We weren't leaving the campsite until 11:00AM due to the fact that check-in time at our next destination isn't until 1:00PM and it's less than an hour up the road.
So of course she took more amazing photos, but I'm only going to share one of them with you.
It wasn't until 10:00AM that we actually started the chore of breaking camp, still at 10:30AM we were rolling off the site and headed for the dump station.
The whole time I was outside making preparations to leave, I had an audience. He was just sitting there while I did all the work, eating his popcorn, or what ever it was. When I approached him and said, "That's it! Show's over", he took off and disappeared into the bushes!
There's only 6½-miles of road that separate Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, that road is also a property of the National Park Service, it's designated the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway.
It's a scenic road, paralleling the nearby Snake River over most of it's short route.
The other 35-miles of today's drive was inside one of the two National Parks.
It wasn't long before we were at the Camground Check-in Station getting our campsite assignment. Five of Yellowstone's campgrounds, lodges and restaurants are run by a private concessionaire, Xanterra, not the National Park Service.
They rent campsites a little bit differently than the NPS. With Xanterra you only pick the "size" of the campsite you need to fit your equipment on, and not a specific site. Guess what, the bigger the size, the higher the price.
By arriving early you stand a better chance of getting the best available site and also that your special requests will be met. For instance, we reserved a 30' RV site (for THE POD) with room for an additional vehicle (ROVER). Our special requests were that it be a back-in site with good sun exposure on the outside of any one of the eight loops.
What we ended up with was a pull-through site, with little sun exposure, on the main road through the campground. We were told none of the 30' RV back-in sites had room for the extra vehicle and few of the campsites really had good sun exposure due to the heavy forest the campground is located in. We also ended up on the outside edge of the main road, at least we don't look directly into anyone elses camper, or them ours. Guess we'll just have to make due.
Just so you can visualize where we are in the park when I talk about where we went, and what we saw, I've included this road map of the major roads inside of Yellowstone National Park.
The two loops you see in the middle of the map are collectively called the Main Road, or Grand Loop Road. If you add up all the segments you'll see it's 142-miles to drive around the inside of the park. Add in another 97-miles of entrances roads from the five entrance stations and that's a total of 239-miles of roadway to explore.
TUESDAY - As you can see from the map above most, but not all, of the park's geyser basins are located in the southwest section of the lower loop along the Main Road.
That's where we are going to be camped, for the first week anyway, at Grant Village. It's the second largest of the twelve campgrounds here in Yellowstone with 430 campsites, second only to Bridge Bay Campground with 432 campsites.
However, not all of those campsites are large enough to accommodate our 28' trailer.
This map indicates the locations of the 12 campgrounds in Yellowstone.
The two that are marked in RED are the campgrounds we will be visiting during this visit.
As you can see we'll be concentrating our efforts on visiting all of the Geyser Basins this time around, but that doesn't mean we won't get a good look at the rest of the park.
We will start our geyser visits today, by checking out one of the lesser visited locations, but the closest one to our campground, The West Thumb Geyser Basin.
WEST THUMB GEYSER BASIN
AND
THE EAST ENTRANCE ROAD
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The southeast quadrant of the Lower Loop plus the East Entrance Road.
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Today that practice is considered "unhealthy" and therefore no longer condoned.
THOSE DAMN RULES! They always spoil all the fun!
WEDNESDAY - If Tricia hadn't taken her early morning walk today we wouldn't have anything to share.
That is unless to want to watch me waiting at the Service Station Garage from 8:00AM until nearly 12:30PM to finally get the suspension parts swapped out on ROVER's rear axle.
THE WEST THUMB SHORELINE
OF
YELLOWSTONE LAKE
THURSDAY - We are starting our fourth day here in Yellowstone National Park and it's time we started doing some serious sightseeing.
The last two days have been mostly about getting ROVER's suspension operating properly. Now that he's back to normal it's no longer our top priority.
Today it's time to go see Old Faithful, one of the main attractions here in the park. Everyone has heard of Old Faithful, named as such because of the ease of predictability of when it's going to erupt.
Its average interval between eruptions is about 90 minutes, varying from 50 to 127 minutes. An eruption lasts 1½ to 5 minutes and expels 3,700–8,400 gallons of boiling water, reaching a height of 106–184 feet.
I don't know for sure, but I feel today's 9:06AM eruption was on the lower end of the amount of water and height achieved standards. It was however right on time, beginning only 4-minutes after the "official" eruption prediction time.
We'll be visiting this location again before we leave, if not several times, and will hope next time for a more spectacular showing.
OLD FAITHFUL
INCLUDING THE
BLACK SAND AND BISCUIT GEYSER BASINS
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FRIDAY - Today we're going to concentrate our sightseeing efforts on the northeast quadrant of the lower loop between the locations of Fishing Bridge and Canyon Village.
This region of the park is famous for two main features. The first is Hayden Valley, the location of many wildlife sightings and the second is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, with it's pair of very photogenic waterfalls.
But first I need to share more early morning photos Tricia took between 6:00AM and 6:10AM from within walking distance of our campsite.
HAYDEN VALLEY
AND
GRAND CANYON OF THE YELLOWSTONE
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STOP: Watch Video #1 below before proceeding.
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STOP: Watch Videos #2 & #3 below before proceeding.
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STOP: Watch Video #4 below before proceeding.
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STOP: Watch Video #5 below before proceeding.
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STOP: Watch Video #6 & #7 below before proceeding.
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This guy is capable of running long distances at 35MPH, and the speed limit is 25MPH,
but he's only traveling at about 2MPH. What's with that!
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SATURDAY - Whenever we leave THE POD unattended we always try to remember to turn off the water pump.
There's too many stories of people returning to the trailer and finding that the water pump had emptied their 40-gallon fresh water tank all over the floor due to stuck toilet valve, a blocked sink drain in the bathroom or kitchen, or even a shower head handle getting bumped by something falling in the shower.
Well we turned off the water pump switch when we left yesterday to go sightseeing, just like we're supposed to, but when we turned it back on to flush toilet shortly after returning from a long day out, we got nothing!
No water pump action at all! The fuse wasn't blown, which was the first thing we checked.
So this morning our first errand of the day will involve driving to the nearest town, West Yellowstone, MT (just 51-miles away) to try and locate a replacement water pump, on a Saturday morning no less.
Nothing seemed to be open when we arrived in town around 7:30AM so we spent some time filling up with gasoline and enjoying breakfast at the Outpost Restaurant.
Thankfully they did have an RV water pump in stock, not the exact one we currently have, but one that will get us through until we can locate the correct one.
With new water pump in hand, we started heading back to the campsite. But wait a minute, we're going to be going right past Old Faithful again on the way home.
Since we had quite a dud of an eruption on Thurday morning and then got shut out of viewing the rest of the geysers in the area by a napping bison, why not stop and see if the bison has moved on in the last 48-hours and see when the next eruption is scheduled.
Also we're going right past the campground we'll be moving to on Monday, let's check that out and find us a good site to request us being assigned to.
OLD FAITHFUL REVISITED
PLUS A FEW BONUS STOPS
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along this hot black asphalt bike trail in 86°F heat.
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I'll bet they've got something ice cold to drink inside.
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Of course we missed one while out sightseeing on the boardwalk.
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Surprisingly the water in the "west side" of the lake travels east
and eventually drains into the Gulf of Mexico (Atlantic Ocean) through the Mississippi River.
The water on the "east side" of the lake travels west
and ends up spilling into the Pacific Ocean.
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