Day 4 - Sep 7, 2010 Last updated: 9/19/10 8:00pm PT
Today we drove around the bottom part of the figure 8 loop road in Yellowstone.
Bubbling mud at the Fountain Paint Pot.
Lone bison wandering around the steaming pools of water.
A constantly erupting geyser at the Fountain Paint Pot site.
The Grand Prismatic Spring is the largest hot spring in the US. The best way to see it is from above. You just can’t see the varied colors from the ground level. Google it to see a bunch of images.
Old Faithful erupts every 60-90 minutes, lasting 2-5 minutes and erupting to a height of 90-184 feet.
There is a very easy trail at the Old Faithful site where you can see other types of hot springs and geysers.
Yellowstone Lake
Bison at the side of the road. I’m not really that close to them, it just looks that way.
This is called the Mud Volcano.
A bison induced traffic jam. I’m not sure how long we were stuck here, but it didn’t matter. This is one of the things we came to see.
This one appears to be licking my car’s headlight. (Mmmm, headlight)
This is from the Artist Paint Pots area. This place had thicker bubbling mud than the Fountain Paint Pot.
Dinner was at Buckaroo Bill’s in West Yellowstone, MT. We had very good BBQ ribs. And it was very filling. Be careful if you order ice cream for dessert. A single scoop is really 5 scoops.
The next day we were heading home. It’s a 12 hour drive home, and we thought that was a bit long for one day, so we figured we would drive until dinner time, then stay at a hotel and finish the drive in the morning. We left West Yellowstone around 8am and drove north to I-90 before heading west. I figured we would stop for the day in Idaho. But when we got there, it was way too early to stop, so we kept going. Then we drove a few more hours, but it was still too early, so we kept going. We stopped in Ellensburg, WA for dinner, but at that point, we were too close to home to justify a hotel room, so we kept going. Unfortunately, we got stuck in traffic. I-90 was closed for about an hour at Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascade Mountains. They were doing rock blasting on the side of the road (Sometimes car sized boulders break off the mountain and crush cars. It’s rare, but it happens). Ultimately we made it home in one day.