On July 6, we left Cody, Wyo and headed through Yellowstone National Park to West Yellowstone Montana. As we entered the Park and headed North along the Grand Loop around to the West entrance. In the distance the hills looked like they had a new coat of snow on them. It was a beautiful sight to see. The sun was bright and the air crisp. A beautiful day!
If you look closely
at the third photo I think that you can see that there is snow along the roadside.When we approached the stretch of road from the Norris Junction to the Madison Junction we got caught up in the road construction. They are putting in a new bridge over the Gibbon River. The wait can be up to over 30 minutes, but luck was with us and we did not have a very long wait. We did make a mental note not to go back along that route later in our visit.
As we turned to head toward the West entrance it was very plain where the Yellowstone Fire of 1988 had burned. The North Fork Fire (as it is called) was started on July 22, 1988 by a wood cutter's cigarette outside the park and was not contained until October of that year. Before it was contained, it roared over more than half a million acres, actually burning about 385,000.
An odd result of this fire was the uncovering of the wreckage of a B-17 bomber that crashed in Jack Straw Basin in the spring of 1943, killing 10 airmen, a site that had been overgrown and almost forgotten to the public. In 1988 cleanup crews hauled out more than twelve tons of refuse, including bullets, a wing tip, small bits of clothing and equipment, and parts of practice bombs. The main hulk of the plane, covered by the rescue crews 45 years ago, was left in place.
Forth-five years after the crash, the cause remained unknown. One soldier did parachute out and survived.
The wildfires of 1988 uncovered a lot other park ghosts as well - old road cuts, bridges, culverts and sites of former garbage dumps. Heavy growth had made them hard to get to and expensive to remove. I don't know if the photo shows it very well, but you can see the progress of the new growth of trees in the area.
Despite massive fire-fighting efforts, it took a snowfall in early September to dampen the fires of 1988.
We will explore more of the west side of the park in the days to come.
Love to all, Candy and Johnny
