Day 10

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

 Mammoth Hot Springs-Terraces

 One of the pools at the terraces-very colorful. there were warning signs everywhere to stay on the boardwalk, the thermals are constantly shifting and oftentimes the ground may appear solid, but if you stepped on it, it would just dissolve under your feet. Yikes! There was one part of the path that had been destroyed because the thermal springs had bubbled up and torn up the asphalt.

 At Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River-we hiked down 600 feet in 1/4 mile-the trail was composed of switchbacks all the way down

 This was the view from the observation tower that we hiked down to of the Lower Falls. The view was dizzying looking down into the canyon

 Eric took a nice picture for us overlooking the canyon

 This is part of the canyon at Inspiration Point

 Some of the many weird bubbling springs full of acid

 Bison in the fields lots of places. We had no choice but to slow down as the cars in front of us were all stopped.

 Another falls that we walked to

This is how the elk were throughout the town of Mammoth Springs inside the park. They wandered in and out of the buildings. It was a little disconcerting, as the bull elk can be very aggressive in the fall. We didn't have any encounters, thankfully!

Today we woke to a very cool morning-the thermometer said it was 37 degrees. I’m not sure if the thermometer was working or not, but it didn’t feel quite that cold. However, it was forecast to warm up to the low 80’s today, so we layered well for our day trip to Yellowstone.

We started off with a hearty breakfast-eggs, sausage, recycle French fries into hashbrowns-and then packed lunch and snacks to take with us.

We are staying in Gardiner, Montana, which is about 1 mile from the north entrance of Yellowstone, so that is where we entered the park. Since it is Sunday, and there are quite a few people still here, we decided to stay away from the high-volume area of the geysers today and went with the hot springs and bubbling sulfur mud volcanoes, as well as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.

Upon first entering the park, there were several elk mulling about the Mammoth Springs Visitors Center. We went in to get some maps and information on camping and talked to the ranger. There was a video playing and several informational posters about how the elk like to hang out in that area, and of course, they, like all of the wild animals in Yellowstone, are very dangerous. People evidently think they are tame and try to get up close to them, only to be chased and gored or attacked by the animals. The animals will even attack people’s cars, so if they are close to your car, you are supposed to keep moving and not stop. I guess people just think it won’t happen to them, because we spent much of the day on the roads dealing with people who were stopping their cars for bison or other animals, and getting out and walking up to the animals to get pictures. It actually was pretty annoying, and we saw one bison start to chase a person who was up close getting a picture.

So, at Mammoth Springs, we first explored the Terraces. The terraces are an area where there is thermal activity producing springs of acidic water that bubble up out of the ground in various places, then trickle down like small waterfalls. The interesting part of this area was that the thermals are constantly changing, so what might be a gushing of water one day, might slow to a trickle the next. There was not a huge amount flowing down today, but it was interesting to see the water flowing at  good rate, and then all of a sudden it just disappeared into the ground. We walked along the system of boardwalks to see the different formations and then got in the car to continue on our way.

Along the Yellowstone Loop road there are many pull-out areas to view the wildlife. We saw many herds of bison (which by the way are the exact same animal as a buffalo), a coyote, and some pronghorn antelope. No bears or moose today. We next explored the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. We hiked a trail to see two sets of huge waterfalls that are part of the canyon. The upper falls we could see from a distance, and the lower falls we were able to be right on top of. The hike was a short ¼ mile hike, however it dropped 600 feet in that ¼ mile, so the entire trail was made up of switchbacks. On the way up Leah and I counted-there were 10 switchbacks in all. The views were great and the hike was just right for the little ones. We ate lunch at the bottom so they’d have energy to make it back up to the top.

We drove halfway through Yellowstone today-completing the upper loop road, it was a total of about 5-6 hours of driving. Going 25-40 miles per hour makes the drive very long-and then including all of the pull-offs and hikes, and getting stuck behind people stopping for herds of bison, it did take quite awhile, but the scenery was very nice.

We stopped at a few other interesting spots, one of which was the mud volcanos. These are basically areas where the thermals push up sulfuric acid, which turns the surrounding ground into bubbling, stinky mud. It really is bizarre to see, and sounds and looks like a giant pot of boiling mud. There was another interesting mud volcano called the “Dragon’s Mouth” and this area of boiling mud and acid was sending out waves of water and puffs of smoke so that it looked and sounded like a dragon breathing fire. It was really neat and weird at the same time. The whole area was like something from another planet.

We checked out the campground in the middle of the park-Fishing Bridge- and really did not like it too much. The campsites were completely on top of each other-so much that we would not have even had space to put out our awning! So we decided to stay here in Gardiner another night and just continue to explore the rest of Yellowstone from here tomorrow.

When we got back to the campground, we played a round of mini golf-complimentary at the campground. One of the things that Bay has repeatedly said since we left home was that he really wanted to get to play mini golf while we were on our trip. Not sure why he wanted to play so badly, but he was really excited when he found out that mini golf was included in our campground stay here near Yellowstone. We had a nice little game to ourselves and then came back and ate some turkey burgers and veggies for dinner.

After dinner Dennis and I took a drive into town to restock on some groceries. On the way we found a road that led up the mountain into Gallatin National Forest. It was a dirt road that wound back and forth up the side of the mountain into a campground near the top. We wished we would have known about it earlier-it was really remote and beautiful. Bear warnings and bear boxes were throughout the campground, but it sure would have been an adventure. We will keep our eye out for something like that somewhere else I’m sure.

Below is a video of the "Dragon's Mouth". It is kind of hard to hear the sound of the roaring and bubbling, but you can see the steam and the waves of water that come out from the opening in the earth.