Vacation - Day Three

We spent the night at the Lake Yellowstone Lodge. Built in 1891, it is the oldest standing lodge in the park and has been added on to a couple of times. Our large room that faced the lake was in the original portion of the lodge. The floor creaked and slopped. The bathroom was huge and had wonderful original tile. The glass in the windows in both the bedroom and the bath was original and had a few visual flaws and drips. I tried taking a picture, but it did not show up very well.

It turns out our visit to the park was just 3 days after it opened. Everyone was nice, but very new and therefore not everyone was very knowledgeable. We decided the best way to see the park was to let someone else do the driving.

Since we visited so early in the season, not all attractions, excursions and areas were fully open. We took the only tour available, the Circle of Fire tour. Our tour bus departed early in the morning and made a circle around the major geothermal features as well as by the falls. My husband sometimes opted to sit on the bus instead of walking around as his knees were hurting (turns out he was also coming down with a cold, but I digress and there will be more about that later). The weather was cool but not bad when we started out or when we ended. In between, there was snow. Cold, blowing snow. He sat the coldest, blowingest, snowyest one out, but I was a trooper and braved the weather to get some shots of the geysers. Here are the photo highlights of the tour.

Lake Yellowstone lodge – from the lobby looking out at the lake













Bluebell pool – One of the first of the thermal pools we saw. The color was bright blue.

Cooking pool – Actually in the lake. There are written accounts of settlers in the area fishing in the lake and cooking their catch in this pool. Our guide said that it probably was not a good idea as the pool has been tested and has large amounts of arsenic and mercury.













Here is a shot of our tour bus at the continental divide. Yep! that's snow!!

Cute little chipmunk watching for Old Faithful to blow. It was actually facing the geyser and looked like it was waiting.

What trip to Yellowstone would be complete without a visit to Old Faithful. I took several shots of the geyser, but this one is shows the gush at the highest point. Note the beautiful clear blue sky.

Here is a shot just an hour later of a geyser. I cannot remember the name, but the story is that this geyser was unpredictable until a few years ago when it blew really big. Since then, it has been a constant geyser, going off every few minutes. Not large like Old Faithful because it does not have time to build up as much pressure. If you look closely, you can see the snow falling in the picture. The little white dots of snow were really much bigger and the wind was blowing so it was very, very cold.

Down the road, we took a break and walked out in a meadow to see some wildlife. This shot is actually a three-fer, although you might be hard pressed to see the third animal. The bison mom and calf was my focal point. The geese and the ground squirrel (lower left hand corner) rounded out the triad. There was a large (30+) herd of bison and a large flock of geese. This photo only shows the mom and calf because I cropped it to get the "madonna" shot.

Water falls – I took way too many photos of water falls. Here are just a few.

Lower Falls

Upper falls

Little falls

Artist Falls Close up

Artist Falls panorama – I tried my hand at using the panorama feature on my camera.

Other wildlife shots

Here is a shot of a raven. Notice the ruts? Those are wagon ruts from the Oregon trail, still visible after over a hundred years. Between 1841 and 1869, the Oregon Trail was used by settlers migrating to the Pacific Northwest

Another ... much smaller, bison herd. These were right by the road and fearless. They were aware of us, but ignored us.














A lone male elk