This morning, we set the alarm for 5:30. While Karen took a shower, I wrote the previous blog entry. At 6 we went downstairs for breakfast. Then I took a shower while Karen spent a few minutes on the computer.
We departed Butte at 7:45, headed for Yellowstone. A cool morning in the 50’s to start, eventually warming up to 70’s in the park. We stopped for gas, then got into West Yellowstone at 10:30 with a 15 minute backup at the Ranger station to pay our entrance fee. Drove on about 5 miles then came to a long traffic backup. We thought it was probably road construction. Was the first sighting of wildlife, and most drivers were rubbernecking. The wildlife? Elk. I said to Karen, “WHAT! I can see this at home all the time, whats the big deal?”
Most of the people stopped appeared to be foreigners. Once we got past that it was on toward Old Faithful.
Most of the roads were 45mph or less. We saw a single bison which looked like a large rock so I didn’t have time to get the camera. But those cars that were stopped to look were under the minimum 25 yards away. I wasn’t about to do the same.
We arrived at a HE-UGE parking lot at Old Faithful and walked into the visitor center about 12:15. A sign said the next predicted “blow” would be 12:50 +/- 10 minutes. That gave us time to grab a bite to eat at the cafeteria, then walk out to see it with the thousands of others there. At 12:40, nothing. At 12:50, nothing. At 1pm, Nothing. Then about 1:10 a little spout appeared. Then nothing. Ah, a teaser. You could watch cameras go up. 1:15, same thing. Then finally, about 1:20 it finally blew. We took our pics and got the heck out of dodge before the throngs made it back to their cars and jammed the roads out. So it was worth it.
We made several more small picture stops on the way out of the park, but the weather was darkening and beginning to rain the further south we went. We pretty much got out of the park by 3pm and continued on towards our stop for the night in Rawlins, WY.