Yellowstone

We have now spent close to 3 days at Yellowstone. I feel like I am repeating myself but it is just indescribable. On day one, we got to the park kind of late, so we headed over to Old Faithful and got there with about 20 minutes before it was due to go off. You could tell when it was getting close, as it began to bubble, and more steam came out. finally, pretty much right on schedule, it shot up! Exciting way to start this leg of the trip. As we drove through the park the next morning, there are so many differnet parts to notice. There will be steam coming from a hillside, or right from the ground and then you'll drive through heavily wooded areas; water falls and strams are common too. We learned there are 4 types of thermal features, geysers, mudpots, fumaroles and hot springs. They have amazing colors due to the microorganisms that live there. The only down side is that they release sulphur so often it is QUITE smelly (think a whole trail that smells like rotten eggs!) Rob has looked into getting a bandana just to cover his nose with! Once again, we've gotten lucky with the animal sightings. Several times, we have seen bisons at close range. The first night, one walked down the street, right past our cars. Every one had to stop until he was done crossing! Then the next night, a whole herd crossed over! We even came across one on one of the trails when we were out of the car; he really didn't pay us any attention. We also saw a herd of elk that was hanging out by one of the visitor centers. They didn't seem to pay attention to us either. we did get a bear sighting but it was quick. There was a bear jam and we were toward the end and couldn't see much. All of a sudden, we saw him run across the road and go off into the woods. It was so fast! The next morning, we didn't spot a bear but we did find grizzly prints( the other bear was a black bear). It was by the water and they went on for a long while. When we asked a ranger about it later, he said he probabaly lived somewhere in that area but we didn't spot him (I'm not sure if we were happy or sad to miss him!!) we will spend part of tomorrow at Yellowstone and then we are moving on to Cody, Wyoming...