Planting the seed

“Hidden” Crystal Falls on Cascade Creek. Photo: Kathleen O’Brien, October 2023.

My husband and I live in Plainfield, Connecticut. We made two quick trips to Yellowstone before retiring; the first was in 1973 as newlyweds and the second in 1987 with our three sons. We saw little during those trips, but the seed was planted.

Start of an addiction

Thank you to both

Received April 25, 2024, from Kathleen O’Brien.

IN THE GUIDEBOOK

The place to spot Crystal Falls is described on page 175, the hike to see it much closer up, on page 178, Yellowstone Treasures 6th edition.

1937 Yellow bus from Yellowstone Park, on display at Historic Flight Foundation, Everett, Washington

I am reading your book Yellowstone Treasures. It’s very nicely written and packed with tons of information. Thank you from a first-time visitor like me.

I will be traveling for the first time to the park in the first week of August with my family and friends. The location we chose to stay in that was affordable is outside the west side of the park. I am coming over from Canada.

I will be staying for five days. Is this time enough? I have divided the park in 4 segments, and each day I will be entering the park from the west. Is this approach right? What are some of the things that I must absolutely need to know? Does the park have wheelchair facilities? My friends’ parents are in their 80’s and won’t be able to do long walks. Does the park have rentals for golf-cart-type vehicles?

I will really appreciate your guidance and help. Thank you in advance for your response.

Warm regards,
Sameer

July 26, 2018
Dear Sameer,

Thank you for your kind comments about the guidebook. I put your questions to the author, Janet, and she asked me to write back to you.

There is never time enough to see everything, unless you stay all summer! However, the most essential sights are on Yellowstone’s west side. Be sure to allow one or two days for the area between Norris Geyser Basin and the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake, where there are so many fabulous thermal features to stop for. “My other personal favorites are the Mammoth Hot Springs area and the Lamar Valley,” says Janet. Don’t try to see everything since you need to allow time for travel and meals. Rather than seeing all your four segments, maybe choose two or three? If you do want to see the east or south sides of the park, look for lodging in Cody or Dubois, Wyoming, since those can be cheaper than lodging in the park or Jackson.

You will be in the park at its busiest time, so expect bumper-to-bumper traffic on some of the roads. If you can start very early in the mornings, you will do yourselves a favor. It’s always a good idea to check the official NPS Park Roads page the map showing current road status and for the closing dates of various roads. Another way to beat the crowds is to bring picnic food and drinks in a cooler for your lunches and snacks. Yellowstone Treasures tells you about the picnic areas.

You also asked if the park has wheelchair facilities and if the park has rentals for golf carts. The visitor centers at Old Faithful, Canyon, and Mammoth will loan you wheelchairs, or you can rent them at the medical clinics (Old Faithful, Mammoth, and Lake). See the NPS Wheelchairs & Mobility page for more information. But there are no golf-cart vehicles. One of the most rewarding short walks is around Black Sand Basin, the nearest short side road to Old Faithful Village, and of course Yellowstone Treasures has a list of more short walks on pages 366-68. And be sure to check the guidebook’s maps for the wheelchair symbol on trails and restrooms.

Another option to look at for your friends’ parents is one of the many yellow bus tours (see Xanterra’s Land Adventures page).

Enjoy your trip!
Beth Chapple

Editor and Publisher
Granite Peak Publications

Also, Amazon is having problems this week with distribution. Alhough they recently placed a large order from our distributor, yesterday the print book listing at Amazon read “Temporarily out of stock,” and today the message was “In stock on July 10, 2018.” (If you’d like the Kindle version, you can still buy that.) This Publishers Weekly article explains that Amazon is having trouble managing the truck deliveries from suppliers to their warehouses. And one reason for that might be their preparations for “Prime Day,” which is when Amazon Prime members see lower prices on many products. Prime Day is supposed to start at midday on July 16 this year.

Our advice to you is to buy a copy before you go. If you want it right away you have plenty of options:

1. Find an independent bookstore (see Indiebound) and shop locally, buy from them online, or find one on your way to the park. One charming store is Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, Montana.
2. Try Barnes & Noble, again either in person at a store convenient to you, or online. They often discount the price.
3. Order right from this website at our bookstore. Our service is quite fast, and of course then you are supporting the publisher directly. We also offer 20% off when you buy two or more.
4. Contact our distributor Independent Publishers Group, either online or by calling 1-800-888-4741. Best for trade buyers or when you want multiple copies.

I’ll leave you with a thought from reader Robert D. Rice, who wrote in his 5-star Amazon review on May 15, 2018: “Best guidebook I have ever read. No ambiguities, the descriptions and directions are very detailed. So many options available at every location I wish I had time to do it all. I love the focus on geology and I will enter Yellowstone almost like an old hand having studied this amazing book.”

Enjoy the park!
—Beth Chapple, Editor and Publisher

Recently two readers wrote to ask what the numbers next to so many entries mean. As author Janet Chapple wrote in her nugget called “The Features of Yellowstone Treasures,” “Some people get confused about how to use the mileage markings in the road logs in my book. I explain these in the Introduction [on page 17]. They show the distance from an entrance or major junction as well as the distance from the other direction, since a visitor may be traveling either way when consulting the guidebook.”

Here’s one letter we just received on April 1, 2018.

Hello,

Just purchased Yellowstone Treasures and still trying to figure what to visit in June this year and which trails to hike. I have one question, which I still can’t find the answer to while following the book.

You have numbers in front of some trails, like 0.0/20.5 “Yellowstone National Park boundary” on page 33 or 0.9/19.6 Dailey Creek Trailhead, and many others.

What do these mean? How should I use them in planning the trip and the places to visit?

Thanks,
Ross

Well, much of the guidebook is written as a road log, which means the author and her husband Bruno Giletti actually drove the roads to find out how far from the major road junctions or villages each trailhead or picnic area is located. To follow this explanation best, look at pages 286-87 in your book or open this link to the “From Norris Junction to Madison Junction” book excerpt. Each chapter in the guidebook starts with the junction or park boundary given as 0.0, like this:

0.0/13.4 Norris Junction. . . .

From there it’s just under 4 miles (3.9 mile) to the Artists’ Paintpots, so that paragraph starts:

3.9/9.5 Side road to parking for Artists’ Paintpots . . . [with icons that show you this is a recommended hike and there are restrooms]

But suppose you’re doing the chapter in the other direction, because you entered the park at the West or South Entrance and are coming from Madison Junction. Then you can see that the hydrothermal area is 9.5 miles from that end of the road (the second in the pair of numbers). See the map to confirm that Artists’ Paintpots is about a third of the distance from Norris to Madison (and for a recommendation that you look across the road in Gibbon Meadows for wildlife such as elk or bison).

We don’t really expect everyone to be zeroing their trip meter in the car every time they come to an entrance or a junction (though you could!). And people even use the book when they are riding on a bus tour. So the mileage indicators serve to show you the order of the sights and help you plan approximately how long it will take to get places. For example, if you are heading north to Norris, you know it’s just 0.6 mile after the Artists’ Paintpots to a picnic area.

When you are planning your trip don’t forget you can also use the driving distance chart on pages 20-21 to figure out how much you could get to see in a day. Hope that helps!

Photo Credit: The photo of elk is by Suzanne Cane. We use it on page 41 of Yellowstone Treasures, updated fifth edition.

—Editor and Publisher, Beth Chapple

Excerpt from page 50 of Through Early Yellowstone

The month of March in Yellowstone also means that park roads start to close to oversnow travel, in preparation for plowing and reopening in April and May. While the road from the North Entrance (Gardiner) to the Northeast Entrance (Cooke City) is open year-round, today at 9 pm the road from the East Entrance to Lake Butte Overlook (Sylvan Pass) closes to snowcoaches and snowmobiles, and other roads follow throughout the next two weeks. Conditions permitting, there is also a schedule for reopening the roads for motorized traffic. See the Park Roads page at https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/parkroads.htm.

This period between closing the park roads to oversnow travel and reopening them is a time when cyclists and hikers can travel the roads but car drivers are not allowed. See the National Park Service’s Spring & Fall Bicycling page to learn about the regulations and reminders, since you must still share the road with bears, administrative vehicles, and snow removal equipment. No services are available within the park during the spring shoulder season.

—Editor and Publisher, Beth Chapple

Updated August 20, 2018.

Readers find both the list of maps in the Table of Contents and the “54 Recommended Short Walks in Yellowstone” table to be handy, because they are organized by road log section in the same order as the guidebook. For example, if you find yourself at Canyon, you can see that all seven recommended walks on the chart can be found on the map on page 179 (a map completely revised for 2017).

Because the new Yellowstone Treasures ePub and Kindle versions have text that flows differently on every e-reader, they benefit from fully hyperlinked indexes that will get you to each topic or image. A quirk of the ePub is that text flow works best in portrait view for this e-book.

The PDF, on the other hand, retains the page numbering of the print book, so you can find topics by page number. Links go from the text nearby, not the page numbers. Look for the hand cursor. For example, on page 318 it says “a hydrothermal explosion such as the one that formed West Thumb Bay (see pages 138-39).” You can either put 138 into the page search box at the top (in Adobe Reader, for example) or click/tap on the words “West Thumb Bay” to get to the same place, where Janet explains how it’s a small caldera.

Here are a couple of tips that will help you get around with Yellowstone Treasures on different e-readers. In the ePub on the iPad, you can double-tap on an image or map to enlarge it. On the Kindle or Kindle app for iPad instead, you spread two fingers apart to zoom in, and then tap the x in the corner to close the image and continue.

As Ann Kristin Lindaas wrote us in April 2016 from Norway,

“I have already bought the print book and I really enjoy it. Essential for planning my days in Yellowstone! I will be traveling the US for about a month in September and I’m hoping to bring electronic versions of most of the books I’ve bought.”

Here’s to enjoying books in whatever form you choose! Cordially, Beth Chapple, editor and publisher.

In 2017, you’ll see this new logo more often.

Back in June, we got a surprising message. The logo we have used since Janet founded Granite Peak Publications in 2000 is a mirror image of the real Granite Peak in Montana! Ralph Saunders, a friend, avid hiker, and mapping expert with Rocky Mountain Surveys of Billings, Montana, let us know with the following note as he ordered a copy of Through Early Yellowstone.

Just a little note. The picture of Granite Peak in the logo is actually reversed. Turn the paper over, hold it up to the light and you’ll see the terrain as it actually is. Not a big deal but thought I would let you know.

Well, it is a big deal, and we will gradually rectify it to the one you see above as we publish upcoming editions.

As part of the centennial celebrations, Granite Peak Publications released Through Early Yellowstone: Adventuring by Bicycle, Covered Wagon, Foot, Horseback, and Skis in June. The story about Alice Parmelee Morris called “Yellowstone Trails Blazed by New York Woman” was originally published in the New York Times in 1918, two years after she made the trip. All ten of the other main stories, as well as the numerous poems and short excerpts in the anthology also took place before cars were allowed in the park, during 1870 to 1916.

With entertaining travel accounts and many watercolor paintings and engravings, the book is a wonderful way to inspire someone you know and allow armchair travel to Yellowstone National Park.

Now is your chance to buy Through Early Yellowstone at 30 percent off or the very practical Yellowstone Treasures guidebook at 40 percent off. You can also get a holiday bundle with one of each book for just $40. Hurry, sale ends January 10, 2017.

Fortunately I was able to combine a fun and research-filled road trip to Yellowstone with this book festival. I drove from Seattle with my son on September 18th, spent a mere four days in the park, and we drove back via Missoula. Author Janet and I will be sharing some stories and pictures from our trips over the next few weeks, as well as adding videos to our YouTube channel. Today I added a video called “Fan Creek 360 degree view.”

–Editor and Publisher, Beth Chapple

Amazing book to review before your visit, but also to keep with you during it! Upon entering the park we were given a map, but this book has so many more detailed maps of each area that were SO helpful! I was responsible for planning a day and a half worth of activities for my group, and this book helped me to not disappoint! It explains EVERY single feature of the park, split up according to region. Seriously, check this book out and your friend will think you know it all. Can’t wait to go back to the park–according to the book, I missed out on A LOT.

—L, Amazon.com 5-star review, June 22, 2016

The price of the Yellowstone Treasures e-book in three different formats normally varies between $12.99 and the list price of $19.99. People all around the world can now easily buy it, as we discussed in an April post, “E-books for international readers.”.

Now, for just this calendar month, July 2016, Amazon.com is offering the Kindle version of the guidebook for $3.99! That’s a bargain for the Updated Fourth Edition, which boasts more facts, anecdotes, history, and travel tips than ever before. To get selected for this deal, a book must have high customer ratings on Amazon.com (3.2 stars or better), and with 69 reviews, the updated fourth edition currently has a rating of 4.7 stars. Something to consider giving to someone you know who has a Kindle or the free Kindle app on the iPad?

—Editor and Publisher, Beth