Tuesday, July 13th

I’ll tell you all about today in a minutes. First, I have to tell you that we saw eight ELK, close enough to take real pictures! They were all cows and calves (is that what you call elk moms and babies?) and they were across the river and down a slope from the road, so they felt very secure and seemed to look right at us! Now I really feel like I’m in Yellowstone!

Okay – now for the day. We both slept in a bit after our nine-hours on the geyser trail yesterday. It was touch and go there for a while last night. There was a group of eight or ten young folk camped outside our window and they were having a GOOD time! It’s great to hear people laugh, but not when you’re trying to sleep. Happily, just like the night before, when ten o’clock came, silence fell! Yeay!

Coffee and oatmeal and packing, all at a leisurely pace, and we can stop at the Lodge office and check out, at the post office so Marilyn can mail post cards, and at the Snow Lodge where there is WiFi! I’ve spent more time trying to find the spot on my lens and finally figure out that it’s on the mirror! I’m much relieved. (However, tonight I find that there is another one, so more work is ahead of me!)

We are quite behind on our blogging so we camp in the sunroom with our computers and get to work. Since we spent yesterday after dinner writing in Word and exporting photos, we are able to make pretty short work of the blogging part, although for whatever reason Marilyn’s blog won’t let her upload more than three photos and mine only takes twenty of the twenty-eight I had uploaded. I guess I can’t complain!

Marilyn has shown me how to download my Flip into iMovie and export as a Quicktime, so I add a twenty-eight second video of Grand Geyser to yesterday’s blog. Jen had asked for Old Faithful, but Grand is so much…grander!

While I’m on Gmail, Stu IM’s me! I just love when he does that! He even checked the video on the blog so I would know that it actually works! P.S. There still isn’t any word on the District’s early-retirement plan. What a surprise!

When we’re all done with the techie world, we head out into the Real Thing! We’re pretty confident that we’ve done all the “geysering” that’s in walking distance from the Lodge, or at least our walking distance, so we’re going a bit further afield today, heading north toward Madison and working our way back to Old Faithful.

First we follow Firehole Lake Drive to see a few more geysers, the coolest of which is White Dome. It’s erupting as we arrive. Black Warrior Lake is also quite cool. You can see the bacteria that live in the hydrothermal springs and form mats.

Back to the main road and we enter Firehole Canyon Drive, which had been recommended by Gloria at the Lodge desk. It descends to the level of the river and while we are taking pictures of the river I spot a huge bird flying down the canyon and scream, “Eagle Eagle Eagle!” to get Marilyn’s attention. It turns out to be an osprey, I think, but it was a BIG bird and it has a white head, in my defense! Next stop – Firehole Falls and more photos of the river.

There are some cars pulled off the one-way road down the canyon and we join them to see THE ELK! There are seven in a group and one loner. As we watch one of the moms gets up and shows us her white rump. They are called wapiti by the Native Americans, which means white bottom.

When we can tear ourselves away to make room for others we discover a whole herd of cars parked just over the rise! They don’t know about the elk; they are there for the swimming! I don’t know how people can swim in that freezing water! We had passed some fishermen earlier and they were in waders to keep warm!

There are enormous rocks in the river, left there by the receding glaciers. Logs gather at their bases.

As we are coming back we see more fishermen. This part of the river is reserved for fly fishing and it is fun to watch for a few minutes. There are some little kids enjoying the great outdoors and that is great to see!

Fountain Flat drive yields an interesting plant that might be a thistle? Anyway it’s pretty!

Next we turn in to see the Fountain Paint Pots. We’re about geysered out but here there are mud pots! What fun to see them bubble like a thick stew and try to catch them in a photo! The video is much easier! And there are always more beautiful hot springs to see and shoot!

Our last stop is the Black Sand Basin, named for the obsidian sand there. We didn’t really see much, but there is a really cool geyser called Cliff Geyser that is right on the bank of the Iron Springs Creek. There is a small pond with a black bottom that earns the name Black Sand and a couple of other gorgeous hot springs, Emerald Lake and Sunset Lake.

Back to the village and we check into the Old Faithful Inn for one night. This is THE place to stay in the village. There is even a bellhop (“Front!”) to take up our bags – except we’ve only got our backpacks, so we points the way to our room and sends us on our way! The clerk who checks us in is a graduate of UCF (Under Construction Forever) and has a degree in hotel management! He says, “a hotel and nature – what could be better!) He tells us we have a room with two twin beds and the bathroom down the hall; but when we open the door we are greeted by two double beds and are tickled green! Maybe he likes us! He also printed out our tickets for the chuckwagon ride and meal at the Roosevelt on the 16th. Hope I don’t lose those!

On one of the beds is a stuffed bison with a sign that says we can purchase him by just taking him with us. He’ll be added to our bill and part of the proceeds go to the Yellowstone Preservation Fund. I’m working really hard at not needed a stuffed bison!

We go out to move the car and take a brief tour by the gift shop before going to dinner at the (much cheaper) Lodge and blogging and exporting our photos. With any luck we can post tonight and take off first thing in the morning. (I'll load the video later; it's taking forever and we have to get going!)