Below-freezing temperatures, gray-cold sky, snow, and ice, it must be winter. But we are not in Phoenix, we are on vacation in Yellowstone National Park for our first winter visit to the park. Saying we are thrilled barely captures a fraction of what we are feeling; this is ecstatic, Wunderbar, delightful, and amazing. Pinching ourselves won’t make this more real; it cannot take away the sense of possibly doing something that could be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We are at once adults looking through the eyes of a child experiencing all the wonder befitting a curious and imaginative wide-open sense of awe.
Friday night, we flew into Bozeman, Montana, and earlier today, Karst Stage transportation brought us to Mammoth Hot Springs. Melinda at the front desk checked us in, starting our visit on the right foot with her enthusiasm, friendliness, and patience by walking us through all the coupons for meals, tours, snow coach drops, and transfers, making our hot tub appointments, and pointing us to the ski shop. At the front desk of the ski shop, a gentleman by the name of Point set us up with snowshoes and then offered to drive us to the Upper Terrace Loop trail for our first-ever Jack London experience.
Neither of us had ever had snowshoes on our feet prior to today, but this is something to fall in love with. If either of us thought we might be clumsy using this new mode of transportation, it didn’t matter as we were up here all alone.
It’s difficult to comprehend how extraordinary all of this is as 24 hours before, we were in the desert experiencing a day like so many other mild Phoenix days of winter, and now we’re deep in winter but also at Yellowstone, here without thousands of others and a soundscape, unlike anything we’ve heard here before.
It’s like time has slowed down and is meeting us on our terms compared to the bustle of the summer season.
A mile and a half later, we had finished the trail and decided to walk back to the hotel via the boardwalks of the Terraces instead of getting a ride back from over near the warming hut. Finding the stairs downhill too packed with snow to walk on, we decided to slide down on our bottoms. Woohoo! Those snow pants really did the trick!
Getting back shortly before nightfall, we went to dinner and met Cody, who would remain our server of choice for the rest of our stay at Mammoth and then it was time for the hot tub. We nervously expected to freeze getting in and out of the water; it was, after all, in the low 20s (about -5c), but to our great surprise, this was a piece of cake. The concrete around the jacuzzi is heated, and getting out of hot 105-degree water (40 Celsius) in freezing weather was easier than one would think – no, there was no wind, and the door to the heated changing room was only steps away.
Our first day in Yellowstone was perfect and nothing less. The photo is on the Upper Terrace with a hot spring reflecting the now-dead tree branches that have been consumed by the hot mineral waters.
