Having a cabin right near Old Faithful was never on my must have list. But, I checked the Xterra website which does the reservations for all of the Park lodging daily and out of no where three nights at a cabin popped up, clearly the result of a cancellation. Hard to describe how lucky this was. Due to covid, nearly all of the cabins in the park were closed-there were public showers allowed to be open so any cabins that did not have their own bathrooms were closed. Of the limited hotels in the park anyway, some of those were closed. All of the National Park campgrounds were closed; some of the privately run campgrounds were open, but even there, the bathrooms were open for toileting but no showers were allowed. I was perfectly content to camp and not shower for days on end but when a three night cabin stay popped up literally out of nowhere I grabbed it. The cabin was perfectly perfect for me...double bed, small bathroom, no frills, perfection. I'd stay here again in a heartbeat. In a normal year I'd probably choose to stay in one of the non-bathroom cabins because they are dramatically cheaper but for this trip, I would not change a thing.
I set off in the morning vowing to walk the entire Old Faithful boardwalk. Hard to describe what that means other than a lot of walking. I did the hike up to Observation Point and walked to Solitary Geyser. I walked halfway to the Geyser Basin and saw the river geyser (I forget its real name)...it was not going off at the time, and I would like to see that sometime, but having been to Yellowstone before I did not feel the need to sit and wait for any of the geysers. I just wandered by, enjoyed the view, moved on.
The area around Old Faithful was busy, probably the only really "busy" place in the park, but there was a different tone to it this year. Everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) was wearing masks. On the trails off the beaten path most people wore masks, or at least pulled them up when they walked by other people (which is what I did). Only a few hikers did not wear masks but even they had the curtsey to stay at least 6 feet away. Also, and this is weird and if you have not been to Yellowstone you can't understand what I mean by this, but there were NO BUSES. Generally there are massive buses everywhere dumping off tourists and picking up tourists and generally getting in the way of all of the cars and walkers and everything. This year, no buses. No foreign tourists either, obviously, as no one was allowed to travel into the US. Not that I did not see and hear non-English speaking people, but they were few and far between. And other than the Old Faithful area, the park was not really that crowded. Many of the hikes I went on I was the ONLY person I saw on the trail. It was odd. Generally Yellowstone is a place where you want to get up early to miss the crowds. Not in 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment