season out of fear of the large crowds we’d read and heard about, but being here on the Upper Geyser Basin a couple of days after the Fourth of July, things seem pretty calm and uncrowded to us.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Hello, old friends; we are back.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

There was no way we could be in the area and not walk from the Old Faithful Inn across the Upper Geyser Basin up to Morning Glory Pool. Along the way, we got to see Riverside Geyser spouting off.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

We couldn’t have asked for more dramatic skies.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

The astute among you might recognize that we are on our way back to the Old Faithful area.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

The Fishing Cone at West Thumb Geyser Basin is well underwater today; this is our first time seeing it so.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Fractal chaos at its best.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Don’t think I’ll ever be able to take a more iconic photo in Yellowstone, as this one has snow-capped mountains, a lake, blue skies, mom, dad, kid, a hot spring, and a boardwalk.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Already heading back to the car as our time in Yellowstone must come to an end on this short visit.

Oxbow Bend in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a few minutes to spare on our way through the Grand Teton National Park.

Caroline Wise at the Oxbow Bend in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming

We are at the Oxbow Bend of the Snake River with Caroline, commemorating the moment with a walk into the waters. It’s already 6:00 p.m. as we leave the Tetons.

Midway Mall in Big Piney, Wyoming

These summer days up north are deceiving due to their length. It’s still unbelievable that we’ll pull over in Green River, Wyoming, in a couple of hours and call it quits on the day so we can get a proper night of sleep. Tomorrow is the long haul home, and we are certainly accumulating a sleep deficit. Our original plans had us driving to Salt Lake City tonight, but after weighing the options and verifying the miles on our map, we decided on the detour. The Flaming Gorge Motel was a bargain at $38 for the night and is also a clue as to why we are detouring.

Glacier to Yellowstone – Day 3

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Caroline Wise and John entering Glacier National Park in Montana for the first time

We are close to our destination of reaching the Canadian border, but we first have to deal with a National Park in our way and apparently also have to contend with an encounter with the sun.

Glacier National Park in Montana

Going-to-the-Sun Road is an imaginatively named road that elicits dreams of moving into the heavens. First, we will have many miles that need to be covered to reach such lofty heights. Lake McDonald in the early morning makes for a beautiful sight.

Glacier National Park in Montana

If we have to stop every five minutes to gawk at the scenery, we’ll never make it to either Canada or the Sun.

Glacier National Park in Montana

Where water flows, so do our emotions, and from them, an outpouring of not only love of place but the reinforcement of love between each other. Our profound luck to be first-hand witnesses to such spectacular places is a kind of magic we find inexplicable but will hopefully continue to experience well into the future.

Glacier National Park in Montana

That tiny scar across those steep slopes is the road we’ve been traveling on our way to the Sun.

Glacier National Park in Montana

Wow, somebody broke out the beauty stick and beat this part of the Earth hard.

Mountain Goats in Glacier National Park in Montana

I can’t help but see momma goat on the right seeming to be stepping out of her winter coat. At this point, we were on the other side of the Logan Pass Visitor Center, starting our exploration of the eastern side of Glacier National Park.

Glacier National Park in Montana

We must be getting close to the Sun as its reflections are becoming ever more impressive. If I’m not mistaken this is Saint Mary Lake.

Glacier National Park in Montana

Some will stop for squirrels or bears; I’m all about the thistle.

Glacier National Park in Montana

Maybe we are shortchanging Glacier National Park with a brief half-day visit?

Glacier National Park in Montana

Swiftcurrent Lake on the Continental Divide Trail in an area called Many Glacier. Now I’m certain we will not be able to give this park its due. With such a short season, this park will be difficult to visit again.

Glacier National Park in Montana

This park is a place where every corner and hillside offers a vastly different view of what you thought you were just looking at. It’s a bit of a fool’s paradise for photographers where getting lost in snapping more than you are experiencing is a real risk.

Montana

Sure, we took the obligatory photos at the Canada frontier sign and again at the “Welcome to Montana” sign for those traveling south, but those selfies were weak compared to this beautiful shot of a dramatic sky and weathered barn set in the green grass surrounded by cragged mountains. Matter of fact, we went so far that we were on the other side of the “Leaving America” sign, and upon seeing the long line of traffic to cross into Canada, we changed our mind about stepping into the Great White North and made a U-turn. We still have to go through U.S. Customs even though we’ve not left America, as the border control agents couldn’t see that we’d never left. So the obligatory moment of tension mounts as we wonder if our names have somehow shown up on some list that mandates that we are border bait for a cavity search. Fortunately, we had digital pictures that showed us just minutes before on the American side and had, in fact, not been in Canada, so after a minute or two with our friendly border agent, we were allowed to proceed.

Museum of the Plains in Browning, Montana

In Browning, Montana, we needed to stop in at the Museum of the Plains Indian to learn something more about the indigenous people that once enjoyed the lands of their ancestors without the interference of those who would rather they live somewhere else, such as on the moon. The contrast between the art of Native Americans who lived in Pueblos and those who lived on the Plains is stark.

Museum of the Plains in Browning, Montana

Both historic and contemporary arts and crafts are on display here. Too bad no in-residence Native Americans are sponsored here to help us visitors learn something more about the Blackfeet, Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Sioux, Assiniboine, Arapaho, Shoshone, Nez Perce, Flathead, Chippewa, and Cree cultures that are represented here.

Montana

I see it, too, off in the distance, way out there….. Being out here on the Great Plains is a terrific contrast to the canyons, mountains, and forests that we traveled through on our way north.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at the Roosevelt Entrance at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

It’s YELLOWSTONE! Not just once in a lifetime, not even twice, but a third visit is in order, even if it’s a fraction of the time of our previous outings.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Fourth of July long weekend you can rest assured that finding lodging in the park would be a long shot. Even finding something outside of the park wasn’t that easy, and apparently, we got one of the last two rooms available in Gardiner, which is just outside the park over in Montana. Here we are at the Mammoth Hot Springs terraces, and this, at least for today, will have to be the extent of our time in the park as it’s getting dark.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Hot water, minerals, and plants that thrive in this chemical soup may not be everybody’s cup of tea, hmmm, probably be a horrible-tasting cup of tea, come to think about it, but Caroline and I enjoy every single proverbial drop of it.

Caroline Wise at Helen's Corral in Gardiner, Montana

We ate bison burgers at this little joint called Helen’s Corral a few years ago and are enjoying it a second time while reminiscing about our previous visits to Yellowstone and that Caroline’s mom was here with us on our last excursion into this corner of America. Tomorrow brings nearly a full day of revisiting some familiar places. We can’t wait.

Mount Rushmore Trip – Day 3

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Sunrise in Wyoming

The night and day are punctuated by the beauty of the sun, turning the sky into gorgeous shades of the spectrum that strike our eyes in just a way that makes us ooh and aah. We love these travel days when we are motivated to rise early and witness these moments of dawn where the stillness and quiet are about to give way to the world reanimated.

John Wise getting a ticket in Wyoming

“I swear I did not see the speed limit sign or you hiding wherever it was that allowed you to come out of nowhere to give me this ticket.” Come on; we are out on the Great Plains where I can see for 100 miles; this state trooper must have been in an underground camouflaged bunker using a periscope radar to see that I was “kind of” going over the speed limit. He was a great sport in letting Caroline take his photo while he was giving me my ticket; all officers should be as nice as Wyoming troopers.

Bison in Wyoming

See, I told you that I couldn’t see the speed limit sign; it was behind all those bison milling around it. Come to think about this was probably some intricate speed trap, but how they trained an entire herd of bison to participate in these shenanigans is beyond my comprehension.

Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming

I’d like to know the statistics of how many people who visit Devils Tower National Monument have that iconic 1980s music from Close Encounters of the Third Kind in their ears.

Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming

Another one of those wildlife signs that will prove disappointing because, just like the ones that warn of elk ahead or deer crossing, there obviously will not be any prairie dogs seen today that might be ready for some potato chips.

Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming

Okay, well, it looks like this one has already had his fill of potato chips. And no, Mr. Prairie Dog, it’s not the photo that makes you look bottom-heavy; you are that fat, did some kid give you their entire pizza?

Caroline Wise in Wyoming

Somebody built their lucky kid the greatest lemonade stand ever! Unfortunately, there was nobody else here who had some lemonade to sell us, so we commandeered it for our photo-taking purposes.

Tipple in Wyoming

This is the Aladdin Coal Tipple, built in 1898, and when it was in use, it transferred coal to rail cars. That coal was sent through Belle Fourche, South Dakota, to gold smelters at nearby Lead and Deadwood. If you ever dreamt of visiting a tipple, I’d recommend you get busy, as this is one of the last remaining of its kind in the western United States.

Aladdin, Wyoming

The town of Aladdin has shrunk from its coal mining days of having a population of about 200 to just 15 today. The old general store is now over 100 years old. A nice little place to stop for a drink and a treat on Wyoming Route 24.

Caroline Wise and John Wise entering South Dakota

Entering South Dakota for the first time from the west because this is the “Western Edge” trip to Mount Rushmore.

Black Hills of South Dakota

Into the Black Hills of South Dakota because this place is known for the Black Hills, and we have a deep desire to know all of these iconic places throughout America.

Caroline Wise in the Black Hills of South Dakota

And, of course, Caroline has a deep desire to stand in as many waterways, lakes, rivers, streams, oceans, and bodies of water across America as she can.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota

Maybe there’s a bit of cheesy factor going on here, but it’s still impressive. Caroline and I, being who we are, had to learn about the controversy of using Native American sacred lands for celebrating white Americans when we, as a country, have done little to nothing in gratitude for their sacrifices. You wouldn’t think it all that hard to offer at least an apology and an expression of gratitude to the many diverse peoples of our country in trying to modernize our magnanimity.

Custer State Park in South Dakota

Custer State Park is as beautiful a place as one could hope for, but I do have to scratch my head that there is not one park in America named after Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Chief Joseph, or Geronimo. While we do have Pontiac, Michigan, the honor of those whose lands were taken for our nation remains sadly neglected.

Custer State Park in South Dakota

From the old wooden corkscrew bridges to tiny tunnels carved through boulders instead of being blasted to smithereens that would have allowed RV’s and small airplanes to navigate these roads, the designers and engineers responsible for the layout of Custer State Park did a great job.

Custer State Park in South Dakota

We ran into a couple of bison jams on the road, but this solitary one grazing in the shade won the “Bison of the Day” award.

The snail was named “State of Maine” because we bought it while in Belfast, Maine, at the Purple Baboon back on our first cross-country road trip. The otter travels with us from the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California, and if I’m not mistaken, the Kodama from the movie Princess Mononoke was picked up at Kinokuniya bookstore in Los Angeles, California.

Caroline Wise and John Wise entering Nebraska

Out collecting states, making sure we see as much of America as possible. That’s our motto, and I believe we’re doing pretty good living up to it.

Nebraska

Cattle on the windswept Great Plains. By the time we get home, we’ll order “The Great Plains” by Ian Frazier after falling in love with these sights and the idea that, at one time, there were seas of bison out here that painted the landscape black with their numbers. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to read Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” before our next visit.

Nebraska

What would a visit to Nebraska be without sunflowers at sunset?

Caroline Wise and a giant sunflower in Nebraska

It would be nothing if I couldn’t beat that with the largest sunflower I’ve ever seen, along with my wife’s smiling face.

Nebraska

The metallic clang of the windmill spinning at dusk against the purple and red sky makes for a perfect close to an extraordinary day where it felt like we experienced three or four days all smushed into one.

Mount Rushmore Trip – Day 2

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Albuquerque, New Mexico

We’re running late. It’s already 6:15 a.m. when we are getting back on the freeway. Why the rush? We are trying to get to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, which is about 1,200 miles (2,000 km) from home. Our first stop this morning is 383 miles (616 km) from this overpass. Time to move quickly.

Garden of the Gods in Colorado

The trip of the “Western Edge” appears to be a theme here as we are just to the west of Colorado Springs, Colorado, when we arrive at Garden of the Gods, our first stop. This free-to-visit park was designated a National Natural Landmark in 1971, and should you find yourself driving up the middle of Colorado one day, you should drop in.

Garden of the Gods in Colorado

If we had the time, we’d be out there on that wagon for a hayride.

Garden of the Gods in Colorado

Our visit to Garden of the Gods was brief, but we did get a great impression of the place.

Caroline Wise and John Wise at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado

Anybody who knows us knows that there was no way we were going to pass up on the opportunity to visit a national park, even if it meant we’d have to drive through midnight. To dip our toe into Rocky Mountain National Park was only going to add about 100 miles (160 km) of driving, which sounded easy peasy to us, too, and so up the mountain, we strode.

Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado

Out in these mountains, the Colorado River is born, which makes possible the abundance of food, life, recreation, and prosperity that many people enjoy from around the globe. Without the snowfalls in the Rockies, our lives in Arizona, Nevada, and Southern California would be vastly different.

Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado

How lucky are the people of Earth that America’s 18th President, Ulysses S. Grant, established Yellowstone National Park? He was followed by our 26th President Theodore Roosevelt, who was one of the park system’s greatest supporters in giving to all of us these pristine, undeveloped treasures that we can experience in the way nature has shaped them without the heavy hand of man who has often been less than kind on our environment.

To the west are mountains, mountains, some desert, more mountains, and the ocean, and to the east, the Great Plains for as far as you can go, sort of.

Caroline Wise and John Wise entering South Dakota

While to the north is Wyoming and beyond that are parts unknown to the two of us, though we are willing to go into that void to see for ourselves just what is there.

And what we find is the golden sunset of perfection and you need to know that we had to bask in this beauty as long as we could because these two travel cheapos are on the hunt for a motel and not just any motel.

Carpet in cheap motel, Wyoming

We scored with that vintage kind of flair that lets you know these rooms have not been renovated since 1974. The great thing about this carpet is that it doesn’t matter how many people before our arrival have bled, ejaculated, vomited, urinated, defecated, blew snots on, or rolled around with open sores on the carpet because that’s all lost in the pattern. No, we do not travel with a black light, as knowledge is not power when you are only interested in saving money.

Cheap motel in Wyoming

These types of bed covers are a kind of Russian roulette where you just want to close your eyes before pulling back the corner. Then you have to decide if you really want to count how many pubic hairs are on the sheets and pillows. Almost worse is when you realize there’s no blanket underneath it and that this thing is going to be lying right on top of you. Our favorite moments, though, are when we finally do lay down, and gravity pulls us into the developing black hole at the center of the mattress that hardly qualifies as being such, as it is more a membrane funneling us into the center of the universe known as the “pile of John and Caroline trying to not roll onto each other.”

Yellowstone with Jutta – Day 7

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

This is the sad day that we have to leave Yellowstone National Park. The cabins up here at Mammoth are GREAT!

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

My photo of an elk turned out horribly with cars behind it and most of its body cut off by my poor framing, so I present you with a marginally better shot of a mule deer without hooves. We’ll miss you deer, elk, bears, porcupines, birds, squirrels, lichen, bison, and sulfurous-billowing-gas-clouds-of-rotten-egg-smell that was somehow endearing. We hope to catch up with some eagles, black bears, wolves, and a grizzly or two on our next visit.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

We drive down the road and wave goodbye to the bison who don’t seem to care one iota that we are leaving. Next time, we’ll bring spicy buffalo snacks and see if we can’t cement better intra-species friendships.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Okay, so we had to do that one touristy thing that you think you can live without when you’re a rebel and rail against all that is normal. I present you with Old Faithful Geyser.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

One last quick stop at West Thumb Geyser Basin to ogle the hot springs, sniff the air, taste the mud, cook a fish, eat some space chicken, and then it’s adios el Parque Nacional de Yellowstone.

Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming

And hello, moose! In the Grand Tetons National Park.

Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming

Oxbow Bend with the Tetons in the blue background as the colors of fall are about to give way to winter. Once winter sets in, Jackson, just south of here, becomes a skiers’ mecca. We, on the other hand, will be experiencing a near year-round form of summer, not so hot as our Arizona summer, but certainly not winter by any stretch of the imagination. Makes one wonder, just what are these two parks like at that time of year? Seeya later, Wyoming.

Yellowstone with Jutta – Day 6

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Dissolved minerals in waters heated by processes deep underground flow, and when they do they have the potential to pool in places. As these calcium carbonate-rich waters deposit their chemical soup, they start forming travertine. Layer upon layer, the molecules bind to other nearby molecules of similar makeup, while at the edges of where the water pools, ridges form faster than on the bottom of the pool that has a larger surface area and before you know it (in geological terms) you are left with terraced pools of cascading water that are laying down floor tiles and countertops for people well into the future.

Here at Mammoth Hot Springs, the process of making travertine is happening right before our eyes. Things are not working like a perpetual machine of great efficiency because the heavily mineralized waters are not guaranteed to always be running. Maybe the plumbing below is broken, or winter didn’t deposit enough snow, changing the water table? Whatever the reason, it is likely the travertine pools we see on our trip will not be the ones you see on yours. The mineral deposits will still be here, but the water that is feeding them may have dried up or is flowing over another part of the mass that has been forming.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

From the steam billowing off of the hot springs, the water condenses on nearby stuff, in this case, these pine needles, and as it freezes, the water molecules can build up, forming these mini ice knives that show you which way the wind was blowing.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

I find it interesting how the colors shift across this dry travertine and am intrigued, although it is only basic chemistry, at how the particulate mixture of the hot spring waters while making delivery of its runoff drops off the molecules that will shade one section with darker hues while on an adjacent pool, the water’s darker molecules now depleted leave the water to deliver a cleaner whiter calcium just next door. It all makes me wish I’d paid more attention in class and taken some advanced chemistry classes.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

The cave has escaped its dark prison and turned the world inside out while psychedelically presenting itself to us to test if we believe what we see. Every day, we search for novelty in our own lives, try to find something new to entertain us, need to see a new movie or play a new video game, and yet here is nature offering us infinity while challenging the mind to find a vocabulary to adequately describe what we perceive. Even when presented with all the time we might need or like to analyze but a small corner of our world, we could spend a lifetime trying to accumulate the poetry of expression and scientific knowledge to remotely describe the beauty and complexity in that which we are attempting to comprehend. This then begs the question of when we encounter the nearly alienesque universe of the truly psychedelic how, if we only rarely encounter those states, can we begin to describe what they are when we can barely explain the totality of what’s occurring when an ocean wave breaks on a sandy shore?

Jutta Engelhardt at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

The old lady in the tree troll is from an old German fairy tale first noted by the Brothers Grimm almost 200 years ago. It was one of the scarier stories made all the worse as the spirit occupying the tree was left there with the passing of the cursed person’s mother-in-law.

Jutta Engelhardt and Caroline Wise at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Maybe you are getting the idea that I’ve run out of impressions to write about from our trip out here? Well, maybe I have.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

While moss tendrils growing out of lichen and bark are not something you see every day, it’s also something that, once it has been described and shown, what more could be said? I could drone on about the molecular structure or its place in the scheme of evolution, but maybe that geeky stuff gets tiring. Oh well, then here goes the nerd out about the scene pictured. The green tendrils are Wolf Lichen, a.k.a. Letharia Vulpina. The turquoise lichen are filaments of fungi that colonies of cyanobacteria, a.k.a. algae, take up residence in living symbiotically as a happy family. As for the bark that these lichens are living on, well, that’s obvious: it’s a conifer. Why is this so obvious? It’s because the Wolf Lichen grows on the bark of these trees in particular. Finally, do not try to eat this lichen as it is toxic, especially to wolves and foxes, but it is a good source of dying fabrics and yarns. Now, you probably know considerably more about lichen than when you started reading this blog entry.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

I’m not pulling a rabbit out of my hat regarding telling some interesting tidbits about these ice cycles; I just thought they looked cool, especially with that carbonated-looking water below them.

Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

Took off down the Grand Loop Road to visit a corner of the park we’ve not been in yet, but at the Tower General Store, we reached the end of the road as it was already closed for winter. While we did get this view of the Yellowstone River, we won’t get to visit Mt. Washburn on this trip, maybe someday.

Jutta Engelhardt and Caroline Wise at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming

So, instead, we drove back out to the Lamar Valley and dipped our toe into Montana. As we already have a photo of Jutta and Caroline in front of a Montana state sign, we instead snapped this one upon reentering Wyoming. We stopped along the way many times and walked out to the Lamar River and at one particular bend in the river where Soda Butte Creek and the Lamar meet, we stopped for a good long time and just watched the area as we had been told that the day before there was a wolf pack seen here with an elk that had met its end. I’m pretty sure they were not paying their respects but were instead having a snack. No luck seeing or hearing wolves on this visit to Yellowstone, but no big deal as things have been just perfect.

Abendrot is the German word for describing the red color of the sky as the sun sets. Abendrot elicits oohs and aahs from Jutta every time she spots a bit of it; that and sagenhaft which translates to fabulous or marvelous. Das Abendrot war sagenhaft, and now you’ve learned a little German, too.