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Yellowstone National Park |
| We went into Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming and were but a few miles into the park when I spied two buffalo (without roots this time) grazing at the distant edge of a meadow. I made Dan stop the car so I could take a picture and he assured me they were too far away to show up as more than dark dots, but I wanted proof that we actually saw some real buffalo so I took the picture anyway. |
 Buffalo at Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. Note the two tiny dots about one third the distance from the left edge. Those are two huge buffalo. |
| Silly me. We drove less than a mile more into the park and encountered buffalo everywhere -- hundreds of them, many walking right in the roadway. |
Some of the hundreds of buffalo we nearly drove into while in Yellowstone. |
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They're monstrously large beasts with ugly features and large, empty eyes. They also have a penchant for jaywalking and tend to lumber out into the road then pause, effectively stopping traffic in both directions. We stopped at a picnic area called Sheepeater Cliffs. The cliffs, which were above us, were lava columns formed a half million years ago. They seemed at perfect right angles and some of the columns had tumbled, leaving a field of jagged square boulders at the cliff base. Among the rocks were five yellow bellied marmots, beaver-like creatures with, you guessed it, yellow bellies and pointed little noses with white fur. They were playful, but quite wary of humans and kept a good distance. We would see their little noses peeking up from behind one boulder, then disappear and pop up several feet closer. One man cut up an apple and placed it on the rocks to coax them closer for pictures, and one daring marmot actually came to within six feet of him to get the fruit. The others looked on and showed signs of nearing but they never did get very close. The red squirrels and chipmunks weren't so shy and kept zipping past the pile of apples to steal a bit, then hiding in the rocks to eat it. We also saw several mule deer and elk while driving down to Old Faithful Geyser. We stopped at a site called Mammoth Hot Springs along the way and my, but it stunk! We should have expected the smell of sulfur, but at first it was overpowering. Like anything, after a while we got used to it and amused ourselves renaming the geysers, mudpots and pools to better suit their appearance and smell (i.e. cesspool, sewerpot, stenchspewer). We agreed that the mudpots (boiling acidic pools that melt the surrounding clay) resembled the Bog of Eternal Stench from the movie Labyrinth. Old Faithful was just that. We saw it erupt four times during our visit. |
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Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.
Webcam
pictures HERE |
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We were lucky enough to get a room at the Old Faithful Inn without a reservation. Our room faced the geyser. When we opened our window upon arriving, there was a large elk grazing right outside! The Inn, built in the early 1900's by the railroads, was a large log cabin-type thing. There were mezzanines on the second, third and fourth floors that looked down into the lobby area, and a tiny crow's nest cabin built into the peak of the main building (though it was closed to public use). It was quite posh with a piano player on the second floor mezzanine and a reservations-only dining room. Needless to say, we ate pub grub that night, and even that was expensive. |
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Old Faithful Inn |
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This area is thermal for several miles so there were smaller geysers, many boiling pools, paintpots, etc. to be seen. At Yellowstone Lake there is a section with geysers that are submerged at the lake's edge. There were also some spectacular boiling pools that were beautiful turquoise blue and so clear we could seen well into their depths. I hope our pictures reproduce the colors because it defies description, a beautiful mixture of green and blue surrounded by yellow and orange. Add the occasional buffalo plop, and it's a veritable palette of colors. |
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One of the many boiling pools at Yellowstone. More info HERE |
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We ventured on further and came to a spot on the Yellowstone River called McHardy Rapids. Our timing was right as we were able to see cutthroat trout migrating upstream to spawn. It was amazing...hundreds of foot long fish struggling against the current. They're crafty little creatures and hide behind rocks to rest up, then they gather in the shallow pools below the spots they will have to jump over and wait their turn...sort of like a fishy Disney World. If they don't make the jump they fall to the back of the line and wait their turn again. |
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Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. More info HERE |
| In all the time we spent in Yellowstone, we didn't see one bear, despite their dire warnings that this was bear country and we should lock up everything, including the toothpaste, before leaving our vehicle. |
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Florida Road trip, American Road trip, touring the USA, American National Parks, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Grand Tetons, Lake Tahoe, Redwood Forest, Boston, Washington State, Mount Rainer, Yellowstone, Lake Powell, Las Vegas, New York, Montana, Road Trip America. |
