Day 18, Having a Wild Time

We got up at 4:00 am to be able to meet our guide, Adam Brubaker, from Tied to Nature at 5:00. We had a bit of a drive from the West Yellowstone entrance to Lamar Valley. Our first stop hoping to see wolves before the sun was completely up. We not only saw 10 wolves, we also heard them. These were part of a pack of 30, and roughly 10% of the entire Yellowstone population of 100. I'd love to post a picture but we were only able to see them with the guide's telescope.

The real highlight of the day for me, a black bear and her cub. Again, the guide knew where to look and we were able to see them in the distance, which is how you want to see a mom and her cub. 

We found ourselves in a bison jam. This is when traffic is stopped while the bison take over the road. This large group was crossing the road and went both in front and behind the car. These lumbering giant animals can run up to 35 miles an hour and are quite formidable when that close. We also got to hear them vocalizing, something tourists are only able to hear during mating season. We got to watch some of the male behavior as they vied to follow a female.

Our guide spotted elk, pronghorn, different small animals and birds, all along educating us about their habits and habitats. We felt thankful to have made and lucky to be able to make this choice.

We went back to the campground to move our site, tonight we will have electricity (which is good since it was 40° this morning and likely to be colder tonight) and to take a rest before heading back to Yellowstone hoping to avoid the crowds.

We make it in time to see Old Faithful erupt. One of the reasons it is the most popular geyser is that it is fairly large, reliably goes off every 90 minutes or so, and it is easy accessible. It shares a parking lot with the Old Faithful Inn. Imagine being able to see it go off from your hotel room!

This area is one of four very geothermally active zones in the world, New Zealand, Iceland, and Chile being the others. That means that just about everywhere you look there are geysers. 

Many of the geysers erupt more or less predictably. There are trails that take you past hot springs, mud pots, and geysers. Some of the geysers have benches so you can wait for the eruption.

We sat and waited for two other geysers. We liked both of them better than Old Faithful. 

The Grand Geyser is the highest predictable geyser and lasted over 10 minutes. More than one person likened watching it to watching fireworks. The spray was sparkly in the evening sun and just when you thought it was over, another spray would shoot up into the sky.

The Riverside Geyser was wider and produced a beautiful rainbow. It went on for over 20 minutes.

We started out of the park about 8:00. We weren't the only people with that idea tonight. We are creeping out at 5 miles an hour… Guess we weren't so clever after all.

PS We aren't sure what caused the traffic backup but it took us 2 hours to go roughly 28 miles. Luckily, there were leftovers in the fridge.

Location: Yellowstone National Park, United States

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