Old Faithful & More

Bright & early this morning (7a.m.) we headed out for Yellowstone, which the west entrance is about 2-3 miles from the RV park. Needless to say it was cold - about 47 degrees, so we were bundled up (not use to cold weather at this point.) We headed for Old Faithful first thing because we knew that would be crowded later in the day. On the way we stopped at the Midway Geyser Basin and walked around the geysers there. Here it shows the hot water from the geyser running into the river.

 Jim found a way to warm up. 

Looking back over the river, it shows plenty of the steam from geysers. There were geysers everywhere.

Made it to Old Faithful about 30 minutes before the schedule time for it's show, so didn't have to wait long. Spent the time in the Visitor Center, then went out and sat and waited for the show to begin. Here is Old Faithful just sitting there very peaceful.

This is the show it put on. It was impressive and lasted about two minutes. Glad we got to see it.

From there we drove around through West Thumb and up the west side of Yellowstone Lake. What a huge and beautiful lake. Our next stop was the Mud Volcano, where the ground just bubbles with this smelly mud. Interesting.

In walking down from the hill we climbed to see the Sulphur Caldron and Mud Volcano this is the view off to the east. Beautiful country.

 Back in the Lincoln to continue going north, we couldn't figure why traffic had stopped. Well, we finally figured out why, a bison decided to lead the southbound traffic at his pace.

I finally had my close encounter with a bison as he walked by our vehicle going in the opposite direction.

 There he goes!

Our next stop was a viewing point for the Upper Falls.

 From the viewing point we drove around to the river side and hiked down to the brink of the Upper Falls. It was about 1/8 mile down. It was a good view to look down the falls of 109 feet. Then we went farther up the road to hike down 3/8 mile (and I mean down as in steep) to see the brink of the Lower Falls which fall 308 feet. Here is a picture looking over the falls.

The water from the falls then go through what they call Yellowstone Grand Canyon.  The hike back up that 3/8 mile sure felt like 3 miles, we worked off the cheeseburger we had for lunch.

These pictures are only a sampling of over 100 pictures I took. We stopped a couple other places on the way back to the RV, but nothing spectacular. The weather warmed up to 86 degrees from the 47 when we started out, so turned into another beautiful day. We are about to head outside to enjoy the evening on our patio. Another real early start tomorrow.