Day 25 - Last day in Yellowstone

Wow, sorry for the long delay. It seems like it has been go, go, go since my last post....
We landed in Cody,WY at the KOA for 3 nights.

 It wasn't very private but it also wasn't too crowded the first night.

Cody has a rodeo every night in June, July and August. Many of the riders were under 25, and one steer rider was only 7 years old! It was explained this is sort of a 'training' rodeo although there were some events with well seasoned riders.
I didn't take any pictures during the rodeo but here's the view from our seats:

Right in front of us are the chutes where the riders get onto the broncos, steers and bulls. The entire thing was really interesting. I think I'd like to go back and watch behind the stands where they shuttle the animals to and from their pens for the various events. It was quite an operation.
It had a 'county fair' atmosphere and felt very local. One funny thing was between each event 2 girls on horseback carried flags with local advertisements on them while the winner of the previous event did a 'victory lap'. I guess you can't escape advertising even at the rodeo.

Friday Aug 30 we had free pancakes at the campground (which were really good)
and went to Walmart and got an oil change then we ate at a German restaurant which was a nice change from the 'bar and grill' type restaurants that seem to prevail 'out here'. After that we went back to the campsite and laid low for the evening.
Saturday, Aug 31: More pancakes and then took a nice walk by the Shoshone River. It was sunny and hot but very peaceful.

 Then we went downtown to visit the Buffalo Bill Museum which is 5 museums in one. We only made it through three of them before our backs gave out. We went to a local brewpub for our meal then back to the campsite to do laundry in preparation for the week-long tour in Yellowstone where we knew we'd have very little free time.

The drive from Cody to Gardiner, MT the next day was uneventful after crossing over the Big Horn Mountains which were amazing and a little scary. We saw some bison as we drove:

see those brown specks in the distance?


The Road Scholar tour, "Yellowstone: The Great Caldera", began Sunday Sept 1 with dinner but before that we met several of the other members of our group out back on the patio behind the hotel which overlooks the Yellowstone River.

In the green field on the other side of the river, elk would come to graze each evening. It was a wonderful place for a glass of wine before dinner.
Weather continued to be lovely.
On the way to dinner we were surprised to see elk crossing the road right in town.

 but this happened a lot during the week and we became used to it.

Monday morning, Sept 2 we met in the local church basement. Gardiner is a small town with friendly people. Everywhere we went people were so nice.
Our guide, Gene Ball, previously worked at the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, and also directed the Yellowstone Association  and Yellowstone Institute, so we were in very good hands.
We also had a group leader, Louis Spencer who taught school in Kenya and Iran, so he kept us in line and made sure all the plans went smoothly.
Gene gave a lecture in the morning about Yellowstone he showed some amazing wildlife slides and introduced us to the Park. We had a lovely lunch in the church and then got onto the coach(bus) and ventured into the park for the first time.
We stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs. There are no 'mammoth' there, just BIG hot springs. The emerging water is loaded with calcium carbonate which precipitates out when the water cools forming amazing terraces. The colors come from bacteria which feed on the chemicals:

We saw these features from several angles and walked through them on boardwalks and down many stairs. That's our guide, Gene, in the cowboy hat

An amazing place, but this was only the beginning.

Tues, Sept 3 we started at the Yellowstone Park Heritage and Research Center where we met archivists and librarians and learned how they are preserving the history of the park. This is not a usual tourist destination although anyone is allowed to do research there. It was a very interesting place.
Each day, we had a brown bag lunch with a cold cut sandwich. We ate in picnic areas.
After lunch we visited the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, one of the most magnificent features in the park.

Not the most flattering picture of me.
Artist Thomas Moran painted a famous picture of this scene(I found this image at TOPofART.com):

He took a few liberties with the subject, but it is definitely the same place. I recall seeing this painting many times in the past.
In addition to this vantage point we visited the Upper and Lower Falls so we got a lot of viewpoints and the roaring sound of the falls.
We also stopped whenever we saw wildlife. Sometimes we just slowed down as we went by because there was no safe place to stop the bus. We saw lots of Bison(buffalo), many elk, and some pronghorn(antelope) like these:

Next we visited Canyon Visitor Center where there was a huge relief map of the area. Different areas of the map lit up as the formation of Yellowstone was described.
We ate dinner in the cafeteria there and headed back to our hotel as the sun set and dusk fell. We saw a few animals but also this lovely rainbow:

Wednesday Sept 4 was a different sort of day. We met Jack Gladstone, a Blackfeet Indian Tribal Citizen. He derives from both Native American and German roots. We spent the day in various natural settings, some we'd visited before, while he told us stories and sang us songs about the formation of Yellowstone, the wisdom of animals, and development of Native American culture.

He was delightful and interesting. My camera batteries were both flat so I didn't get many pictures but I did get this one of a bluebird who stopped by to enjoy the music:

Not sure I've ever seen a bluebird before.
The day wrapped up with Jack giving a performance at the restaurant where we had dinner.
In the morning at breakfast he brought his CD's for sale. I got an MP3 disk with ten of his albums. Lots of great songs, some poignant, some very funny.

Thursday, Sept 5 was our day at Old Faithful.

We arrived just in time to see it erupt as we ate our lunch on the veranda of the Old Faithful lodge(I guess I didn't get a picture of this eruption but this was our view as we waited for the geyser). The period between eruptions is currently 91 minutes give or take 10 minutes. When Will was here in 1977 it was 68 minutes, so it seems to be slowing down.
We left the area for a side trip to the continental divide.

Here's a better shot of me at another waterfall:

There are several other great geysers back at Old Faithful that were due to erupt in the afternoon. These were actually more impressive than Old Faithful but not as reliable. We were lucky to see two of them erupt. This one is called 'Grand':

We also saw this amazing pool called Morning Glory:

Riverside Geyser also erupted for us:

Each of these geysers erupted for 10-20 minutes! Very impressive.
We walked a little over 2 miles to and from these features and as we returned to Old Faithful, it erupted again(no picture this time).
We also toured the lobby of the Old Faithful Lodge which was a real surprise:

It looks like Hogworts with all of the stairways and balcony. And check out the big clock on the 4-sided fireplace(you can only see one opening but there is a hearth on each side)!
As we ate dinner in the cafeteria, we saw Old Faithful erupt one more time.

We stopped at two geyser basins on the way back to the hotel as the sun was setting making for some nice images.

 We didn't get back to the hotel until 10PM and everyone was pretty much done in.

Friday Sept 5, our last day of the tour and the first rainy weather we'd had all week.
We went to Lamar Valley which is along the northern border of the park. Will and I came in this way but we didn't stop and look at anything but we did see lots of Bison herds. The rain showers made it difficult to find a lot of different wildlife for viewing but we saw lots of bison and some pronghorn. Wasn't taking as many pictures at this point.

It was a much quieter day than Thursday but that was ok because we were all exhausted after the day at Old Faithful. We were glad to take it easy and look at animals in the scope in various locations. As we drove home, in daylight this time, each site we passed was now quite familiar and brought back many memories.
We had a 'farewell' dinner followed by a meeting to provide some feedback to the leaders. What a 'family' we'd become over such a short time. I went back to the hotel and made a shared Google folder we could all put pictures in.

I'm going to stop here as it has been too long since I started this post on Saturday. Next time I'll begin with our last day in Gardiner and our trip to Arco, Idaho, and beyond.