Yellowstone

It’s been 23 years since we had Nick and Karen here just after school let out, our tent pitched between the snow piles, seeing our breath at night. This experience is much different. We haven’t seen the bison roaming around our campground as we did back then, but haven’t had a day yet where we didn’t encounter a parking lot on the main highway caused by these massive beasts, and of course, all the “Lookie Lous”!

Of course, the Woman couldn’t but help but becoming a bit of a “Lookie Lou” herself. I didn’t roll down her window this time, like with the giraffe!

Despite being the end of August, all the waterfalls are spewing copious amounts of water. We have no idea where all this water comes given we can’t see any snow cover within the park. But there must be snow cover melting somewhere as we’ve been to over half a dozen waterfalls, and all were raging. A couple were so powerful that they created spectacular rainbows in the midst of bright sunlight!

The Woman again discovered that the Continental Divide Trail runs nearby Old Faithful geyser. Not being satisfied unless she hikes portions of the CDT when she is near it, we set out to find where it crossed the main highway.

We managed to find a section and we hiked maybe a mile or so. The Woman was nervous about bears because of all the Ranger talks we had been to, and so she didn’t want to go in too far when it was only the two of us. She kept yelling at the top of her lungs “Yo bear! Stay away!”, so there was not much chance of a surprise encounter. We found the blazes here much different than we had seen anywhere – fluorescent orange tabs stapled to trees near the trail. Must be the local Ranger’s addition.

We biked from our campground to the only natural stone bridge identified in the Park. While not as spectacular as those in Arches National Park and Natural Bridges National Parks in Utah, it was still fun, and we were pretty much the only ones there.

We’ve had some good wildlife sightings. We spotted some moose on our way into the park, but there was no way to park Colectiva to get a closer look. These Elk showed up near dusk by the local waterhole, and were happy as long as nobody tried to get too close.

I have no idea what this bird is that we saw alongside the Yellowstone River near the lower falls. He looks like something that should perched on Captain Barbosa’s shoulder in Pirates of the Caribbean, Dead Men tell no Tales.

Talk to you soon!