Travel

Some of the geyser areas at Yellowstone might appear at first glance to be tempting natural hot tubs. On a chilly fall day, the rising steam can seem to invite a visitor to settle in for a warm bath—or at least to try the water with a toe. (Assuming, that is, said visitor can ignore the smell of sulphur and disregard the silent warnings of the dead stubs of pine trees standing with their toes in that same water.)

I’m sure somewhere in the Yellowstone thermal area are warm pools that can be and are used for relaxing soaks. They are, however, most definitely in the hidden minority. The major geyser areas are surrounded by raised wooden walkways, flanked by stern signs warning visitors not to set foot off the paths. Some of the pools are acidic enough to burn through leather and most of them are hot enough to scald. Anyone foolish enough to ignore the signs risks being badly burned or even scalded to death. This warning isn’t over-protective, either; people have died in these pools.

Still, it was ironic to notice the natural features that surrounded many of these warning signs—buffalo tracks. During colder weather, the park’s bison tend to gather near the hot springs. I don’t know whether they drink the water, which must be awful if it tastes anything like it smells, or whether they just hang out in the warmth and exchange office gossip.

One of the shallow geyser pools we saw was named "Beauty Pool." We wondered if this was where the buffalo came for beautifying mud packs. If so, we decided, it wasn’t doing much good.

We also wondered, with all the warning signs and the obvious risk to human visitors, why we didn’t see any places where half-ton bison had crashed through the crusted surface into one of the hot pools. Did we just not recognize the signs of such accidents? Do they have some instinct that warns them away from dangerous areas? Or are they just lucky?

Or maybe there is another explanation. Maybe any evidence of buffalo-steaming had been covered up. After all, most of the restaurants in Yellowstone have buffalo on their menus. That meat has to come from somewhere. You can probably order it any way you want—as long as it’s boiled.

An exasperating thing happened on the way to this article; I tripped over my own research.

Last week I visited Yellowstone National Park for the first time. A trip to such a spectacular place certainly ought to provide plenty of material to write about, so I dutifully set out to do so.

In the park I had seen references to John Colter, who was an early mountain man but first a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition. At the end of that trip, he promptly headed back into the mountains to trap for furs, and he was one of the first non-Indians to see the Yellowstone area. It’s a common story that his descriptions of the geysers and hot springs led to the place being called "Colter’s Hell."

Well, that gave me a clever little opening paragraph about having made a trip to hell and back, which could lead nicely into my own descriptions of the geysers, and I was off and running. Then I made the mistake of doing an Internet search for "Colter’s Hell."

It seems that there is some controversy over whether "Colter’s Hell" was ever actually used to refer to Yellowstone. It probably was a name instead for a smaller area of thermal activity near present-day Cody, Wyoming. That may be a minor distinction in the overall scheme of things, but for a nitpicking looker-up of stuff like myself it’s too big an issue to ignore. God forbid that I should perpetuate a falsehood, no matter how common. Neither did I have the time or energy to turn a brief article into a full-fledged research project on early Yellowstone.

So there went my clever opening and half my article, and I was left with nothing much to say.

Except that Yellowstone is an area almost impossible to describe without superlatives. Talking about the mountains, lakes, geysers, and hot springs requires a whole thesaurus of adjectives like spectacular, awesome, and incredible.

I was prepared for that kind of beauty and grandeur. I was not prepared for harshness, as well. The mineral-crusted ground, the dead trees mummified in white sediment, the smell of sulphur, and the acerbic oranges and greens of the hot pools made the areas surrounding the geysers into forbidding tracts of wasteland. They were impressive, certainly, even beautiful in their own stark way, but hardly welcoming or appealing.

"Colter’s Hell" suited them so well. I’m still wistful about not being able to use it.

Logic Problem: Thirteen people, on five motorcycles followed by two cars, are traveling from South Dakota to North Dakota. A sleeping bag on the fourth bike in line comes unfastened and falls off. The rider on the fifth bike hits it, and it pops loose the spring on his kickstand.

Question: How many members of the group does it take to fix this problem?

The Math: One to pick up the offending sleeping bag and stash it in a car. One to gouge open his hand on the kickstand spring. Two to pick up the bike after it tips over. One to hold the bike upright. One to walk along the shoulder of the highway looking for a piece of wire to tie up the kickstand. One to find some rope in the trunk of a car for the same purpose. One to get a water bottle and wash blood off both biker and bike. One to provide tissues for drying the wound. One to find the first-aid kit and apply bandages. Six to offer sympathy and moral support. Two to take pictures. One—at the end of the trip—to figure out that if you pull the kickstand all the way up it relieves the tension on the spring enough so you can easily replace the spring with one hand.

Answer: Nineteen. If that doesn’t make sense to you, it’s probably because you weren’t there.

I’ve never made a road trip with bikers before. If you want to get really technical about it, I still haven’t, since I was among those in a car instead of on a motorcycle. I did, however, learn several things about traveling on a motorcycle.

For one thing, you don’t just hop on the bike and head down the road. You check such things as the tire pressure. You put on your protective chaps and jacket. You check to make sure all your gear is securely tied on or locked in its proper compartment. You put on your helmet. You lift the bike off its kickstand. You climb on. Then you head out. It’s a bit like traveling in a small airplane—you do all the safety checks first, every time, because they matter.

The other thing I learned is that, on a motorcycle, the journey matters more than the destination. Having someplace to go is just an excuse to get out on the road. Riding is the whole point. (That, and stopping at every place between Belle Fourche, South Dakota, and Belfield, North Dakota, where it’s possible to buy ice cream. There are more such places than you might think.)

We did, by the way, also enjoy the destination—Medora, in the North Dakota Badlands. Teddy Roosevelt ranched here for several years in the 1880’s. His neighbor the Marquis de Mores founded the town (named for his wife), built a packing plant and a hunting lodge, and lost a fortune trying to ship processed beef east and west. The museums are interesting, Theodore Roosevelt National Park is spectacular, the people are friendly, and the Medora Musical is terrific entertainment. It’s a great place to visit—even if you don’t have a chance to get there on a motorcycle.