Touring Yellowstone National Park

Monday, September 25th

Out the door early at 7:25 am to head north to the Norris Geyser area. We'd read it gets really busy by the afternoon so for the purposes of picture taking we went early. Really cold this morning at 28F. (-2C) Burrr. Had on my long johns and we both wore various other layers. The sun was trying to come out with puffy white clouds.

We decided to not stop before our destination even though there was a herd of Elk in the meadow along the highway. (we had passed the parking lot before we had seen them anyways.) There must have been 20 photographers all set up with their tripods. It looked pretty cool though with the steam rising up from the river around the elk. Ray will try for that shot another day. As I was driving along the road we did see this guy right beside me. I had Ray hand me his camera... told him to grab the steering wheel and I slowly coasted by this huge guy. He was so close if I had opened by door I probably could have hit him!

On the way we stopped to take a picture of Mt. Haynes.

See all of the steam/fog.

Our destination, the Norris Geyser Basin took about an hour to reach. What a cool place. Unfortunately the colours of the pools did not stand out as the sun was not up high enough in the sky.  Also, the steam into the very cool air obscured a lot of it as we walked along the boardwalk. We will have to wait a day or so and go back when the temps are scheduled to warm up. If this does not happen we will have to postpone doing this park for another time when temps are hotter. Unfortunate the cold front came early this year.

Shows the "black growler" on the upper left

Porcelain Basin

Below what it could have looked like 2 weeks earlier. 

Picture from google

Ray's picture

Video below of what we got for Emerald Spring

This is the Emerald Spring 2 weeks earlier ... picture from Google

Next up Steamboat Geyser. Another boardwalk with snow still on the edges.

There she blows!

Back to the car to carry on with our tour. Next stop was the Canyon Falls. The Yellowstone River has 2 sets of falls. They call it the "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone. Absolutely gorgeous. A lot of these pictures are mine .... for some reason Ray's did not work out as well. Here are some pictures from the overlook at Artists Point of the lower falls.

We headed back towards Canyonville and took the North Rim Drive to see the upper falls.

Back home about 1:30pm to let Freya out of the coach. Had a campfire all bundled up again. Not very warm out.

Tuesday, September 26th

Today we did not get onto the road until 8 am in hopes that we would have better luck with the clouds and warmer temps (thus no steam). We drove south this time towards "Old Faithful". We managed to get some pictures of the Elk Herd and some Bison before turning south at Madison Junction.

This guy was quite a distance away from his cows keeping an eye out for all of the tourists taking pictures.

Later when we came back from our tour he was actually bugling.

We carried on and stopped at Midway Geyser Basin and the Grand Prismatic Spring. Needless to say we were very disappointed. More steam ... no colour.

We got part way up to the "Grand Prismatic Spring" and spoke to a New Zealander fellow and he said you could not see anything with the steam so we did not bother going any further.

The picture below is from Nina at Wheelinit's blog. This is the type of picture Ray was so hoping for. They were here 2 years ago, but 10 days earlier in September. Unfortunately winter came earlier this year.



Ray and I carried on to Old Faithful and found out at the Gift Shop that with the humidity at 40% that the "steam" would be all that you could get until "next June"!!!  and of course we missed seeing the geyser's eruption by 10 minutes and the next one was not for an hour.

Old Faithful

What Old Faithful looks like compliments of Google.

We walked around the lodge briefly ...

Okay ... I guess this whole trip was a wildlife expedition with the Bison and Elk. Bottom line it is cold, gloomy grey and everything is pretty much shutting down in 4 days. Winter has come early. We are outta here! Grand Tetons have been struck off our list for another time as the forecast going forward is for more cloud in that area and how can you photograph the mountains if they are in clouds. We did however, find a bunch of firewood all cut up in rounds by the side of the road while taking a picture of the Firehole River (pics below), so we took some for camp.

Back at camp by 11 am, after Ray walked Freya and I made lunch, we went outside and had a fantastic campfire for several hours. I split all of the wood so we could pack a bunch of it with us for another camping spot. The sun managed to come out for most of it so we were able to take off a layer or two of clothes for a couple of hours. We are at about 6800 feet here so the weather changes frequently.

Tomorrow, even though we have paid for one more day, the jacks will be up and we are headed further south. Had enough of cold and grey... could have stayed in Vancouver for that!

Montana is a beautiful state. A fly fisherman's dream with all of the small rivers and streams that seem loaded with fish, according to some of the fisherman we asked. The road sides are clear of garbage for the most part. We were really impressed. A great place to come for a summer vacation.