Yellowstone National Park, Monday, 5/26/14

Monday, May 26, 2014

 We left Virginia City at 8:45 a.m. and it took an hour and a half to arrive at the west entrance to Yellowstone National Park.  Soon after entering the park we passed into Wyoming and then the road became a parking lot for about an hour.  After creeping along for quite a while, we determined that the holdup was a herd of buffalo in the road. 

Our first stop was to see the paint pots and mud boils at Geyser Basin.  The sight and smell of the bubbling cauldrons in the ground was both eerie and amazing.  Next stop was Old Faithful.  Our timing was impeccable as we did not wait but about half an hour for the eruption.  Its eruption intervals range from 40 to 126 minutes.  We also got lucky and saw the Beehive Geyser erupt.  It is not as predictable as Old Faithful, but the sound and water eruption is way more intense than the former. 

We continued on the south loop through the park and climbed to an altitude of over 8000 feet.  There was still lots of snow on the ground, and we passed the Continental Divide two times.  We soon were driving along the shore of the still partially frozen Yellowstone Lake, and it was remarkable to see hot geysers steaming on the shoreline of the lake.  We took the North Rim Drive along the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and stopped to view the Yellowstone River and some lovely waterfalls.

 Along our route today we saw lots of buffalo, a fox, geese, mallard ducks, two black bear, some elk and antelope.   

We exited the north end of the park into Gardiner, Montana at about 6:00 p.m.  Our plan is to go back into the park tomorrow and see some areas that we missed today.