654 
FOREST AND STREAM 
NOV. 22, I 9 I 3 . 
A TRIP TO YELLOWSTONE PARK.-HI 
By G. S. WYATT 
E left the great city of Salt Lake just as 
the king of day was hiding himself be¬ 
hind the western hills, for the run over 
the Oregon Short Line to Yellowstone Station, 
the western entrance to the great National Park. 
We wished for a pair of cat eyes on this run 
that we might see the many things of interest 
as we were making the trip in the night, but 
as our wish did not come to pass, we retired to 
our sleeping apartment and woke up the next 
morning as we were nearing the place where 
we were to enter the Park. Soon every one was 
astir, getting things together—suit cases, hand 
bags, puff boxes, leggins, veils, umbrellas, maga¬ 
zines, et cetera, that had been around loose for 
almost the entire trip, that nothing might be left 
on the Pullman, as everything had to be trans¬ 
ferred to the Wylie Camp, about two miles inside 
the Park, where we were to leave trunks and 
many suitcases, as each passenger was only al¬ 
lowed 25 lbs. of baggage in the coaches and 
hacks in which we were to travel through the 
Park. From that time on, till we were snugly 
ensconced in our places in the hacks and coaches, 
the women were in a perfect furor, and the men 
were worked, till their tongues were ready to pro¬ 
trude from their mouths, obeying the injunctions 
and commands (mostly commands) of the 
women, who were now in a near approach to a 
state of frenzy, for fear that they would over¬ 
look the exact handkerchief, or other article of 
wearing apparel that should be taken on the trip, 
or that they might take some garment that ought 
to be left behind. After all, the women came out 
with minds fairly well adjusted, and the men 
with nothing worse than the loss of a few locks 
of hair, and some threats of future reckonings. 
I do not see how we could very well get along 
without the women, but at times they are most 
exasperating. To be aroused from your slum¬ 
bers, at an hour in the early morning when all 
the muses are whispering the sweetest and most 
charming things to you, and oftentimes, you are 
holding delightful communion with the angels 
and archangels of the upper world, to say the 
least, is not very pleasing. But in addition, to 
thus being disturbed, to be driven like a dumb 
brute to search for paraphernalia about which 
you have not the least knowledge, puts a man, 
with nerves already at the breaking point, to his 
best to not break the rules of first-class gentility. 
If any one will furnish me with an infallible 
rule by which I can repeat with the same degree 
of fervor and enthusiasm with which I have so 
often repeated them, the following beautiful lines 
(at times) 
“O woman! whose form and whose soul 
Are the spell and the light of each path we pur¬ 
sue, 
Whether sunned in the tropics, or chilled at the 
pole, 
If woman be there, there is happiness too;” 
I agree to take him on a two weeks’ fishing trip 
next summer and pay all the expenses. It is a 
marvelously radical change to be shot, as out of 
a catapult, almost in the twinkling of an eye, 
from your normal feeling, so warm and adoring, 
toward the fair and tender sex, to the opposite 
pole of chill and resentment, till you wished that 
such a being hardly existed, if so, that it was 
at some extreme distance; and usually, this all 
occurs because she takes advantage of the occa¬ 
sion to attempt to show her authority and superi¬ 
ority, to man. My! When the women procure 
national suffrage, and your wife or mine is in 
the White House as Presidentess of this wonder¬ 
ful nation, things will look curious in that home; 
wife with all her time and thought given to 
national affairs, while all your time and thought 
are given to the baby, and matters of the house¬ 
hold. The whole of present conditions will right 
about change. The boys will have to be brought 
up under a teacher of domestic science; the 
fathers will have to attend congresses of fathers 
to learn how to care for the babies; and do all 
the shopping for the family in the way of dry 
goods to be purchased. My! He will have to 
study hard to keep from being “skinned” on 
bargain days at the great department stores. But 
I am going afield. The drive in the early morn¬ 
ing from the station to the Wylie Camp was a 
most pleasant one. The roadway had been cut 
through a most beautiful pine forest, and was 
named Christmas Tree Drive. Every one in the 
crowd, as'we left the station and entered the 
drive, seemed to be as happy and joyous as a 
“marriage bell.” Laughter, from the great depth 
of the joyous soul, rang out on the morning air; 
jokes, full of juice and spice, were heard on all 
sides; songs, that gave expression of the peace 
and gladness that filled the heart, made the forest 
resound with their joyous notes, and youthful¬ 
ness was apparent on all sides, even in the face 
of the old men, and of the women growing old. 
It was a glad morning, as the aroma from the 
pines, in its all-pervasive flavor, emptied itself 
upon our olfactory nerves, and the rich, ever- 
invigorating air, freighted with ozone from the 
mountain tops, sent thrills of renewed health and 
strength through our bodies, and all would have 
gone well had it not been for the confusion men¬ 
tioned above. Breakfast having been served, and 
the necessary changes in baggage having been 
made, the command was given to get ready to 
be loaded on to the hacks and coaches in groups 
of five and eleven, for in such groups we would 
have to travel in our journey through the Park. 
Our crowd of six, including the driver, was a 
jolly one, there was not a dull moment during 
the seven days of our trip through the wonderful 
National Reserve. There was always something 
interesting going on; singing, joking, telling 
some good story, going over to each other, our 
impression from this or that object, recounting 
what we had seen that we might keep it fresh 
in our minds, delivering apostrophes to some 
great mountain, or other object that deeply im¬ 
pressed us; especially was this true when our eyes 
first fell upon the beautiful and attractive Yel¬ 
lowstone Lake, and the Sleeping Giant Mountain, 
and outlining some great sermon that we intended 
to preach when we returned to startle our flocks, 
and make them more than willing for us to take 
another vacation, when things, in the course of a 
few months would become exceedingly prosy, 
.coming from the pulpit. (It is a difficult thing 
for a preacher to admit that things from the 
pulpit, especially his, ever become irksome and 
prosy, but they do for I have sat in the pew a 
few times myself, and have had my wife to pass 
on my deliverances a few times.) So alert were 
we that a fish could not leap above the waters 
of the Madison, the Gibbon, the Firehole, or the 
Yellowstone, that we did not see it. We saw the 
bears, the elks, the deer, the mountain sheep, the 
antelope, the squirrel, the woodchuck, the chip¬ 
munk, where the buffalo was said to roam, but 
which we did not see, the eagle flying to his eyrie 
hundreds of feet above the waters of the Yellow¬ 
stone River as it rushed through the Awful Yel¬ 
lowstone Canon, and yet hundreds of feet below 
the top of the walls, the mountains, many and 
great, the rivers beautiful and swift, lakes the 
most lovely and charming in the world, nestling 
at an altitude of 7,741 feet at the foot of the 
Absaroka Range of snowcapped mountains,which 
rise from the water’s edge to altitudes of ten or 
eleven thousand feet, the geysers multuitudinous 
and attractive, and yet repellant, the mighty Yel¬ 
lowstone Canon, that, with its awful, overmas¬ 
tering influence, made you stand trembling, with 
head uncovered, as it forced your thoughts to the 
contemplation of Nature’s Mighty God. But 
back to our trip. All tourists making the trip 
through the Park travel over the same route, 
those from the north entrance beginning where 
the tourists from the west entrance end their 
sight-seeing. So leaving our camp, we start up 
the Madison River, over the pioneer route, fol¬ 
lowed by such early travelers as Bridger and 
Burley, discoverers of the Great Salt Lake, Col¬ 
ter, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and Dr. 
F. V. Hayden, of the United States Geological 
Survey. We soon pass the Riverside Military 
Station, headquarters for a detachment of United 
States Cavalry. The Rainbow and Loch Leven 
trout of the Madison splash the water here and 
there as we pass along. On the south side of 
the Madison Canon Mount Burley rises from the 
water’s edge hundreds of feet high, and the scen¬ 
ery here is most beautiful to behold. At the 
junction of the Gibbon and Firehole Rivers is 
situated National Park Mountain, where on Sept. 
19, 1870, the Washburn-Langford party camped, 
having completed an exhaustive exploration of 
the Park, and where it was first suggested that 
the Yellowstone region should be made a Na¬ 
tional Park, and it is said that it was largely 
through their efforts that Congress passed the 
act of dedication in 1872. The Government in 
1903 had built at Gardiner, and dedicated by 
President Roosevelt (one among the best Presi¬ 
dents this nation has ever had, and that is a 
remarkable statement coming from a Southern 
democrat, who has been such from his youth up), 
an imposing stone arch, upon which is inscribed 
the following: “Yellowstone National Park, cre¬ 
ated by Act of Congress, March 1, 1872. For 
the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People.” On 
and on we travel along one of the most charming 
drives in this wonderful reservation till we halt 
for lunch at the Wylie Lunch Station, on the 
banks of the beautiful Gibbon. At this lunch 
station, on this day, as we learned from the 
matron on our return, three hundred and nine¬ 
teen people took lunch, but there was plenty and 
to spare, for the Wylie management makes it a 
rule to always feed its guests well. Our crowd 
had been increased by a large number from other 
states, and from here on the crowd gathering 
around the camp fire at night was estimated to 
be anywhere from three to five hundred. Here 
we saw our first bears, the black and the cinna¬ 
mon varieties. The Vice-President of the S. M. 
U. displayed more nerve than many of his ad¬ 
mirers thought he possessed by approaching ex¬ 
ceedingly close to an exceedingly large cinnamon 
bear, which fact exceedingly excited Mrs. Vice- 
President, and caused some of the party to re¬ 
mark that it was the first time that they had 
ever known the exceedingly courtly Vice-Presi¬ 
dent to disobey his exceedingly charming wife. 
No one ever saw him repeat it during the trip 
through the Park. We are soon in our places 
in the hacks and coaches, and off to the geyser 
region by way of the Falls on Firehole River, 
which is one of the picturesque scenes of our 
day’s journey, having a fall of about eighty feet 
