Today we return to Yellowstone.
It's tough to leave behind the majestic peaks of the Grand Tetons, but we have more sightseeing to do.The Grand Tetons National Park is oriented north-south, with just two roads. It's very simple to navigate.
Yellowstone's central roads are laid out like a figure-eight, called the Grand Loop. (Actually, it's more like a loop wearing a belt across its middle.) Entrance roads branch off the Grand Loop to the south (Grand Tetons), east (Cody), north (Gardiner), west (West Yellowstone), and northeast (Cooke City).
Before we're through, we'll have traveled nearly every road in the park.
Our route today will take us up from the Grand Tetons, around the lower right curve of the figure-eight, to the point where the loop's belt pinches in.
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Our first stop today is Grant Village on the south entrance road. The Visitor Center here has an excellent display on the role fire plays in Yellowstone's ecosystem.
Until 1972, park rangers believed that fire was nothing but a destructive force that had to be stopped in order to preserve the natural environment. They could not have been more wrong. Fire performs a vital function in the circle of life. It enriches the soil. It maintains vegetation diversity. It kills off non-adapted (invasive) species.
The park is covered in lodgepole pine forests. Lodgepole pines produce two kinds of cones. One of them opens at a relatively low temperature, just 113 degrees. It mainly provides food for rodents. The other cone requires a thorough burn to open and become fertile. Lodgepole pine forests are characterized by tall trees and very little understory. A lack of understory means minimal fuel for a surface fire to spread. But as trees die off, they create fuel on the forest floor. It takes more than a hundred years' for dead trees to produce enough fuel for a fire to spread more than an acre or two.Fire sweeps through lodgepole pine forests every 150-300 years.
It sweeps through grasslands every 25-60 years.
The last major fire to sweep through Yellowstone's lodgepole pine forests was in 1988. It burned 793,000 acres, or 36% of the park.
Our next stop was the West Thumb Geyser Basin. As we approached the turnoff, three elk jumped out of the woods in front of our car. What a rush!But these elk were only the beginning...