Archive for the ‘National Parks 2006’ Category

Day 11 (Bridges and Arches)

Tuesday, May 9th, 2006

canyonlands sign

We got up and ate breakfast. They didn’t have fresh waffles, just the frozen ones. After we finished packing we drove to Canyonlands National Park. We went to the needles visitor center to get our stamp and pick up a map of the park. We toured the park and took pictures of the unique rock formations.

We saw the wooden shoe arch, it’s an arch that when looked at, looks like a wooden shoe. What do you think?

wooden shoe

After Canyonlands, we took a scenic route back over the mountains and by two lakes. This seemed to actually be a quicker route back to the town we started from. It was just over the mountains, rather than around them.

We stopped and ate lunch at A&W. I think the last time I ate there was in high school. I forgot how good their root beer floats are. Only thing is that they use soft serve ice cream now. It was just as good as I remember though.

After lunch we headed to Natural Bridges National Monument. This park has three of the most impressive natural bridges in the country. A natural bridge is a span of rock that was originally over a river/water. This is what separates it from an arch.

We drove to all three monuments. At the third one, we walked the .2 miles down the ravine so we could stand underneath the bridge. Fortunately, nothing fell from it while we were underneath it. That would have ruined a great trip 😀

archarch angie

Yes we did really go all the way down there!!

steve arch

One the way back to the main road we ran into a sign that pointed out a unique rock formation. It is called the Bears Ears. Angie couldn’t make the connection, can you?

Bears Ears

Back on the road we headed to our overnight destination. This took us over the mountains and over the northern edge of the Colorado River and Lake Powell. We stopped at the Hite overlook. This was an old mining town, during the uranium frenzy. After the mining died out the town sort of shutdown and is pretty much a ghost town.

We arrived at the hotel in Torrey, Utah. The hotel is just outside our next destination Capitol Reef National Park. Our room had a fantastic view of the mountains from our balcony.

Room with a view

We grabbed dinner and headed to bed.

Day 10 (Decent from the mountains)

Monday, May 8th, 2006

Today we drove out of the mountains and into the Utah desert. We actually had a 20 degree temperature increase. We reached Arches National Park

Arches Welcome

This park is home to some of the most amazing rock features. All of which have been created by millions of years of sediment being laid down when this area was covered by ocean. Then millions of year of erosion have left us with what we see today.

spiers

delicate arch

skyline arch

We spent over 4 hours in the park today, so we really had no time to do anything else today. We drove to Moab for dinner, then headed down to Monticello, Utah for the night. This was the closes town to our next destination; Canyonlands National Park. We checked into the hotel and hopefully we can get to sleep early. It is a little bit loud here, so hopefully we will get a good night sleep.

Day 9 (east meets west)

Sunday, May 7th, 2006

Today was pretty much drive day, but we planned to stop at two locations and drive until we got tired on the way to our next destination.

The first place was Promontory Summit, Utah to visit Gold Spike National Monument. For those of you that are not railway buffs or american history for that matter, this is the place at which the transcontinental railway was completed.

gold spike

The site is where the Central Pacific and Union Pacific united to inaugurate cross-country rail travel. This happened on May 10th, 1869. We just got there a few days too early to see them re-enact the driving of the final spike into the ground. They hold a ceremony every year on that date.

The original engines have long been scrapped, but new replica engines have been built. They have updated them for safety but have kept the original look. (e.g. they didn’t use rivets because welds are stronger, but used hidden welds so you could not see them, and put in fake rivets to give it an original look.)

Steve Gold Spike

After watching a video about the building of the railway, we took a driving tour that drives over the same path that the railway was on. We passed a section of railroad that was built in both directions. This happened over a 250 mile course because no specific meeting point had been chosen and because of typical government inefficiency each railroad company was paid a partial amount for each section they graded. There was no incentive for them to stop grading.

After Gold Spike, we headed back to Salt Lake City. We stopped near Ogden for dinner, then headed over to our second stop; Temple Square.

We took their short 30 minute tour. Unfortunately, the Tabernacle is under restoration, so we could not tour it.

After the tour we decided to head out as far as we wanted to drive before we got tired. This took us to Price, Utah. We checked into the hotel and sat in the spa for a little while, then headed off to bed.

Day 8 (The lovely smells of Yellowstone)

Saturday, May 6th, 2006

We got up and packed, we thought about staying another night in Yellowstone, but because a lot of the park was still closed we figured we could do the rest of what we wanted in a day. This was also helped out by the fact that the southern entrance to the park was still closed. This meant we would have to adjust our itinerary a bit.

We skipped breakfast, as we had plenty of food from leftovers. We headed back up the road and stopped at all the geo-thermal sights along the way that we could get to. We stopped at the following locations:

Biscuit Basin, It was very smelly but had some spectacular views of the the pools. Here is a picture of the Sapphire Pool

saphire pool

Midway Geyser Basin; this area had a very large basin that was filled with water and water spilled down from over the top of the rim. One area was so smokey and windy that you were engulfed in sulfuric fumes. I have some great video of it I will upload when I get back home.

steve midway

Fountain Paint Pot; Here we saw some very unique fountains. During this loop some stupid kids were putting their hands in water. I wanted to kick them in the butt and push them over for being so stupid. Well, one thing they probably don’t realize is there are TONS of microbes in that water that will probably make them sick. It will serve them right.

Here is one of the mud pools

paint pots

On the way to the next area, we took the Firehole Canyon Drive: This had an awesome view of the waterfall at the end of the drive.

angie at the river

Mud Pots; On the way we saw lots of bison, elk and a fox. We drove down to the lake, but pretty much everything was closed. We headed back to the Mud Pots, but they had all the trails closed because of bears.

There were some springs across the road from the Mud Pots that smelled even worse than the Mud Pots. This was called Sulphur Cauldron. It sure was aptly named.

One of the interesting things was that this side of the park is pretty much flat with snow and meadows filled with trees. A very different look than the other parts of the park we had been to already.

After looking at all the hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles, we headed over to the canyon area trails. This is an area that follows both the north and south sides of the Yellowstone River. We stopped at the south rim first then we drove to Artist Point for a spectacular view of the lower falls. After taking photos, we drove back to the upper falls viewing area.

Fortunately for us, all of the strenuous trails were still closed. Most of them decended 300 to 400 feet down the side of the canyon. Our legs had about had it this week.

grand canyon sign

Here is a view of the lower falls
lower falls view

This is a view of the upper falls
upper falls

After driving the canyon trails, we headed out to the western entrance to the park. On this road we saw more wildlife than on any other road we have been on. We saw LOTS of bison, elk and even some wolves. On the way out of the park, there was a bald eagle area, but we didn’t see any.

We stopped at west yellowstone at the McDonalds to grab a bite to eat. We then looked at the map to figure out what to do next. It turns out that most everything at Grand Teton National Park was closed this time of year, so we decided to skip it. We are going to head to some of the other parks in Utah. We drove to Idaho Falls for the evening and then grabbed dinner at a local diner.

Day 7 (Into Yellowstone)

Friday, May 5th, 2006

We got up and ate breakfast at the hotel, then we headed out. From this point, there has been no Internet access, so these posting have been delayed. The wireless coverage pretty much bites, and once we entered Yellowstone, the provider didn’t support any dial-up coverage. My phone kept saying “alternative provider”. I need to ask at work what that means. I did get SMS pages though. Most of the time though I had no signal in the park.

welcome to yellowstone
We drove to Livingston, Montana to fuel up. This is where you turn south to enter into Yellowstone. They promote themselves as the original gateway to Yellowstone.

We got there pretty quick, it took about two hours. The remaining time to the visitor center at Yellowstone only took another hour, so we had almost a full six hours to explore the park today. I am not sure why Google thought it would take five plus hours. Perhaps the final destination was further then we went?

We stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs visitor center and chatted with the park ranger to figure out what we should do. After getting our brochures and maps, we watched a short video about yellowstone. When we walked out of the visitor center we got a surprise! There was a small heard of bison grazing in front of our parked car.

bison at the visitor center

We decided to eat some of our leftover food for lunch. We ate and watched the bison, We then started driving down the road to some of the hot springs. We stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs terrace and walked the trail (it was a wooden walkway). We walked up to one of the springs and watched the water bubbling up and running down the hill.

We then drove the upper terrace drive. This is a one way road that gives you great views of some of the geo-thermal features. Some of the sites you had to hike a quarter or half mile to, but most of them were easy enough to do. We read that one of these springs is a site for some of the best travertine formations.

Next, we drove down to Norris Geyser Basin. This was a good 1.5 mile walk through several geysers and hot springs. BOY! the smell of sulfur is strong! At the end of this trail, we had a lovely overlook of Porcelain Basin. We were too tired to do that trail. Although it was only a half a mile, you had to climb down a very steep trail. The down part isn’t so bad, it’s the back up. So onward we went.

We drove down to Old faithful and checked to see if the Yellowstone Lodge had any rooms. We were in luck, they did! We stayed in one of their cabins. Fortunately, they still had cabins with bathrooms and showers! I don’t think Angie would have appreciated it if I got a room without them.

After we unpacked, we wandered around the area. We walked the old faithful trail. This was a circular loop around the geyser. We walked all the way around it, then we found a seat for the show. We learned that old faithful does not go off on a regular basis. Again, that wonderful state education at work imparting incorrect information. The geyser goes off approximately every 92 minutes, but as we learned it can be late or early by about 10 minutes. The next morning, it went off and then again 34 minutes later. The lesson learned is that you can’t predict when it will go off, just make an educated guess.

Not sure why this image is rotated. I am working on fixing that later.
old faithful

After watching the geyser erupt, we ate dinner at the Yellowstone Inn. It turns out that this was their first night being opened. They had a lot of kinks they were trying to work out. Fortunately, we were not in a hurry so it was a very low stress dinner. After dinner, we drove back to our cabin and got ready for bed. Angie and I read and finished the newsletter entry for this day.