Old Faithful

[July 9]
Because of the fiasco the night before, we decided to set the alarm for 6:45 am and be at the registration desk right when it opened. Terry went in and was able to get everything all figured out. We ended up getting campsites for the next 5 nights, three nights at Bridge Bay and two nights at Canyon. From there we decided to head down to our campground and stop at the sights along the way. There were some amazing waterfalls to look at. We first stopped at the Upper Falls. This waterfall has twice the dropping distance as Niagara Falls, not nearly as wide, but definitely beautiful! We took a hike down Uncle Tom’s Trail to see the Upper falls from below the falls (instead of the brink of the falls). It was 384 steps down a cantilevered metal walkway down the side of the canyon. It was really awesome to see the falls from this view. We then went to Lower Falls and Artist Point. From Artist Point you can see the Lower Falls and what is referred to as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It was really pretty.

We then headed down to Hayden Valley and stopped at most of the scenic stops along the way. We saw more waterfalls and great views of the river. In Hayden Valley we saw a herd of Buffalo. It was neat to see so many in one spot. We didn’t get quite as close to the buffalo as we did during our late night drive the night before where we nearly clipped one with our passenger side mirror!

After Hayden Valley we stopped at the Sulphur Caldron, our first thermal feature sight of the trip. The name is fitting, mmm sulfur, can’t forget the waves of sulphery mist as they roll on you ;) Right around the corner is the Mud Volcano stop. It’s a nice walk through various bubbling pools and fumaroles. Unfortunately the mud volcanoes weren’t doing the globular ‘blop-pop’ they do after a rain fall.

We rolled into Bridge Bay and got to setup our campsite. We setup our new changing room (thanks Suzie!), and our 10x10 shaded canopy area, this was definitely needed since our sight didn’t have any trees. The place looked really nice. We got a little oriented to the campsite—finding bathrooms, talking with people at the desk, seeing the humongous RVs…this site seems like it is more for retired people or people without children, we didn’t see a lot of families there.

At around 4 pm, Terry’s dad and his wife Lynn came up from Laramie, WY to visit us. They also brought along their two dogs. They are very cute and well behaved. We chatted with them for a while at the site and then decided to head to Old Faithful. We stopped at a few of the scenic sights along the way and got some great shots of Yellowstone Lake. Our favorite spot was the waterfall Kepler Cascades. It had a great overlook and a lot of cascading small falls. When we arrived at Old Faithful we saw that it was going to go off at 7:03 pm, so this allowed us about 45 minutes to walk around and see some other geysers, but Terry’s dad and Lynn stayed behind and waited for Old Faithful. They got us a great spot to view it from when we came back! We made it back from around the loop just in time to see it go off. It was really neat to see. It did spout quite high and it lasted for about a minute with spouting at different heights. After that we decided to get dinner. We went to a restaurant right by Old Faithful, at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge. Dinner was really good and Terry was quite adventurous and had Bison Ribs, they tasted a lot like a pork roast. From there we parted ways and picked up some forgotten necessities at the general store. Terry’s dad and Lynn stayed the night at a cabin in Canyon Village and we headed back to our sight at Bridge Bay. On our first turnoff from the main highway, we almost ran into three moose crossing the street. We saw them early and stopped and pulled to the side. There was a vehicle coming from the other direction that came about a foot from hitting them. Had the moose not gotten startled and backed up earlier, the car would have it them. It was kind of scary to see. We passed by the moose and got to our campsite at about 11:00 pm and headed straight for bed.