Yellowstone - Cody, Wyoming

Wednesday, Sept. 15. We left the park this morning to drive to Cody, Wyoming. We made a loop drive out of this 12-hour day, going out the East Entrance and returning through the Northeast Entrance. At one overlook, we found this jaw bone of some unidentified animal, and a dental floss strip on the ground beside it. We thought that was an interesting combination.

We didn't see any wildlife in the park, but shortly after we were outside the entrance, in the Shoshone National Forest, we stopped at a little gift shop and there were 4 deer right beside, and crossing, the road as we left.

We drove along the Shoshone River in the Shoshone National Forest for several miles. This was the first national forest, and was designated that by President Benjamin Harrison. Joe is very impressed with the vastness of these mountains.

He likes to take these self-portraits whenever he can find something to set the camera on, then he has 10 seconds to run over to get in the picture. He was devastated to learn that he wasn't fast enough to make it this time -- he thought he ran really fast.

I really need a video of him running over to get in these pictures, as well as some of the positions he gets in trying to get the camera set up. Oh well, it was a good try.
We came by the Buyffalo Bill State Park and Reservoir. We stopped for a short visit at the dam and watched part of the movie about its construction.

Then we drove on into Cody, which is a cute little cowboy town, with a rodeo every night during the summer. We would have liked to spend more time here, but we ate at McDonalds so I could post two days of blogs and that took way too long, so we had to cut the visit here short. There was a couple of museums here we were interested in --the Dug Up Gun Museum and Buffalo Bill Historical Center, so if we ever come through here again, that's something we can look forward to.

We drove out of Cody on the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway, which was another awesome drive. Chief Joseph was leading the Nez Perce Indians over the mountains and through the pass to outrun the Army with his clan of 600 Indians and 2000 horses to get to Canada. There is a lot of history about this route.

This highway connected with the Beartooth Highway, which was another pretty mountainous highway. We came upon 3 bighorn sheep grazing in the rocks here.

After we got back in the park, we encountered a buffalo jam! These animals are so funny -- they just mosey along, not caring if they are in the road or not, and not at all concerned about the traffic they are stopping. It probably took us 20 minutes to get through this pack.

It was getting close to dusk by now and harder to see, but we did see a big bull elk with 5 cows, and a couple of deer. We saw a sign that said there was a controlled fire in the park, and we were glad we noticed that sign because we could see the flames a few miles later.

We put in 230 miles in the car, and 12 hours. We were pretty tired when we got back to camp - 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., too late for us old folks. But it was another great day, and we are looking forward to more of the same tomorrow.

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.