Monday, July 29, 2024
Around Yellowstone
It got down to 43 last night, and for some reason, we didn't turn the heat on. It was a bit chilly (57) inside when I got up, but we are loving the weather here.
We didn't head into the park until afternoon. We passed the "entering Wyoming " just inside the park at 12:42 after fueling and picking up lunch at Subway for a picnic later.
At the Madison intersection, we turned south today, which is still on the Grand Loop. We took the first turn off to Fire Hole Canyon Road. On our first trip to Yellowstone in 2010, we actually walked out in the water here and sat on these rocks. We did not attempt that this year. We saw a huge bird nest up in the tree on our way out of this side road, and it looked like an osprey was in it.
Then we took another side road down Fire Hole Lake Drive. This is really a big geyser area. Some of the geysers were actually going off, others were bubbling. We could sure smell the sulfur back here. There was a small bike group that came through here. We spotted two sandhill cranes back here in this area. That was a surprise.
Traffic is definitely thicker here in July than it was on our two previous trips in September. Some of the turnouts for the geysers are so backed up that it’s blocking traffic out on the main road. We skipped those!
Biscuit Basin on Fire Hole River is the one that blew up a couple weeks ago. They have that road all closed off. We drove up to the side of it. There was a traffic jam parked along the road here.
Our next stop was Old Faithful. We got there at the worst possible time (2:38). It was going off just as we pulled into the parking lot. We brought our Subway picnic with us and sat on a bench and had lunch. We had almost a 2-hour wait before the next eruption. But it’s a very pleasant day and this is a good place to people-watch. A lot of non-English speaking people in the crowds. Eventually, we went into the Visitor Center behind us. There was a movie showing so that helped us pass the time. We waited it out, and Old Faithful went off about 4:10, 13 minutes earlier than predicted. It only goes off for about a minute every 90-120 minutes, but we were happy to see it for the third time. Our other two visits to Old Faithful were on my birthday.
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Moving on, we crossed the Continental Divide (twice) at an elevation of 8,800. It’s really been a nice day, sunny, little breezy, but it’s very comfortable. It’s 66° in West Yellowstone. We’re a little higher so we might be a little cooler.
From Madison Junction to Old Faithful is where most of the geysers in Yellowstone are located. From Old Faithful on around up to Bridge Bay and Lake Village, it’s mostly heavy forest. At this point, we’ve only seen one lone Buffalo today and the two sandhill cranes.
We turned north at West Thumb and headed up toward Bridge Bay, Lake Village, and Fishing Bridge. We’re driving along beautiful Yellowstone Lake on this road. This is a huge lake, very pretty. It is the largest high-elevation lake in the lower 48. We went through a fire-damaged here. Looks like the lake stopped the fire on this side.
About 5:30, we turned off at the Bridge Bay Marina turnoff, and Joe spotted a huge bull elk right after we turned off the main road. We certainly weren’t expecting that. After we stopped and gawked, we drove on and turned around, and spotted a second bull elk in the trees. We were very excited about this -- these were the first bulls we have seen in Yellowstone.
Our next side trip was to Fishing Bridge. They were actually fishing off the bridge. We had ice cream cones at Fishing Bridge, then drove through the campground. It looks like they have added on quite a bit to the Campground. When we were here 14 years ago, the campground parking slots were back to back, two deep. It was really just a parking lot. We actually camped here. This new section has several long rows of single pull-throughs. Very nice. I’m sure it’s very pricey too.
As we were leaving the parking lot, we saw our first deer of the day.
Our next stop were the mud bogs. We heard a story at Fishing Bridge that there was a incident at the Mud Bogs last night. A buffalo was standing in the mud and a grizzly charged him. We did not hear the outcome.
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We see geese around almost every body of water. We don't know if they live here permanently or are migrating, but there are a ton of them around.
Just past the Mud Bog is Hayden Valley and we saw three or four buffalo there on the other side of the river. Then we came up on our first Buffalo jam in Yellowstone. We saw a lot of buffalo in Hayden Valley, one big herd and one small herd. This one had a calf with it.
We got to the Canyon Village intersection just about 7:00. We’re about 40 miles from the campground. We were on this road last night. We took a side road to Virginia Cascade. We took this road last night too, but there were too many cars to get a picture. And you can see there's no passing room here.
We turned onto Madison River Road (West Entrance Road) at 7:52, thinking we might have better luck tonight seeing some action at the river. But the pattern of the elk on the river seems to have changed this time. We came through at 8:00 and didn’t see any at the river. However, at the end of the river, where we saw them last night, we saw a small herd of 10 cow elk and calves. We are deducing that when we were here before, in September, the bulls were in rut. That probably explains why we would see a bull herding the cows across the river. Apparently, the bulls are not with the cows yet and the cows are able to graze on their own. This is our unscientific deduction.
When we pulled out of that pull out, we took the River Drive down just a little ways off to the right. This was a road Joe had wanted to drive. As soon as we turned in, we spotted seven more cow elk across the river here. One of them was up on the ridge, maybe as a lookout.
It was 9:00 by the time we got home, and we were both exhausted. But we had a good day today -- another 140 miles in the Jeep. Tomorrow morning we have to move to a different spot, so that will get our morning started.
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