Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Good Bye Yellowstone

Yellowstone you are a mystical, magical, wonder. I have so enjoyed your golden and green meadows, stately mountains, clear and raging rivers, crooked trees, mineral terraces, and wildlife. Most of all I loved your bubbling, steaming, spouting, colorful pools of mysterious waters. You were everything I could have hoped for and much more.  So much more. It took me a long time to get to see you and you were worth the wait. I only wish everyone could experience your wondrous beauty. image image     image       image       image       image       imageimage     image         image 

Upon waking this morning we noticed we had a small amount of snow. Look at these tiny, perfectly formed, snowflakes. image image image These were not frost crystals but were snow flakes and they looked like flowers to me. What a pretty way to leave such a magnificent place. But before we could leave Tommy had to take a bucket of hot water to the roof of our RV. He had to pour hot water on the slide outs awning since it had a half inch of ice on it from yesterdays rain and would not retract.  image

We are on our way to Billing, Montana, a 5 hours –200 mile trip back north to have our generators fuel leak repaired. A little change in our loose travel plans.

I have to give a big thank you to Rocky Mountain Cummins in Billings, MT who got us in as soon as we arrived.image image Our fuel leak was repaired in less than a half an hour and we were on our way. Plus we were NOT “taken to the cleaners” on the bill. $35 for the part and $50 for labor. We are smiling.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Yellowstone Day 5

Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone were breathtaking with the green water flowing to the falls. image This was the appetizer to the view of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. image image   There was seating here so you could sit back and relax and take it in.image  

Whoa! the view from the overlook at Inspiration Point was Whoa!image    See the reds and yellows in the canyons walls and see the falls in the distance jut to the left of center in the above picture. I never tire of seeing waterfalls and those upper falls were lovely.image

Mule Deer, still with velvet on their antlers, are trying to fatten up for the winter. image      A different view of the falls from Artist Point. image        image       image

In Hayden Valley the soil permits little tree growth but  abundant grass and shrub growth is used by the animals for grazing. image

Sulfur Caldron looked like a vat of witches brew.  image

Dragons Mouth Spring – the name is perfect for this feature. It growled, hissed, puffed smoke, and spewed water out of it’s mouth causing waves of caustic water to roll over rock. image

West Thumb Geyser basin – Yup you guessed it, it has more hot springs and geysers. The Abyssimage  and Black Pool hot springs were phenomenal. image         image        image

We may have to leave Yellowstone a day or two earlier than expected. We found a fuel leak in the generator and need to get that fixed.  After that it’s on to Grand Teton National Park.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

Yellowstone Day 4

The weatherman got it right today. We woke to sunny skies but black clouds quickly rolled in and rain poured down off and on, more one than off. So off we went with rain coats in tow.

White Done Geyser had just erupted when we pulled up and was still  letting off steam.image

With the cooler temps and rain Firehole Lake lived up to it’s name. We couldn’t see the lake for the steam.image

We haven’t had phone or internet service for several days and we heard it was available at the Snow Lodge in the Old Faithful section of Yellowstone. Since it was pouring rain we thought today was a good day to make phone calls to family and friends, catch up on email, and upload the last several days of blog post.

After we finished there we went to see the new $27 million Old Faithful Visitor Education Center that just opened 8/25/10. Beautiful building.image Exhibits that explained about the geysers and hot springs. We watched a movie on Yellowstone in which the cinematographers should get an award for – stunning! We wanted to see Old Faithful erupt again since the rain stopped. We weren’t paying attention to the time, Tommy told  me to look out the window and we caught the eruption though the visitor centers huge windows. image

Not a busy day but the rain finally ended making it a great day!

Friday, August 27, 2010

Yellowstone Day 3

We decided to change campgrounds today to a midway point in Yellowstone. This will bring us about 25 miles deeper into the park and it will make seeing the rest of the park easier. We scoped out the new campground last night and the site that we wanted would be vacated today. We stopped and talked with the people  that were in the site to see when they would be leaving. So I got up this morning and took Hooptie up to secure the spot while Tommy took the RV into the closest town, Gardner, to get water and dump our tanks. What a plan! and best of all, it worked. Now we are at the Norris Campground, we found we like it even better than Mammoth. This campground is wooded and more private.  We plan to make it a shorter day of sightseeing so we can go back to camp and look for the Elk and Grizzly bear that has been coming around the camp area in the evening. Last night when we were checking out the new campground, we saw these two Elk resting in a nearby meadow. This one guy is huge and has a perfect rack (antlers). They are almost a mirror image.image These boys were gorgeous. image image People started to gather to take pictures, and by then the Elk wanted to leave the area. They had to cross the road to get to another meadow. We watched as the Elk approached the people and most of the people did not even move. image They are crazy. If that Elk got spooked and felt like he needed to defend himself, well… those antlers are sharp. image Anyway, what a beautiful treat and hopefully they will be back and bring their friend the Grizzly.

The Artists Paint Pots were interesting pools of thermal water. Each one was colored differently due the minerals that were present in the pool.image image image image image Mud pots were also there making plopping and burping noises to get your attention. This one was as white as snow. image

Beryl Spring is the color of the most desired aquamarine gem stone. I could have stayed there for hours watching it boil and seeing all of the steam come from the vent. The heat and smell of sulfur wasn’t too bad today with the help of the strong breeze.image

Terrace spring brought us a few more thermal pools. image image  It is so strange to walk up to a pond of water and see it in a full raging boil. 

Firehole Canyon ….gorgeous! This drive had it all, water falls,image a gigantic canyon,image        a swimming hole, image and of course, the beauty. Tommy found himself on top of the world here in the canyon, image     even if it were only for a few minutes. We will be sure to bring our bathing suits tomorrow cause I’m going in if the weather holds up. We just heard that we might have rain, hail, and possibly snow over the next few days. Yes I did write snow. It was 90 degrees yesterday, but with low humidity, it felt great and it was in low 80’s today. They, the rangers, said the weather can change quickly here.

Nothing says Yellowstone like Old Faithful. She is the heart of Yellowstone. She did not disappoint. As predicted she steamed and smokedimage  to keep the crowds attentionimage until she spouted water high into the sky for several minutes.image image She truly is the original fountain display. What a show she did put on and will do encores every 90 minutes.

Dinner at the lodge was enjoyableimage and it allowed us the time to hike a trailimage to see the Opalescent pool. These pools are everywhere and some look really deep.image   After another short trail, then hike up the side of a mountain, to get a good vantage point, we were able  to see one of the prettiest natural formations I have ever seen - the Grand Prismatic Spring. image The colors of this fantastic spring were changing right in front of our eyes. More blues  image then it morphed into greens image with yellows on the edges and red fingers.image image Now this really was an awesome sight. I think I will have to go back to see this again.

What was to be a short day of sightseeing turned into not getting back to the RV until 8:30 pm. image image That is a sign of a great day. Yellowstone you are a marvel!