Today we leave Cody to go to West Yellowstone for a two day visit to Yellowstone. The weather is drizzly and a little cool.
We left at 8am for the trip to West Yellowstone- a 3 hour drive but it will be longer since we will be making a few stops along the way.
Our first stop at 8:20 am was at the Buffalo Bill Dam -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Bill_Dam.
We stopped at the visitor center to see the exhibits, take photos of the dam and some in our group shopped in the gift store.
8:50 back on the bus and to our next stop at the Pahaska Tepee gift store and lodge. We got there at 9:45 and had 30 mins to shop at gift store, use bathrooms, get coffee or snacks and take photos. It was a light snow outside and the trees had some snow on them.
Pretty cool place...http://pahaska.com/
Originally a lodge founded by Buffalo Bill.
Scenery on the drive to the entrance of Yellowstone
At 10:30 am we entered Yellowstone and after a short drive the bus driver saw a bunch of cars pulled over on the side of the road. He slowed down and we saw a grizzly bear foraging in the bushes by the side of the road. It came out of the bushes near the bus and stood up and I was able to get some good photos of the bear standing. Really cool and exciting!
At 11:30 we stopped at a campground- fishing bridge- which was next to Lake Yellowstone.
Here we were to supposed to have a picnic but the benches were all wet from the rain. We used our raincoats to sit on while we had our lunch. I bet this spot is beautiful on a sunny day. There was a cafe gift store where we bought postcards and coffee.
On the bus again at 12:15 and on the way to Artist Point we saw bison on the side of the road.
We stopped at Artist Point which is supposed to be the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It had a spectacular view of the waterfalls.
http://www.yellowstonepark.com/artist-point/
Our next stop was Yellowstone Canyon Village which was like a small town- grocery store, laundromat, visitor center, and restaurants. We had 20 mins. here to visit the visitor center.
Our bus took us on a drive up into the mountains to get to the West side of Yellowstone. On the way we saw a bighorn sheep on the side of the road, a black bear under some trees a short distance from the road and bison.
Black Bear
On this drive there was snow on the ground and in the trees- it was like a winter scene in Sept.
When we got on the other side the weather was a bit warmer and no snow on the ground. Around 4 pm we arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_Hot_Springs
On one end of the area was the terraces of hot springs and boardwalks surrounding them so one can see the different pools of thermal water. At the other end was the visitor center and buildings that was part of Fort Yellowstone.
Due to the fact we only had one hour here we chose to go to the hot springs and walk around part way and taking photos. In order to really explore the area we needed at least 2-3 hours. In the grassy park between the Hot Springs and visitor center buildings were about 10-12 elk.
They like to hang out here and seem not to be afraid of people. It was easy to take some good photos of them and some of our group did.
Due to a mixup our bus driver did not know the road to W. Yellowstone was closed and after 20 mins of driving found the road closure and he had to drive back to Mammoth and out of the park to the town of W. Yellowstone, MT.
We arrived at our hotel at 7:50pm- almost 2 hours late. Even though it was a Wed. night and we were the only tour bus in town all the local restaurants were busy. We went to the Slippery Otter Pub and after a 30 min wait got a table. We had a salad, burgers and fries- food and service very good. Since they did not have dessert we went down one block to the Dairy Queen for some soft serve ice cream.
Really busy tiring day. Tomorrow we go back into Yellowstone Park.
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