We spent 10 fantastic days in Yellowstone. It is such an amazing park – it’s easy to see why it was the first national park back in 1872! We had been here 18 years ago but we didn’t have the luxury to really take our time to explore each area of the park – they are all so different! The fall is beautiful here and at 8,000 feet above sea level – it’s been chilly. It even snowed ½ inch one evening!
Yellowstone is a super volcano that last erupted 640,000 years ago. It has more geothermal features than anywhere else on earth and has i10-14 earth quakes every day but fortunately you can’t feel them because they are so small ( at least for now)! The magma is only 3 miles below the service here instead of the normal 100 miles so it’s still a very active geothermal area and it’s fascinating! We saw geysers erupting, beautiful hot springs, hot steam fumoroles that sounded like jet engines and mud pots bubbling. There’s lots of wildlife too! We saw grizzly and black bears, elk, coyotes, wolves, mule deer and LOTS of bison! It was the rut for the bison and the elk so we saw the males posturing for dominance. The male bison were butting heads and fighting. The male elk were bugling and chasing the other males away from the “women”! The scenery is beautiful too and they have 1,000 miles of hiking trails– we took several really nice hikes to some of the backcountry geysers. It has been 22 years since the big Yellowstone fire when a third of the park burned. The park is rebounding quite nicely. The areas that burned are covered with lodge pole pines and lots of underbrush for food for the animals.
It looks like fires but it's steam from the geysers
Meanwhile- back at the campground
We were about to leave to go explore one of the geyser basins when Gary noticed the toilet making a funny noise. Whenever something doesn’t sound normal, you know there’s trouble! When we got back from our trip to the geysers Gary started trying to figure out what the problem was. He discovered a screw had come loose from the toilet seat cover and had fallen down in the pump that is inside the toilet. The toilet was not usable with the screw in the pump and the only way to get it out was to COMPLETELY dismantle the toilet and all the “parts”. He disconnected the wires for the pump, unscrewed the toilet and took it outside to the picnic table to work on it. Picnic tables make good workbenches – keep that in mind the next time you have a picnic and be sure and take a tablecloth along! We still have about a month left on our trip so we were REALLY hoping it could be fixed. Well – the chief of maintenance did it again! The toilet is fixed and reinstalled in Rose. Thank goodness – it’s no fun to trek to the bathhouse in the middle of the night – especially when it’s cold!!!
Highlights:
- Exploring the geyser basins to see geysers, hot springs, fumoroles and mud pots
Old Faithful erupting - it erupts about every 90 minutes
Noisy Fumarole in the geyser basin
- Yellowstone falls and the canyon
- Camping in the national park
- Watching the wildlife
Bull bison fighting over the "girls"
Black bear
- Beautiful views on the Beartooth Scenic Highway - 11,000 foot elevation at the summit
Next stop is the Grand Teton National Park just south of Yellowstone. It’s not a super volcano but it sits on a major fault line that they say is overdue for a major earthquake! Livin’ on the edge!
