Funny buffalo story. While traveling on the lower loop there were a lot of fun places to pull off and look at everything. We say our first buffalo and elk when we spotted LOTS of people stopped and out of their cars looking at something. Funny buffalo story. When stopped at a parking lot and found a short hike to Oja Caliente springs. We decided to walk the trail since it was nice out and we needed a good walk. Along the trail we spied this buffalo.
We left him alone and kept walking to the springs. It was a cool spring and there was a stream nearby. The boys of course wanted to throw a few rocks and climb on this cool old log. As I was taking a picture of the boys I heard Jerimy say "ah, Margaret- the buffalo's coming". To which Lucius ran toward his dad (away from the buffalo). Oliver I asked to climb down and come to me when the buffalo kept coming. He got closer and closer and closer. Thank goodness the log was in the way and the buffalo didn't really care about us- he just wanted to swim in the creek.
That was a fun experience with a buffalo. So after THAT, we hiked back to the car and started driving again. This time we stopped at Lower Geyser Basin.
Then it was time to drive to Old Faithful. It was Crazy busy, super hard to find a spot to park. We walked through the gift shop to find a flat penny machine and then grabbed some lunch stuff. We had a picnic near Old Faithful. As we were walking up to it- it went off. Super cool to see. Not knowing for sure when it would go off again (I thought I'd read every 30 minutes), we ate lunch and waited. We waited and waited and then started to hear people talking about "every 90 minutes". Noticing that the crowds were not forming yet, we walked to the Old Faithful Inn to look inside.
After what seemed like enough time, we headed back to get seats for the show. The crowds were deffiantly back now, and we ended up sitting on the boardwalk. We had a decent view till a bunch of other people just walked right in front of us and sat down. That did not make me very happy and kind of ruined the experience for me a bit. I was grouchy but didn't let it completely wreck my day.
But now you're getting sick of the photos but I'm going to keep going. At this point in our day it's about 1:30 pm and we realize there's a LOT left to drive on this lower loop. Back in the car we look for places to stop. We see a waterfall sign and jumped out briefly to look. Oliver even took our picture.
Now we really wanted to get around the lower loop before it got dark, so the next stops were nice but felt a bit rushed. This is Yellowstone Lake:
The Mud Volcano and Dragon's mouth springs:
Upper falls from the south rim:
The brink of Upper falls on the north rim:
Here's Gibbon Falls, cause you can never see enough waterfalls:
Then near the west exit before we left the park for the evening, we stopped at what the boys called "elk mountain". It's where we saw the elk this morning. There were three laying out in the grass soaking up the last of the sunshine.
Then it was off to West Yellowstone town to find McDonald's for dinner (the boys' choice), and a candy store for dessert.
What a long fun day. So much to see and do. I don't think we really planned enough time to spend in the park itself and didn't realize how much driving we'd be doing once in the park. But we loved it. Tonight when we got back to the tents we started a fire in the wood burning stove. It made the tent nice and cozy warm. Jerimy kindly woke up during the night to add more wood.
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