May 24th - Yellowstone National Park

It only got down to the mid 40's last night, not into the 30's as forecast. It is 37 here right now and supposed to get down to 33 tonight.

Today we had a GREAT day in Yellowstone. It was a little disappointing that several roads through the park were still closed. We basically drove to Old Faithful, about 110 miles, and returned on the same route. I would have liked to see Yellowstone Lake but that would have required another 30 mile trip just to see one part of the lake and then backtracking the 30 miles. The lake covers 136 square miles. The elevation of the surface is about 7,800 feet above sea level. Even though we didn't see the lake we still had a very good day.

The north entrance to the park is about 55 miles from here. We are at elevation 4,500 while the north entrance is at elevation 5,300. We were up as high as elevation 7,500 during the drive. The number of people at the park today shocked us. There were easily more than 500 people, maybe even a thousand, who watched the same Old Faithful eruption that we did. I assume there were approximately the same number who watched all the other eruptions today, they occur every hour. Another amazing thing was the number of rented motorhomes. We never went more than a couple of miles without seeing a rented Class C motorhome.

There was some beautiful scenery getting to the park.

 I had to stop and get a photo of this "bridge" after we drove over it.

Our first stop was at Mammouth Hot Springs. The entire area has hot water coming up out of the ground and leaving colorful deposits. The surface is sometimes just a crust and can collapse. There are boardwalks that you must use to view the area. Sometimes the ramps were relatively steep and there were also steps. I counted 287 of them getting to the top of the observation area.

We saw quite a few elk, a small bear and many buffalo. The one below was just grazing along the edge of the road. If I had stayed in our lane Kathy could have reached out the car's passenger window and touched it as we drove by. No way was I going to get that close.

A few miles later we had to stop while three crossed the road. This one decided that he preferred to walk down the road for awhile.

Two of the other three came back up next to the road and followed it. After maybe 150' they walked off the road. They have absolutely no fear of cars.

This bear was clawing the bark off this fallen log.

 "Steam vents" are all over the park.

 These folks are just starting a picnic at one of the areas along the river. We ate our lunch at one of the other picnic tables. The temperature was in the high 30's. It snowed a little while we were eating our lunch.

We finally made it to the complex built around Old Faithful. We spent some time in the visitors center, on the left in the background. Kathy went out before I did and took this photo of me while I was walking out.

 I returned the favor.

 The walkway out to Old Faithful.

 The steam you see in the foreground is Old Faithful. There are lots of other vents in the background but we didn't see any of them erupt. I don't know if they do.

 I couldn't resist. I had to take a photo of the eruption.

On the way back we stopped and walked back in to see Painters Pots. There were colorful deposits around different vents. Some were quite close together and yet the colors were totally different. At the Old Faithful visitors center there was a display that said that different organisms preferred different temperatures, and that it was the organisms that created the colors.

The bottom of this area was a muddy brown. There was about 6" of flowing water here.

 This one looked to be several feet deep. The water was clear but had a turquoise tint. Large bubble regularly came up from the bottom, out of cracks in the bottom.

 This one was kind of a creamy white.

 This one looked like it was a diluted form of the one above.

We also stopped at Gibbon Falls on the way back.

 This is the stream that carries the water away from Gibbon Falls.

This is some of the snow we encountered. We regularly drove through snow flurries when we were at the higher elevations. It snowed quite hard during one mile long stretch.

When we returned to Livingston we went to Rick's on Main Street for supper. Kathy had a shrimp dish and I had a hamburger. Both were good.

A side note. I had filled the car up before I took my 100 mile plus drive around the Hanford Site in Richland, WA. I filled it up again this evening. We had driven 374.8 miles and it took 12.35 gallons to fill it up, 30.3 mpg. This car loves high altitudes. On the way back "down the hill" (800 foot elevation drop over 55 miles) out of the park, I drove 65-70 mph. The instrumentation on the car said that our average mileage increased by 0.4 mpg during the drive.

It is past time to get to bed. It has been raining and it will probably be a cold, rainy morning to pack up and move tomorrow. Since tomorrows high is supposed to be a rainy 40, and tomorrow nights low is supposed to be 31, we are heading east. Hopefully we will make it to someplace where the low will at least be in the mid 40's.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.