Mooned by Elk (Yellowstone, Day 1)

Our day started with a parting of ways with the strangest Motel 6 we’ve ever stayed in. To begin with, it had no carpeting; instead, it had bambooish floors. It also was a room about the size of a closet under the stairs, but with a non-slopping roof. However, the bathroom was about the size of Yellowstone Park. Oddly, the shower was about the size of a cupboard. In fact, while showering, it was necessary to choose between getting very friendly with the wall or very friendly with the shower curtain. Oh – and it seemed to be furnished with things from Ikea, complete with platform beds.

After checking out, we headed back to Grand Teton, scoffing at the tourists who excitedly stopped to take pictures of the mountains, since we’d been there and done that, and, once you’ve seen one mountain, you’ve seen them all. (Although, Sedwick just reminded me of one exception to this – we saw a cool looking break in the clouds that was stop and picture worthy).

Then, we came to Yellowstone, which is a park of a different kind than the Grand Tetons. To begin with, it’s apparently built over hot steam. We also saw the most timely geyser of all – Old Faithful (who is becoming less faithful over time, at least so sayeth a park ranger). Because of the wind, the spout of water went more out than up, but here’s a slideshow of the pictures we took of it. Even more exciting than Old Faithful was White Dome … White Dome Something. We were driving along, looking for geysers and steam and spouts and such, and pondering how similar Yellowstone smells to Lubbock (at least in the sulfery parts), and White Dome started geysering. Since we weren’t expecting it (unlike Old Faithful who we were sitting and waiting for), and since we were in a warm dry car, it was quite fun to see.



We also discovered the existence of something called mud pots, which are sometimes also called paint pots, since they look like dried paint sometimes. In a paint pot/mud pot area, we saw the most geysering geyser that has ever geysered. This isn’t in the sense of how high it geysered, but in the sense of how frequently it geysered. There was a geyser next to it that was named something like spasm geyser, which I thought was a much more appropriate name for this geyser, since the so-named spasm geyser never geysered while we were there. So, I took a picture of the gysering geyser with the spasm geyser sign.

So, in Yellowstone, in the ground we saw: fountain geysers, dome geysers, hot springs, mud pots, fumaroles, and bubbling Lubbocky smelling stuff. Some of those pictures are here (as well as others).



We also saw many more animals than we saw in the Grand Tetons. In fact, we saw more elk butts than you can shake a stick at. Apparently, elk are taught from a young age to always show their butts to tourists, and constantly keep their heads down, pretending to eat. In fact, if you get out of the car and walk around trying to get a better vantage point (as Sedwick did), the elk will turn with you, making sure you just have a nice view of being mooned. This quest for an elk face also let Sedwick meet another Red Sox fan. As he was walking toward the elk, Michele noticed someone getting out of the car in front of us, and quickly spotted that she was a Red Sox fan, since she had a Red Sox tee-shirt on. The woman talked with Sedwick a bit, after seeing his Red Sox hat. Her husband asked if she’d met a Red Sox fan, and she replied “Well, I’m not talking to a Yankee fan, John.”



To show the elk how picture posing should be done, we had the animals pose in a few different spots, showing their faces rather than their butts. They continued the trend of having paparazzi follow them.



In addition to elk butts, we saw lots and lots of bison. Unlike the elk, they don’t taunt the tourists. In fact, they don’t seem to care whether they’re being photographed. (However, at one spot, where this baby bison was hanging out with its mom, some tourists were getting close enough to the bison that we prepared to get a picture of a bison goring a tourist. Alas and alack, this did not happen. Therefore, we have no action shots of bison. We apologize for this)

After leaving the park, we escaped Wyoming and headed to the refuge of Montana. We stayed in West Yellowstone, which is enamored with painted buffalo. In fact, they had a buffalo painted with a buffalo on it. West Yellowstone is also very modest. They had businesses such as the Ho Hum Motel and the It’ll Do cabin. This was in addition to names that reminded us that we were out west, such as the Brandin’ Iron Hotel (which didn’t have its own check in area, and directed guests to check in at the Dude Hotel). We then made it to our first stop, which was a brewpub named Wolf Pack Brewing Company. Even though it hadn’t gotten great reviews, we decided to give it a shot. However, first we noticed the closed sign on the door. Then, we noticed the people eating inside. We decided the closed sign was a mistake, so we went in. Sedwick, being helpful, turned around the closed sign. However, a waitress soon came up to us, and informed us that they were, in fact, closed. We asked about all the people sitting there eating. She told us that they were having problems, and suggested we try a pizza place down the street. Puzzled at these odd Montana customs, we left, and, happily, ended up at Bullwinkle’s. First, there were very nice people there. There was a Red Sox game on, and the hostess seated us at a table for twice as many of us as there were (we hadn’t brought the animals in, so there were just 3 of us), so we could have a good view of the game. This place also had quite good food, and Moose Drool, which is quite very good Montana beer. So, all in all, it was a good thing that the Wolf Pack was having “problems.” I bet they didn’t even have Moose Drool.

We also discovered that Montana hotels have their own oddities. Here are some pictures of the oddities of ours.