Monday, February 15: Columbia SC to Louisville KY

Off we go - we met our Carolina Travel travelling companions at Dutch Square in Columbia and headed west at 7:15 sharp, with mimosas served to mark the occasion. There were 33 on board for the ‘ultimate snow trip’ – 31 travelers, driver and tour director. We got into falling snow as soon as we crossed the North Carolina line and followed it on through Tennessee and Kentucky.

We stopped for the night in Louisville, KY, where the temperature was 25 degrees, as compared to 41 degrees when we left home this morning.

Tuesday, February 16: Louisville KY to Moline IL

Louisville is situated on the Ohio River at the Falls of the Ohio. It was founded in 1778 by George Rogers Clark and named after French King Louis XIV. In the 1800's, it was an important shipping port, but today it's best known as the home of the Kentucky Derby.

We crossed the Ohio River into Indiana and saw more snow. As we drove across Indiana, there must have been 2 dozen cars in the ditches along the sides of the road. More snow in Illinois, which is flat, flat, flat. We stopped for the night in Moline, which sits on the banks of the mighty Mississippi River. Temperature was about 23 degrees, with brisk wind - we didn't wander around outdoors for very long. Sadly, this marked the end of the line for two of our travelers, who had to head back home due to a family illness.

Wednesday, February 17: Moline IL to Council Bluffs IA

Today we're off to learn all about John Deere, who founded Deere and Company, the largest agricultural and construction equipment manufacturers in the world. In 1837, John Deere invented the first commercially successful steel plow, which worked better than other plows in the tough soil of the Midwest prairie. Deere located his company here, and other agricultural equipment manufacturers followed. The town grew along with them -- until the farm crisis of the 1980's when the town nearly dried up.





In the 1990's, Moline began staging a comeback through the redevelopment of the riverfront and today the John Deere Commons is a multi-million dollar entertainment and tourism complex showcasing John Deere and the history of agriculture in the Midwest. The John Deere Pavilion is a huge building full of old and new tractors, combines, and other agricultural equipment.

It didn't take long to see enough tractors, and then we were on our way again.... across the Mississippi and into Iowa. Iowa doesn't seem like a very big state until you start driving across it - it took the rest of the day. Of course, we made an unscheduled stop at the Iowa 80 Truck Stop - said to be the largest truck stop in the world. All we know is that it is huge - there are at least 8 trucks inside of the place, including 3 tractor-trailer rigs.

Iowa was a pretty drive -- lots more snow. The terrain was gentle hills, with a few more trees than Illinois, and monster farms. It looked mostly like corn, but of course, it was all white - fields of snow, frozen rivers, and some very impressive snow drifts.









Today we saw wildlife, too - a bald eagle, several hawks, some wild turkeys, lots of deer and Canada geese.

Out in this frozen land, we even saw some folks ice-fishing.  Talk about wild lilfe - they gotta be nuts.

We stopped for the night at Council Bluffs, right on the banks of the Missouri River. From our hotel room, we could see Omaha, Nebraska, across the river, and we're heading that way in the morning.

Thursday, February 18: Council Bluffs IA to Cheyenne WY

We made a short stop this morning at the Strategic Air and Space Museum, just southwest of Omaha. This place focuses on US Air Force military aircraft and nuclear missiles located southwest of Omaha Nebraska. It's a huge complex displaying historic aircraft, missiles and space vehicles. We saw lots of planes and learned all sorts of things. For example, we saw "Greased Lightning," a B-58 that set a world speed record in 1963 by flying from Tokyo to London in 8.5 hours, despite having to slow down for mid-air re-fueling.

On across the great state of Nebraska - it looks a whole lot like Iowa, but there's a little less snow, big farms with monstrous irrigation systems, frozen ponds with ice fishermen, and un-frozen ponds with lots of waterfowl - mostly Canada geese. Just outside Kearney, Nebraska, we drove through or under the Great Platt River Road Archway Monument - it is a tribute to the pioneers who rode and walked this way as they headed west.

It's windy out here, especially in the western half of the state, as we reach the high plains. We passed quite a few wind farms - huge windmills busy making electricity.

By the time we got to Wyoming, there was a bit of a blizzard underway - the last hour of the drive was icy and dicey. But we made it to Cheyenne to a warm room, nice dinner, and getting ready to head further west in the morning.

Friday, February 19: Cheyenne WY to Sheridan WY

After last night's snow, the area around our hotel was like a winter wonderland - all soft and white and peaceful. We had time to walk around a while - and to consider jumping in that heated pool.

After breakfast, we headed over to the State Capitol for a tour. This building, which was completed in 1890, has a distinctive gold dome - inside the dome, the ceiling of the rotunda is blue and yellow stained glass. There are statues scattered around, inside and outside - a pretty place in the snow.

We walked around the slippery corner to the Wyoming State Museum to learn a little more about the history of this state. Here is Shoshone Chief Washakie, whose claim to fame was that he was the only major Indian chief who never declared war on the United States.

We drove north from Cheyenne to Sheridan - not exactly the most direct route to Yellowstone, but ... it was the route that wasn't closed by snow. And it turned out to be a pretty drive - we saw lots of pronghorn antelopes, as well as bald eagles, white-tail deer and mule deer.

Saturday, February 20: Sheridan WY to Yellowstone National Park

We're off again - heading north into Montana, then west across that state and then south into Yellowstone - a roundabout route, for sure, but it's probably best that we stay on the roads that aren't closed for the winter. The landscape was beautiful, but as we lost altitude, we also starting losing the snow. There were still deep drifts in some places, but other spots were blown clean by the wind.

Another good day for wildlife watching - we're up to a dozen pairs of bald eagles - surprising to see so many. And we're still seeing a good many pronghorn antelopes - the farmers must love them - in a couple of fields, the pronghorns far outnumbered the cattle. We also spotted a few deer - mostly mule deer.

In mid-afternoon, we finally reached Yellowstone - approaching the park from the north and heading into Mammoth Hot Springs. This grand entrance, the Teddy Roosevelt Arch, was named for the president who was a big supporter of Yellowstone, as well as other national parks. Yellowstone National Park sprawls across the northwest corner of Wyoming - over 2 million acres of geysers and other hydrothermal features, crystalline lakes, thundering waterfalls and panoramic vistas. The park sits on top of an active volcanic plateau that includes the largest concentration of geothermal features in the world.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its name. The first white explorers in the area were the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805. When passing through present-day Montana, they were told about the Yellowstone region to the south, but they chose not to investigate it. In 1806, John Colter, a member of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, left to join a group of fur trappers and passed through a portion of what later became the park. His descriptions of this place of "fire and brimstone," as well as reports from later mountain men and trappers, were dismissed as myth. In 1856, Jim Bridger reported boiling springs, spouting water and a mountain of glass and yellow rock - his reports, too, were ignored because Bridger was known for being a spinner of yarns and tall tales. It wasn't until 1869 that an 'official' expedition documented the wonders of Yellowstone, and by 1872, Yellowstone National Park was created.

We started our own exploration in the northwest corner of the park - Mammoth Hot Springs. As the name suggests, this area is known for lots of hot water and steam bubbling from the earth - although our first sight was a herd of elk.

Unlike some other thermal features, these hot springs leave behind travertine (calcium carbonate). The travertine forms huge terraces and mounds resembling giant stairs or ski slopes. How does this work? As the super-heated water rises from deep beneath the earth's crust, its acidic nature dissolves the limestone. At the surface, the water deposits travertine, producing natural sculptures similar to the way stalagmites are formed in caves. The result is tier upon tier of multi-colored, cascading, terraced stone. The sculpting of these ever-changing terraces continues today as thousands of gallons of water well up and deposit more and more travertine.

We took advantage of the late afternoon sun (a balmy 30 degrees) to walk the trail through the area known as the Lower Terraces. As we walked, we could see steam escaping from the snowy mountainside.

Along the trail sits a cone-shaped stone, about the height of the 3-story building, known as the Liberty Cap. It supposedly resembles the knit caps worn during the French Revolution. The Liberty Cap was formed by a spring that had enough pressure to raise water above the growing formation, allowing mineral deposits to build slowly and continuously for hundreds of years. It is estimated to be about 2500 years old.

Further along the trail, the water from Palette Spring flows in criss-crossing patterns down a steep ridge where heat-loving micro-organisms create orange and brown colors. The effect is much the same as an artist would achieve by letting watercolors run down a vertical surface.










Around the middle of the trail, there are massive terraces that resemble sandcastles or layer cakes. Some of them are bubbling over with hot water, some are oozing water or steam, and some are dormant. It's a landscape like nothing we've even seen before. We would have stayed longer and seen even more, but the sun dipped below the horizon and the temperature went with it.

We headed back to our lodging for the next couple of nights, the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. It's big and old --complete with clanking steam radiators and lacking in amenities such as television, telephones and internet. We enjoyed the evening ranger program - the Night Sky of Yellowstone - inspired us to head outside in the near zero evening to see what we could see - lots of stars!

Sunday, February 21: Mammoth Hot Springs & Lamar Valley

The temperature dropped to 2 degrees last night and it didn't seem much warmer than that when we ventured out after breakfast. With a step-on guide to show us where to go and where to look, we headed east from Mammoth Hot Springs to visit Lamar Valley, which is winter range for elk and bison. And - in theory - where there are grazing animals, the predators will follow.

We saw a few elk, including a big bull elk grazing alongside the road. At this time of year, most of the elk from the northern part of the park have migrated into southwestern Montana for the winter.












On the other hand, we saw hundreds of bison throughout the day. Sometimes solitary animals, sometimes small groups, sometimes big gangs of them - but it is clear that there's no shortage of bison.

Our guide was hoping for a three-dog day by spotting wolf, coyote and red fox, but had to settle for 2 of the 3. We saw a couple of coyotes and a red fox. We looked high and low, but never did see the elusive wolf. Wolves in Yellowstone were eradicated many years ago and just re-introduced in 1995. Their population now stands at about 100, so we have more chances to see them before we leave. Still - no complaints in the canine department - the coyotes were charming and the red fox was a real beauty.

Another lucky sighting was a group of big horn sheep perched on a steep hill near the road. The bighorn is one of three mountain sheep found in North America; they graze on grasses and browse shrubs. They are well-adapted to climbing steep terrain where they seek cover from predators.

With or without animals, the scenery was pretty spectacular. Snow, mountains, rocks, streams - just beautiful.

Coming out of the valley, the snow kept getting deeper and deeper and the mountains loomed larger and larger. We slid between the Absaroka Range and the Beartooth Range into the little town of Cooke City, Montana - just outside the park boundary.










At Cooke City, we were surrounded by snowmobiles - a rather necessary means of transport since the road out of Cook City (further east) is closed by snow - and is open only about four months out of the year. We had lunch here and stretched our legs before heading back the way we came.

Things looked different going in the opposite direction - this time we spotted moose - a bull and a couple of cows - having their own lunch among the willows near the river. Very exciting to see this shy creature - they are not very common in these parts since forest fires in Yellowstone have destroyed so much of their favorite habitat.

More bison, including one fellow who had established himself in the middle of the road and had no intention of letting us pass. It seemed like he was the crossing guard, as several other bison crossed over while he cast evil looks at us. It's against the law to harass these guys, so we just sat back and enjoyed our first bison jam - as our guide pointed out, there are a lot worse places to be stuck in traffic than in Yellowstone. Amen to that.

We meandered back to Mammoth in late afternoon - time enough for a stop at the Visitor Center - nice exhibits and a good movie about the park. Upstairs they have stuffed animals, so we got to have another look at all the critters we had seen during the day.