26 Apr 2020 FINDING SISTERS IN YELLOWSTONE

Posted at 11:10 AMh in Travel by

by Linda Henderson

Recently, my “Sisters of the Traveling Snake Boots” and our husbands took a trip of a lifetime together. The trip was to Yellowstone National Park in the winter.  

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you may have seen many references to my Sisters of the Traveling Snake Boots. Over the years, I have received several messages and comments from followers requesting I tell the story of the Sisterhood.

FINDING SISTERS 

The “Sisters” story began in 2011. The first sister was Karla Riker Hall. She and I became acquainted because I was a customer of the photo printing company where she worked. The more we talked, the more we found we had lots of things in common. We discovered we both enjoyed taking short road trips around Arkansas and the first adventure was planned. After that first excursion together, there haven’t been many weekends that we haven’t gone on a photography adventure.  

Our husbands have joined in on our trips too. Karla’s husband, Mike Hall, is also a photographer and my husband, Jim, has earned the nickname Sherpa, because as he loves to say, he just drives ‘the bus’ and hauls my equipment.    

Next to join was Lisa Schmatjen McCarley. Lisa and her husband, Ricky, first met Karla and her husband in the woods while photographing waterfalls. Karla invited Lisa and Ricky to attend a landscape photography gathering. They came and as it is said, the rest is history.  

The next sister to become a part our group was Eilish Reding Palmer. Eilish entered the circle after a chance meeting. Eilish and I were Facebook friends and had messaged each other a few times, but had never met each other in person.   Jim and I happened upon Eilish while photographing elk in the Buffalo National Park. An instant friendship was formed and she and her husband, Charlie, became a part of our little tribe.  

YELLOWSTONE

Eilish and Charlie have made many trips to Yellowstone in the winter. I loved hearing their stories about how special Yellowstone is in the winter and how few people are in the park during this time. Eilish and Charlie were right; there were times while we were there that we would go 15 to 20 minutes without seeing anyone and the only traffic we encountered were the bison jams.  

The sights of America’s first National Park in the winter time are very different than I had expected. I anticipated a very cold, snowy and desolate landscape, filled with snow-covered mountain ranges. 

It is so very different from Arkansas in the winter. We get a little snow and it melts away by the next day, leaving a muddy countryside. Not so in Yellowstone. I found deep, white snow blanketing everything. The mountain peaks and valley road appears to be cut around otherworldly rock formations, boulder beds and sharp rock ledges. The snowy forest takes on a magical appearance and I kept expecting to see snow fairies dancing around towering lodge pole pines. Early in the morning the trees and valleys were covered with a thick icy fog. When the sunlight touches the trees, they look like sparkling diamonds and jewels. We didn’t get to see it snow many times during our visit, but when it does, it coats everything with a dry wispy cover. 

It was cold. The lowest that we saw was -19, but we had the right kind of clothing and dressed in layers. I was never uncomfortable.   

In Yellowstone, steam and pungent odors of sulfur billow up from the hot springs, lakes and the geysers of the caldera area. The hydrothermal features and colorful pools are sometime hidden by thick steam. For a few, brief moments the steam stops and their brilliant colors can be seen.  

I didn’t expect to see wildlife so close to the road. I had assumed they were far from the road and required a big zoom lens or high-powered scopes to see. I was definitely wrong about that as the park is filled with frosty, snow-covered bison roaming on the open roads from field to field. They dig deep into the snow with their massive heads, trying to find blades of last summer’s grass. The bachelor elk groups are also close to the road in the high forest. They too search for grass, pawing their hooves into the snowy ground. Coyotes and foxes patrol the Lamar Valley in search of small rodents, rabbits or recent fallen prey. A lone moose lingered close to the steam-fed river at the edge of the forest. In the Lamar Valley, bighorn rams climb up steep jagged peaks right next to the road.  

Every morning, we rose early to photograph the sunrise and the feeding wildlife.  Each morning the sky was gray and foggy. It didn’t appear the light would be optimum for a beautiful sunrise but as the sunlight would break the tops of the mountains, the light changed and the clouds parted and the sky filled with pinks, purples and oranges. Light hit the tops of the mountains and filled the valleys with sunshine and we were rewarded for getting up early with a stunning sunrise to photograph. The sunsets were also magnificent. The sky hues varied with each moment till sunlight changed to evening shades.  

Travel within the park during the winter time is limited to only the roads that are plowed. To enter the interior of Yellowstone requires that you hire a snow coach or take a snowmobile tour. The snow coaches are four-wheel drive vans or buses with huge (48-inch) tires. Our trip into the interior was the highlight of our trip.  We got to see the back county and the vast open spaces of the park. My favorite wildlife sighting was while we were on our snow coach tour. It was a long line of bison wandering across a vast, snow-covered field in a single row. The backdrop for the scene was thick gray steam rising high in the sky from the hot springs and the geysers in the Geyser Basin.    

Yellowstone National Park is more than 2 million acres with more than 400 miles of roads and 1,000 miles of trails that weave through the spectacular park. There is no way it could all be seen. It is a great gift that our forefathers gave us and it should be protected for the benefit and enjoyment of all Americans. 

SISTERHOOD NAME 

So, where did the name for the sisterhood come from? One of the things we all had in common, other than cameras and tripods, were snake boots. Thus, we started referring to ourselves as The Sisters of the Traveling Snake Boots. 

We are so blessed that we all have become friends. Not only do we travel together, encourage each other’s photography skills, share photography tips and locations, but we have been there for each other during, weddings, illness and during times of great loss. Very few days pass that there are not phone calls or texts between the sisters. We came together because of our love for photography, a love for the outdoors, a belief in God and a love for discovering what is down the road less taken.  

Linda Henderson
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