Roads of Romania and Beyond

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Next day we went to Grand Teton, a national park located south of Yellowstone. We drove for almost 100 miles. It wasn’t the best day to visit Grand Teton, since it was hazy and one can barely distinguish the silhouettes of the beautiful mountains that are the attraction of the park. Probably the Teton range looked better in the early morning, but our friends got up late and with all the driving we got to the park at around 1 PM. We drove to Jenny Lake in the south of the park, took a boat to the western shore of the lake and hiked a small trail to the Hidden Falls and to a panorama point called Inspiration Point from where we could see the entire Jenny Lake at our feet. All around this area there were signs advising people that bears are in the area: do not try to feed them – who would be crazy enough to try that? – don’t leave your backpack lying around etc. The hike was pretty, even though a bit crowded with people. On our way back through Yellowstone we passed a sign marking “Continental Divide” which I had no idea what it was but later found out – thanks to wikipedia – that it is “a line of elevated terrain which forms a border between two watersheds such that water falling on one side of the line eventually travels to one ocean or body of water, and water on the other side travels to another, generally on the opposite side of the continent”. In this case the Continental Divide separates the watersheds of the Pacific Ocean from those of the Atlantic or Arctic Oceans.

For dinner we decided not to eat in the park like we did the previous days but go to West Yellowstone. At Alin’s insistence we choose a pizza place. I’m not a big fan of pizza so I ordered macaroni and cheese, comfort food for the soul 🙂 In the menu the m&c; of Wild West Pizzeria of West Yellowstone was advertised as “world renowned”. I don’t know if it is really world renowned but it was very good and it reminded me of a dish that we eat in Romania. I have to say that this was the first time that I ate macaroni and cheese which must be a record of some kind since I’ve been living in US for 10 years and m&c; is pretty popular here. They used to serve it in Intel’s cafeteria from time to time but I never had the curiosity of trying it.

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Our accommodation in West Yellowstone was a rental house way to big for us, but since we were paying by the person it still came cheaper than a hotel. It had four bedrooms, two on the second floor and two in the basement and a living room and a kitchen on the first floor. It came equipped with a cable TV and grill which came in handy in the evenings. The best part about the house was that is was located very close to the park’s entrance so we didn’t have to drive additional miles – the park is big enough as it is.

On our first day in Yellowstone we went to see the geysers and we started with the most famous one. Old Faithful is where everybody goes and we were lucky to get there 10 minutes before it was scheduled to erupt. Old Faithful erupts every 80 minutes and it’s probably the most predictable geyser in the park. Based on the duration of the last eruption, rangers are able to figure out a time frame for the next eruption. There were crowds of people sitting on benches around the geyser perimeter and waiting patiently in a complete silence like some religious ceremony was about to take place and our voices would ruin the experience. It started with some steam and a little spray and then it erupted into a tall stream of water and steam. The show finished and everybody started in the direction of their car but we decided to stick around and see the rest of the geysers in the upper geyser basin.

We followed a trail to the Observation Point up a little hill where we got a good view of the entire basin. On the way to the Observation Point we passed very close by a bison – our first encounter with the creature which used to roam these lands 150 years ago before it was hunted close to extinction during the 19th and early 20th centuries. We were to see many more the following days so I guess they’re no longer endangered. After Observation Point we went around the boardwalk at the upper geyser basin and looked at even more geysers while being surrounded by an all mighty rotten egg smell. Castle Geyser started erupting and it went on for half an hour. We saw Old Faithful erupting one more time, this time from a different angle and we headed for the Old Faithful Inn.

The inn is a rustic looking lodge made of logs dating from the beginning of the century. It’s very impressive looking on the inside and the lobby was full of photographers trying to capture a image of the log work above us. We decided to eat dinner at their dining hall. The badge of the girl at the reservation counter read her name and underneath it “Romania” so I started to talk to her in Romanian. She’s been working on a 3 months temporary contract in Yellowstone and she was very happy to meet us. I guess she didn’t meet many Romanians during those 3 months. But we couldn’t chat long, since there was a line behind me. Cris and Alin tried to be creative when ordering food and they ordered bison and elk but frankly my lamb was much better. From this early dinner we went to catch the sunrise at the middle geyser basin by the Grand Prismatic Spring which colors looked spectacular at dusk.

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The first day of the trip wasn’t much to talk about. We drove for 700 miles, passing from California to Nevada and Idaho, ending up in the town of Twin Falls. We left our friends house in Sunnyvale, CA about 10 AM and got to Twin Falls around 11 PM local time. We stopped to eat at a fast food place off Hwy 80 where the food was awful. We spent the time chatting with Laura and Alin, catching up with everything that happened during our four months absence. The scenery was pretty all the way to Idaho. Nevada looked a lot like the desert part of Southern California. Yellow fields stretching to meet the horizon. Black cows here and there. Plus the occasional casino in the middle of nowhere. We were pretty tired when we got to Twin Falls and since we had one more day of driving in front of us, we called it a night soon after we arrived at the hotel.

Next day we managed to get ready to leave the hotel at around 10 AM. The reason for our stop in Twin Falls was to see the Shoshone Falls. I wasn’t expecting much since I read somewhere before the trip that the falls are at their best in April when water flows are high but that the flows diminish significantly over the summer due to irrigation. I figured that wasn’t much left by September. They looked impressive in the pictures I’ve seen on the web but I was sure that those pictures were taken in spring and probably in good years too. We drove for three miles past the main street in Twin Falls and found ourselves at the entrance gate. For $3.50 we were allowed to pass and got a brochure that described the falls as – how else? 🙂 – “The Niagara of the West”. The brochure even boasted that Shoshones are 50 feet taller then Niagara. Unfortunately I was right in my expectations. The falls did not look like the web pictures. They were nice but not that impressive. We took a few pictures and hit the road again, heading for Ketchum.