Day 7- Yellowstone National Park

Our second full day at Yellowstone we really did get up early. Like, crack of dawn early. Handler 1 wanted to see if she could catch some more wolf action, and the rest of us were most agreeable to the idea.

On our way out, Handler 1 saw these photo opportunities and jumped out of the car.






We traveled back to Hayden Valley and the same overlook where we'd seen the wolves before. We were about to move on when two white 15-passenger vans pulled up. We figured they were either a bunch of people chasing after large charismatic megafauna...or a fencing team. Regardless of which, we decided to stick around.

They turned out to be a tour group of nice British folk who think it's the coolest thing in the world to spend 3 weeks of their year getting up at 4 am to go and try to see wolves in Yellowstone. Hey, more power to them. Plus they brought viewing scopes, and through one they were able to see the black alhpa male of the Hayden pack playing around in the snow waaaaaaaaay off. They let us take a look at him through their scopes (binoculars were no assistance at this range), and so we did get to see wolves once more.

However, wolf watching was not our only order for the day. Oh, no, we had far, far more planned. First stop was the grand canyon of the Yellowstone, which is the canyon formed where the Yellowstone River cuts through the earth, revealing the yellow colored stone that gives the park its name. On the way, we partook of a deer jam.


Here are the Upper Falls, which are neither the bigger of the two falls, nor the most northerly. It took Handler 2 a long time to get that 'north' and 'up' are not synonymous.



And here are the famous lower falls!

We took about a gajillion photos here, but will only provide you with one or two for brevity's sake.

Wildlife we saw in the canyon included this raven, who was waiting for people to park at one of the overlooks so he could pick dead bugs out of the front grills of their cars.

And this nesting osprey, pointed out to us by a nice couple with a scope.

After that, it was to our second Yellowstone place of lodging. This historic Yellowstone Inn, built originally in 1903 in a near perfect replica of the Walt Disney World Wilderness Lodge.

It's actually quite pretty inside, and a definite step up from the rape cabins. Sure, the bathrooms were down the hall, but the in room sink was lovely, and the period decorations lent a very nice air to the place.

Also, it's right by Old Faithful, which went off within minutes of our arrival.

After we checked in and left our food bags and cooler with Bell Service (so that our car wouldn't be attacked while we were hiking) we headed out to the Midway Geyser Basin. Our mission was to hike the Fairy Falls trail.

The trail goes right past the Grand Prismatic Spring. The steam coming off of it reflects the varied colors of the bacterial mats in the spring, so that it looks like even the steam is multi-colored.

And here's the spring itself, in a view you don't get unless you take the Fairy Falls trail and hike halfway up a big hill next to it.

Here's a close up of some of the bacterial mats and runoff streams.

We continued on down the trail. In case you were wondering, there are a LOT of Lodgepole Pines in Yellowstone.

Finally, we reached our destination!

One interesting thing occurred while we stopped for a brief rest and pictures: a beaver appeared! Handler 1 was taking pictures and looking away, so when Handler 2 saw it he shouted "Dear!" Handler 1 immediately turned around and, seeing Handler 2's pointing finger, immediately started scanning the horizon for deer.

Needless to say, we didn't get any photos of the "alleged" beaver.

Everyone we'd met on the trail (which included yet another enthusiastic group of British tourists and one random southern family who saw the beaver), told us we needed to continue on to see Imperial Geyser. So we decided to take them up on their suggestion (because, if you can't trust a Brit, who can you trust?).

There was a long runoff trail leading up to the geyser, which had formed itself into a little river with waterfalls and everything.

Imperial Geyser was pretty neat on its own, too.

On our way back up the trail (which, by the way, was significantly harder than going out...we were getting TIRED of all this hiking crud) we caught this guy just lounging in the grass some 25 yards off the trail.

There were some neath thermal featurs just set around the parking area for the trail. These things are seriously just everywhere in Yellowstone.

The handlers were pretty darn tired at that point, but they had originally planned to see the remainder of the geyser basins that day. There was no way they were going to do everything they wanted, but they decided to press on as much as their aching feet would allow them.

This is Grand Geyser. Not erupting, I'm sorry to say, but still reflecting at least.

Handler 2 decided he was dead tired and wasn't going to bother getting out of the Sexy Scion for more thermal features, so when a strangely shaped rock caught Handler 1's attention and she jumped out to see what the interpretive sign said about it, he stayed behind.

This is what happened when Handler 1 was about 15 feet from the car.

Neat huh? Turns out it was White Dome Geyser.

Handler 1 really wanted some close up shots of the Fountain Paint Pots, so we made that our last stop of the day.

These were much cooler than the Artist Paint Pots.

Clepsydra Geyser

At that point, everyone felt it was time to retire to the lodge and see if we could get ourselves dinner in the dining room. We passed an elk jam along the way and photographed this doe shortly after wading the river.

Quote of the Day:

Handler 2- "Except, my magic underpants don't have a pee hole."