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Last trip through YNP
dpmule
Member Posts: 6,739 ✭✭✭✭
For this year. Headed to Powell Wyoming to visit eldest son and family.
Weather is going to allow us to sneak through the Park today, but big storm system supposed to arrive midday tomorrow will possibly close Sylvan pass and the East gate, making it a 7 trip instead of 4 1/2 on Sundays return.
Hopefully will get to see and photograph some Bighorn sheep on Sylvan and not get hung up in any bear or Buffalo jams.
Mule
Comments
Safe travels. Have a great time.
Thanks Joe, one of these days when we are routing thru, maybe we can meet up on Jackrabbit somewhere for a meet and a cup.
Mule
Sounds like a great trip, travel safe!
Have a great trip! Judy and I stayed in the park for a week 10 years ago. It was late in the season and we were the last staying at the accommodations before they closed down for the season. Best time of the year to be there. It sure was different than my previous visits that were wall to wall people. Looked all week but didn't see any bighorns until we were a hundred yards from the gate as we were leaving.😊 Bob
I went through YNP once on a trip from Utah to somewhere in central Montana. Never again. It's probably quicker to drive around it than suffer the "touron" traffic jams going through it.
Hope this predicted four-day storm doesn't totally lock you down, mule.
Hey take a detour past the Tower ranger station and take a picture for me. See all those trees around the house? My grandmother planted them when my dad was born.
I love YNP. Hope you have a great trip.
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
Damn, good thing she did not have twins! Don
Yeah she thought outside the box. Here's a couple shots of her the Park Service would rather not see. Sitting ON the Mammoth hot spring, and a little too close to Old Faithful.
Enjoy
I have been there twice. Stayed for a week with the motorcycle and a weekend with the car. I am ready to go back.
Magical place.
It's a spooky place. In the back of your mind, you realize that you're walking around inside a just-barely inactive mega-volcano.
May it back on Sunday night and as expected the East Gate was closed due to weather on Sylvan pass, so a 225 mile drive turned into 425.
On the trip over we saw four grizzlies, the first in a big park on the Gibbon river between Gibbon falls and Norris jct, #2 was walking on a walkway by Dragons Mouth between Canyon and Fishing bridge. Rangers were showing up to handle the lookee loos. Luckily timing of the bears was perfect and very few vehicles had stopped to cause a bear jam by the time we went by them.
#3 and #4 were just about Yellowstone lake near 9 mile trailhead and about a mile apart, I think the lower one had a cub in tow, but not positive. The upper one was very blonde and a real pretty bear, none were overly large.
Saw several hundreds of Buffalo and got tied up in two small Buffalo jams.
Did not see a single Bighorn sheep on this trip, none in the Park and none while headed down the Northfork of the Shoshone to Cody. We usually at least see ewes and lambs that are visible from the road, but none this day.
Mule
Boy am I jealous. With all the history I have there, I've only been three times, and that was 30-40 years ago.
The features haven’t changed much since your Grandmother’s time nor your visits.
The roadways have been upgraded a couple times since your last visit, but no real route changes, just wider and have lines nowadays.
The two major differences are one, way way more Buffalo than 40 years ago, they (NPS) has allowed them to populate to the extent that they keep the elk pushed out of the traditional parks and meadows that they used to be very visible in. The elk still hang out in Mammoth but they keep a low profile elsewhere, you still see them occasionally, just not visible like they were in the 70’s and 80’s.
If a rancher were to treat and over graze federal grazing lease ground with cattle or sheep this way, their lease would be pulled. But with the Buffalo it is ok. They don’t cull or trap near as many as they used to. I’ll get off my soapbox on this one.
two, the traffic during summer is horrendous, the swarms of Asians used to come by charter bus, so only one vehicle. Now many, and I’m guessing they are on a return trip, have taken to flying into Salt Lake City and renting vehicles. I’ve noticed in my drive throughs when we either got hung in a bear/Buffalo jam or our traditional pee stops, that sometimes upwards of 6 of 10 vehicles will be full of Asians. Not really picking on them as there is tons of folks from everywhere viewing the Park.
From rumblings and comments that Cam Sholly, the new YNP Supt, I look for a registration or lottery type system to be implemented in the near future due to the infrastructure, roads, services, emergency services, and rangers are being overwhelmed by the hoards.
I used to occasionally like to go for an outing and go up on Dunraven pass north side towards Tower jct and glass Bighorn sheep but it’s not worth the effort now and that route between Canyon and Tower was closed this year anyway.
Mule
Wow that's a neat review, I can picture a lot of that in my mind's eye. Last time there we camped in Mammoth near the base of the hot springs and the morning sun brought us out of the tent and we were surrounded by elk eating the grass.
Neat story, my grandparent's house was right at the base of the hot springs, over to the right a little. One day grandpa got sent to the root cellar for something (it was dug down into the ground/hillside) and he spotted white mineral water leaking through the dirt walls. They kept an eye on it and the leak got bigger and bigger, until it started pooling. So they abandoned the root cellar, until it filled up and started encroaching toward the house, forming terraces quick in that direction. There was nothing else to do but move into different quarters there in the valley, and they tore the house down. For years you could see the low rectangular opening that used to be the root cellar, until it was covered up.
Lemme poke around and I'll see if I can find a picture of that.