1st Day in Yellowstone

9/10/2008 Yellowstone Day 1
What can I say, we are at a camp site that has wifi, yet I can not connect to the Internet. I can connect to every other wifi connection but not this one. Go figure. Anyway on with the news. I am going to give an accounting of each day at Yellowstone separately. So the title will indicate the day and the beginning of the note will indicate the date. And of course the posting date is when I finally get a connection to post it.

It is already so hard to decide which picture we should use, that if I only did one post for all of Yellowstone, it would only contain about five pictures. So on with Day 1.

Today we began driving the upper loop of the park by starting at Mammoth Hot Springs then heading counter clockwise around the upper loop. There were a number of elk in town (Mammoth) area both in the "main" street and also a little off the main street. The elk male on the main street was young, but the other male was a huge bull elk with a rack that has about 14 points and about four feet wide.

We begin our viewing of the hot springs, after taking pictures of the elk, by following the boardwalk around the the structure. The springs were kind of dry, not much water. I guess it is probably the time of the year. One of the springs did have lots of water coming up and because the air temperature is cold (in the mid 40's) there is lots of steam. The wind is also blowing pretty hard so instead of going up, the steam is horizontal to the ground. But the springs still look pretty unusual.

When we are almost done walking around the springs, we hear thunder. So we begin heading to the car a little faster then normal. Carmen is a little worried that we are basically standing on a mineral hill that probably attracts lightning. It starts to rain before we get to the car and Carmen starts to run to the car. I have a camera backpack and is bouncing around so I continue to walk. Before I get to the car it starts to rain harder and begins to hail, small but hail none the less.

The elk, with the big bull with the full 12 point rack (sounds nasty doesn't it) is headed across the main thoroughfare with the females. Well this has stopped traffic and I can't take a picture because my hands are so cold and the camera and lens are wet. I run as best I can with all my gear and get to the car. Carmen, thankfully, has turned the heater on. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!! Did I mention the rain and hail is cold? Just thought I'd mention it. We stop at the restrooms and when I come out here comes a small group of doe that took refuge under some trees, smart elk.

We continue around the park. Taking the driving portion of the springs upper terrace road. Again many of the springs are dry - even with the current rain and hail.

The mountains, hot springs, geysers, rivers and streams, waterfalls, the rock formations, the vistas, and of course the animals. We have seen elk, deer, and bison today. Very exciting. Carmen has taken to wearing her gloves and has on four layers and my jacket and she's still cold.

We stopped at the Norris geyser basin. It is so cold that the springs and geysers are giving off a lot of steam. There is a very distinctive sulfur smell in the air. Normal for the geysers. It is very interesting and pretty to look at, but you have a hard time to see the bubbling of the water and mud in the camera. We'll have to wait and look at the pictures to see how they come out. I hope to have one flaming, I mean bubbling geyser for the blog.

We continue and at the last minute decide to take one of the "loop" roads, this one is about two and a half miles long. The problem is we pass the entrance so we turn around and go back. The road is one-way and a good thing too, because it is very narrow. Good thing Carmen is driving. Not realizing it was there, we come upon a waterfall and only get a quick shot or two before there are cars behind us, so we continue. We get to the end of the loop road and backtrack to the beginning again so we can get a better picture (now that we know there is a water fall). This time we make sure no one is close behind and proceed along the road. When we get to the falls, there are about five cars all stopped, people out of the cars and taking pictures. Where we stop it is a little, I mean little, area on the side of the road so that other cars can squeeze by. We take our pictures, and yes that means plenty of pictures. We continued on our way.

We come across, and not for the last time, a bison in the road walking down the middle of the roadway. Not a care in the world, after all they own the road. This bison was just off of the road and was moving slowly through some trees along a small (very small, I'm only about 30 feet from him) field. Carmen said my insurance is paid up so go take pictures. I wonder what she meant by that?

We make several other none scheduled stops viewing wildlife both close and afar and get back to the camp site late, sometime around 8:30 PM. We are both tired and all we have done is to load the pictures from the camera cards to the computer and start to write this. By the time the pictures are loaded, we are headed to bed. Oh, did I mention it was cold today. Didn't get much above 54.

We see an number of elk and deer, but no bear yet in Yellowstone.

It is getting dark and we still have more than a quarter of the loop left to complete. We are driving as it is getting darker and it is getting harder to see. We see other Bison, one we have to go around, yet it is so dark we can not get a picture, the camera will not focus on it. Oh well.

Hope you enjoy the couple of pictures we did take. Hope to have 9/11 ready tomorrow morning and posted. Now that I'm at a site that has wifi, I should be able to catch up.