Yellowstone, August 9-10

Young grizzly in Yellowstone

Old Faithful, first time

Boiling pool, river, minerals

Old Faithful, second time

Castle Geyser

The south entrance.
Patti loves these signs.

Dragon's Mouth mud pot

Rutting bison

Why did the bison cross the road?
Females or water!

Lower Yellowstone Falls
from Artist's Point

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

A happy family

After unexpectedly spending a month in Glacier NP, we visited our good friends the Burringtons in Bozeman, MT for several days.  What a great, relaxing time.  Then off to Yellowstone.  We drove around the park and camped outside the east side of Grand Teton NP, since Yellowstone is close, and we figured we'd spend more time there.  Plus we kept hearing how crazy crowded Yellowstone was.  In retrospect, it would probably would have been faster to go through Yellowstone to get to the Tetons, despite traffic, construction delays and wildlife crossings.  Still, we got to see the back of the Tetons, which was cool.

Our first day in Yellowstone, we headed up the west side to Old Faithful, of course!  Took 1.5 hours to get up there, but the drive was beautiful.  There was a young but huge grizzly just 20 feet from us on the side of the road, knocking over yarrow roots.  We heard from a ranger later that grizz tend to go after the same food source for a while, which explains why they become a danger when they realize human camps are a source of food.  As a matter of fact, a man was dragged out of his tent and killed shortly before we arrived in the park.  His camp was clean, but somebody else had left food out.

We got to see Old Faithful go off 3 times that day, about every 1 hr 20 min.  We wandered around the geyser basin, which was stunning and very unusual.  More geysers than anywhere else on the planet.  Funny thing is, we always hiked prepared with rain gear, extra food and water.  This time, we just took windbreakers because there were thousands of people around, loads of buildings, and the "trail" was a boardwalk.  It was like Disneyland!  Wouldn't you know it, when we were about a mile out, one of those famous Big Sky storms swooped in and pounded us with cold, sideways rain.  We would linger by smelly glaciers and boiling pools to catch some warmth!  We made it back to the lodge just in time for it to clear (and to see Old Faithful for a third time that day).  We headed back to camp tired, wet but happy.

Next day in Yellowstone we headed up the east side and got stuck in a traffic jam of large numbers of bison crossing the road.  Very cool.  The males were rutting, grunting and herding their harums around, keeping the females close.  There were geysers all over the place, and the Yellowstone River was gorgeous, roaming placidly through the meadows of the caldera.  We also headed to a group of mud pots, all colors, one of which looked like a dragon hiding out in a cave.  The we headed to Yellowstone Falls, one of the parks many landmarks.  There were over 300 steps down to the viewpoint, but it was worth it, and the "grand canyon" the river carved was stunning.  After 2 days of seeing the canonical sights in Yellowstone, we decided to start our adventure in the Tetons.