Birthday and Yellowstone

Tuesday, Sept. 14 - First of all, thank everyone for my birthday wishes.  I was quite shocked when I opened up the blog today and found the birthday poem.  Thank you Cathy.

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.

The next pool was 163 degrees, one of the hottest on the lake.  The lake has these hotspots under the surface, which melt holes in the ice in the winter.  Otters come to these melted spots in the winter to fish.

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!

Yellowstone Day 1

Sunday-Monday, Sept. 12-13 - We had housekeeping chores to do this morning in Great Falls before we headed to Yellowstone for 5 days without electricity, so I shook Joe out of the sheets at 7:00 a.m. and went to the laundry.  He managed to get back to sleep and finally came to check on me about 8:30, so I sent him to McDonalds for breakfast sandwiches.  Then I put the laundry away and vacuumed the RV while he cleaned the windshield and side windows, and shook the rugs.  We were ready to roll about 11:00, so we didn't have time to see any of the waterfalls around the city, not even the one at the dam.  Hopefully, we can come back through here some day and spend a little time in Great Falls.  So we continued our drive through the beautiful Big Sky Country of Montana, enjoying every mile.  We have driven Highway 89 a lot on this trip, and it is a very scenic drive.

We had a good laugh when we saw a monument of "Thunder Jack."  We met a guy in Chicken who said his name was Thunder Jack, and he was full of crap!  But according to this statute, Thunder Jack represents all the mountainmen and explorers who helped tame this country.

We drove alongside the beautiful Yellowstone River for many miles, and looked for a place to camp. We did see one deer along the highway today. We had planned on camping around Livingston, but the prices were too high, due to the proximity to the park, so we ended up driving 6 miles back a dirt road to a little state park, Dailey Lake Park.  It was a pretty spot, but we had gale-force winds all night long and did not get much sleep.  I wondered if the little lake could generate a hurricane, the winds were that bad.
We drove back out Monday morning and continued on our way, still driving along Yellowstone River.  We were on the road by 8:30 and saw 4 deer before we got to the highway.  We saw our first steam coming from the far side of this river, miles before we ever got into Yellowstone Park. We made a pitstop next to "Devil's Slide," and there was a sign here calling this the Wildlife Highway due to the migration of some of the wildlife from the park when it gets cold.

Joe washed the bugs off the windows here so we didn't miss anything.  He has spent many hours on this trip washing our windows.  I hope to continue this new hobby of his to the windows at home.
We arrived at the gates of Yellowstone about 10:30 a.m., and the line wasn't too long.  We stopped to memorialize the occasion with a couple more pictures.

Our campground was 53 miles into the park, and we saw a mama elk with her baby shortly after we entered the park.  By the time we got to our campground, we had seen 5 elk, 1 deer, 7 buffalo by themselves and then herds of a dozen and then 30.  We also saw Canadian geese along the river.

We arrived at Fishing Bridge Campground right at 12:00 noon, and got set up.  We decided to take a little drive and came across another herd of buffalo right across the road from the lodge.  These may have been some of the same ones we saw as we came in.

We stopped at some of the thermal pools we had driven by in the RV, and watched the bubbling water and steam drifting into the sky.  You can really smell the sulfur and whatever else is in these hydrothermal areas -- not a pleasant smell! 

This one was named Dragon's Mouth.

Since Bridgette and John were unable to join us here, we took some photos of the bacteria pools for our family biologists.  They would love it here!

We also stopped at the Upper Brink of the Cascade Waterfalls.  It sure moves a lot of water.  Joe caught a rainbow in the spray.

We drove around Canyon Village and then Lake Village and Bridge Bay before we ended our day.  Right by the turnoff to Canyon Village Lodge we came upon 8 deer grazing.

Then we drove around Yellowstone Lake, which is huge, and very pretty.  There were some geese and ducks on it, but we didn't scare up any other wildlife on this drive.  We went in the lodge at Lake Village, and then drove around the huge Lake Hotel.

We drove back through Bridge Bay campground, which had closed yesterday for the season, but the gates were not closed.  Just as we were exiting the campground there were two park guys ready to close the gates, probably for the season.  We were that close to getting locked in there!
Tomorrow we plan on driving the Grand Loop, which includes Old Faithful -- a fitting event for my birthday.  Joe says we are eating out all 3 meals, so I don't even have to cook or wash dishes tomorrow.

It's a party!

May your birthday be filled with

bears and bison,

elk and moose,

bighorns and pronghorns,

and every furry thing your heart desires!!

With love and best wishes from all of your blog followers!

Great Falls, Montana

Saturday, Sept. 11 - This morning we left our  remaining travel buddies, Marilyn and Collins, as well as Jerry and Judy, and headed on our own toward Yellowstone.  Marilyn made me a lemon pie for my birthday next Tuesday, and they gave me a puzzle of Glacier National Park as a birthday present.  Judy and Jerry presented us with some homegrown honey from the ranch, so we were sent off on our own in grand style.  We had driven through Babb, Montana, the other day but I didn't get a picture, so Eric, this one is for you.

Just so you know, there really is a Babb, Montana.  We drove about 175 miles today, across the Big Sky Country of Montana.  We had always heard it called that, and we were excited to get to see it.  And it certainly is Big Sky Country.  You can see for miles and miles!

The Rockies were a constant companion on the west side of us, and they are always breath-taking.  It was a nice, sunny day for a change -- a little windy, but we could live with that.  Although last night the wind really blew hard all night long, and we had to pull our slides in just so the vinyl covers over them would quit flapping.

We saw lots of cattle (some right beside the road), and horses.  But we also saw a small herd of antelope, maybe a dozen.  One place we passed two fenced pens of animals, and I said to Joe, "is that elk"?  He said, "no, they're camels."  (I really thought I could tell the difference.)  It turned out that we were looking at two different pens, and this ranch had both camels and elk.  We saw some llama too,

and a grouse right beside the road. 

We have a new repair issue to the RV, so we are heading to Great Falls to find an RV supply store.  I got locked in the bathroom yesterday morning, and had to wake Joe up to open the door because the knob wouldn't turn from the inside.  About midnight last night, the same thing happened to Joe, and I had to get up to let him out.  And then today, when we stopped for lunch, he couldn't get in to the bathroom.  He had to find a screwdriver to get the door open.  So as soon as we got checked into the campground, which is very nice, we headed out to the RV store.  We found what we needed, and Joe switched out the doorknob on the bathroom door so we don't have to be rescued any more.  We found an Albertson's on our way back to the campground, so we restocked on groceries too. 

We know we are missing exciting things at home.  Cody scored his first high-school extra-point in his football game this week, and Kaylee scored her first goal today in her first soccer game of the season.  We hate missing out on these exciting events, but Yellowstone is just ahead, then we'll see how long it takes us to get home.