Vacation 2010 - Day 11

Today we had planned to go to Yellowstone National Park. Not entirely sure why we booked a hotel in Butte (MT), guess it was that it was the closest city that had hotels in our price bracket available. If that wasn't the case then Kenny screwed up when he booked the hotels. Either way there was no point in bitching about that. We just had to accept the fact that Yellowstone was about 115 miles south of our hotel and that it would probably take us about 2 hours to get there.
We took the I-90 east to State Route 359. We followed it until we got to the junction with State Route 287 and followed it until we reached West Yellowstone. Once there we filled the truck up and got lunch a Dairy Queen for an almost obscene price. Well, since you don't have that many choices... you just have to accept that.
Next we drove to the West Entrance of Yellowstone and took a picture in front of the Yellowstone sign. We drove into the Yellowstone and very soon we saw some moose. We stopped and took pix and video. One of the moose walked by us in a distance of about 5 feet. That was pretty cool. Guess the moose knew, that the weird humans with the cameras in front of their face don't pose an threat at all. Shortly after that we saw a couple of Bison gracing pretty close to the road. We stopped to take pix and video, without leaving the car. We followed the road along the beautiful Madison River and very soon we got to the Lower Geyser Basin. I walked up first, since dogs are not allowed near any of the geothermal features. It was very neat and very interesting. I took tons of videos. The hot springs are fun... okay their smell leaves a little to be desired, but otherwise interesting and fun. My favorite was called the Red Spouter... a feature were red mud is moving around in circles. Very interesting to watch. After I was done it was Kenny's turn to check it out and I stayed with Daisy.
We continued on the road and got to the Midway Geyser Basin. I checked it out first. There are 2 large geothermal features. Both have the most amazing shade if turquoise that I have ever seen. The steam can be quite intense at times but it is absolutely great and interesting. I took lots of video. It actually takes you way longer to walk around this feature than you would think. While I was taking video Kenny was hanging out with Daisy near the river. Once I got back it was Kenny's turn to check out this feature.
After that we moved on to the Black Sand Basin. Again it is a very interesting geothermal feature. Lot's of hot springs and tiny mud features. The tiny features are at least as interesting as the large one. One of the hot springs has steam features that are just amazing and reveals and amazing shade of turquoise. The last feature could best be described as a 'little Old Faithful'. I think I good pretty good footage of the thing erupting. Next it was Kenny's turn to check it out and take pix, while I stayed with Daisy.
Then me moved on to see the main attraction: Old Faithful. Just our luck that we missed Old Faithful by just 5 minutes. So we had to wait for about 90 minutes. We found a spot in the shade and just hung out and waited for the show to begin. About 10 minutes before the show was supposed to start, I went to the front to have a better view to take video. While Kenny stayed back in the shade with Daisy. After a couple of teases Old Faithful finally erupted. It was absolutely great, even considering that I was watching it mostly through a screen of the Video Camera. Once the entire show was over I walked back and found out that several kids had petted Daisy and she was completely fine with it. Surprise, Surprise. Guess, she's getting social in her "old" age. Kenny managed to take quite good pix from where he was standing.
It was a little after 6 pm and we still wanted to see the Mud Volcano. We headed west until we got to Yellowstone Lake. It is an absolutely beautiful and huge lake. It's actually way bigger than I imagined it. We then headed north and reached the Mud Volcano. Kenny got out first and took pix of that feature. After he got back it was my turn. This feature was the one that smelled worst of all the geothermal features we had seen all day. The 2 features that really stood out were "Dragons Mouth" and the "Mud Volcano". The first one a bubbling mud feature with lots and lots of steam. The "Mud Volcano" is as the name suggests a mud feature that pretty much shows how a real volcano would be working. After that I took video of steam coming out through the pavement. You could also see how the sulfuric acid was slowly corroding iron. By the time we were done with that feature it was past 8 pm and we started to head to the North Entrance of the Park.
We stopped to see a herd of Elk gracing across the river. I tried to take video and got about 2 minutes of it. Not too sure how good it's going to turn out, since there was only very little daylight left. We continued to the North Entrance and watched a lightning storm. That thing had been building up all day long. So it really didn't come as a surprise. We were pretty close to the exit of the park when it started to rain. But that wasn't even the worst. While we were driving through a very narrow canyon the thunderstorm really started. Thunder, lightning, strong wind gusts and rain. Nothing really out of the ordinary. The only difference is that the wind gust increase greatly in a very narrow canyon. At times the dust was so thick that you barely could see the hand in front of your eyes. Kenny was scared to death... It didn't bother me that much since I have experienced the down draft winds before. We finally made it to the North Entrance and to highway 89. We were driving in lots and lots of lightning and heave down pours. Finally we made it to the I-90 and headed west. About 60 miles before the hotel, Kenny had to pull over since he was way too tired to drive and I took over. We made finally made it to the hotel by 1 am. That was quite a long day and all in all we drove 435 miles.