The Times and Travels of Nolan
Documenting trips I’ve taken and places I’ve seen.
The thermal features of the assorted geyser basins along the Firehole River sent up steam plumes into the dreary sky. It was a fitting Yellowstone tribute for our drive to West Yellowstone to find lunch. Along the way, Elizabeth, Pam and I would get the chance to see some of Yellowstone’s west entrance region. At …
Continue reading “National Parks Trip: West Yellowstone and Gibbon Falls”
For the first time in this entire blog series, on Day 7 of this trip, I can finally not talk about smoke obscuring vision. It’s a bit of a trade-off though, because the weather pattern shift had finally come through, so now I get to talk about 40 degree weather and rain showers. In real …
I have written at some length about my wildlife quest in Yellowstone in August 2021. As a refresher, I was after six big mammals in particular: elk (spotted first at Grant Village the day before), bison (all over Hayden Valley), pronghorn, bear, wolf, and moose. This was the night to get them. Elizabeth, Pam and …
Continue reading “National Parks Trip: Gardiner, Lamar Valley and the Big Mammal Hunt”
This was starting to look more like how I imagined Montana. The land of the Big Sky, in my mind, was full of – well – big sky. In contrast to the forested slopes of the Yellowstone caldera and plateaus to the south, the Gardner River descends through Gardner Canyon north of Mammoth Hot Springs …
Continue reading “National Parks Trip: Whitewater Rafting the Yellowstone”
It was time to put in work. In Yellowstone, freed somewhat from the binds of family slowing her down, Elizabeth was ready to embark on an ambitious agenda of sightseeing and activity-doing. To be able to see a reasonable chunk of a national park the size of Rhode Island in about 96 hours, you have …
If Lamar Valley is “The Serengeti of North America”, then its nearby cousin the Hayden Valley must be at least the Pampa of North America. The Hayden Valley frames the Yellowstone River as it flows northward from Yellowstone Lake towards its date with the Upper and Lower Falls, only 20 miles away. Those 20 miles …
I know Elizabeth’s hangry vibe, and we were rapidly approaching hangry status. We had been supposed to get an early lunch with my family at Leeks Marina in Grand Teton, but they had decided to head out for Jackson Hole before lunch. On top of that, Leeks Marina wasn’t open, so the deliciously-advertised pizza wasn’t …
Our first geyser basin! My expectation going in was never that West Thumb would be the highlight of the entire trip, but since it was the first one I expected that maybe it would hold a special place in our hearts – a premonition that I would say played out exactly correctly. Some of the …
For the first time in a couple of days, we were going back into fully uncharted territory. Having seen most of the vantages of Grand Teton south of Colter Bay, we were now seeing the northern reaches of the Tetons and moving into the rolling terrain of Yellowstone’s southern plateaus. It was kind of hard …
Continue reading “National Parks Trip: Yellowstone’s South Entrance”
I awoke on August 16 full of the conflicting sadness that my family was leaving and excitement to see Yellowstone. I did want to get one more sunrise from one of the greatest sunrise spots on Earth. The boundary layer aerosol load over northwestern Wyoming may have disagreed, but that was neither here nor there. …
Continue reading “National Parks Trip: Last Morning in Grand Teton”
