Taking a Ride Through the Park

Sunday August 30, 2015   Day 33    Yellowstone N.P.   Mammoth Campground, site 46   4^th day

I fished the Gardner River from 11:00-14:00.  Fished the usual spots with a couple of takes on an Adams parachute, but no hook-ups.  Went down a little and nymphed a run and picked up a brown trout about 12” long.  That was it for my 3 hours of hard work.  It's a good thing I don't have to rely on my fishing for sustenance.

When I got back we went for a ride along the Mammoth-Tower road.  But on the way, I stopped at the local bag of ice vending machine in Mammoth. 

Putting in three $1.00 bills for a 7# bag of ice that cost $2.00 in
the grocery store.  But closest grocery store is a ten mile round
trip with a 1,000 feet elevation change.  Winding switchbacks.

There is a self-interpretive trail along the way that we stopped at.  It was a ½ mile boardwalk with signs describing the flora and fauna and geology of the area. 

 

 

We continued on to Tower Junction where the Northeast Entrance road turns off to the left.  We went straight towards Tower. 

The Tower-Canyon road just north of Tower.

We drove through the Tower Campground just to look at it.  It has small sites, little privacy and set up mostly for tent camping.  That’s typical of most of Yellowstone’s campgrounds.  They were built in the ‘50’s when everyone car camped with tents.

We continued on to Canyon Junction over Dunraven Pass.  We checked out the campground at Canyon.  It is quite large with at least 6 loops.  The sites were geared towards tent campers.  The sites are uneven.  There are R.V.s there, but more tents. 

Mammoth is our favorite campground in Yellowstone.

From Canyon Junction we took the Canyon-Norris road.  Along the way we took a ride on the Virginia Cascades drive which follows a small creek to a waterfall.  But there is no parking at the waterfall.  Eventually there is a parking area about ¼ mile upstream, but we kept going.  The drive eventually connects to the Canyon-Norris road again. 

There are several trailheads along this road which go to backcountry lakes.  I pulled over at one of them, Ice Lake Trail.  It was only ½ mile to the lake which had three back-country campsites around it.  It was close enough that we could hear the road noise.  It was a very pretty lake as any of them would be. 

Ice Lake

One of the trails I would like to take some day is Grebe Lake Trail.  Grebe Lake is the headwaters of the Gibbon River.  It is the best place in Yellowstone to catch grayling, which is extinct in MI and almost everywhere else in the country.  But my fishing book says it’s tough to cast to them from sure and recommended a float tube.  It is a 3-mile hike to the lake.  One of these days I want to do it.

We turned towards Mammoth at Norris Junction.  We checked out Norris Campground while we were there.  It was similar to the other two we looked at.

We got back to the campsite at 18:30.