Day 7: Yellowstone National Park to Douglas, Wyoming

In order to take a second shot at the Canyon section of the park, we had a light breakfast and checked out early. As noted earlier, Yellowstone is something like Disney’s version of the wilderness, all the way down to the international waitstaff at the hotel dining room. This morning, we saw many of the same servers we had seen the night before. We were seated by Jin from Malaysia and served by Edyta from Poland. After breakfast, we made a quick stop at the hotel gift shop. We picked up a postcard for Mary, our landlady back in Somerville, a couple gifts for family, and a few selections from the ample huckleberry section. Apparently, huckleberries are the trademark fruit of this region, and Yellowstone sold just about everything you could think of in huckleberry flavor: coffee, tea, honey, and espresso beans, pretzels, and, of course, huckleberries covered in huckleberry chocolate. We took our gear and goodies back to the car and headed northward.
Seeing Yellowstone before 9 is a completely different experience than seeing it in the heat of the day. The light filtering through the clouds and the trees is soft and peaceful, and the crowds, while still present, are much smaller than they are at midday. We saw the same herd of bison along the side of the road, but there was almost no line of traffic waiting to see them. Ambivalent to the presence of humans, the bison continued exactly as they had during the primetime show in the afternoon, eating, rolling in dust, and still ignoring us. We approached Canyon Village and took the road to Artist’s point. The name is very appropriate because the view of the massive canyon and the crashing waterfall in the distance is inspiring. Once again, Yellowstone makes a brilliant photographer out of the rank amateur.
After we took in the views and got our pictures, we walked back down the path toward the parking lot. By that point, it was ten o’ clock, and the people watching had already picked up. License plates from numerous states (mostly Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana, but also some from as far away as Florida, Texas, and Connecticut) began filling up the parking lot, bringing tourists eager for their glimpse of the wilderness. As it happened, many of them got closer than they expected to. A thin female deer wandered out of the trees and into the parking lot. She instantly attracted a small crowd of people edging ever closer with their cameras as she casually walked toward the wooded area across the lot. A couple children almost got close enough to pet her. Of course, this animal is not a pet. She is wild and could probably give a vicious kick if she were frightened. But this does not stop the tourists from pushing their luck. As we drove southward toward the eastern exit of the park, we saw two more hilarious examples of this phenomenon. Working our way through the bison once again, we saw two bison standing directly in front of an SUV on a pull-off. The driver of the SUV had stood up in the vehicle and was sticking up out of the sunroof. Her passenger was leaning out of the window, about eye to eye with the animals. Thankfully, the passenger had the sense to snap herself back in when started casually walking away. Then, while working our way through one of the tell-tale lines of traffic, we eventually saw a small black bear on the side of the road. As the bear nonchalantly walked through the forest, about twenty feet from the road, a crowd of half-a-dozen tourists sprinted behind it, cameras flashing. I can understand slowing down in your car, both to take pictures of these animals and to make sure you don’t hit them if they move quickly into the road. But running alongside a predator is where I absolutely draw the line.
On the eastern side of Yellowstone, we drove along the northern edge of the Lake Yellowstone. The sky was mostly sunny, but the wind had picked up enough to create white caps on the waves of the lake, making it almost look like the ocean. We also passed through several miles of forest that had been damaged by fire.
After we left Yellowstone, we drove through Shoshone National Forest. Although there was no visible wildlife and more commercial tourist establishments, the scenery was just as spectacular and, because it didn’t seem as carefully choreographed as Yellowstone, it felt wilder. There were fewer lakes and rivers, but there were more jagged cliffs soaring on either side of the winding road.
We left the forest area and the rolling grassland of cattle country replaced the trees, but the immense cliffs, mesas, and rock outcroppings were still very much a part of the landscape. Many of the rocks were painted with red, orange, and violet striations. In any other part of the country, these areas would be protected somehow. They would at least be state parks. But in Wyoming, this is just what land looks like.
Around 3:30, we stopped in Thermopolis, which a cliff just outside of town will tell you is the “Home of the World’s Largest Mineral Hot Spring.” The Hot Springs State Park is just off Route 20 and home to a perplexing variety of hot baths open to the public. We pulled up to the first one we saw, Star Plunge. We approached an elderly man at the counter and asked about the facilities and he told us about the indoor and outdoor mineral pools that were kept at around 94 degrees and a hot tub that was kept much hotter. “Some days it’s 102, but I’ve seen it round 104 and 105. You just don’t know. And everybody takes it different. I can’t take it at 104, but my wife can. It’s different between men and women and your skin tone.” We were convinced. We rented two towels, changed, and went to the pools. I was worried that visiting a hot spring on a 90 degree day might not be as refreshing as we hoped. The sulphur smell was initially so strong that I thought I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it, but I got used to it after a few minutes. The water was not oppressively hot but about as warm as a comfortable bath. After a few minutes in the pool, Aaron and I were approached by a bald, elderly man who had driven in from over the mountains. He asked us about where we were from and what Aaron did (he didn’t ask me) and then told us about his ideas on electricity, individual windmills for houses like the ones they used in the 30s, and his ideas on the government’s role in “the nine-eleven.” He also told us his favorite joke “Why won’t they let me stand next to the governor of Wyoming? Because these two bald heads would look like Dolly Parton with her shirt off!”
We arrived in Douglas, Wyoming, our resting place for the night, around 6:30. We got off of the highway and immediately encountered construction and a detour. We dutifully followed the detour through a small residential neighborhood, across an overpass, down the main street through town, and then right back onto Route 20 on the other side of town. We knew we would have to turn around and try again, and to improve our chances, we pulled into a liquor store to ask for directions. We asked the elderly lady behind the counter how to get to E. Center Street. She waved that off and asked “What are you looking for?” We told her we were looking for the Morton Mansion B&B. She recognized the place instantly and gave us directions that turned out to be right but sounded suspect at first. “You go up where the detour was, and you know it kind of snakes up like this, then over the bridge, you remember the bridge, and then there’s a stop sign, and you go straight through and then you left at the light, and the next light, you take a right, and it’s down the block.” We had followed the entirety of the detour and remembered no bridge and no stop sign. We never did see the stop sign, but we did find the Morton Mansion.
On the recommendation of the innkeeper, we went to a diner in town for dinner. Because Wyoming has not yet passed legislation to prohibit smoking in restaurants, the non smoking section was isolated in a fish bowl from the rest of the restaurant. Aaron ordered a steak and onion rings and I ordered a chicken fried steak. The idea of a chicken fried steak had been kicking around in my head since the innkeeper mentioned that it was one of the restaurant’s specialties, and my mouth was all set for that crispy golden goodness smothered in white sawmill gravy with a side of mashed potatoes. When it arrived, it looked nothing like a chicken fried steak. The breading was closer to breadcrumbs than a batter, which really ruined the whole experience, and to add insult to injury, the gravy was pinkish like there was some tomato or red pepper in it. Aaron told me that the mashed potatoes were good, but I was too disappointed to notice.
Then, on the recommendation of a businessman from Oklahoma we met at the B&B, we went to the Plains Motel Ice Cream parlor. The Plains Motel is a full complex that includes a motel, a restaurant, a store, and an ice cream parlor. The interior was decorated like a 1900s soda fountain. We ordered our ice cream cones and went out to the deck to enjoy them. Although it was in the high 80s, it was still very comfortable outside. It was so comfortable, in fact, that we had to check three different thermometers to be sure that it was really that hot. We concluded that this must be the “dry heat” people in the west talk about. If this is dry heat, I’d really hate to see the dry cold.