Bike Odyssey 2014 – Day 38 (June 23) – Geysers for Geezers

First time I was really sorry to leave a campsite – the whole Livingstone KOA campsite was nice, every site nestled in trees, and the river’s edge site was so seductive I could have happily stayed another day. But we hit the road, got to the Yellowstone Park (visited a café in Gardiner in my daughter Rosie’s honor – see photo) and entered. Ultimately the Park was worth it for the wildlife and the Grand Prismatic Pool, a bubbling, boiling turquoise and sky blue sulfur spring that produces multi-colored vapors, described in his autobiogrpahy by my pal Bobby Bridger as featuring elongated diaphanous steam spirals [that] swirl to heaven, escaping thermal pools of unimaginable temperatures bubbling up from within the volcanic bowels of Mother Earth. The temperature from the pool’s deep, hot core cools as it approaches the banks, allowing various intrepid forms of living algae to defy the heat and flourish in rich, deliciously intense colors. Creating a steamy aurora borealis as a visual celebration of their bold survival, the algae pools mirror the heavens while simultaneously casting a ghostly reflection of their own translucent pastel hues into the spiraling vapor clouds. From my first visit, the Grand Prismatic Pool seemed to me the perfect mystical metaphor of a human: light shining through vapors, creating rainbow prisms of color…

The remaining landscape of the Park was disappointing, nonetheless, mostly impenetrably dull pine woods (with no peaks visible above them) decimated by fires and storms and, on top of this, suffering from a severe infestation of hugely-fat-tourist beetle. If you drive the whole Park you eventually reach some fine lakewide vistas at the furthest southerly point, but these too recede as you follow the figure-8 main road back northwards. The best and most interesting part – with the exception of the astonishing sulfur pools – is in the Northeast quadrant, where moose and bear and deer and buffalo literally abound, and come in close, to the delight of the humans snapping away like paparazzi who’ve chanced upon a naked, horned rock star. A lone young wolf trotted up the road, looking lost and confused; several buffalo mooched along the tarmac too – and they’ve been known to attack cars. We saw some frisky males leaping and kicking out backwards to keep vehicles at bay.

It’s a long day on two wheels at 35 mph, 215 miles of constant vigilance – the concentration is the tiring part – to reach Cooke City, an old mining town where Brendan and his outstandingly comfortable & clean High Country Motel provided a refuge. A little on the cold side for camping, at 8000 feet, and if you’re as weary as we are, oh for a bed. What takes it out of you is the strain of focusing on possible animal intrusion and, worse, possible driver-suddenly-seeing-an-elk and braking abruptly. The elk were very far away, tiny dots they would have been even if our fellow-tourists had had telephoto lenses, which they didn’t. God help their families at home movie time. There’s an elk in that shot somewhere, godammit, I swear there is.

The one giant outlet, at Ol’Faithful, king geyser, featured accessories stretched across immense stores. The buyers looked sad and uninspired by either their purchases or the sights, or the travel. It’s hard not to feel sorry for people whose journey is so devoid of the smell of the landscape they’re passing through that they’d almost be just as well off watching a travel-video. Tomorrow, for us, the famed Beartooth Pass. And by tomorrow sleep will have sewn my legs back on.