{"id":5533,"date":"2017-09-15T15:25:14","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T19:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=5533"},"modified":"2017-09-15T15:25:14","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T19:25:14","slug":"yellowstone-national-park-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/15\/yellowstone-national-park-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Yellowstone National Park – part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Buffalo\"<\/a>

Buffalo<\/p><\/div>\n

On Tuesday I made a day trip into Yellowstone National Park (“part 1”) and on Wednesday we traveled east-to-west through the park with an aborted attempt to see Old Faithful. So yesterday – Thursday – I made a second day trip into Yellowstone with the primary purpose being to view Old Faithful.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be much more than that.<\/p>\n

I entered the park around 10:15am via the west (West Yellowstone) entrance where traffic was heavy. I traveled with fairly heavy traffic for 20 miles until I encountered some stopped traffic. I could see ahead to where the traffic was halted and my first thought was that there had been an accident (I saw a tow truck with a flashing yellow light coming the other way). For a while the traffic moved, albeit very slowly. But as I approached the point of the bottleneck I saw the problem: a herd of about 300 buffalo, some of which were on the road. I edge forward a bit further until the traffic came to a dead halt as the herd began to cross the road. I sat for nearly 15 minutes, engine off, as buffalo swarmed nearby, some crossing just one car in front of me. Very cool. I didn’t mind that 15 minute delay at all.<\/p>\n

\"Crossing<\/a>

Crossing the road<\/p><\/div>\n

\"More<\/a>

More buffalo<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The crowd at Old Faithful<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The eruption<\/p><\/div>When I finally got to Old Faithful<\/a> I had to endure a cold rain. I was underdressed, in shorts and a relatively thin hoodie. My first problem was trying to determine when it was next scheduled to erupt. I considered, then discarded, the direct approach of asking a tourist as it seemed that almost no one in attendance was speaking English. I got to the geyser and noticed that several hundred people were already waiting, which I took to be a clue that it was expected to erupt soon. I went into the lodge to get some coffee and found a sign that gave me the information I needed: it was scheduled to erupt at 11:25am. It was 11:10am. I got the coffee and got back to the edge of the viewing area by 11:20am. Exactly at 11:25am the geyser erupted. I got some video, then some stills.\u00a0 Very impressive.<\/p>\n

Next I tried to get into the parking lot at Grand Prismatic Spring<\/a> and failed – too many cars for a very small lot. I tried again later and again got shut out. So if there was a failure on the day, that was it. I was disappointed, but that disappointment was tempered by the other things that I did and the other shots that I got that were spectacular and mostly unplanned.<\/p>\n

I decided to take a run along Firehole Lake Drive, mostly because I liked the name. Well, it was well worth the investment of time as I saw the White Dome Geyser<\/a> (but not erupting), Surprise Pool and Hot Lake – all very interesting. All very beautiful.<\/p>\n

\"Hot<\/a>

Hot Lake<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Surprise<\/a>

Surprise Pool<\/p><\/div>\n

After the Firehole Lake Drive I went across the road to the Fountain Paint Pot Nature Trail<\/a>. This was a boardwalk with a wide variety of geothermal features – a roaring vent, some smaller geysers and bubbling mud. Beautiful vistas and closeups everywhere I turned.<\/p>\n

\"Steaming<\/a>

Steaming rapids<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Oxidized<\/a>

Oxidized stream<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Deadwood\"<\/a>

Deadwood<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Howling<\/a>

Howling hole<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Another<\/a>

Blue pool<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Vents\"<\/a>

Vents<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Small<\/a>

Small geyser<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Desolation<\/a>

Desolation 1<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Desolation<\/a>

Desolation 2<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Desolation<\/a>

Desolation 3<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Desolation<\/a>

Desolation 4<\/p><\/div>\n

\"A<\/a>

A buck in the grass<\/p><\/div>At this point I thought I was done taking photos and headed home. But more photo opportunities appeared, including one of an elk buck and his harem.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A beautiful bend<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Sparkling<\/a>

Sparkling waters<\/p><\/div>\n

\"White<\/a>

White Dome on dark day<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday I made a day trip into Yellowstone National Park (“part 1”) and on Wednesday we traveled east-to-west through the park with an aborted attempt to see Old Faithful. So yesterday – Thursday – I made a second day trip into Yellowstone with the primary purpose being to view Old Faithful. It turned out … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,4,64,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures","category-places","category-stw","category-places-wy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-1rf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5533"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5572,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5533\/revisions\/5572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}