Yellowstone National Park

Sunday, June 6, 2010 Yellowstone National Park

Eleanor: As mentioned in yesterday's blog, today dawned rainy and cold. Not a good start to what was to be one of the highlights of our trip. The good thing was that our car got a nice washing. By the time we arrived at Yellowstone, the rain had become only a sporadic drizzle. The drive in from the south gave us wonderful views of steep cliffs, beautiful fir tree forests and snow. We came to Yellowstone Lake, got out of the car and saw an elk 20 feet away. Walking the boardwalk loop, we got our first up-close look at many geysers, shooting up steam by the side of the lake. Bubbling mudpots and pretty pools of blue, pink or green pools of water lay among the geysers. Yellowstone Lake is very large. We passed it as we entered from the south and will drive by it tomorrow as we exit the park on the east side.

The south visitor center is many miles inside the park. When we finally got there, we found we had a little over an hour before Old Faithful was scheduled to erupt. This gave us enough time to walk another boardwalk circling O.F. which brought us close to smaller steaming geysers, mudpots and colorful paintpots. There didn't seem to be many people around, but by 15 minutes before the big event, many hundreds of people had lined the viewing area and we all stood expectantly. At first the steam seemed to be more profuse, then would die down. Then small spurts of water sprang up, but also died down. Finally the big moment arrived and cameras clicked away. With the heavy cloud cover, photos don't show the eruption as clearly as if it had been against clear blue skies. Also, O.F. has not been as high as in the past and some day in the future may not even exist. Bill estimates it went up about 60 feet. Maybe it's all the hype, but we weren't as impressed with O.F. as we were with the grandeur of the park and all the wildlife.

As the afternoon wore on, the rain became heavier and we decided to drive to the west exit to our motel in W. Yellowstone, Montana. The park is huge, so this took a while, especially when cars stopped in the road when wildlife appeared among the trees. At one point a bison was on the side of the road. Traffic was crawling along, so we had a chance to take a picture.