Yellowstone

The Bear Tooth highway out of Cody is beautiful with mountains that look like sharp bear’s teeth.   Pete is the designated driver through mountains and he’s been doing great.  I am in charge of food and I am happy to be doing that. 

Beartooth Mountains

  We stayed the night at Crazy Creek Campground and realized we’d stayed in the same place 2 years ago.  In the valley way below the camp is the Quaker Oatmeal family ranch—it is beautiful!  Across the road is the beautiful Crazy Creek waterfall.  There has been record snow this winter so the waterfall is much faster and larger than two years ago.The wild flowers are lovely.

Crazy Creek Campground

From our campsite

Quaker Oats Ranch below our campground

Crazy Creek Falls

Beautiful flowers!

Walk to the Falls

 

This is BEAR COUNTRY so we are prepared!  Here’s Pete’s plan of defense.:  Note the signage.  Note the presence of “bear secure boxes”. Carol walks first.  Carol sites bear and tries to distract it.  Pete pepper sprays the bear hoping that he is down-wind and the spray doesn’t land on him.  The bear will run away from us!  THAT is the PLAN!  Note the pepper spray is in a holster on his belt always ready and he shoots from the hip!  That’s my man!!

Bear Country

Bear box at campsite fr food storage

Just like when I was riding Trigger in 6th grade with my six guns

Mosquitoes suddenly swarmed us as we were out walking.  FYI—for purposes of this blog—walking is defined as proceeding on a flat surface.   Hiking is walking on a trail or road that is not flat and involves a lot more effort!  Anyway we went crazy swatting them and they zoned in on Pete who tastes like dessert to them. We should add another holster for Pete with bug spray!

We came into Yellowstone through the Northeast entrance with our lifetime Senior National Park pass which cost us $10 years ago and lets us into all the National Parks free and campgrounds are half price for us!  Such a deal!  We hiked up The Trout Lake trail—and I do mean hike about ½ mile up .  At 8,000 feet altitude we came to a beautiful creek and lake where the trout had come home to spawn...and we saw a nice adult trout about a foot and a half long.  My favorite photos so far.  Doesn't even look like it could be real!

We were camped for the night in Yellowstone and I looked out the side door about 9 pm and saw a bull buffalo two feet from the screen door.  He was just grazing along the RV in the rain.  By the time we got the picture (from inside and out the back window), he was 5-6 ft away but it took a while for my heart to stop racing!  This will be a memory!  He was huge!

From inside the RV

Yellowstone Park is such a treasure.  We must have seen a thousand buffalo from the car and several bulls close to the road and they look beautiful from a distance.  We also had our first wolf siting ever.  He was walking with a bone in his mouth but pretty far away.   The road is not crowded but the campgrounds are so we are getting up at 6:30 tomorrow to get our next site.  Next stop was Mammoth Hot Springs and we were there by 8am and able to get a campsite. 

 

Bull buffalo

The hot springs and these formations are growing larger every year. A magma chamber relatively near the earth's crust heats the water and it reaches the surface as steam and boiling water bringing minerals with it.   There are boardwalks all around these formations in a fairly large area. The evening Ranger program was great.  Yellowstone is now back to it's most natural state since 1800.

Old hot spring with built up minerals-no more activity there but is active all around it

Our camp site at Mammoth Hot Springs

Off to Great Falls, Montana tomorrow to get a mobile RV repairman to re-caulk our back window which leaked some in the first rain we’ve had.   We meet up with our Adventure Caravan tour in Calgary, Canada July 13^th.  The Great Falls ER is where we spent quite a bit of time two years ago when we first started on this Alaska trip and had to return home because they didn't have a MRA available for a week.  We're hoping to slide out of here before anyone knows we're here and be on our merry way!