That's Gardiner, Montana, about a quarter mile from the north entrance to Yellowstone National Park. We arrived here Easter Sunday after a long drive across Montana. We're still only a little more than halfway across it. There's a hell of a lot of Montana.

Gardiner is the last stop before the park, about 50 miles or so south of the Interstate along a lovely highway that winds up the Yellowstone river valley with the Abrosoka mountain range on the left and the Gallatin range on the right. It's a beautiful valley, lovely drive. We found a place to stay in Gardiner, which was our first big diversion from plan. We had been planning to stay at a place called the Hibernation Station in West Yellowstone, at nine on the big square clock face that is Yellowstone park, and just outside the western entrance. However, we come to find out, the park isn't really open yet. Only the north entrance is open right now - it's open year round because it provides the only connection to the outside world for a place called Cooke City, which is all the way across the park. So if we stayed in West Yellowstone, we wouldn't be able to get into the park at all without making a very lengthy drive up and around and back down to Gardiner anyway. And the Hibernation Station wouldn't cancel our reservation without four weeks notice (of course they had no trouble taking our off-season reservation with well less than four weeks notice). So, okay, we are unschooled eastern yokels and they saw us coming. Good for them. But don't stay at the Hibernation Station in West Yellowstone because there are certain people out west who would be straight-up enough to tell a visitor from far away who's obviously interested in touring the park, "you know, you aren't going to be able to get in this time of year." And the managers of the Hibernation Station are not those people.

But we figured, how often are we going to be this close to Yellowstone? We ate the cost of three nights at the Hibernation Station (you know, it's even a stupid name) and we got a room for two nights at the Abrosoka Lodge in Gardiner. Actually it ends up altogether costing no more per night than if we'd wanted to stay at a downtown D.C. hotel. The only problem is that this is still the dead of winter according to the locals. Very little of the park is accessible - it starts opening up in another week - and there is literally no place to get lunch in Gardiner. It's hard enough finding dinner. Nice little town, except that right now, nothing's open and later in the season it's going to be three stories deep in RVs.

At the moment, half the people here appear to be German. We have no idea why. As for the winter thing, well no. Despite fears that it would be snowed in, the weather was absolutely magnificent today. Sunny, there was hardly a clown in the sky, and the temperature was into the 60s. That's up around 6500-7000 feet where we were. The TV station down in Billings said it would be pushing 70. So far, knock on wood, we really have had very cooperative weather. There was more of that weird, I'm snowing, no I'm not kind of behavior coming through eastern Montana and again I feared we might be driving into snow conditions. But then we broke out of it somewhere between Mile City and Billings and it was partly sunny and warm again. Supposedly there's rain approaching from the west so we'll probably hit it tomorrow, but it should stay too warm for snow, again knock on wood.

But today, damn. As I mentioned, only the barest minimum of the park was accessible. The road across the northern side is kept open all year because it's the only way in or out of Cooke City, which must be an interesting place. We didn't go all the way across to Cooke City, but we did manage to see one cool place - Mammoth Hot Springs, which is right next to the park headquarters and is very cool. Lots of sulfurous water bubbling up from the ground and trickling down, leaving strange chemical deposits as it goes. There were all these signs telling you in every language imaginable to stay on the boardwalk because the ground has been known to give way beneath people and drop them into boiling underground pools.

There was a great illustration, I'm guessing late 70s or early 80s from the jogging shorts and pulled up white athletic socks, of Goofus plunging into boiling water to suffer horrible burns and die shrieking like an animal, while Gallant stands on the boardwalk, pointing with one hand and holding the other over his mouth in alarm. Dad, in the background, is so busy oohing and aahing at the pretty scenery that he has no idea Goofus has finally tempted fate one time too many. In a moment, Gallant's cries (or Goofus's screams) will get his attention and in the back of his mind he'll probably figure it was bound to end up in something like this eventually.

But I digress. Take the boardwalk all the way up and you'll see the Minerva Terraces, all lacy white travertine in layer after layer tumbling down the hillside. At the top is the blue pool, which is very neat. But then you might be tempted to head back as the boardwalk just goes around to the other side of the flat table at the top of the complex to what looks like another bit of steam coming up.



NO! Do not do this! This is where reading my journal pays off. Canary Springs, at the very end of the boardwalk system, is far and away the highlight of the whole complex. See above. (We had it completely to ourselves - not that many people around to begin with and none of them went past the Blue Pool). Lots of water bubbling up and rushing down the hillside in this wide rushing cascade. There are several pools below the main spring that are this amazing blue color. Fallen tree branches encrusted in lime and calcium and what not. The water runs right under the boardwalk in places and you're engulfed in this sulfur-smelling mist. Just astonishing.

(From the official newspaper of the park, Yellowstone Today - the spring edition... "Thermal water can also harbor organisms that cause a fatal meningitis infection and Legionnaire's disease. Exposing your head to thermal water by immersion, splashing, touching your face or inhaling steam increases your chance of burns and infection.")

So if we die mysteriously, blame Canary Springs. But damn it was cool.

Another thing you're supposed to do is stay at least 25 yards from the buffalo. But that's hard to do when they're wandering right down the road. We saw a few elk, but they're more skittish than the buffalo. We saw tons of them. Literally. They're enormous, and they have no fear of cars at all. At one point on the road toward Cooke City we and a couple other cars had to stop and wait for a pack of them that were just hanging out in the middle of the road, not moving a muscle. Just sitting there messing with us because they knew they could. There are these thin orange poles lining the road with reflecting tape on them, for night safety I guess, and one of them was having a splendid time rubbing his head up against one of those and butting it. But a couple of others seriously seemed to have no plan in mind other than just blocking the road as completely as possible. It was really cool, but still. When the one standing stock still directly across the center line finally moved, he slowly clopped right toward our car and I started wondering if he would consider it a good thing to rub against or butt heads with. But he went around us and passed right down the other lane, so close to my open driver's side window I literally could have reached out and touched him, but I figured startling a 2,000 lb buffalo, with big old horns, was probably not a good idea. We had this park handout explaining how people get gored by buffalo here every year - again with helpful illustration of the goring process so you'll recognize it when it happens to you. Horns go here, etc.

We ended up driving to Tower Falls, only to find that the road was closed and we couldn't get the last two miles or so to see it, so we went back, after taking a picture of the tracked snow cat, (like the one in The Shining) waiting for winter to return. In fact, while there were patches of snow still hanging on in random spots, it really is spring in Yellowstone right now. Ah well, we filled a good part of the day anyway. Took tons of pictures. It was truly amazing. Then we came back and did laundry at the local laundromat because it really was damn near the only thing open.