Yellowstone National Park was established by Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant back in 1872 and is widely held to be the first national park in the World.  It spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges.  Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest super volcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years.  From the projections I’ve seen, you probably don’t want to be around for the next one!!

As I told you before, we camped just outside the park’s west entrance, at the KOA in West Yellowstone, Montana.  We were pretty happy with that particular KOA even though it was crowded.  As a rule, campers are friendly people, and the folks at this campground were no exception.  We met several of our “neighbors” and enjoyed chatting with them about their experiences.

The KOA was just a barbed wire fence away from a field of cattle.  A couple times a day they would be close enough to the fence that you could hear them mooing, bellowing, snorting, and grunting.  If you’ve ever been around a heard of cattle you know what I’m talking about.  I seem to remember some of the older western movies having a pretty accurate cattle noises.  Anyway – Gus, as you can imagine, was very interested but the cattle were never very close to the fence and the grass was high enough that from his vantage point, he couldn’t see much — until one day when he and I were out for a walk.  It had just rained and for whatever reason the cattle were right next to the fence.  All the cattle saw Gus early enough to run away before he could get very close; then this one calf was curious enough to check this little animal out.  In the picture you can see mama looking on in the background.  They spent at least 30 seconds getting closer inch by inch then the calf stuck out his tongue about the same time Gus did the same thing and when they touched; that calf was outa there.  That was an actual laugh out loud moment for me.

The roads in Yellowstone National Park run in the shape of a figure eight.  Our first trip into the park from the campground we took the northern loop.  This is, for lack of a better term, the loop less traveled.  Old Faithful and most of the geyser stuff is on the south loop so that’s where most of the traffic is.  Our first photo opportunity was here at Gibbon Falls.

We didn’t get out of the truck much because we were just doing a ride around and planned to come back later to explore.  One place we definitely wanted to spend some time at was the Mammoth Hot Springs area.  We might have stopped on this trip but it didn’t look like there was any parking available and after all, we were going to be back – we’d do it then, but we never made it back to the north loop.

We took the next day off to deal with a battery problem we’ve been having.  Turns out the batteries for the trailer were junk and we had to drive almost 85 miles round trip to get them replaced.  But it was an exact replacement and I was thrilled that I wasn’t going to need to replace the electric converter in the trailer.

The next morning we headed for Old Faithful.  After seeing the crowds in the park and talking to a few people about it, they said that the earlier you go the fewer people you have to deal with.  We pulled out of the campground at 6:45 AM.  Gus had to stay behind because there are no dogs allowed on the wooden walkways they have around the Upper Geyser Basin, besides we weren’t going to be gone that long.

I wasn’t down in the front row when Old Faithful erupted but I still managed to get a decent picture.  The average interval between eruptions varies from 60 – 110 minutes.  An eruption lasts 1.5 to 5 minutes, expels 3,700 – 8,400 gallons of boiling water, and reaches heights of 106 – 184 feet.  Robin was right down front and has a video posted on her facebook site if you’re interested.  After Old Faithful we decided to take a walk around the Upper Geyser Basin on the wooden sidewalk.  This is what it looks like from the air.  That’s Old Faithful standing alone at the top right of the picture.

The walkway takes you past several geothermal features including geysers, hot springs, mudpots, and steam vents.  We didn’t see any of the mudpots but there were plenty of the other.  Grand Geyser is the biggest predictable geyser known.  It erupts every 7 to 15 hours, can shoot up to 200 feet into the air and lasts for 7 to 12 minutes.  I wish our timing had been lucky enough to watch this one go off.  That cone is around the geyser hole is impressive; especially when you consider that it only gets one or two inches taller every HUNDRED years.

If you were wondering how the whold geyser thing works, here is a video that does a pretty good job of explaining the process.

There’s lots of other geothermal features along the walkway including this constantly boiling cauldron.  I don’t remember what it was called but it was boiling pretty violently while we were there.

The other thing you see several of along the Upper Geyser Basin walkway are these mineral pools.  I would have liked to have a way to get the camera higher so we could get that great looking down inside.

We were approaching the end of the walkway when something falling out of the sky caught my eye.  It was a bird and it was diving out of the sky like a pelican dives into the ocean.  A park ranger walked past and told us that it was an osprey; also called a fish eagle, or river hawk.  When an osprey catches a fish they hold it aerodynamically in line with their body so it’s easier to fly with.  We watched this one make 4 or 5 attempts in the river before actually getting away with its lunch.  As it was flying away, another osprey took its hunting position over the river.

The other thing you think about when you hear Yellowstone is the wildlife.  We saw lots of elk but they were too far away to get a good picture of.  The wolves that I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about were, of course, nowhere to be seen.  But the buffalo – those guys don’t really care.  This guy was walking along a trail that was right next to the road.  Bobbi was quick with the camera and got this great shot.  He was almost as big as my truck!!

Yellowstone National Park is a definitely worth a visit.  The park gets 80% of it’s visitors between July 1st and August 31st.  I recommend that you visit in what they call the shoulder seasons, early June or early September.  The weather is still mild but school is in session and park visitor numbers are down drastically.   Make sure you give yourself a bare minimum of two days and bring a camera and some comfortable shoes as many of the things can’t be seen from the road or parking lot.

It was time for us to pack up and start heading for Washington then up into Canada.  Just before we crossed from Montana into Idaho, we pulled off the road to let some traffic go by, stretch our legs and walk the dog around.  When I was walking back, this is what I saw our Montana trailer in the state of Montana.

Hope you’ve enjoyed the trip so far.