Ronnie and I were up bright and early this morning. It seemed that at this high altitude that while we get our initial sleep in everything’s okay, but once we wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning it’s very difficult to get back to sleep. We have both had some issues with trying to catch our breath and this has been difficult.
We left our Air BNB around 6:45 this morning and went looking for a place to have breakfast. On our way into West Yellowstone, we were greeted with a beautiful sunrise.
The breakfast place that I found online was not open, so we found another place and we had a very nice breakfast. We stopped at McDonald’s to get a couple bottles of orange juice for us to drink during the day.
We entered the park early and headed towards the southern loop. We tried to get there early and maybe see some wildlife. We also wanted to get to Old Faithful early and watch it erupt. The temperature was very cold. It was 28 degrees.
We entered the park, and it wasn’t long before we saw a line of parked cars. That usually indicated some sort of wildlife. We looked to our right and we saw a fox walking quickly across the grassy area along the side of the road. It was moving too fast for me to get a photo of it but it was really cool to see it. We saw other people with cameras on this side of the road. I got out of my car and Ronnie pointed to the other side of the road where a bison was walking. There were two of them. I managed to get a quick picture as it went by where we were standing on the side of the road. Just a little while away from us, it moved into the road and all the cars had to stop to let the bison pass. It was really a cool moment!
We turned onto the South Loop to head towards Old Faithful. The fog was horrendous, and we really couldn’t see very much. Our goal of getting to Yellowstone National Park early to see some wildlife was going down the drain rather quickly. If there was any wildlife there, we would not have seen it.
We continued to wait for the the eruption of old faithful. I was surprised that there were so few people there that was okay with us. Old Faithful erupts every 64 to 98 minutes. You can check out when the last eruption was on a National Park Service web page. We were there about 10 minutes, and I found a web page and saw that the geyser had erupted About 60 minutes earlier. We were surprised that there were less than 100 people waiting for the Geyser to erupt. I think that it erupted somewhere between 86 and 90 minutes after its last eruption.
The eruption finally happened, and we were both a little anti climatic about what we were seeing. It was cool, but we expected some aha moment that never happened. We are both glad that we saw it and because we will probably never be here again.
Our next stop was Kepler Cascades where we watched water coming down the side of the mountain in mini waterfalls.
After Kepler Cascades, we reached Isa Lake and the Continental Divide.
The Continental Divide is an invisible line that separates the major watersheds flowing to different oceans. In general, if a raindrop falls on the west side of the Continental Divide, it will join rivers that wind their way to the Pacific Ocean.
We continued to West Thumb Geyser Basin where there were numerous hot springs and geysers. We walked along the boardwalk and soaked in the different geysers.
While walking the boardwalk, I saw a cool tree trunk that I couldn’t resist photographing.
The road continued along the shoreline of Lake Yellowstone. I saw some trees reflecting in the water and stopped for a few photos.
While I was there, I used my long lens to shoot the steam from the geysers at West Thumb Geyser Basin.
We found a turnoff for the Fishing Bridge. It is a bridge that crosses the Yellowstone River. It was okay to see but since we are not freshwater fishermen, we just grabbed a few photos.
A little further down the road brought us to the Mud Volcano area. It was interesting to read some of the history of the area.
We entered Hayden Valley which is a popular spot to see large wildlife. We had been kind of disappointed so far but as we entered the valley, we saw bison off in the distance. I stopped and took some photos with my long lens. Only a little later, there was a bison on the side of the road, and I stopped for photos, forgetting to try to capture animals too far away.
This was not the only bison we saw. We found another one a little farther down the road. We were very happy.
We turned onto a road marked as the Upper Rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone upper rim. We found ourselves at a beautiful waterfall in a very deep ravine.
I finally had a chance to take a photo of the beautiful mountains that surround Yellowstone National Park.
I also took a photo of the “Leaving Yellowstone National Park” sign as I am sure that we will not be back.
We supercharged out Tela Model X in West Yellowstone. While the car was charging, Ronnie showed me a rail car at the end of a rail car siding that advertised the town of West Yellowstone. It was very cool.
Tomorrow, we leave for Mt. Rushmore. We are going to try and put in a long day of driving as it looks like bad weather is coming in at the end of the week.
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