A few more Bison, hot spots and beautiful views for the road.....

Today is the last day of this adventure (if you don't count flying back tomorrow, which we hope will not be an adventure.....).

We woke up to rain, the first time on this trip, so we are not complaining.  The plan was to drive down slowly on the last stretch of road we had not covered in Yellowstone, stopping along the way to look at sights and whatever wildlife was there, and then make our way down to Jackson Hole (from where we are flying early tomorrow morning), on the back roads of Grand Teton Park, which we had not seen on the way up.
The weather, though cold, did not stop us and we lucked out at most of the places we stopped:  it either stopped raining long enough for us to walk around, or it as snowing, which is not as bad to walk in.  (Just 2 days ago, it was 75 degrees and we were walking in short and t-shirts....  weather does turn quickly around here.....).

We drove down along Hayden Meadow, which was beautiful in the grey light, encountered our last herd of buffalo.....










They are really not bothered by cars it seems....  although, once in a while, someone does something stupid or gets too close, and they charge.

But it was great to be so close again to say good bye to them....

We visited the 2 remaining thermal areas:  the first one being the most active of the park:  These are boiling pools of sulfuric acid which where created last time this area blew up 125000 years ago.  That was not the BIG one:  As you 'll note from the board below, big eruptions (which would blow up the entire park - and it is a large park) -

 happen every 600 to 700 hundred years.  It's been 640,000 since the last one - you do the math!!!!!  As I've said, this whole thing could blow up any minute....  and it really feels like it may when you look at this particular area......

We also stopped by the West Thumb area of the the Yellowstone lake, which has a lot of thermal features right on the lake.  It was snowing there....

 The boiling water, coming right out of the cold, still lake is impressive.

As we drove along the lake, we saw this duck,











as well as these diving birds (which are hard to identify because the light was bad, I  may try once we get home).

All around Yellowstone, you can still see the impact of the devastating fire of 1988.  While this type of fire is normal, and on a 250 to 300 year cycle, it is the only one that modern people have witnessed.  The impact on the forest is still visible - but it is nice to see the new small pines thriving and building a new forest.

The weather was getting better but still foggy as we entered Grand Teton park, and the mountains were hidden.  I'm so glad we were so lucky on the way up!

The trees have changed colors significantly since we drove up:  it was only 4 days ago, but it was noticeable, and beautiful.
By this overlook, we saw a white pelican flying right over us!  I did not even know they existed, so was very happy about it.  Would have loved to take a picture, but he landed beyond the trees and would not come back for us.  Still this area was very pretty.

Since we had some time, we walked around the town of Jackson.... It's does not take long .  But it is very pretty, with lots of galleries and nice stores (but we were good and did not buy anything).  The town main square is known for it's four arches (at each corner) made out of elk antlers (no elk was hurt in the making of the arches- they shed them in the spring and in 1960, boy scouts went all around the meadows to gather them to build the arches).

It also has interesting art on the sidewalks.

We have driven over 1500 miles, visited 4 big national parks, and crossed beautiful, strange and empty places, met a lot of while life and seen amazing sights.  It's been a good trip!

Geysers are cool!

Today was all about exploring Yellowstone's many and varied geothermal features.  So we got up before sunrise, and, on the way to Old Faithful, got treated to a beautiful sunrise and moonset at the same time!  We also got to see the surrounding mountains turn pink, and the mist from the many geothermal vents light up.  It was well worth the early rise.







Besides, the park is very crowded (surprisingly so, since this is the "shoulder" season.  Many "seniors (like us....) and may tourists from everywhere - heard a lot of French and German today, although, by far the most numerous tourists from overseas are from China:

At the lodge, the signs to the restaurants and cafeterias look like this......
We arrived in the Old Faithful area shortly after 8am and, although it was not empty (these are people waiting for Old Faithful to do it's thing), it was not crowded either.  Our timing was perfect:  we arrived within a few minutes of it's schedule eruption, and indeed, it was right on time! Aand quite a sight!  In fact, we got to see it a second time (it goes off about every 90 minutes), 
Me from the overlook which gives a completely different view, and Joe from the other side.
 Right after the overlook, I startled a doe and her fawn, but carefully moved away so as to not bother them...











I then got to the well named "Solitaire" Geyser:  first, it is remote from the main geyser area, but also, because it requires a steep climb, there is no one up there.  It goes off every 4 to 7 minutes, so I waited there, and had the show all to myself!

We lucked out geyser-wise:  as we were studying the map in the visitor center, they announced that the "Beehive" Geyser was showing signs that it was going to erupt within 5 or 10 minutes, so we rushed there and got quite a show!  The sun's direction was such that the geyser was flying the rainbow flag...... (that's the picture at the top of the blog).
The visitor center has the times for all of the geysers that are predictable (most aren't), so you could spend all day going from one to the other.....  We saw Old Faithful, Beehive, Daisy and multiple smaller ones too.


Then we moved on to the different type of geothermal areas nearby:  There are beautiful and deep blue pools, bubbling mud holes that bubble all the time (I love those!), and amazingly varied colored terraces:  the blue comes from sulfites in the water (they absorb every color but blue), the other colors are thermophile bacteria which grow in large colonies in the hot, sulfur rich water (nature is amazing!).




There are geysers of every size and every behavior:  Small ones that go on all the time, large ones that are predictable, large ones that erupt every hour, some every century, some completely unpredictably. There are pools of every color and depth, and these delightful mud pools that bubble all the time. Here are a few examples: we took SOOOOO many pictures, it's hard to pick a representative set.

  It's too bad that such signs are necessary, but I guess when over 4 millions visitors come every year, it's inevitable that a few will be idiots......












A lot of the large pool areas, where the water level varies with thermal activity have trees that started to grow, and stand as a dead forest, killed by the heat and the minerals when the thermal water oeverflows.





















And then, among all of these geothermal feature, there is nature: beautiful streams and meadows, bison roaming everywhere, ospreys by the streams where people are fly fishing, and large ravens...
What a place!

 We had a nice lunch by such a little stream, away from the smell of sulfur, just before an afternoon rain that lasted about one hour, but did not impact any of our plans.