The Fall is Here

At the end of August I extended my car lease and decided to switch to a new car. I got this large Chevy Impala with New Mexico plates. Or just one plate to be exact as it only had the one in the back. I had to Google to see whether driving a car like that is even legal. Apparently cars registered in 19 or the 50 states require just the back plate and New Mexico is one of them.

The road to Bear Lake in the Rocky Mountain National Park is closed for most of the time because of road work. However, if you get there before 9am you can drive there yourself instead of having to catch a shuttle bus. One Saturday morning I woke up really early and went out before the sunset and finally got to see this beautiful place. It had snowed a few weeks prior up in the mountains.

I wasn't digging the Chevy Impala at all so I switched it to another Chevy Cruze 2012 and this time I got the best model with keyless ignition, leather seats and all that other useless stuff. It's funny though how two cars from the same company can be so different. The Cruze is so much fun to drive whereas the Impala just made you want to avoid driving altogether.

Random Wildlife

I feel like I've seen this guy before. I shall call him Bob from now on.

This bird is called the... umm... greyish bird?

The elk gather around in the meadows and the bulls do the weird bugling sound

Don't get too close

Say hello to our pika friend

Some moose looking for a way round the fence

Awww... so cute. A turkey vulture. Love the perforated nostrils

Some bighorn sheep ewes getting a drink

It felt like a real operation at the Rocky Mountain National Park when the bighorn sheep crossed the road to get to the meadow. There must have been a dozen park rangers stopping all traffic and making sure they got across safely and without too much stress.

As seen from this chart by the park rangers, getting to see these creatures is not exactly a guarantee.

 

Yellowstone

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The first Monday of September is the Labor Day, a national holiday, so I felt I had to do something special during the long weekend. Visiting the Yellowstone National Park had been on my to-do list from the get-go so with an incredible short planning, I decided to take the plunge and just get it over with. I left early on Saturday morning and came back on Monday having driven approximately 1250 miles (2000km) over the course of these three days, most of which were on Saturday and Monday.

I spent the first night in Jackson Hole, WY where I went to a two hour rodeo in the evening. I booked a more expensive seat in the covered main stand and that proved to be a good decision since 15 minutes after the start it started pouring like crazy and the organizers eventually let even the cheapskate people under the main stands since it was so bad.

Some ski-hills in Jackson, WY

As a non-US citizen, can you say cheezy? I dare not even say anything about the speech that went along with this.

After a not-so-good night, I head out at 7am when it was 40 ° F (4.5 ° C) and incredibly foggy. I pretty much missed all of the Grand Teton National Park which lies south of Yellowstone. That in itself would've included enough interesting stuff to spend a couple of days there but since I had extremely limited time, I decided to just drive through it. The fog was so thick in some places that you couldn't see ANYTHING. Luckily it cleared out shortly after I reached Yellowstone.

Some random falls which seemed cool at the time but just a waste of time by the end of the day when I saw what the rest of the park had to offer.

 

Yellowstone has roughly half of the world's geysers. In layman's terms that means not dozens but a couple of hundred of these things spread around in quite a small area. At first you feel like taking a dozen pics of the ones you see but later on, you just end up walking past most of them... "blah, that's nothing special". Only in Yellowstone.

Everyone seems to talk about the Old Faithful but these things were way cooler, or would that be hotter? It's a non-stop, kind of a hypnotic show that you just want to keep staring at forever. Then again, if you get in front of the spray, it smells like boiled eggs because of the sulfur.

Dayum

The Old Faithful as seen from a distance. I missed this show by a few minutes and had to then wait for about 90 minutes in order to catch the next eruption.

A random waterfall to which I had to hike 2.5 miles there and back again in a not-so-great terrain without any water (or a hat). What a dumb-dumb I can be sometimes. Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I had skipped this since it took what seemed to be forever and eventually I ended up having to drive through quite a few interesting places since the clock was ticking fast and the sun was going down. Oh well...

The sizzling Grand Prismatic Spring

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone as seen from the top of the 308 feet (94 m) Lower Yellowstone Falls

Oh hello there mr wolfy coyote

The obligatory buffalo pic. There's no fence between them and I but they were just concentrated on the omnomnom so no panic.

This is what a forest looks like after a wildfire. This was basically all I saw for the next 30 minutes driving east towards Cody, WY before it got dark and the last hour or so was driving in pitch black. This wasn't exactly the most fun time I have had here since I was absolutely exhausted after one of the best days I've ever had in my life.