Thursday, August 1, 2024
Yellowstone Falls
The temperature range today was 39 to 84. I heard the furnace running during the night. It was almost 11:30 when we went into the park this morning, but the lines were a lot shorter. We’re both tired this morning so we’re planning on a shorter day.
OK, so you wanted more buffalo pictures -- here you go. These are scattered around on both sides of Yellowstone Street in West Yellowstone, three of them are at the museum along with the big statue of the bear. I love these painted animals like this.
We came back along the Madison river, got stuck in the normal traffic jam. We came through here at 5 miles an hour. Finally, we got up to the point of interest -- one lone cow elk decided to cross the road right in front of a couple cars in front of us. Once the elk cleared the road and moved into the trees, traffic started moving and we made progress.
Madison River is looking pretty this morning with the sun glistening off of the waves. This is a pretty drive even though it does take longer than it should. It only took us 30 minutes this morning to get through there.
Here is the pasture where the elk have usually been grazing in the evening. Tonight they were not there.
We stopped at the Upper Brink of the Yellowstone Falls and I made it down to that lookout and to the second one. The first one you really couldn’t see much, but the second one had a decent view. There was a lower deck as well where you could really see the face of it, but I couldn’t walk down there. Having bad knees, it certainly puts a restriction on life
When I got back to the Jeep, it was time for ibuprophen!
This is the bridge over Yellowstone River right before it starts narrowing for the falls
We then drove to the Lower Falls. This is a very popular place, little bit of a back up getting into the parking lot, but we got very lucky and got the very first handicap spot. We both made it down to the viewpoint. It’s a really awesome place and the canyon walls are what they call artist paintbrush. Joe found us a bench in the shade and we waited it out until we got to sit there and just look at the falls. This was my third walk of the day and probably the last one, but it was certainly worth it and I would not have wanted us to leave here without seeing this beautiful falls again
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Back out on the main road, we saw two foxes -- one of them on the road and the other one under a bush, the one under the bush eventually crossed the road . Then we started seeing Buffalo. And geese. Next stop -- Fishing Bridge to get some lunch.
About 3 o’clock we left Fishing Bridge General Store, having had lunch there, to go bear hunting. We’ve heard about some bears toward the East Entrance and our waitress here gave us a little more information so we’re on our way to find the bears. We spent an hour and a half on that mission. We drove out east about 15 miles, went up a look-out and found no bears anywhere. But we had a great view of the lake. This information "sign" was interesting about the area.
This area had a terrible fire some years ago. The burnout is heartbreaking.
From the lookout, Joe spotted something in the far distance through the binoculars that was moving. We think it was probably elk but they were too far away to distinguish. That was the end of our hunt. We stopped back by Fishing Bridge for an ice cream cone and then we are headed out to finish today. It’s 5:00 and we’re again heading further away from the campground. We made a run through the Baybridge Marina parking lot looking for our nice bull elks, but they weren’t there. I thought they must be out playing hide and seek with the Bears but right after we pulled back out onto the highway, one of the bulls showed up. He was very cooperative, even crossed the road in front of us, we were lucky -- right place right time
We passed the turnoff to Old Faithful but were too tired to even think about turning in. Then we drove through the geyser basin. That's always interesting, and always a lot of traffic.
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We turned on our Madison Road at 6:20, the earliest we’ve made it all week. We had high hopes of getting through here without too much delay. We thought we were going to get through unscathed, but about halfway across we saw brake lights. It was only about a 12 minute delay, but it sure felt longer. There were 3 cow elk lying on an island in river on the other side of the road, after Madison River crossed the road. We don’t know where the rest of that herd went, but these three found themselves a nice, cool spot.
We had found a truck parking area just outside of town with good cell signal so we have stopped there the last two nights and uploaded our pictures for the day. After that, we got to the campground just after seven, weary travel folks. 170 miles today, and this was supposed to be an easy day.
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