Cody and Yellowstone

Yesterday was Yellowstone; today is Cody, our home from yesterday through Wednesday. We began yesterday with breakfast in Greybull, Wyoming, in a cafe with equal-sized sections for smokers and non-smokers. We couldn't remember the last time we've eaten in a place where people could smoke, and yes, we noticed the smoke where we were sitting. We got to Cody around noon, checked into our motel room, and quickly continued on to Yellowstone, 53 miles away on a spectacular drive that includes the Buffalo Bill Reservoir. In June 1976, after finishing the first (long) draft of my first (bad) novel, I pitched a tent in the state park along this reservoir, spent my days on a lounge chair editing, and went into Cody in the evening for a square meal. So this place brings back a lot of memories.

Yellowstone National Park was a mixed bag yesterday. I'll confess that I much prefer the Grand Tetons, where I'll take Linda tomorrow. The day was hot and hazy, temperatures in the high 80s, and a few small fires in the park added smoke to the sky that increased the haze. This hurt the views in the north part of the park near Tower Falls, where the wide valley vistas were rather indistinct in the sunny haze.

The other thing spoiling the view was the prevalence of dead trees. A couple of days ago, leaving the Mount Rushmore area, we saw a lot of dead pines that were attacked in the last year by pine beetles, devastating the forests. But that was nothing compared to what we saw in Yellowstone, especially the drive to the lake from the East entrance. High sloping hillsides were piled with fallen trees, strewn haphazardly like discarded matchsticks. Wildfires are always a problem in the western states, as the recent devastation near Yosemite reminds us, but the evidence will be there for many years to come in Yellowstone. Lots of dead trees still stand like abandoned sentinels of latest danger, but we saw so many fallen trees pointed at us that we were sure one would untangle itself from brush and impale our little Toyota.

The big plus was the wildlife. We didn't see any moose -- I have promised Linda a moose sighting on this trip -- but we did see a thousand or so buffaloes. We saw one herd of 200-300 on the way in and the same herd a half-mile away on the way out six hours later. Other times, they were right along the road, and the funniest sight of the day was a park ranger using his vehicle to herd the big adults off the road when they lingered too long and tied up traffic. We got lots of great photos (soon available on our Facebook pages, since I'm still stymied by alien forces on this site), including one Linda took out the window of a huffing male just a few feet away. After we passed an estimated thousand head of bison for the day, I was reminded of a visit to Yellowstone a long time ago with Judy, who, late in a similar day as I gestured toward yet another cluster just off the road, said, "If you point out another fucking buffalo today, I'll scream!"

We also saw elk, pronghorn antelope, mule deer, hawks, a trumpeter swan, and more. I can't get enough of wildlife in the wild, and Linda feels the same way. I'd rather spent an afternoon looking at buffalo than at Old Faithful; in fact, that's what happened yesterday, as we never did get to the big geyser. We weren't crazy about the sulphur stench of the Mammoth area and kept driving past the fulminating features that so many other people apparently savor. Lakes, mountains, trees, animals. That's all we ask. And we'll see plenty of that tomorrow in the Grand Tetons, starting of course with about a 130-mile drive from Cody through Yellowstone. Where's that moose hiding?