The Senior Season at Yellowstone

There's nothing like the national parks when it comes to bringing out stupidity. I don't know what it is exactly. Maybe it's just excitement that breeds obliviousness, but it seems seeing a bison or an elk reduces otherwise normal people to quivering bowls of jelly.

We're just back from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks where we encountered all the best that humanity has to offer. It seems, unbeknownst to us that there is a phenomenon called the "senior season." I guess it must be all those seniors (like us) who figure the regular summer season with kids--make that noisy kids who can never walk anywhere--ends with Labor Day thus ushering in a period with fewer cars and available hotel rooms.

Whatever the reasoning, the period between Labor Day and the closing of the park (starts shutting down the end of September to end of October) is now one of the hot times to visit. We couldn't reserve any rooms in the park lodges even a month in advance and paid $140 a night for a Super8 room in Jackson. The Visitor's Bureau told us we were lucky to have found a room at all.

Yellowstone it appears is as popular as the Grand Canyon as a destination, judging by all the tour buses disgorging their Asian visitors and by the two rows of seating packed with spectators that circled around Old Faithful, which faithfully erupted on time. We stayed at West Yellowstone, which is actually fun as far as tourist towns go. All the animals we saw (bison and elk) were along the park road leading to the town, and the bison indeed did walk down the middle of the road. Herein lies some of the stupidity we saw.

For those who care for details, bison (American buffalo) weigh around 500 pounds. They don't see very well and are inclined to lumber along rolling their eyes and looking unimpressed. Each year, one hundred large animals get hit by cars and cause $150,000 in damage, presumably to vehicles. We were stopped on the road to let three rather large bulls walk down between the rows of cars when the very small car in front of us pops the sun roof just as one passes and a woman suddenly pokes her head out to start taking pictures. It startled me so I can't imagine it pleased the bison. The one next to her car started and then veeered away. Good thing it wasn't in a mood to be cranky as the animal was as large as the car and its head was pretty much on a level with hers. Only thing more silly were the occupants of cars up ahead who were running back down the road and trying to get beside the animals for more pictures.

The presence of animals did really strange things to people. Cars stopped in the middle of the road while the occupants got out. Other cars parked under signs that said do not park alongside the road. I saw one SUV parked across three handicapped parking spaces. Maybe you can't get a ticket if you don't park properly?

But it wasn't just animals. The geyser fields were another source of mischief. Apparently, there were those who didn't believe the warnings about unstable ground that can give way into scalding underground cauldrons. One fellow actually lay on his stomach on a slippery boardwalk because he wanted to dip his hand into runoff water to see if it was hot. Since the signs said the water in some locations could range from 160 to 280 degrees, one can only wonder about him. I suspect this is where the Darwin Awards might have originated.

Then there were the drivers--and not just of the trucks and RVs. I discovered in Old Faithful Lodge that power wheelchairs be a powerful extension of personal aggression just like the large trucks, invariably driven by older men possibly trying to recover lost youth and power by driving 25 in a 45 mile zone and refusing to use pullouts.

Ah humanity! Was it worth it? Of course. The national parks always are. But with visits to Yellowstone now at an annual rate of nearly 600,000 a year and all the others equally being loved to death, I would have to think hard about going back. On the other hand--I'd really like to see Yosemite.