Our Second Day: The Day of the Buffalo

Today was a long, long day. We really wanted to go see Mammoth Hot Springs today. From where our hotel is it is normally only a hour and a half drive. However, a road is closed, so the trip to Mammoth that would normally be only an hour and a half is a predicted four hour drive. Well, we hadn't seen that side of the park either so we thought we would give the long drive a try.

On our way in we saw our first bison of the trip. He was just going along the side of the road. I'm grateful we had a car to stay inside to keep us safe. As we went along we kept seeing bison wandering along the side of the road.

We also saw this Blue Heron on our way into the park.

Our first stop was Black Sand Basin.

We then continued on and went over Craig Pass. The cool thing about Craig Pass is that at the top is Isa Lake. Isa Lake sits right on the Continental Divide so that water from the lake flows to both the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean.

Continuing on we came to the Yellowstone Lake. We drove along the side of the lake for a good part of the day.

Next we came to the Hayden Valley. Here we saw herds of buffalo.

Brad and I drove up to see if we could could get some good shots of a buffalo who had come up to the side of the valley. Brad turned around to fix his camera and found there was a buffalo right behind us. See for yourselves.

So, from here we drove for a long ways, up to see Tower Fall.

They had this crazy rock across the canyon.

From Tower Falls, we went to Petrified Tree. It was an ancient redwood tree that had been preserved by lava covering it over.

From Petrified Tree, we went to Undine Falls.

From Undine Falls, we finally made it to Mammoth Hot Springs. There were so many elk meandering around. We would be walking about 10 feet away from them and they didn't care.

This little guy was like this for a while.

We walked around Mammoth Hot Spring and found all these cool terraces.

By this time it was getting pretty late. The sun was setting and it was time to go home. Brad made the drive in two and a half hours. Not bad, but we got in a little before 11 and we are tuckered out. Tomorrow we're going to retrace a lot of our steps to catch a lot of the stuff we had to skip because we were running out of time to get to Mammoth. Things would be a lot easier if that one road wasn't closed, but we've had a lot of fun seeing all the beautiful country here in Yellowstone.