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.
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.
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 GREEN colored roadway is where we went exploring today.The southeast quadrant of the Lower Loop plus the East Entrance Road.
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Approaching the boardwalk of the West Thumb Geyser Basin, these are the first you'll see.
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The basin is located just two miles north of our campground on the shore of Yellowstone Lake.
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These are described as the Thumb Paint Pots.
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Very nearby was this bubbling pool of mud.
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It's hard to believe two pools so close together can have such different colors.
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This one is called Surging Spring.
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This one is called Collapsing Spring.
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Some of the springs had very little water in them...
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...while others had no water at all.
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This is called the Abyss Pool, it's the only one you can't see the bottom.
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This one has inexplicably been named the Black Pool?
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The water flowing out of the Black Pool has colorful microorganisms living in it.
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It flows under the boardwalk and empties into Yellowstone Lake on the other side.
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This one is located just off shore and is called the Fishing Cone.
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A short distance up the road we spotted this small herd of female elk and calves.
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One of them was even sporting a numbered radio collar.
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In 1988 Yellowstone had one of its worst fire seasons. The effects can still be seen today.
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The fire burned down to the Yellowstone Lake shoreline where firefighters escaped the flames.
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In order to get a better look we drove up to the summit of the Lake Butte Overlook (8348').
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In 1988 there were 42 fires caused by lightning, plus 9 more caused by humans.
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On our return to the campground we spotted this guy (all alone) trotting down the roadside.
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We also spotted these two male elk resting in the shade after a long day of eating on their feet.|
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Today that practice is considered "unhealthy" and therefore no longer condoned.
THOSE DAMN RULES! They always spoil all the fun!
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
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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Today we went exploring the southwest quadrant of the Lower Loop.
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The Historic Old Faithful Inn (since 1904).
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Look! They were expecting us and left the door open, how inviting!
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Inside of the massive lobby with the five story tall chimney.
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It's beautiful and all, but we're really here for the Breakfast Buffet!
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Outside of The Inn is the Upper Geyser Basin. Look at all those individual steam clouds!
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That's Old Faithful way over there, pretty much all by itself.
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This is the 1904 Inn, complete with it's 1913 East Wing and 1927 West Wing additions.
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Here's Old Faithful just warming up for The Big Show, still 45-minutes away.
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With 10-minutes left before the show I visited the men's room at the Visitor Center.
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Just as I got comfortable in my seat the show began.
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After the show we walked around the back side to get this photo with the Inn in the background.
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A bridge over the Firehole River starts the walking tour of the Upper Geyser Basin.
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Here you can see some of the runoff from Old Faithful's eruptions.
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Just up the path we ran into a Ranger installed roadblock.
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Hiding behind a tree was this huge bison, apparently a little too close to the walkway.
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This formation is called the Beehive Geyser and we hear it also puts on a spectacular show.
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Unable to visit the Upper Basin we moved on up the road to the Black Sand Geyser Basin.
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This beauty is called the Emerald Pool...
|
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...and this is the Rainbow Pool.
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A little further up the road is the Biscuit Geyser Basin.
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This beauty is called the Sapphire Pool.
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All we need to do now is find ROVER and head home, it's lunchtime.|
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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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Today we explored the northeast quadrant of the Lower Loop.
|
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These bison look to be on the edge of a forest fire, but it's actually just geyser steam.
|
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Upon arriving at the Mud Volcano we saw a Ranger led tour that was just starting.
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So we joined in and took the .6-mile walk through the area.
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Our first stop was at a feature called The Dragon's Mouth Spring.STOP: Watch Video #1 below before proceeding.
|
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The second stop was at The Mud Volcano.STOP: Watch Videos #2 & #3 below before proceeding.
|
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Our small group then traversed up several flights of stairs...
|
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...just to go back down on the other side.
|
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The Ranger suspects a bison jumped the rails onto the boardwalk earlier this morning.
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Here is what a "bison scratching post" looks like when they're finished scratching.STOP: Watch Video #4 below before proceeding.
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I wonder what she's taking a photo of?STOP: Watch Video #5 below before proceeding.
|
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After several more stops we headed back towards the parking lot below...
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...where we saw bison doing what they do best, holding up traffic on the roadways.
|
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With most of the small herd across the street traffic resumed to it's normal crawl.
|
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Just a short distance up the road we entered the Hayden Valley.
|
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With lots of water and grasses you're nearly guaranteed to spot wildlife here.
|
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I suspect that's what is going on here, more bison crossing the roadway up ahead.STOP: Watch Video #6 & #7 below before proceeding.
|
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This was our first view down-canyon from Lookout Point (Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone).
|
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Of course the view up-canyon was much more dramatic, the 308' tall Lower Falls.
|
||||||||
STOP: Watch Video #8 below before proceeding.
|
||||||||
The view from the Grand View Overlook.
|
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The view from Inspiration Point.
|
||||||||
Another insprirational view.
|
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You must cross the Chittenden Bridge to access the South Rim Drive of the canyon.
|
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The proverbial "water under the bridge".
|
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A couple of photos from Artist Point,...
|
||||||||
...this one with a cloud shadowing the falls.
|
||||||||
We caught just a smidge of a rainbow when at the Brink of the Upper Falls Overlook.STOP: Watch Videos #9-12 below before proceeding.
|
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It's going to be a long time before we get back home!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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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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Todays travels were on the central west quadrant of the Lower Loop and the West Entrance.
|
||||||||
Yeah, the bison is gone and the boardwalk is open.
|
||||||||
This formation is called the Sulfide Spring...
|
||||||||
...and this one is the Sawmill Geyser.
|
||||||||
This entire loop trail is 2.8-miles long.
|
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Grand Geyser is set way back from the boardwalk. It shoots higher than Old Faithful does.
|
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This is the Beauty Pool, I'd say they named this one right.
|
||||||||
This one is the Giant Geyser.
|
||||||||
At the very center of the loop trail is the "Big Payoff" I was looking for.
|
||||||||
This is called the Morning Glory Pool, which is better viewed in the mid-afternoon sun.
|
||||||||
It's by far the biggest, most beautiful pool we've seen so far.
|
||||||||
Now all that's left to do is hike over a mile back to the beginningalong this hot black asphalt bike trail in 86°F heat.
|
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The beautifully crafted Hamilton's Store (since 1915).I'll bet they've got something ice cold to drink inside.
|
||||||||
The aptly named "Knotty Pine Porch" spans the entire front of the building.
|
||||||||
We arrived back at Old Faithful with plenty of time to spare for seeing the next eruption.Of course we missed one while out sightseeing on the boardwalk.
|
||||||||
This one was no dud in height or duration, although it got off to a slow start.
|
||||||||
This time the "main attraction" did not disappoint.
|
||||||||
After Old Faithful we headed back to camp, but stopped at Kepler Cascades to take a look.
|
||||||||
The cascades drop dramatically before passing under the observation deck.
|
||||||||
The small Isa Lake is unique, it's a "one of a kind in the world".
|
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Isa Lake straddles the Continental Divide.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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