Day 56: Yellowstone National Park

Thursday, June 11
Yellowstone National Park WY
Odometer Begin: 116, 505
Miles traveled: 128
Time spent traveling: 6 hours
Other: Old Faithful geyser ruptures every 90 minutes +/-
Wx: mostly cloudy high 50s F.
States traveled: WY

So, no snow last night but it was cold. We started out the day at Mammoth Hot Springs Lower Terrace. It is a terraced area of white, yellow and orange, plus steam. We decided that we would drive the interior loop of Yellowstone. We checked out the falls, they were cool, but we have seen falls before. The yellow walls of Yellowstone canyon were beautiful. We headed by the lake next which is enormous and then through a wildlife corridor where we saw LOTS of Bison.

We ended up at Upper Geyser Basin, where Old Faithful is at around 12:45. Old Faithful erupts every 90 minutes and the next eruption was at 1:15 ish. We with at least 3,000 others waited for the show. Click on photo below to watch short movie.

From Yellowstone

It was cool but the real show is from Grand Geyser, which is less predictable. They estimated that today it would erupt between 9:30 AM and 1:30 pm. We got there at around 1:45 pm and it started as soon as we walked up, no joke. How is that for timing? Grand geyser is the biggest in the park and last for 7-20 minutes. There must have been at least 100,000 gallons of water coming out of it!

Tonight we camp at Norris Campground which is much better and there is even a Ranger Talk on the history of Yellowstone we may check out.

Yellowstone