Day 9 - July 14th - A Day at Yellowstone

So of course Dave got the day started a lot earlier than us, and hung out at the KOA until we woke up. We were picked up at our campsite around 8:30 AM to go to our rental car, a 2005 White Dodge Stratus. The guy that picked us up had a wealth of knowledge about the area, and Southern California, where he is originally from. "Too many assholes there." We had to head back to the campground to get our Yellowstone Pass. The drive was incredible...speed limit was 70 on a deserted road, and I took full advantage of a car that can accelerate (even though it was only a 4 cylinder). Yellowstone was incredible, and the pictures posted show much of what we saw.

We ran into a traffic jam not too far into the park, and I said "there's probably some buffalo in the road", and less than 10 seconds later, a car pulled forward, and a bison was 10 feet from our car. We saw many more bison that day, as well as some pronghorns (or weird looking deer, we couldn't tell), and later on a pair of elk. The first half of the day progressed with us looking at hot springs and geysers, something we got really tired of before we got to Old Faithful. The Grand Prismatic Springs was incredible, and besides our pictures, looking at some online would also do it justice. Old Faithful was obviously something we had to check out, but it turned out to be extremely boring, and Dave is convinced that the park pumps water for this huge geyser every hour and a half. His captioning tells his side of the story.

After Old Faithful, we drove a lot more, not concerned about stopping for geysers and hot springs anymore because they all look the same. We saw Yellowstone Lake, the largest high elevation lake (above 7000 feet) in North America. It is at about 7700 feet. We then wanted to check out some waterfalls, and parked at the Upper Falls. We started hiking around, and after half a mile, we came upon a trail called "Uncle Tom's Trail". It leads down to a great view of the Lower Falls, but it is a 328 step descent and subsequent climb, all at an altitude of 8000 feet. Let's just say Dave wasn't the only one out of breath. Altitude sucks.

We then decided to walk to Artist's Point, which has an incredible view of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. The hike was close to a mile, more uphill climbs involved. We then realized after capturing the great view, that we were 1.5 miles from our car at the other parking lot. Wearing our bright pink flamingo shirts from YoWear, we figured somebody would pick us up as hitchhikers. We were wrong. After 20 minutes and 100's of mosquitoes, we finally made it back to the car, and were completely exhausted. We decided to start our drive back to the campground, and on the way saw some cars stopped. We also stopped to see what everyone was looking at (this is the standard for driving in Yellowstone), and found 2 fairly large elk roaming around. Some of the pictures were blurry, but we got some great ones of them.

We ate at Buckaroo Bill's in West Yellowstone, MT and decided to return for their Breakfast Buffet the next morning. We got back to the campground originally with plans of waking up early (4AM) to see the sunrise, and more sites at Yellowstone, but were too exhausted and decided against it. After sitting in the hot tub later on, we took showers and turned in for another cold night.

By the numbers:

100's:
Dollars saved by renting a car
Comments on our shirts
Mosquitoes destroyed
Mosquito bites
Times Dave (we) needed to stop and catch his (our) breath

Sweet Pictures
Map of how far we've gone