Yellowstone, Part 2 (08-18-17)

Yellowstone is a huge park and is definitely NOT what you would call a “one trick pony”.
In addition to the wildlife viewing, there is tons of great hiking. While poor Randy worked, we hiked several trails with Liz.

Hellroaring Creek was a 6 mile round trip hike to….Hellroaring Creek.  To get there, we descended about 850 feet into the canyon.  The problem with that, of course, is that what goes down, must come up!

The views of the Yellowstone River were spectacular along the way, and once we were at the bottom, we crossed over the river on a suspension bridge.













Ordinarily I am not a huge fan of suspension bridges, but this is sturdy enough to handle horses, so it wasn’t an issue.














Far below, the Yellowstone River was a sight to behold!

We were all tired, but felt like we accomplished something after hiking that trail.













The other trail we hiked was to Petrified Trees.  If we had done the whole trail it would have been 1700 ft of elevation gain. 













Lucky for us, there are petrified trees to see after only 1000 ft of gain.

We took a break and had a snack while we enjoyed the spectacular weather and views..

Yellowstone is also known for its geothermal activity.  In addition to the impressive geysers like Old Faithful, just driving down the road you can see the hot spring and geyser activity.

The Old Faithful area of the park is extremely crowded, but we did brave it one day, hoping to see our favorite geysers erupt.

Old Faithful is not the most impressive geyser, its just the most predicable decent sized one.

Our favorite is the Beehive- It spews 200 feet in the air and the base is shaped like a beehive.  The wind shifted during the eruption, and we got pretty wet!

It was early enough in the day that we decided to eat lunch and then walk down the boardwalk and wait for Grand Geyser to erupt. There was plenty to see along the way.





As beautiful as these pools are, their blue color means that they are about 190*- too hot for most living organisms to survive.

After an hour and a half of waiting (Patience is necessary when waiting for geyser eruptions) Grand Geyser did not disappoint.

We took the loop road back to the RV, which took a while due to traffic jams of all kinds.

We are not the only ones who like to explore.  Dozer loves it when we are in a place where he can explore outside.

Naturally, all that exploring is exhausting!













Things became a little dicey when we had a couple of days of not so great weather. One day the sun didn't shine at all. As I mentioned in my last post, we are totally reliant on our two solar panels in this campground. If our batteries got too low, we were going to have to leave.



We were extremely careful in our electrical use, and took more extreme measures than we ever had before. We charged our phones, computer, and cameras either while in our truck or at Liz and Randy’s.

The furnace was kept off because even though it is propane, it uses some electricity. One morning it was 45 degrees when we got up- IN the rig!

Luckily, making coffee isn’t an issue- its almost as easy to boil the water and pour it into the coffee maker as it is to make it regularly ( or, maybe I just think that because I never have to make the coffee?)



Anyway, soon enough the sun came back out and our batteries were back up to 100%!

We ended up staying in Yellowstone just over a week.  We had a great time with Liz and Randy, and really enjoy this park.  (I stole this picture from Randy- thanks Randy!)

Next up is the eclipse…..were we in the path of totality?  You betcha we were!