Yellowstone is big and alive and fascinating! Unfortunately, it is bigger than my time allows, so I assume all that I am doing here is really getting a first taste of the features and the living elements of this supervolcano that we hope will never erupt in our lifetime! And in terms of sightseeing, I haven‘t even spoken of Grand Teton yet.

So let‘s start with the 20th of September, when I arrived in Grand Teton after the „scenic“ drive up from Park City (refer to my driving blog entry) and got right away into the middle of a huge Bison herd. Now this is probably not unheard of in this area, but also I am thinking that many tourists come here and never really get close to Bison, whereas I was literally surrounded by them, but I couldn‘t really help it. What happened is, after I had checked into the Hampton Inn in Jackson town, I left for sunset and had not even entered the boundaries of the park when I came upon a Ranger Guided activity that started by the river side and then continued as an auto corso to various overlooks over the park. At one point I decided to get ahead of them after they had been talking forever at an overlook where there was not too much to see, so I drove down the few miles to famous Mormon Row and the old farm houses to get a few shots of the sunset with the hazy Teton Range in the background (we were surrounded by wildfires at that time, causing the visibility to drop). And well, there I was, parking the car in a pullout when suddenly there was Bison all around us, hundreds of them! And then, the pronhorn was out, too.

Next morning, I was in what they call GTNP proper, waiting for a sunrise that was in fact hiding behind the wildfire smoke. You couldn‘t even see the mountain range unless you were literally standing in front of it. The colors produced by this elusive sun were beautiful, especially up Signal Mountain where I went next, but this natural soft tone filter could not make up for the lack of visibility into the mountains. So I withdrew to the hotel, took a late breakfast and a nap before checking out and moving over to Teton Village to check into the next hotel, where luckily my room was already available. This was good timing and a good location to bypass the main road where I had got stuck three times already in the one-lane section due to roadwork, and to be in time for a ranger guided activity to Taggart lake in the early afternoon. The smoke was still there and the visibility still wasn‘t, but apart from that it was a perfect autumn afternoon, sunny, crips, bright colors, not too warm nor too cold. The walk was leisurely and interesting, and once we reached the first lake I took the opportunity to go a few miles on to a second, where I took my shoes off and cooled my feet in the fresh water before returning another trail down to the parking lot. I had deserved a nice dinner and a swim in the waterfalls and hot tubs of the „award winning spa“ in my lodge, and it was really gorgeous. When I am grown up, i will have a swimming pool like this!

Pickup on the 22nd was at 6:30 in front of the lodge. I was on a Old Faithful / Yellowstone Discovery Tour with Wildlife Expeditions, a „sustainable“ tour company part of Teton Science Schools that can be booked with getyourguide. I went to school with the co-founder and now CFO of getyourguide, and recently have become a freelance travel photographer for them also (very recently, in fact, as the first tour that I have taken photographing for them was in San Francisco). While the tours themselves are mostly OK, the organization of the vouchers and the travel dates by getyourguide have been a nightmare so far, and this one was no exception – as it should have taken place on the 23rd. Only by chance did I find out it was actually 22nd, which cost me my Old Faithful Hotel booking in Yellowstone that I so desparately wanted, and probably cost me my prepaid rate, too. We‘ll see. The tour itself was mostly driving in the truck and getting out, but the guide was very knowledgeable, the two other people on the tour friendly and funny, and we had a good time spotting Moose and Elk (one moose actually walked in front of our car, just yards away from the Yellowstone South Entrance Gate) and getting to Old Faithful in time for one of the eruptions right before lunch. There were good photo ops on the way, both of the tour and the activities we did as well as the scenery and the wildlife, so I hope once more that getyourguide will be satisfied.

Losing my reservation at Old Faithful had meant to find an ad-hoc solution, which I got in form of a hotel room at Grant Village, about an hour before Old Faithful inside Yellowstone National Park. So I had to drive the same route that I had just down with the tour again, but found more bison herds and good sunset spots along the way, getting some more impressions of Yellowstone, including some scenic shots of Waterfalls that we had only briefly stopped by or literally seen from the moving car during the expedition. So the 23rd I started from Grant Village and had to drive only a couple of miles to be in the West Thumb Geyser basin, which is reportedly one of the best for sunrises. The morning was very chilly and cloudy, the sun casting a yellow and orange color on the clouds it was hiding behind, which added to the steamy and gleamy atmosphere of the thermal area. I heard rumors from other visitors that bear and moose just had said good morning, but I couldn‘t spot them myself. On to Old Faithful, then, to discover at my own pace. I had been recommended renting a bike (or having a bike with me, which was a bit too much for the Prius), which is really a great means of getting around in the Upper Geysir Basin between Old Faithful and Morning Glory Pool as well as heading over to Fairy Falls and the beautiful, incredibly beautiful overlook across the Middle Geyser Basin and Grand Prismatic Spring from Fairy Falls Hill! I could spend weeks here, watching and listening to the geysers, the pools, the springs. I said initially that Yellowstone is alive, and nowhere is this more true then here. It burbles, gurgles, hizzes, fizzes, splishes and splashes, fountains and rivers and spouts and cones and everything that comes with the thermal features of an ancient supervolcano that probably had changed the surface of probably half the continent if not more forever when it last erupted.

The previous night, I had been lucky, profiting from a cancellation at Old Faithul and getting a room for tonight. It was a pretty nice room in the „Old Faithful Snow Lodge“, one of three lodging opportunities at OF, but rather an expensive one, given that I have already spent fortunes on hotel rooms and having promised to myself that for the coming days it would be a rather budgety accommodation. Well, not so, but how often can I come to Yelllowstone anyway! But having a room at OF meant I could hang out a little in the late afternoon, get an early dinner at one of the restaurants and then heading out to take long time exposures of erupting geysers, in particular Grand, during sunset and dusk hours when I could manage exposure times of between 1 and 15 seconds, and then, at night, finally one of Old Faithful. However, it had started raining a little and there was neither moon nor stars, so I could not compete with other people having taken such pictures before.

A glimpse out the window confirmed that there would not be much in terms of nice dawn light or an intense sunrise, so rather than going out to the Prismatic Spring again, I decided to run the bike down the path past Castle geyser towards Morning Glory Pool (the name must come from somewhere?!) but got stopped short by an erupting Grotto Geyser. Now this is really my favorite, intricate in its forms, not quite sure if it symbolizes some Italian art, but the sun coming through the morning haze added to the atmosphere, I liked it a lot! I spent more times around all the Geysers and Pools, using my new tripod for rather unconventional „high up“ photographs where only the camera can be lifted, not the photographer himself, before leaving around 10 o‘clock to return the bike and continue north towards Mammoth Springs, which would be my last stop inside the Park. There was so much to see and even more to miss along the way, so I got only ideas of the Lower Geyser Basins, all the sightseeing detour roads or the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which in late afternoon light was unfortunately exactly 180° of where I wanted it to be, and I definitely could not come back in the morning, so I had to give this one a pass. Well well, so far so good, tomorrow I will try to complete the „Big Five Animals of the Yellowstone“, driving the Beartooth Highway out of the park towards Cody and then probably almost to South Dakota.