Augmented Fourth: Mountain Men and Yellowstone

Sulphur Beds!

Geysers!

This is YELLOWSTONE!

It is the height of tourist season. We had noticed this in Glacier, but were now headed to the oldest National Park in the nation and by far the most popular. Keaton later described it as a Disneyland flavored national park. While there are "day-hikes," Yellowstone gets its name from the massive amounts of sulphur deposits created by the systems of geysers, mudpots, springs, etc. But we had a church to see before we arrived in Yellowstone.

Following the 90 and a few state highways down the Continental Divide, we ended up in the town of Seeley Lake. Nathan's grandpa had been a backwoods pastor in the real sense. One could almost say a backwoods missionary. Three of the churches in Eastern Montana, Al Pullmann had built with his own hands. One was out of the way in Eureka, one we had passed in a town in Condon, and the last we were stopping at in Seeley Lake. In a fortuitous turn of events, the cleaning lady was just finishing up, so we got to see the church inside and out. Nathan's grandfather was a master carpenter who used wood in almost every facet of the three churches that he built. Unfortunately, the pastor was not there. Nathan signed the guest-book and listed his family history so that everyone would know the descendants of the first pastor had tread here again. That sounded overly dramatic, but we were hoping it was as cool as something like that.

So, we ended up in Yellowstone late afternoon to discover that every campground inside the park was full (surprise). We also discovered shortly that every campground outside of the park in a 20 mile radius was ALSO full (less cool, but ok). The ranger reminded us that in any National Forest in America (including the one surrounding the entrance to Yellowstone) we could camp anywhere as long as we were 100 feet from water and 500 feet from the road. The only problem now became finding a flat spot in which we could camp. After all, we were in the Rockies. These weren't even foothills, they were the ROCKIES. After driving several miles deep into the African rainforest...err, American National Forest, we came across a turn-out. We decided we'd find something here or bust. The "happy" medium we found was somewhere in between. We climbed up a deceptively large foothill (it seemed smaller from down below) only to find false crests, more sagebrush, and a notable lack of anything truly flat. But, we had dragged our stuff up this mountain, so we were going to make a comfrotable night of it. At least, we were going to make a night of it. The good side entailed watching a beautiful and long sunset at high elevation. I don't think pollution makes the beautiful colors of the sunset; I think they've always been there. At any rate, Wyoming (technically DEEP southern Montana, but whose keeping track) had them just as good as Orange County or LA had. The down side had us eaten alive by mosquitoes. Retiring into our sleeping bags simply for protection, we wondered why there had to be so many mosquitoes. Why not just enough to feed the bat and bird population, and no more? Maybe they reproduce more after the Fall.

We woke up the next morning still pretty tired and rather sore (sagebrush does not provide a very comfortable sleeping surface). Heading down the mountain, we jumped in the car and car-toured Yellowstone. Almost immediately we saw a couple bison; I'm convinced the rangers teach them to pose. The ones near the road always seem so picturesque. It also felt like a theme park; we didn't even have to leave the car to snap a picture of the buffalo. We then meandered through the park mostly in the car, getting out to walk past the sulfuric fun along the boardwalks provided. After admiring Old Faithful and the rustic lodge built almost entirely of lodgepole pine, we headed down and out of the gigantic park and into Grand Teton. Yellowstone is an awesome park, but there were far too many people there to make us want to camp the night there. We saw almost everything they had to offer from the road, which involved quite a lot of getting out. We also covered both Eastern and Western roads, since after we did Grand Teton we came back up through Yellowstone to get back to Nathan's house. Here we'll share some of our favorite picture-postcards from the land of sulphur and hot-springs.

The first night, we almost stayed in this abandoned pump-house (it's interesting to notice how much National Forest used to be private land). This pond actually fed an irrigation ditch that had been out of service for more than a generation. We saw the farmhouse to which is belonged down in the valley, but couldn't find a way to get to it. The pump-house ended up not really being structurally sound enough (nor big enough) for four men...