If you saw an ark float by in Yellowstone National Park this past June, it would have made total sense. The flooding that hit the park was such that roads collapsed all over. People were lucky to have gotten out when they did. Some of them even required helicopter rescue through no fault of their own because the word couldn’t get to them in time about the danger.
As of October 15, 99% of the park is now open to visitors. Some of the park was accessible just a few weeks after the flooding, but it took until this week to get open up the way to one of the park’s most popular spots: Trout Lake.
The one remaining road that still needs work is the Old Gardiner Road, which connects to Mammoth Hot Springs in Montana. Even so, that road should be fully accessible by November 1.
The reopening of nearly the whole park couldn’t have come at a better time. Fall and winter are the best times to visit the park. In the fall, the wildlife is even more spectacular than throughout the rest of the year. In the winter time, cross-country skiers and snowboarders turn the landscape into their own private winter wonderland.
In the face of humankind’s battle against the elements and the rest of nature, it’s amusing that Old Faithful kept on its famous cycle throughout the calamity, nature being peacefully oblivious to its own unknowable vicissitudes.