Yellowstone National Park, Lake Hotel, August 15, 1908: We left
Old Faithful Inn this morning with some regrets. One could spend
several days there with profit. The inn itself is comfortable and the
surroundings attractive. We have had the misfortune to be overtaken
by a party of excursionists, who entered the Park from the west. An
excursionist is an uninteresting traveler. He is apt to be some one who
is traveling because the rates are cheap. The regular tourists were
very much put out by the overcrowding. But if one wants to be alone, or
with a few friends, he must not follow the beaten paths of the Park.
There are many ways of traveling in vogue. The easiest way is by the
stages of the transportation company, which owns and operates the
hotels. In the hotels one is apt to get a good bed and, sometimes, a
bath. The food served in the dining rooms is of the conventional hotel
variety. All the supplies are brought into the Park in heavy freight
wagons. Most of the things are taken out of cans, but a few fresh
vegetables are supplied from gardens cultivated by the hotel company.
The milk also is fresh, drawn from cows kept in the Park. Cheaper
modes of travel and subsistence are supplied by camping outfits. One
company maintains a series of permanent camps, and others use movable
camps, carrying all their bedding and their utensils with them from
place to place. But whichever way one travels, he is apt to pick up
many friends. Friendships, in fact, are easily made in the Park. For
the time they seem very real, and partings at the end of a journey seem
almost like partings with old friends. It all comes from the fact that
the people one meets here are, for the time being, all the people there
are in this little miniature world.
But we are still leaving Old Faithful Inn, so far as this letter is
concerned. The regrets that many felt in leaving the inn were increased
by the disagreeableness of the weather outside. It was a miserable
rainy morning. It drizzled all the time and, intermittently, there were
downpours of water. It fell to my lot to ride on the outside of the
coach, with the driver, which is a very choice seat in fair weather.
When it is rainy, the ladies, and the ladies’ men always prefer to ride
inside. But there is so much chattering inside, often about nothing,
that a quiet man prefers to be outside, even in the rain. The driver
is a good fellow. He does not talk much. He is too intent on watching
his horses moving on a slippery road, often around abrupt curves. The
four fine chestnut horses were real good company, so intelligent and so
willing and so eager. It was hard work this morning to pull the coach,
for there was a gradual ascent, from one hundred to two hundred feet to
the mile. Plenty of clear water was running in the mountain streams. We
crossed the continental divide, at an elevation of about 8,300 feet,
but we soon recrossed the line and found ourselves once more on the
Atlantic slope. The driver pointed out many objects of interest, among
them Shoshone Lake, resting in the laps of mountain peaks, a beautiful
body of water. But the persons inside the coach seemed oblivious to
many things, except the mileposts which they counted, audibly, with
great regularity--there were thirty-four of them to count to the next
lodging place. And it rained all the time!
It was on this part of the journey that I learned most about the
animal life in the Park. It was one of the things in which the driver
was interested. There is all manner of life in the Park, from weasels
to antlered deer and bear, and in the air, birds from the tiniest
creatures picking their livings in the pine trees, to the stately
waterfowls that strut about in seven league boots. All the birds and
animals; all the creatures that crawl and burrow in the earth, or that
fly in the air, are protected by the omnipotent arm of the government
in Washington. The soldiers who patrol the Park are the only ones who
are allowed to bring guns into the preserve. Not a shot is fired to
break the stillness of the surroundings. The squirrels romp in the tree
tops and the beavers carry on their prodigious works just as they did
before there was a man on this continent. Here the foxes have holes
in the ground and the birds have nests in the trees, and there is no
one to disturb them. The results are wonderful. The birds and animals
hardly know what fear is, they seem so greatly unconcerned about the
presence of passing people. Here they find
“_No enemy
But winter and rough weather_,”
and of these they find a great deal during the winter months. The
tinges of winter are already in the air, even in August, for winter
comes early on this high elevation and when it comes it is severe, the
mercury falling to forty degrees below zero and the snow piling up to
depths of ten or twelve feet.
On our thirty-four mile journey we were shown many objects of interest,
pools the bottoms of which rival the rarest flowers and gems in their
colorings. But also some ugly things, mud geysers, filthy and bad
smelling. At noon we halted for luncheon at one end of the Yellowstone
Lake, and some persons took boats, making the rest of the day’s journey
by water. We reached the Lake Hotel at about four o’clock in the
afternoon, tired enough to appreciate the comforts and hospitalities
of the place. This hotel is one of the best in the Park, lighted
by electricity and heated with steam, the rooms all cheerful ones.
The meals in the dining room, also, were good. The lake itself is a
wonderful body of water, considering its extent and its elevation.
The tops of the mountains stand all around it. It lies in the hollows
formed between mountain ranges. But aside from these features, it is
not more interesting than other bodies of water.
After the rains, the sun went down in mountain splendors. How good it
seemed to see the light flooding through the breaking clouds! We have
been very anxious about the sun for tomorrow is our day at the Canyon
of the Yellowstone and there, if anywhere, one needs the sun to bring
out the colors. I have heard so much about this Canyon, since coming
to the Park, and read so much about it before coming here, that I am
very anxious to see it and to measure it with my expectations. So far,
I must confess, nothing has exceeded my expectations, and much has
fallen far below them. The things as they are, often play havoc with
the things as we have imagined them.