Yellowstone Day 2 1/2

We had a great day. We had breakfast at Old Faithful Inn, visited the Native American cultural center, which is new to us, bought Phil a T-shirt, and bought a can of sloppy Joe stuff for tonight. We also bought two new beautiful pieces of artwork to hang in our living room at Gainesville, where there are a couple of bare spots. They will be shipped via Fedex to my father and step mom's house, and we'll retrieve them upon our return.

When we arrived at Old Faithful, the parking lot was empty. When we left about 11 am and the parking lot was full. We drove up to the Firehole Lake drive as every other time I had been there, it was closed. It was much less crowded. We saw lots of thermal features.

As a little girl, we visited Yellowstone when I was about 6 over Memorial Day weekend. My aunt Sue Ann also went with us so she would have been a teenager. I remember one evening it was very cold and we waited and waited for a geyser to go off and it never did. That reminded me of a sign we saw today that said a geyser MAY erupt between 4:30 and 8:30 pm.

We also drove across the park to Canyon, then down the Yellowstone valley as it comes from Yellowstone Lake. The bison were beginning their rut, and the big bulls were all rolling around in the dust and posturing. We just sat and watched a while and wondered what the landscape was like when there were millions of these beasts instead of a few thousand. We stopped at Lake for ice, but they were out, so we just bought a couple of ice creams. I usually don't eat stuff like that, but it tasted good today.

We drove on to Bay Bridge to get ice. Then we stopped at the West Thumb geyser basin to see thermal features in the lake and on shore. Last stop today was at Grant to get showers. Very good operation there, and showers are $5.25.

Back at camp, I whipped up some sloppy Joe's with a bagged salad. The mosquitos are bothersome tonight, so we are in our bug hooch enjoying the quiet of this campground.

Tomorrow, we'll drive up to Mammoth Hot Springs. I'm not sure after that. We're here a third night, and then we move to Grand Tetons.Читать далее