My Yellowstone Odyessy

Chapter 8

9 Colter's Hell

We promised Larry and Ann we would stop by later today as we prepared to roll out ourselves. Since Old Faithful wasn't that far away, we decided to head that way first. As we traveled west, I began to notice stark evidence of the 1988 fires that threatened the whole park, I was surprised to see so much new growth coming up, in fact during our travels around the park, I noticed the charred remains and piles of dead trees being quickly overtaken by young trees blotting out the old, and all this has been since I was born.

Near Scaup Lake, we had to slow for a buffalo jam, there was a small herd browsing about 25 yards away from the road several cars were stopped as tourists rubbernecked and gawked running over to get that perfect picture, this was a scene we would encounter many times during our stay. We slowly worked our way through the jam and continued on our way, traffic was now really picking up, and by the time we got to the Old Faithful area the parking area had really filled up. It was getting warm out now so I shed my jacket and sweatshirt for a black tank top, my leather vest and my pink head wrap, we locked our jackets in our saddlebags and wandered off to gape at Old Faithful like the other tourist's.

While we were waiting for Old Faithful to be Faithful, we chatted with other young bikers like ourselves, I talked to a very attractive blonde headed girl a year older than me while her husband talked with Terry, they were from Vegas where she worked as a dancer at Luxor, she sure had the legs for it, I could see Terry giving her the once over. They were staying at West Yellowstone and were leaving at the end of the week. I got pictures of the geyser at various stages of eruption; our next stop was the Lower geyser basin a few miles up the road. We wandered along the boardwalks observing paint pots, bubbling mud pots, and boiling hot springs in an environment that smelled like oatmeal cooking…

Our next stop was Madison Junction where we took a restroom break and looked around briefly in the bookstore, continuing on we stopped at Norris where we visited a little museum dedicated to the park rangers, apparently it used to belong to the army when troops were stationed here in the 1870's. There were a few elk moving around in a wide meadow below the campground, a beautiful creek flowing through it as well. We then traveled east through the famous Hayden valley, I wanted to return to this area tomorrow or the next day, they told us this was the best area for viewing wildlife. We did see buffalo, geese and a couple deer, Terry saw a couple places that looked like good fishing spots but he still needed to get a special permit to fish so maybe tomorrow.

We Ate lunch at Canyon Village and made reservations for a trail ride tomorrow, riding a different kind of "Horse" We then rode a short way down to Inspiration point then up to Grand view for a look at the lower falls at the Grand canyon of the Yellowstone, a beautiful waterfall that made me wish I had a better camera. The place was packed, and lucky for us, we were on motorcycles, being able to maneuver through traffic better. We were there almost an hour snapping pictures, hiking to Lookout point and posing in front of various backdrops for each others pictures. When we left, both of us decided to not wear our helmets, I wore my head wrap, and Terry tied a bandana around his head, because of the low speed limit, we could enjoy the sights and sounds much better.

As we motored along, I took in the fresh smell of the pines, the warm sun hitting my face, the low rumble of the motorcycle, you can't beat it, and for awhile we rode next to each other and could talk back and forth.

We visited the stinky Sulphur Caldron and the mud volcano, spitting hot mud. As we neared Fishing Bridge Rv traffic increased two-fold requiring us to slow even more, at times keeping our feet skimming over the pavement "walking" our bikes at times. Too much congestion, but then this was the middle of August, we were lucky to even find a campsite. Slowly we cleared the "Circus" and picked up speed past Bridge Bay making a stop at the West Thumb Geyser Basin. We fooled around here for around 45 minutes before getting back to camp around 6:30.