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04.09.2014 Day 12: Yellowstone National Park. (On the hunt for Yogi Bear and BoBo)
What a huge day it was yesterday. We started with a stop in the town of Jackson to get some old photos taken. Hmmm check the photos to see what I mean. Talk about laugh.. we did.
This was the day we planned to drive from south to north through Wyoming up through the Grand Teton Park, into Yellowstone National Park and up to Bozeman Montana. We decided to make it a short drive day so we had lots of time to stop and view things.
The drive through Grand Teton Park was awe inspiring. Beautiful peaks towering over us and wet lands beside us. Really lovely, and then a seamless drive into Yellowstone. Our plan was to take the ½ hour drive straight through to the hot springs area and to view Old Faithful, the regular gyser that blows every day several times, almost regularly on time. But we arrived at the gates of Yellowstone to find out from the ranger that the road from the south was closed and the only way to view Old Faithful was via a 1 ½ hour circular detour up to the east across the middle of the park and down to the south again to where the geothermal areas were. This added a lot of time to our trip, but we decided checking out Old Faithful was something we needed to do and we got great views as we did this large and unexpected circuit of Yellowstone.
"Predicting Old Faithful:
The time to the next eruption, the interval, is predicted using the duration of the current eruption. The duration is timed from the first heavy surge which lifts water skyward at the start of the eruption until the last small splash above the cone at the very end. The longer the eruption lasts, the longer the interval until the next eruption. For instance, a 2 minute eruption results in an interval of about 55 minutes whereas a 4.5 minute eruption results in an interval of about 90 minutes. "
As we drove through the park there were lots of warnings about bears and I couldn't wait to see one. Did I see one? NO! But we did have a close encounter with a bison. Traffic was clogged up ahead and as we slowly moved forward there was a huge buffalo wandering aimlessly along the road by the cars. And yes he wandered past our window and 'eyeballed' Ken. We have it on video, but no snaps sadly. See video http://youtu.be/RXfQ0TOik9s .
So no Yogi or BoBo but we did see Bob the Bison. Also caught a few grazing Elk in the camera lens. This park is a huge geothermal area and we stopped several times and wandered along the boardwalks looking a bubbling mud pools and surging boiling water spouts but the special moment was when we finally sat in front of Old Faithful and true to type she blew 20 minutes early. She exploded with hot water for about 5 minutes, and it was really spectacular. See video http://youtu.be/agZ-TassriI
What was not so spectacular was that it was so late by the time this happened, there wasn't one piece of accommodation in the entire park. We decided rather than continue north we would exit by the Western gate into Yellowstone, and find a place to stay outside the park as soon as possible. This park is huge, and we were still driving as the sun dropped behind the skyline and by the time we got out of the park it was dark. We stopped at the first Inn we saw, and they were full up, but further down the road a more run-down place had the vacancy sign up. In we pulled....what? $189.00 a night? No way!
Ken set his jaw and said, we are going to drive north to Bozeman, and stay there. What followed was a pitch-black 2 hour drive through what looked like in the daytime might have been a very picturesque gorge. We arrived in Bozeman Montana at about 10pm found a room for $89.00 by which time I was so tired I could hardly get out of the car. Fell asleep before our heads touched the pillow.
- comments
Mike You know the difference between a buffalo and a bison? You can't wash your hands in a buffalo. (Sorry,, works better with a Cockney accent...)
Ros Mike, you are very silly !!! :)