Super day in Yellowstone

Low clouds this morning

July 29 – BRRR it was cold again this morning but supposed to warm up a lot so we were up and out the door for Yellowstone at 8.  I dressed in capris but layered on my tops.  Bill overdressed for the ride and was hot long before I was.  Before we even got to West Yellowstone there were unusual low hanging clouds along the mountains.

Road work

The traffic getting into the park was not too bad and things went rather smoothly until we got to Norris.  We stopped at the Ranger Museum there to get my passport stamp that we didn’t know they had the last time we came.  Then we were on the road to Mammoth Hot Springs.  That’s when the going got slow.  There was a very long section of road work and we were switched from single lane to both then back again.  It was so nice once we got passed it.  They work 12 hours most days or they will never get it done before snow season.

Geyser at Upper Terraces

Our first real stop for the day was Mammoth Hot Springs – Upper Terraces area.  We decided to drive the one-way loop and at the first stop Bill dropped me off thinking he’d find a space and ended up having to drive the entire loop to get back to me.  I saw him head on around so took my photos of the formations at the first stop and was ready when he came back around.  I waited with the car in a no parking area for him to go see what I had seen.

Orange Spring Mound

The next stop was the Orange Spring Mound.  That was really interesting.  It looks like a huge mound of cake with icing dripping down.  On one side it has a lot of orange coloring and continual steam coming from it.  Most people just stopped in the road there and took photos from the window so we had to get out of the way several times.

Angel Terrace

Further around the loop was Angel Terrace.  It looked rather desolate, all white.  Maybe the Angel part was due to the white snowy look it had.

Once we came out of the loop and down the hill to the outside of the Upper Terrace, the wall of formations sort of runs down the hill forming the Lower

Lower Terraces

Terraces.  One section was quite orange and steamy.  We drove on passed into Mammoth Springs at an elevation of 6,239.  It’s open year around, but isn’t actually a town even though there is a post office there.

Fort Yellowstone was built here and the army protected the

Albright Visitor Center

park from 1886 to 1916.  The fort’s building now house the Albright Visitor Center and private residences and the parks headquarters.  Three of the original buildings have been torn down but the rest are in use.  The enlisted men’s quarters now house summer staff for the park system.  There is only one hotel in the community, a medical center, a general store and a couple of small shops and restaurants.  There is also a large park services residential area just outside of the village.

View of Lower Terraces

After checking out everything we took out our picnic lunch and our tablecloth and spread it on the ground along side where we were parked.  I had packed some chicken salad, broccoli salad and potato salad.  We chased it with some crackers and brownies for dessert.  We saved our fruit for a snack later.

Bill at Roosevelt Arch

The road out of the back of the village goes to Gardiner, MT where the Roosevelt Arch is.  That is the official entrance to Yellowstone.  As luck would have it they were doing road work in the entire town but we could still walk to the arch for photos.  The first part of the town that you see looks like a typical western town with plank sidewalk and no pavement for road.  We found out that the pavement had gotten so cracked and buckled that they took it up and it is part of the work they are doing that will take 3 summers to complete. 

Main Street of Gardiner

We checked out the shops and split a cup of ice cream before heading back into the park.  Bill spotted what he thought was elk in the town’s green out front, so I circled back around and it was a male and female pronghorn antelope.  Nice!  First ones we’ve seen here.

Male pronghorn antelope

We didn’t get far before we spotted a female elk along the road and another mile was another one.  We had to drive back to Mammoth Hot Springs to take the road north east to Tower-Roosevelt.  This is when things really slowed

Wet moose

down.  First Bill spotted a single buffalo along the road and then cars were stopped all over and we finally found out they were watching a female moose taking a bath in a pond along the road.  We stopped for a few minutes to catch her and finally got back on our way.

Mom and her babies

As we were pulling into the Tower-Roosevelt Ranger Station for a passport stamp there was a deer and her 2 fawns right where we were turning.  They pretty much ignored us and the babies raced to get some lunch.  That stopped traffic for a bit also.  

Stagecoach passing through

Where we made our turn to go to the Yellowstone Association Institute at Lamar Buffalo Ranch there was a stagecoach trail ride coming through.  Then we were on our way through Lamar Valley and it seems at every turn there

were more herds of buffalo.  We saw cars in the pull out on the right and there was a small ridge just behind the pull out and we could see buffalo so I pulled in at the far end of the pull out and Bill got out to video.  

From August 3, 2015

Just as he was going up the ridge 2 buffalo came around it and I yelled for him and he turned and videoed them going in front of the car and across the road.  Traffic was

Here's the big guy!

stopped.  Then a single buffalo came in front of me and stopped and the edge of the road and looked left, then looked right and the walked to the center line and stopped.  Then he looked left again and right again and just stood there gazing at all the people with cameras and cars stopped.  He was there 5-7 minutes just standing and watching, then slowly he turned around and walked back to the ridge and went around it.  It was unbelievable.  Several watchers were crouched beside our car in case he decided to get aggressive.  There were others still over the ridge but he was maybe 10 feet from my car.  Bill was thrilled to be so close to this big guy!

As we proceeded down the road to the Lamar Buffalo Ranch where I could get another

Some of the herd in Larmar Valley

passport stamp, we passed field after field of buffalo herds.  The Lamar Valley is the largest accumulation of buffalo in the park.  The buffalo at their peak in the US was 60 million.  In the late 1800’s there were less than 300 left.  The Buffalo Ranch had 25 pure buffalo and the Ranch then protected and provided for those 25 and increased the herd back to what it is today.  There is an estimate of 250,000 currently owned privately and publicly in the US.  Each winter there are some that die from no food and some walk off the park boundaries and are then fair game for Native Americans to kill but you cannot get a buffalo permit.  

Strange rock formation

We turned around at this point and headed back to

Tower Falls

Roosevelt Lodge where we took the road south to Tower Falls.  Along the way were some interesting rocks along the road and along the walls of the Yellowstone River.   They made a nice backdrop for the Tower Falls.  There’s a nice stop there with a shop and snacks and then a short walk to the falls.  We ended up not getting a snack since we had fruit in the car that we hadn’t eaten at lunch time.

It has been a long day and we were finally on the last loop around to heading home.  It was really a super day after seeing so many wild animals in their natural habitat.