CLASSIC TRIP - Montana and Yellowstone 2002, Part 2

A friend from work had just been royally screwed by the company that runs the national park lodging. He'd just come home his mother's funeral in Croatia physically and emotionally exhausted and called up the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley and reserved their best room. His family would go with him and have some much needed R&R in the desert park.

When he arrived, he had found that they had overbooked and substituted him at a nearby motel...with no break in the price. Luxury room pricing for a lousy little motel room. Understandably, he has no pleasant thoughts about how he was treated.

I bring this up because he related his story to me right before I left for our trip to Yel lowstone National Park and had made reservations specifically for an accessible room with a roll-in shower. I was apprehensive about what would greet me at arrival...

We left from Big Timber, Montana right after breakfast. From here, it's a 23 mile drive on Interstate 90 to the town of Livingston. A 75 mile drive south on highway 89 takes us to Gardiner, Montana and the original entrance to Yellowstone National Park on the north side of the park.

We pass under the circa 1903 Roosevelt Arch and head to the small entrance station. There are about 10 cars in front of us and the line is moving very slow. After not moving for about 10 minutes, a ranger starts walking along the cars asking people to roll down their windows. When he gets to us, we find he is sending those who have passes around the entrance station. Since we have a Golden Access Pass, we happily comply.

If you're disabled and don't have one, get a Golden Access Pass the very next time you go to a national park or monument. This free pass allows you and everyone in your vehicle to enter national parks at no charge. In addition to saving you a ton of money (Yellowstone's entrance fee is $20), you might just get to skip ahead as we did. (Normal entrance fee in 2019 is $25 - Ed)

(Note: The Golden Access Pass is now simply called the Access Pass - Ed)

Our plan is this...we have two nights here in Yellowstone park. Our first day, we want to get to the Old Faithful geyser area and explore it. The next day we want to seek out the park's wildlife and see any other sights we can find.

We intend to make a beeline to Old Faithful after getting in. It's a 51 mile drive from the entrance station. Two and a half hours later we arrive. Several things delay us along the way: people stopping in the middle of the road to photograph animals (at one point, a lone moose was surrounded by about 30 people with cameras like paparazzi), cars driving 10 miles an hour in a 45 mile per hour zone, and when that was passed, about 20 miles of single-lane road construction with a 15 mile per hour limit.

Finally, at 2:30pm we pull into a parking spot about 200 yards away from Old Faithful itself (parking hint: there are three handicapped spots right in front of the Old Faithful Inn that no one knows is there). The thunderstorms that were predicted for the afternoon are threatening and a light rain starts to fall. On the bright side, the next predicted eruption of Old Faithful is only five minutes away, so we won't have to wait in the rain for very long.

About a minute after we find a good viewing spot on the paved trail, the geyser goes off with a huge fountain of steaming water lasting about 7 minutes. It's quite a show. Now the rain is starting to come down harder so we beat a hasty retreat to the adjacent Old Faithful Inn just as the lightning and thunder start.

Inside, the inn is a spectacular sight. The lodge, built in 1906, has a big lobby that soars several stories. Thin logs seemingly support the whole thing but in reality, a steel, load-bearing rods placed in the logs actually do the work. A multi-storied rock hewn fireplace with a custom pendulum clock anchors the area where you can relax in comfortable morris chairs while reading a book or newspaper. (Another hint: past the public Men's room and Ladies room, there is a large, unisex and very accessible bathroom for wheelers.)

We haven't had lunch yet so we head to the dining room. There's no wait for a table and the service is very good. My hamburger was a bit bland but my wife and Tim had french dip sandwiches that were very good. It was also pretty reasonable at about $7 per person.

Its still raining and there are several really well stocked gift shops in the inn and the surrounding area. We take our time hunting for souvenirs before finally heading down the road to Grant Village where we have reservations for the next couple of nights.

Back at Old Faithful, the old inn and the Old Faithful Snow Lodge were extremely nice and architecturally stunning (if possible, try to get an accessible room in the Old Faithful Snow Lodge for the best accessible rooms in the park). Here at Grant Village, the lodge is lackluster...looking like worn-out 1970's condos...needing a coat of paint badly. (I tried for the Snow Lodge, but they were already booked when I called in May to make reservations. The room prices are identical at both locations.)

Whoever designed this lodge needs a kick in the rear with handicapped parking that could not be any farther from the accessible room. We had to walk, lugging our luggage, all the way through the building. It was a miserable journey.

On the bright side, the bathroom was great. Roomy, with grab bars on the toilet, a roll-under sink, a sliding accordion door, and...best of all....a roll-in shower with bath chair. The bathroom made up for the run down condition of the place and the extra small beds. I do have to admit that when making reservations, the agents did not promise any more than what we got and, knowing that the beds would be small, we brought along a twin-sized air mattress so that we'd all have plenty of bed...so I don't feel that I had been taken advantage of.

There is little in the way of any amenities in the room. No TV, no radio, no A/C. There is a small heater and a telephone and the toiletries were just a touch above par for most motels. Certainly, the room is not where you'd want to spend a lot of your time and maybe that's for the best...forcing you out to see the beautiful park.

There are several levels of dining available to you at Grant Village. A coffee shop in the general store has fast food with table service, a restaurant overlooking Yellowstone lake offers moderately priced pizza and pasta, and the Grant Village dining room is the upscale, reservations-only location serving full-service meals.

We opted for the dining room. Service here was just a bit slow but the food was delicious. I had a pork chops while my wife had salmon and Tim had a chicken dinner. A very tasty cream of asparagus soup started the whole thing off. Another waiter in the restaurant is also doing a tour of the major league ball parks and wanted to compare notes. After dinner, we spent another half hour with the friendly guy talking baseball and stadiums. Pricing here is comparable maybe to a Cracker Barrel.

The next morning, we awoke to a bright and sunny day. With no TV or radio, we did not have a weather report so we crossed our fingers that it would stay this way. It did.

After a marvelous breakfast at the general store coffee shop, we headed back to the Old Faithful area to hike the geyser basin that we'd been rained out on the day before.

The Upper Geyser Basin (home to Old Faithful) has a wonderfully accessible three mile plus trail that gets you up close and personal to the largest concentration of thermal phenomena in the world.

We started off at Old Faithful and walked up the paved trail. Along the way, we saw such famous sights as the Castle Geyser and the Riverside Geyser which regularly shoots a 75 foot stream of water over the Firehole River. At the end of the paved trail is the second most famous feature of Yellowstone Park, the Morning Glory pool.

A boardwalk allows you to get right on top of the Morning Glory pool, a hot spring with crystal-clear water shaped and colored as such that it looks like a morning glory. Visitors over the years have not been kind to the pool...many have thrown money and other assorted trash into it, clogging up it's vent and allowing bacteria to grow in it. An orange rim around the spring attests to this.

To combat the pollution, back in the 1970's the park service relocated the road away from the springs and geysers and set back the boardwalk around the pool. It's helped, but the park service still pulls much trash out of the Morning Glory pool during its annual cleanup.

On the way back, we take the boardwalk and see the geyser field. There are mud pots, hot springs, and geysers galore along the accessible boardwalk. The old wooden boardwalk is gradually being replaced by recycled plastic boardwalk as it wears out. The plastic sections are very smooth for wheelers.

It's great to see a TV-jaded kid like Tim really get into the geyser field. He's really impressed when he gets within 10 feet of the ever erupting Sawmill Geyser. A big bison named George lounges in a small meadow nearby...George gored somebody last week, we're told, when they tried to push him into a shot with Old Faithful. Some people never learn...

At the end of the trail, there is one steep section (that can be detoured - check with a ranger before hiking to find the smoothest path for you) after crossing the bridge over the Firehole River. On the other side, we end up on the backside of Old Faithful where we stop and wait about thirty minutes for the next eruption. It's big and spectacular. It's also a fitting end to our visit of the Upper Geyser Basin.

We have lunch at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge dining room. Here's another hint for you: the fast food place in the lodge is only about a dollar or two cheaper for lunch than the dining room but it's very crowded and you wait a long time for service. For just a couple of dollars more, the dining room is a much better place to eat and unwind with full table service and no wait.

Back in the van, we make the 40 mile trek to Hayden Valley where we're told we're almost guaranteed to see wildlife. But first, as we leave the Old Faithful area we see a large herd of elk nibbling the grass of a nearby meadow.

Hayden Valley does not disappoint. Large herds of bison roam everywhere. Too far away for a good camera shot, they do show up good with binoculars. As I scan the valley and the Yellowstone River bisecting it, I see something odd. I move down about 1/4 mile to get a better view and look through the binoculars again to make sure. Is it....? Yes, it's a bald eagle resting on a branch over the river looking for a juicy trout. Looking around, I see it's partner soaring high over the valley. It's the first and only bald eagle I've ever seen in the wild.

We return to Grant's Village and after dinner in the coffee shop, head down to the amphitheater for the evening campfire ranger presentation.

Mosquitoes are everywhere. Thankfully, my wife brought along some high-powered DEET that we slather on. We don't smell too good, but the bugs don't bite. Others at the campfire are fiercely swatting as the extra high-powered Yellowstone mosquitoes dive bomb them.

The ranger tells us that mosquitoes are not among the park's protected wildlife, so feel free to swat, smash, and kill. They are a renewable resource she assures us...

The evening's presentation is a slide show showing how conservation and scientific techniques started in Yellowstone have caught on around the world. It was interesting, but I missed the old sing-alongs around the campfire of my youth. Couldn't we just have a couple of songs to go with the slide show? Oh well, it was still fun and educational to boot.

That was the last night of the trip. The next morning we exited through West Yellowstone, Montana where we saw a coyote and some more elk and bison before exiting. One thing we did not see was Yellowstone's most famous animal resident...a bear. When we arrive home a week later, there are three black bear sightings in our neighborhood. Is it now more common to see bears in our neighborhood that in our national parks?

-Darryl
Copyright 2002 - Darryl Musick

CLASSIC TRIP - Montana and Yellowstone 2002, Part 1

A Montana Collage - Gallatin National Forest

Be careful what you wish for, right?  My wife wanted to really get away (we were having our kitchen remodeled and we were stressed) so I found what, so far, has been the most out-of-the-way and as-far-away-from-civilization accessible lodging in the country - 14 miles from the nearest town and 7 miles from the nearest paved road...the last mile was the driveway into the lodge.  She also had never been to Yellowstone so we put together this trip.  So let's go back to 2002, shall we?

Right up front, let's just say that you need a little extra determination to get here and then get around...especially if you use a wheelchair for mobility.

The state's major airports at Bozeman, Billings, and Helena just don't show up on major airlines radar screens so direct flights from most of the country is not an option. What flights you do find are not going to be cheap. Once you arrive, accessible public transportation will be a challenge to find as will accessible van rentals.

We decided to drive. From L.A., this is not a quick and easy road trip especially if you have trouble sitting in the car for long spells. After 3 nights on the road, we were finally at our destination....Big Timber, Montana, about 50 miles east of Bozeman. We needed some time to just not drive any more.

Researching for a place to stay yielded the Burnt Out Lodge, a bed and breakfast run by Ruth Drange on her family's cattle and sheep ranch. The lodge is accessible with three ramps leading into the building. The area around it is not, so you will need your own private van or car to get there.

The reason you need your own ride is because it is remote. In fact, for a wheeler, I cannot think of a more remote accessible accommodation that I have ever come across. The lodge is located at the farthest reach of the three thousand acre ranch abutting the Gallatin National Forest.

Only 7 Miles to go to the Burnt Out Lodge

To get there, you first drive seven miles beyond Big Timber. Then, it is up six miles of dirt road to the first gate. Someone must get out of the car to open the gate (an attendant here is really necessary for all but the most hardy wheelers), drive through, return to close the gate lest any cows escape the ranch. One more mile of bumpy road is necessary to navigate before you reach the lodge building where one more gate must be opened and closed.

It takes a pretty major effort just to get here.

Once here, it is pretty easy to go up a ramp into the building and into your room. The lodge has a vast open public area with a two story fireplace to warm up at. Five rooms are all on the first floor and each will allow access for a wheelchair easily. One room in particular has been built with bars for the toilet and bathtub for access. There is no roll-in shower, however. Plastic chairs are available for use as bathing chairs.

The View from the Room

We stayed in the accessible room, although as the only guests at the inn Ruth offered us our choice of any room. The room is huge and very open and airy. A twenty foot ceiling reinforces that feeling. It is furnished sparsely with just a bed, two night stands, a small table and two chairs. It was sparkling clean and comfortable, but it does take a bit of getting used to.

Our first day had started in West Yellowstone, Montana after we had stopped there for the night. Along the way to Big Timber, we stopped at Nevada City, a recreated Ghost Town where authentic buildings had been moved to from other areas. It was a quiet and not unpleasant stop but not exactly enthralling either.

In Big Timber, we had dinner at Prospector Pizza in a pretty little downtown area before bedding down for the night at the Burnt Out Lodge. We saw dozens of deer along that 7 mile access road up to the lodge.

After sleeping pleasantly in our large room with all the windows and the front door open (great things to do when you're several miles from the nearest road), we had our breakfast and decided to do a little sight seeing.

This morning, that would entail heading up the Boulder River valley from Big Timber. We stopped when we got to Natural Bridge.

A short hike lead us to a bridge and several viewing platforms built into the rock. The paths are accessible but be careful of the hundred foot drop off of the sides when heading to the platforms. The bridge path is not as scary.

From the bridge and the platforms, you can see the natural bridge when the water level is low, as it was when we visited in July. In a spectacular display, the river drops down a hole and travels about one hundred yard before emerging from a shear cliff face.

When the water level is higher, the hole is underwater and the river flows over the natural bridge but you can still see the other waterfall emerging from the hole in the cliff.

After our tour up the valley, we headed back to Big Timber. It was over one hundred degrees when we hit town so we decided to spend the afternoon in the community pool. A buck fifty was all it took to get all three of us in where we lounged around for an hour and a half...until the lifeguard's shrill whistle told everyone to immediate evacuate the pool. A thunderstorm was approaching fast.
 
We took quick shelter in the small pool house where I took the opportunity to give Tim a shower in the only roll-in shower we would see in Montana. Now that's what I call thinking on my feet!

We changed back into our street clothes and headed out of town. The rain had let up enough so that we could visit Prairie Dog Town State Park. This is a small area set aside for these large, barking rodents where you can see them in a wild setting to your heart's content. Outside the park's perimeter, the critters are fair game for the farmers and ranchers who shoot these animals as pests when they see them.

A shower and a nap back at the lodge refreshed us and we headed back into town for dinner at the City Club, a combination steakhouse, bowling alley (six lanes!), bar, and casino. We had some delicious Montana steaks...better than the steaks we payed three times as much for on the way home in Las Vegas.

The town turns in pretty early and try as we might, we couldn't find too much to do after 7:30pm. We missed the only showing (7:00) at the local theater but we'd already seen Lilo 'n Stitch back home. A trip back to the lodge where we could reach out and pat a cow's behind as we drove by was in order.

Another night with the fresh Montana air wafting through the room and we were ready to tackle another day. After breakfast, we drove fifty miles to Bozeman to visit the Gallatin County Fair's opening day.

This is a very small fair where everybody was giving out freebies or samples. Everybody had candy bowls out for quick little nibbles. A local political group opposed to an upcoming ballot measure gave us a huge sports cup (with their logo on it, natch) filled with ice cold water with a local chiropractor matching that with a big bottle of spring water out of an ice bucket...perfect for the 105 degree day.

A few local sportmen's groups filled our bag with free fishing tackle...lures and bobbers. A candy maker threw in some free samples of fudge. A local mine even gave us some raw rocks that they grind into talc...along with ruler, pens, pencils. Another local politician running for office gave out free American flags.

We were in hog heaven with all the goodies and we got to see all kinds of livestock and eat that great, greasy fair food while watching some country and western concerts. It was a great day and we met a lot of friendly local folks.

After the fair we ate dinner at McKenzie River Pizza in the beautifully restored downtown area of Bozeman, where some workers recognized us from the fair earlier. It was good pizza and even better beer.

Tonight would be our last night at the lodge. We had one more open-air night before our last breakfast with Ruth.

A deer walked by one foot outside the dining room window while we at our morning meal and a marmot rooted around outside. Before it got too cute, Ruth whispered to us that the marmot was a pest and she would have to shoot it if it returned. Ah, the ways of the Montana cattle ranch life.

Stay tuned for part 2...Yellowstone!

-Darryl
Copyright 2002 - Darryl Musick