Chapter Forty-Two
Old Somewhat Faithful
May 29, 2009—Yellowstone to East Table: Sadly, even in Yellowstone, Campground Hosts get divorced.
On our way south, out of Yellowstone, we stopped at its biggest attraction. That’s right, the gift shop. Ha ha, no, Old Faithful, of course.
To “Agorophobic Al,” it was pretty crowded here, and this is the low season. The parking lot here is so large, that it can be seen from space. It’s so large that Justin Beiber and Lindsay Lohan could park here and not hit each other. This must be a zoo in the summer.
By the way, isn’t it time to stop saying that things are so large that they can be seen from space? Whenever there’s a fire in California, Brian Williams shows us an image and says that it’s so big that the smoke plume can be seen from space. I mean, biggus dealus. I can look at a Googlemap satellite view of my house, and see that I need to clean some bird poop off my car. So let’s agree that pretty much everything is big enough to be seen from outer space.
Old Faithful wasn't that faithful for us: about 30 minutes late for its scheduled eruption. In the forties, one of the employees found an old truck steering wheel with the shaft attached. He’d stick the shaft in the ground, and his buddy, when he felt the geyser’s first rumbles, would yell, “OK, Bob, let ‘er rip.” Bob would crank the wheel as if opening a big valve, just as the geyser lit off. Each time a few tourists were fooled, and complained about the fake show.
We got a rain check for a free second viewing (just kidding, they are all free), but it was time to push on. By the way, we saw a smaller geyser in Lakeview, Oregon that we liked a lot better.
The lodge at Old Faithful has an old-time rustic charm. Many of the lodges and concessions in national parks have apparently been outsourced to a company call Xanterra. We saw this here and at Crater Lake. The lodges look great, but there's something overly commercialized about them. More "Trump-Tower" than "National Park."
Plenty of great views on the way out, and along the Grand Tetons, but the fire damage from Yellowstone's 1988 fire (which burned 38% of the park) is still prominent.
Since it was a Friday night, we were worried about finding a campsite, so after a good lunch in Jackson, WY, we stopped early in the afternoon at the East Table campground in the Targhee National Forest. It was on the Snake River, and very close to Idaho. It was totally deserted when we got there.
The river was high, and large tree trunks would occasional flow down, making raucous wood-splitting noises when they hit things. We also saw rafters and plenty of pelicans and geese.
The clouds looked menacing, so I prepared the tent for storms that never came.
Great dinner, slept well, blah blah blah.
Stay tuned for thunderstorms and normal people sleeping in filthy bathrooms.