After a good night's rest in our St. Anthony, Idaho airbnb, we got on the road bright and early to drive back to Yellowstone. You see, last year we made a day trip of Yellowstone from our Red Lodge cabin and though it was really cool, it ended up being like a 15 hour day. We were exhausted. I wanted to be able to have two days in Yellowstone and after much research, decided on that airbnb an "hour" away was as good as we could do. Everywhere is crazy expensive out there! It had taken us more like two hours the previous night due to hail so I believe Terry and I got up at like 6am to try to get back early, but we didn't arrive at West Yellowstone until 10am! Ho hum, you just can't win. It was a sign of things to come that day...
The Yellowstone sign had a post for cameras so we were able to get a pretty good picture.
Our new van was rocking it!
So we got back into the park (free once again thank to Evie's 4th grade Every Kid in a Park pass) and were trucking along and enjoying the beautiful scenery...
...when we came to a screeching halt. TRAFFIC!
Stand still traffic in Yellowstone? I almost checked our GPS location to make sure we weren't back in L.A., because gosh darn it, it was ridiculous. Like infuriating! But we checked our tempers and settled in. We sat there and crept forward every once in a while for about an hour.
At first I thought it was due to people stopping on the road to look at wildlife (thought it had to be a bear and people were losing their minds over it) but when the traffic didn't move after so long, I worried that it was backed up all the way to the intersection at Madison and we'd never get in.
It was definitely beautiful, but we had a lot planned for that day and I saw it all dissolving before me.
When we finally got a little further along this river area, we discovered the problem: Buffalo, and what's more, baby buffalo.
You'd think people had never seen a bison before. 😜😂 Which of course they probably hadn't. It's just that we get a little callous to them since we see them in Custer State Park all the time.
They are cool and every time I see them I get a little sad that most were shot recklessly by greedy pioneers, but I was super annoyed that we had lost an hour of our precious daylight to traffic over buffalo.
From there traffic did improve. Samuel made me take a picture of that rock in the river. I hope he appreciates seeing it in the blog. 😂
Hey look! A fisherman in his natural habitat!
The rivers were all so gloriously full.
There were three more road side buffalo that people started braking for, but we passed them quick enough.
We finally arrived at the Madison intersection I had worried about and thankfully it was clear. We turned right and then right again on Firehole Canyon Drive. Pretty cool waterfall back there!
That water was impressively yellow in color. So much water!
Firehole Falls.
Since we had been stuck in traffic so long, we all had to pee so bad. Like I couldn't wait. So when we saw these outhouses we stopped even though the old swimming area was closed. I had Terry pose for me but a car came around the corner.
Next we went back to the Old Faithful area. I guess yesterday we had been on Geyser Hill and we had turned around on our walk when we saw the path winding far away to this area. We didn't have time for it at that time, but I had seen a geyser going off over there so I wanted to return. Thankfully we caught a break and got the perfect parking spot and set out, only we had to go around those buffalo.
We took the kids' picture with them and then went the long way around.
We walked up the path and saw the geyser that I had probably seen in the distance the day before.
It was only just after noon so we had at least an hour and a half to wait before potentially seeing it go off. We took the right hand turn to go explore the other side of Castle Geyser.
Samuel in front of Tortoise Shell Spring with Castle Geyser behind that.
Opposite Samuel on the boardwalk was little pretty boiling pool, Crested Pool.
We decided to stay to the right on the boardwalk instead of taking the left fork which was asphalt.
We crossed a bridge over the Firehole River and saw another bubbling pool called the South Scalloped Spring and it's accompanying orange bacterial mat drainage.
Belgian Pool.
Churn Geyser I believe...
Theses three Spasmodic Geysers were all bubbling away and pretty in color.
We had just missed the Grand Geyser erupting so we moved on to these, the Wave Spring and Economic Geyser.
Beauty Pool...
...and its accompanying Chromatic Pool. They share water levels so when one is higher the other one is lower. Beauty Pool was higher.
Off we went across another bridge and saw some layered terraces draining from another geyser.
The Giant Geyser was doing some bubbling but didn't do more than that, even though Terry and Ezra returned to it after we had left because they were so sure it was going to go off.
It's one of the largest geysers in the world! It would have been so cool to see it erupt but it doesn't go off often.
There were a few others next to it that usually go off before the big guy loses his lid.
What a cool cone shape.
Pretty pink flowers while we waited for Terry to come back. Me and the kids just plopped down on the boardwalk, haha.
Next up was the one and only geyser I remember from our family trip in the early 90s. I can vividly remember waiting forever on this hillside for the geyser to go off. I remember when it did too and it was cool. And now I was back with my kids! It was cool for me.
Terry had us jump.
Ha ha ha.
We didn't want to wait around for it to erupt so we just took a quick break.
Noah took this shot of Evie. 👍
And someone took a picture of me taking a picture. 😂
On down the boardwalk we came to this alien looking rock...
So weird!
The Grotto Geyer was cool looking.
It sort of reminded me of a Flintstone house.
The boardwalk brought us to another bridge and the end of the road.
Ezra was trying to be naughty (and just happened to look cute) by throwing forbidden rocks into the water.
Looking back the way we had come.
The end of the line was the most beautiful pool in the whole place, Morning Glory.
Boom baby!
A little zoom...
...a little more. And one of the many Boy Scouts surrounding us had a heat gun. It says 133.2 degree Fahrenheit.
And one more zoom into the pretty hole of death.
I stood on the close-by bench to elevate myself and get the kids in the shot with the pool.
Selfie time!
Noah took another picture of me taking a picture.
For our walk back we decided to take the more direct asphalt path. It was hotter, more barren, and more boring, but we just needed to get out of there. Ezra was tiring out so for the first time Terry and I agreed to swing him. Nice shot Noah or Evie!
We took a detour up a hill to our right about halfway back for a geyser that was due to go off, the Daisy Geyser, but it never blew. We waited maybe ten or fifteen minutes, got periodically sprinkled on, but it never went off. Ain't nobody got time for that!
I found it funny that there are signs absolutely everywhere forbidding you to step foot off of the boardwalk because of the thin crusted, but that doesn't stop the wildlife! There were piles of dung everywhere. 😂
Once we were finally back to the our original fork, we sat down to wait with the crowd for the Castle Geyser and no more than a few minutes later it started to go off! Talk about perfect timing!
It was just after 2pm, which was 15 minutes later than their estimate we had seen earlier when we just arrived.
This was definitely the geyser I had seen from across the way the previous day.
A little video footage right at the beginning.
The thing showed no sign of stopping so I wondered south for a different vantage point.
The water looked cool flowing down the sides.
A little more video I took. I don't know why it was having a hard time focusing.
I walked back up to Terry and the kids and she was still blowing!
So I walked back on the boardwalk that we had treaded earlier.
A little zoom with that Tortoise Shell Spring in there.
It just kept going and going and going!
Zooming at the fam across the way.
I walked back to them and took their pic again.
I think we left after about ten minutes when the thing was still blowing. Most everyone else had. It was crazy how long it went. Those pesky buffalo were still blocking our path. We got back in the van, grateful to rest of our feet, drink some water, and eat our lunch.
We drove north and stopped at another waterfall.
I remember the signs for Gibbon Falls from last year but we didn't stop. We were all super grumpy for some reason so it wasn't that pleasant of a stop, though I can't remember why.
They look happy though! I think Samuel had been climbing and jumping on rocks and fallen down for one thing.
Chipmunk! The kids were more interested in him than in some old waterfall.
Roadside elk!
One of the kids took this out the side window.
So my plan was to go north to Mammoth Hot Springs because I vaguely remembered being impressed by them when I was little (mostly I remember the stench). However, a large potion of the highway from Norris to Mammoth was under construction and we had to sit in traffic yet again. This did not help our tempers. When we finally came clear we climbed in elevation and then started going down again. We stopped real briefly for me to take a shot of this waterfall.
Next we stopped for a long bathroom break just above Mammoth. It was probably a mistake since there was only one pit toilet, a long line, testy parents, and rambunctious children. But we got out of there and then drove through the Upper Terraces. First we stopped in the parking lot and got out briefly to see pretty much nothing.
I believe this is/was the beginning of the terraces but we were not impressed. My memory was of mammoth sized mounds and mounds of foul smelling white terraces. It was not how I remembered, but I had been little. My mom said they've shrunk...
Once of the features while we drove.
Another one.
Burned out trees.
We parked and got out here.
Cute little Ez.
These were pretty cool.
More dead trees.
Another thing.
We came out to the highway again and looped around to the Lower Terraces. Nice view.
We stopped one more time.
This was going to be the very last stop. It was past five, we were hungry, had a long drive ahead of us, and were pretty done.
Perhaps these were what I remembered...?
Minnie terraces and orange bacteria.
That bird didn't seem to mind the water!
This was the far end of the terraces.
A panoramic of the whole thing.
Zooming a little.
A little more.
I hadn't seen the name of that rock initially. The kids thought it was hilarious.
Thumbs up for the Devil's Thumb... 😮😆
At the time I was super annoyed they didn't line up like I instructed but I like it now.
I had Noah take our picture.
Noah took a couple pictures of Evie too. It was windy and cold just there.
There were lots of other people there too, but I always try to cut them out.
Nice one Noah.
This is the shot that Samuel took of me that he was continually laughing about. 😂
Exiting the park! Goodbye Yellowstone!
It was a seriously beautiful drive back to Red Lodge.
After much discussion we stopped at McDonalds in Livingston for dinner about an hour later. We threw the gluten free diet out the window for the first time in over six months. The littles did have some D. as Evie calls it and my heartburn returned that evening and persisted for several days. Was it the gluten or just the greasy food? I think probably both, but more gluten than anything else. They sure loved it though.
We had an almost two hour drive so at least the scenery was beautiful. The kids watched the Lego Batman movie and Terry and I smiled as we listened. We got back to the cabin around dark and it was raining yet again.
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