Yellowston National Park

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Saturday, July 24, 2010

Yesterday we spent the day in Yellowstone. The park is everything everyone has ever spoken about - outstanding! The weather could not be better. High of 73 yesterday and 45 last night. The skies are vast with deep blue backgrounds and large puffy cumulus clouds. It seems you cannot take a bad picture here, even if you were using a 1970"s Polaroid.

The park sits on a fault line and they have since January of this year experienced over 3000 small earthquakes. The biggest one recorded was 3.8.

Yellowstone is tremendous and after 7 hours of driving and stopping and seeing things. I was afraid we saw it all. We are dry camping for 2 nights in the actual park starting Monday and I didn't want to be done with all the scenery already. Come to find out, we saw less than a 1/4 of it. It is magnificent. It is very diverse from one side to the other. Parts of it has hot bubbling, boiling mud holes that are impressive and smell like rotten eggs, parts of it is all - as thick as can be - pine tree forests, and parts of it is wide open plains. The volcanic mud holes are similar to the ones we saw in Costa Rica, but they are not nearly as hot. There is also a huge lake in the middle called Yellowstone Lake. We saw private vessels on it and want to inquire about renting a boat.


The first stop we did was 'Old Faithful'. Its a bit of a hike from the parking lot to the actual spot to view it. They have benches and boardwalks set up all around the volcanic eruption sites and everyone of them was packed. They list the times old faithful goes off everyday up until around 5:30, after that, it becomes sporadic. It is, and was, spectacular. The wind was blowing the steam towards us and you cannot see the magnitude of the water spout from some our pictures but it was at least 60 feet tall. We got wet from the steam but by the time it hit us it was cooled down. I hope we have time to go back and view it again from the other side so the wind is behind us.

The second stop we did was a campground. They have 4 in the park. All of them have water and sewer hook ups but no electricity. We are self contained so the water and sewer are not a problem for us, but no electricity is being too close to home during a hurricane, and I hate it. Oppps, I'm not supposed to say hate - I dislike it very much! I inquired if we were allowed to run the generator at night (alot of parks do not allow this), and they told us that the generator was not allowed and ANY time of day. The park is natural and the animals need it to stay that way. I agree, but damn.......Anyway, Tommy booked us for Monday and Tuesday night in a park called Fishing Bridge. We drove through it yesterday to scope it out. Its okay, nothing to write home about - but - we are in the middle of Yellowstone.

We also stopped at a trail where you can hike down one side and up the other, across a waterfall. There are 2 water falls in the same area. We did not do the hike but observed the look out points. We plan on doing the hike while we are staying in the park.

Everywhere you go, there are signs of bears and elk, and moose and bison. It seems the bison are the most plentiful. They come and go, and do what they want, when they want to. Its really neat. They cross the road in front of you and take their sweet time doing it. (The other day on the news, the lady that was charged - it was not her fault. Some idiot threw a water bottle a the hind end of the animal and it spooked and all he saw was her and he charged. ) OH, and yes, also on the news - about the hikers on the Grand Tetons, we were there 4 days prior. It wasn't us! (Alot of you have text us and we couldnt answer because of the signals out here).

Today we are heading out on the Polaris on some trails. I am a bit nervous being in uncharted territory and wild animals everywhere, but Tommy promises the noise from the razor will scare them away. (I'm not sure if I believe him because we have seen plenty of animals on trails before.)

If I don't blog tomorrow or the next day, send out troops to scour the bellies of all the local bears.
LOL

Have a great weekend, and thanks for reading,