Monday in Yellowstone

This morning we headed back into Yellowstone, planning to do the clockwise northern loop: Norris to Mammoth Hot Springs to Tower-Roosevelt to Canyon Village to Norris. About 70 miles, plus the 60-or-so miles each way to Norris. We've done longer day-trips, but none that seemed this long.

The Madison River is beautiful, and Nana and Poppa once more talked about fly fishing - how peaceful and relaxing to be standing in the river, watching the water... I'm all in favor of it because I like trout almost as much as salmon! I heard that Autumn went fishing last weekend - maybe she can get Nana to take her.

We went to Gibbon Falls and Paint Pots - no parking, so we couldn't see them.

Poppa and I walked down to Porcelain Basin and got some interesting pictures:








Then we saw Bruce the Bison just walking down the road. He came toward Poppa's side of the truck, walked in front of the truck, and continued right past Nana's window. If she hadn't rolled the window up, I was ready to pounce!

We saw a mommy grizzly bear and her cub, but they were too far away for a picture.

We had lunch at the grill at Mammoth Hot Springs. It was like being at an amusement park instead of a national park. We didn't walk up to the Hot Springs because of the crowd. One good thing was that we drove past half a dozen mommy elk and their calves, lying on the lawn of the lodge in the shade. The mommies were just looking around and the babies were taking naps. Unfortunately, there were too many people to get a picture (and they were standing WAY too close to the elk.

Later, Poppa did get a nice picture of a bull elk grazing. His antlers are HUGE:




Another traffic jam was caused by two young black bears about 50 feet up a tree, right next to the road. They were on the side of the tree away from the road, so all I could see were their paws wrapped around the tree trunk.

Yellowstone is very interesting - the rivers are great, there are mountains and great wide meadows, the wildlife is the best we've seen since we left our back yard in Pittsburgh. We went over a pass at 8,859 feet, the highest so far on our trip. There are lots of waterfalls, but we couldn't get to see some of them because of no parking.

There are lots of trees, but they are almost all lodgepole pine. Lucy, our tour guide at the lodge yesterday said they're referred to locally as "pinous monotonous". They can't compare with the beauty and variety of the trees and forests we've seen in California, Oregon, Washington, and Glacier. (I know Glacier isn't a state, but Poppa keeps referring to it like one.)

Yellowstone is spectacular in its size and variety, and deserves its place as a jewel in the National Park system. But I don't see the sparkle in Poppa's eyes that I saw in Glacier. Nana doesn't like it at all. I think its biggest problem is TOO MANY PEOPLE. So tomorrow, there will be 3 fewer tourists. The nice lady at the Red Rock RV Park has given Poppa a map that will take us to waterfalls, fish, an interesting log cabin, and a drive to more than 10,000 feet, all of it close to the campground, and probably not known by too many people.

I had hoped to get back to Old Faithful and get a picture of Dan and Diane in their natural plumage - "black shirts that we wear to work with jeans and tennis shoes". Hey, thanks again to them for their hospitality yesterday! If you follow their blog, you'll get a much richer picture of Yellowstone and hopefully a better one than we can give in two days. If we had the time to see the park in smaller bites, we'd probably like it better.

Posted from Nana's iPad