Mike & Kris - Enjoying The Ride

Yellowstone:  a lot of beauty, a lot of wildlife, a lot of land, and a lot of traffic!  We are here for six days and there is so much to show that we will do it in two installments.  We settled in on our first day inside the park at Fishing Bridge campground.  It’s great to be inside the park even though we can practically touch the RV next to us. Oh well we haven’t been at our campground very much.  Our first afternoon we followed the Ranger’s advice and headed to the Hayden Valley to meet the “Wolf Watchers”.  It is a group of people from all over the place who spend weeks in Yellowstone every year tracking a wolf pack and grizzly bears that reside in the area.  What an interesting group.  They are very generous letting everyone look through their scopes and they have a wealth of information.  We even saw wolf cubs in the distance.  The real  fun, however, came when we tried to head back to our camp in the evening.  Yikes, we were on the famous road where the buffalo roam–literally.

The buffalo aren’t the problem, however, it’s the people who stop to get out of their cars, let their children out of their cars, or just roll down their windows to get a picture.  Anyone who has been to Yellowstone knows exactly what I’m talking about and the first night we enjoyed being in the back-up.  But after the first night, it was not so much fun anymore.  We needed to find a better route.

The next day we headed to the Lamar Valley and guess what we saw?  More buffalo of course, but we also saw some elk and a bear in the distance.

On this trip we were able to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and Yellowstone Falls.

Along the way we found two bull elk hanging out which was very exciting.

Next we moved on to the Old Faithful area.

Again, it is very impressive.  The crowds are huge but it is worth it.

We walked up to get the picture of the Grand Prismatic Spring which is our title picture.  The colors are amazing.

On Tuesday morning Mike headed out on a photography class which produced some great shots.

In the afternoon we headed back to the Old Faithful area to walk the back area and we were treated by an eruption of the Beehive Geyser.  We were walking along the boardwalk headed out to the Morning Glory Spring when we heard a man on a walkie-talkie. He said, “We have water in the Beehive Indicator…I repeat, we have water in the Beehive Indicator!”

We kind of giggled to ourselves but followed him to see what was happening and we were introduced to the “Geyser Guys”.  They follow the geysers and report in what is happening.  By the time the geyser blew there was a huge crowd gathered and many where downwind and got soaked.  It was exciting being so close and seeing and hearing all the water shoot out.

So, as you can see, our first three days were packed and there is still so much to come.  Next up, our trip to the most Northern spot in the park–the Roosevelt Arch and cell service!