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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Yellowstone Day 3 (August 2nd)

Are you ready for Day 3?!
Before going to the park we went and had a big breakfast at a local place, the Running Bear, in West Yellowstone. I had blueberry french toast (I had no idea that this even existed and boy was it delicious with boysenberry syrup!). I could have eaten 5 slices! And their bacon was so crispy and thick! So SCRUMPTIOUS!
We spent the whole rest of the day in the park and it was marvelous. As you can see from the pictures it was another beautiful day. Our first stop was the Norris Geyser Basin. Tori was already asleep, so we took Brooke out for a stroll, and of course, she was all smiles, even though this stroller was on the bigger side and she slouched the whole time. Our first stop was Steamboat Geyser (lower left picture) and it was pretty neat, but it has a sporadic schedule, so we didn't see it go off. Huff and Puff is the other Geyser pictured (right next to Steamboat and with Brooke in front, the top middle picture). I wish that I would have paid the $.50 to keep the trail guides, but alas, I did not, so we just have to call the other beautiful pools, just pools, even though they had cool names like opal or iridescent. At the bookstore we bought Tori some little American Park Animals (12 animals including: a rabbit, a beaver and an eagle, which were her favorite) and a Yellowstone and Tetons Baby Animal Book. Both of which kept her busy all day in her car seat! Definitely worth my money!
Our next stop was the Yellowstone Falls. We went to the upper falls and to Artist Point. Artist Point is the right middle picture and it is truly magnificent! There were even artist doing watercolor and pastel drawing there. Tori thought it was pretty amazing too. There were quite a few "wow"s and "look"s. The upper left picture with Tori sitting on the rock is a great picture of the yellow stone that the park is named after. Tori liked all of the big rocks along the trail to Artist Point and finally got to crawl up on one. She thought that was pretty neat! I love her windblown hair in the pictures! She is so beautiful!
Our next stop was a late picnic lunch (nice picnic set up huh?). We got a spot near Yellowstone River. Brooke was really excited to get out of the car again and blew us a kiss while we were eating. That day she didn't need toys because she was thoroughly amazed by her hands. She stared at her hands for many hours trying to figure out how they work. She is trying to learn how to clap and wave. It was pretty funny. She would be babbling and then all of the sudden get a glimpse of her hand and then she would just stare at it!
Here is the quiz... can you spot Jason in the upper left picture? Jason ran down from the bridge that we were taking pictures at and I really had a hard time finding him in my viewfinder to take a picture!
I love the lower right picture of Tori. She was so excited to walk all by herself and to run up and down the trails. It was much more fun than eating her lunch! Today, mind you it was the 3rd day in the park, we saw the elusive Bison! They were all in the Hayden Valley! We even got to see 2 different Bison cross the Yellowstone River! Pretty amazing that these huge animals can swim! The rangers said that this was a rare sight in the park and we were really lucky to see them!
See the Bison in the upper left picture? He decided to take a stroll in the middle of the road blocking traffic for a while.and then finally crossed so that we could take the other 2 close up pictures. Amazing, huh? We even parked off the side of the road and got to look at some Buffalo herds! Tori really liked to see them all too!
Our next stop was we saw this cool geyser called Dragon's Breath. It sounded like a cave that you would see in the ocean with the tide coming in and out and every few minutes it would belch out sulfur air and and spit a river of grey water. It was pretty awesome! I could have watched it forever!
We continued our drive through the bottom loop and caught a glimpse of another Black Bear, an Eagle, more Bison, Antelope and some Elk. We finally stopped at the West Thumb Geyser Basin and took Tori for a stroll along the boardwalk. The view was incredible! There were actual geysers in the lake! As we strolled along we ran into a cow Elk and her fawn (seen below) right off the path in front of us. I did not have to use my telephoto lens for these pictures, but she did block our way from continuing our little walk. We stood on the path for about 10 minutes waiting for her to cross back to be with her fawn, but no she was on the left side of the path and her fawn was on the right. Jason tried to cross in between her and she reared her head and was very wary so we had to go all the way back around! Mind you, it would have been fine except that nature had called me about 20 minutes before this incident! Oh I wanted to move that mama elk back to the other side of that path! our way out someone offered to take Tori off our hands because she was being so darn cute!The lower left picture was taken from the car as we were leaving West Thumb. The top right picture is of the Water Lily Pond.Okay, I know you are thinking, why did you choose to keep the picture of Jason in the car with that goofy dazed look on his face. OK, so here is the story. Jason joined me in the back seat of the car and wanted to take a picture of us and he was concentrating so hard on holding the camera right to get us both in the picture that he forgot to smile. Ha ha ha...what a silly man! The other cute pictures are of the other cute wildlife that we saw along the way...of course, Tori and Brookie! Notice in the picture in the bottom middle Jason is bent over, well, Tori had just poked him in the eye with her eagle toy! Ouch!!On our ride home we took the Firehole Lake Drive. We saw some pretty amazing stuff! The top picture is of the Great Fountain Geyser. It looked so remarkable with the sun setting in the pool. The next geyser was awesome! I call it the Volcano Geyser, because the steam coming out of it and the water flowing from it looked like a volcano and it's lava! We didn't quite get a cool picture of the steam coming out of it, because the sun was right behind it. But it was spectacular to watch.
That's the end of day 3. We went home and had pork roast soup at 9:30 PM! What a day!
If you missed day 2 click here and here for day 1.

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