Today was an excellent day. Joe and I had fun all day, exploring Yellowstone and enjoying the day together. It started off with my birthday picture.
(The hat was left over from Collins' birthday party.) Then we went to breakfast at Lake Lodge. This lake is huge -- 136 square miles, 110 miles of shoreline, and up to 400 ft. deep at the deepest point. The water temperature of the lake right now is 44 degrees. We drove along it for miles, and saw our first wildlife of the day. We saw one elk on the way to breakfast, then we came upon a little group of 3 cows and one bull right beside the road.
We were seeing steam from geysers and thermal pools all along the lake. This area is the thermal gardens.
We both felt the water here from the boardwalk. It was pretty hot -- in fact, you could feel the heat from it before you ever put your hand in the water.
This next was called Abyss Pool. It was right beside the lake too.
We drove on to Old Faithful, which erupts approximately every 90 minutes. It was an awesome thing to get to do on my birthday. Joe said it was appropriate -- I was old and faithful. I think he meant that as a compliment. I think.
My dear Indiana friend, Barbara, called to wish me happy birthday and informed me there was a web cam at Old Faithful that she had watched a friend on in the past. So I called my kids, and Tiffany got set up to look for us. John was tied up in meetings, so we never got connected with him, but Tiffany did see us as we waved at her. We watched Old Faithful erupt at 11:30 and again around 1:00. We were told the temperature at the lip is about 204 degrees, but someone else said that it gets up to about 240 just before it erupts. It is pretty spectacular.
We walked around the boardwalk in between, and there was a small herd of bison grazing (and resting) right beside the geyser.
We had lunch there at Old Faithful Lodge, then drove on around the Grand Loop. This next one is called Excelsior Geyser and it last erupted on my birthday, Sept. 14, 1985. I kept waiting, but nothing happened today.
Bridgette and John would be enthralled with this place. We took several pictures of bacteria pools for Bridgette, but they really need to come here and see all this for themselves.
This next geyser is White Dome Geyser. It was going off when we were at another one, and by the time we got over to it, it was dormant. We waited for a while, but finally gave up.
We did catch this next one, Artesia Geyser, going off every few minutes.
We drove back a side rode to Firehole Falls and came upon a group wading in Firehole River, or lying on the bank. A guy told us there was a swimming hole on up further, and we finally came upon it.
The Firehole Falls was pretty awesome too. We had seen the top of it from another pull-off, but this side road gave us a pretty good view of it.
We finally found the swimming hole, so Joe and I both took our shoes off and waded in! The water temperature was probably around 50-60 degrees. But our feet were pretty tired, so it felt good.
We got back on the main road and continued our drive. We had to wait several minutes for road construction, then just after we got through that, traffic stopped again for a bison sauntering down the middle of the road.
We continued our loop, but by now it was getting to be a long day. We stopped at Canyon Lodge for dinner, but there was a 30-minute wait, so we drove on down to Lake Hotel, where there was a 45-minute wait. On the way through here, though, we saw probably 300 bison, and 11 more elk, including a big bull. We saw 3 deer scattered throughout the day. We ended up at Lake Lodge, where we had eaten breakfast, but we had a prime rib dinner, so Joe took pretty good care of me on my birthday! And I had phone calls from friends and family, so it was a good day. It ended up being a 12-hour day in the car, but worth every minute of it!
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