8/18/08 - Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

We got up and took off to see part of the park. The park is kind of laid out in a figure 8. We drove the lower part -- this is where Old Faithful is. This is a huge park. We left at 9 am and drove 125 miles and didn’t return back to camp until 7 pm. There is a lot to see and you stop often. We went to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We went on the south part of the canyon rim drive because the north part of the drive was under construction for the summer of 2008 (of course). We saw the upper and lower falls on the Yellowstone River through the canyon. These are really massive waterfalls. Then we continued south on the way to Old Faithful and drove through a herd of bison. They were on the road and on both sides. Traffic had come to a standstill because of having to dodge the bison. It made me think of the old Roger Miller song, “You Can’t Roller Skate Through a Buffalo Herd.” We stopped at several locations that had mud pots, steam vents, pools, waterfalls and geysers. We finally made it to Old Faithful and only had to wait 30 minutes until it blew. After Old Faithful we saw more mud pots, steam vents, geysers, waterfalls and pools. The entire Yellowstone area is geothermal and is the remnant of a gigantic volcano that erupted 600,000 years ago. Yellowstone has thousands of small earthquakes each year -- most can’t be felt. One of these days it’s going to erupt again like Mt. St. Helens. Only a whole lot bigger.