7/10/08 Old Faithful and a LOT of Buffalo

Today we took a long ride and saw lots of spectacular things! (Remember, you can click on each picture to enlarge it)

Our first stop was at an overlook where we saw these falls.

Just below the falls we could see the trout that were resting in small pools of calm water before they tried to swim upstream to the spawning area.

Bob saw one go upstream but I missed that one. At the height of their migration they jump every 10-15 seconds through the rapids.

A view from the banks of the river.

OUR FIRST BUFFALO! I wanted to go him so badly and help him shed that winter fur so he wouldn't look scraggly! These animals are H U G E!

A resting buffalo, the steam you see is coming from a hot spring. They seem to like being in the areas of the springs.

Yep, more buffalo.

A pretty scenery picture.

Buffalo rest wherever they darn well please. Even just along side the road. I mean, really, who is going stop them? Or move them?

I call this one "Wild flowers in the middle of the river".

There is an abundance of Canada geese in the park.

A going down the road picture.

Elk getting a drink of water.

A herd of buffalo with babies.

More pretty scenery. We never get tired of looking at surroundings like these!

Buffalo standing in river. Tired of buffalo yet? Trust me, by the end of the day we were saying, "Oh look, another buffalo, big deal."

We stopped to look at some falls along the way.

In this next picture take note of the bare areas, the ridge of trees with bare spots amongst them. This is a site where a volcano erupted 125,000 years ago.

We saw lots areas like this ravaged by fire. We've heard lots of references to the fire of '88. Yellowstone was on fire from June 14th to September 11th burning a total of 793,880 acres, or 36% of the park, but not all areas were devastated. Twenty five thousand people were involved in the fire fighting effort at a cost of $120 million dollars. About 300 large mammals perished in the fires, 246 elk, 9 bison, 4 mule deer and 2 moose. There were a total of 51 separate fires going on at the same time, 9 caused by humans and 42 caused by lightning. It didn't help that this area was in the worst drought since 1934.

Contrary to what was feared, visitors were not deterred from visiting Yellowstone. In fact, 1989 had record breaking visitor numbers which totaled 2,600,000.

More scenery from this magnificent park.

We were at one overlook when we spotted this eagle.

We watched this group take their Yellowstone Stage Coach ride.

By late afternoon we had finally arrived at Old Faithful, the most famous geyser in the world.

We had about 40 minutes before it would go off again so we took the time to walk through the gift shops and make phone calls! We had cell service! While in one of the gift shops we stopped to listen to this fellow.

It was getting closer to 4:01 the time Old Faithful was to do its thing so we walked down to the viewing area to get a seat on the bleachers.

This is Old Faithful about 20 minutes before she "blew".

This is Tom, he is a park ranger who is a science teacher during the winter months but has been coming to Yellowstone for the past 43 summers to act as a guide for Old Faithful.

He was very informative and answered any and all questions.

Since Old Faithful was to do her thing at 4:01 we started hearing, "What time is it?" over and over again starting at 3:55.

Four-oh-one came and went but we didn't have to wait too long before Tom yelled out, get your cameras ready because at 4:02 the geyser erupted.

It took Old Faithful a few seconds to really get going and all we could hear was the hundreds of camera beeps and clicks all around us. And let's not forget all the Oohs and Ahh's.

One hundred and thirty feet into the air the water spewed. What a sight! I had goose bumps the size of jumbo eggs! The geyser lasted just over four minutes and would rest again for approximately 92 minutes before it would go off again.

Our next stop was another set of falls.

We pulled into another lookover down the road and saw this '32 Ford Touring Car with a covered wagon tagalong.

This fellow and his friend have been on the road for the last 43 days and have been to Alaska and back on this trip. They've put over 8000 miles on the car as of the moment I was talking with them. When I asked how the gas mileage was he just gave me a thumbs down. After seeing this I am so thankful for our 53 feet of truck and rig.

They weren't the fastest vehicle on the road.

Another scenery picture.

Another view from the Fishing Bridge on our way home.

Back at the house we settled in for yet another night of DVD watching. Like LaVon said, its a good thing Survivor isn't on!