16.5.2012 – 16.5.2012  14 °C

First day in Yellowstone today (I’m not so secretly hoping that we get a small earthquake whilst we are here in the park.. here’s hoping!). We decided to have a sleep in after our very hectic day yesterday and so started a bit later for the park. The park itself isn’t that far away from the Tetons (about 30 miles) so it didn’t take us long to hit the park boundary. Pretty much as soon as you hit the boundary you are greeted by snow, and lots of it! Apparently, Yellowstone gets the most snow of anywhere in the US and I’d believe it after seeing the entrance way (remember that today is the 16^th of May.. we’re getting pretty close towards Summer here). Actually, we are pretty lucky as they only opened the southern pass a week ago so we are lucky to be able to get thru. Yellowstone is a huge NP so thank goodness we have four days to see it all! It is set out around a figure 8 style park road. To get from one part of the park to another takes a heck of a long time (as we worked out this arvo).

The park is loosely divided into four-ish parts, Old Faithful area, Mammoth Springs, Canyon and the Roosevelt area. Because we entered at the southern end our first stop was to West Thumb hot spring area. I had always assumed that Yellowstone was Old Faithful (just one geyser) and lots of animals.. NO WAY! West Thumb is a good example. We got out of our car and were greeted by the strong odour of Sulphur and a couple of dozen mud and water pools.. Honestly, I must be pretty silly.. here I am thinking there will be very little geothermal yet knowing I’m in the world’s largest caldera that if it blows will take out half of continental US… Hmm hadn’t really thought it thru had I??? Yellowstone is filled with geothermal.. Old Faithful is just one of maybe fifty geysers add to that hot springs, steam vents, mud pools and you have one very active area!!!!!

After marvelling at all of the awesome hot springs and their colours we continued northward to the Old Faithful basin and to our digs. We checked into our hotel (although the room wasn’t ready) and headed over to check out the #1 attraction in Yellowstone, the Old Faithful geyser. OF goes off every 90 mins (+/- 10 mins) so it makes it very easy to check out if you happen to be hanging around at the right time. Like clockwork, OF rocketed its water jet into the sky (which lasted for a couple of mins) amidst the “oohs” and “aahs” and continuous shutter noise. During our waiting time for OF, we noticed another geyser further up the valley also venting so decided then and there that we had to make an effort to see this one in action. The good thing is that the rangers know approx. when each of the main geysers will erupt and therefore they print a timetable.. All you have to do is rock up and see it! Unfortunately, the other geysers are not as regular as OF. Eg one of them goes off every 14hrs but has a fudge factor of +/- 2 hrs!!!! Here’s hoping we are in the area when it decides to go off (cause I’m not sitting out in the cold for 4hrs to see this baby go off). Anyway, most of the geysers weren’t going off at any time in the future so we went back to our digs for some lunch.

Lunchtime over (salad and cold meat), and no real geysers anytime soon so we decided to leave the OF basin for all day tomorrow and to head over to the eastern side of the park to try and see some wild life. The drive over to Hayden Valley was fairly calm. We by-passed West Thumb and went straight to see Fishing Bridge. Fishing bridge is a bridge that you are no longer allowed to fish from… Hmmm… Apparently, us human’s nearly fished this river completely dry so about 20 years ago fishing was prohibited to allow the trout population time to regenerate. Now days, people just stop to marvel at the ice flowing along the river from Lake Yellowstone down the Yellowstone river and watch the Osprey and Bald Eagles do all the fishing!

Our journey continued northwards into the Hayden Valley. Our tour thru this heavily populated, with wildlife, valley was actually a bit disappointing. No bear sightings.. Damn.. Plenty of Bison (they are starting to get slightly ho, hum) and a few Pronghorned Deer at that was pretty much it!! Just as we had given up we saw our first male Elk!! Yeah!!

Song of the Day Carol King, I feel the earth move