The whole seven days we were at the Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone, we never knew whether we were going to have Internet or not. The park charges for unlimited WiFi, but not all the spots receive it very well. As it happened, we were in one of the worst spots. No, we didn’t pay for the usage, but did opt for “coupons” which allowed us to connect free every 10 hours. As I said, the connection was terrible (actually, it sucked!!) but I worked around it. I couldn’t even get good cell reception on my air card, so that wasn't even an option! I did use my iPhone to get emails and such when we were in town. There were a few times I was able to upload and get stuff done on the PC, but that didn't happen often. When I did manage to get on line, the service was more like dial up and not speedy at all....it seemed to take forever to get anything done on it. Even though Internet and cell reception were an annoyance, it didn't stop us from enjoying the days we were sightseeing (and geocaching) in Yellowstone Park.
Friday morning we woke to 33 degrees, but the sun was up and shining bright all day long. The temperature actually got up to 67 degrees, but the evenings were so cold that we had to use the heater. We hurridly got our stuff together (cameras, binoculars, snacks, and jackets) and drove into Yellowstone. Boy is it nice to have the Golden Age Pass! We just showed it to the ranger at the entrance and drove through with no charge.
Since Yellowstone is a National Park, no physical geocache containers are allowed to be placed there. The only thing allowed is Earth Caches and Virtuals. Earth Caches deal with geological formations, and the person who places the cache asks the finder to email them some type of historical data (or post a picture) in order to claim the find. As for virtuals, the finder has to go to a certain spot and email the owner something about what you see there (usually a name or something). Of course, there are many geological features in Yellowstone, so there were a lot of "caches" to locate. As it was, we ended up finding 29 of them.
Since Friday was our first day in the park, we drove to the most famous spot of all (Old Faithful). Old Faithful, as usual, was great. Almost as soon as we got there, the geyser was about to go off. However, we were in for a surprise and got to see both Beehive Geyser and Old Faithful going off within 2 minutes of each other. The ranger said that is not a common occurence, so we were really fortunate. The first picture is of Beehive going off and the second picture is the world famous Old Faithful spouting off.
After watching those two go off, we continued to walk around the boardwalk and saw more hot bubbly pools and spouting geysers.It was still early when we left the upper geyser basin, so we wanted to go see the Grand Prismatic area (mid geyser basin) but it was closed to bear activity, so we ended up going further north to Mammoth Hot Springs.
At Mammoth, we climbed the steps to the top of Minerva just to find the answers to one of the Earth Caches we were researching.
Some of the stuff needed was pretty technical, but we managed to send the owner an email on what he was looking for. We had planned on having dinner at the restaurant in town, but ended up with an an ice cream instead. Neither of us was very hungry after climbing up and down the steps around Minerva.As we were driving back to West Yellowstone, we saw a group of Bison (cows and calves) on the road. These animals are so big, the cars don’t even bother them. We all had to stop and wait for them to move on down the road.
Saturday, we headed northeast to Canyon City and drove around both the north and south rims to view the the falls areas.
The prettiest spot is the overlook called Artists Point. The colors were awesome! It was a fantastic 70 degree day, and we spent a lot of time walking the “many” steps up and down to various view points.From Canyon City, we headed south to Fishing Bridge, then back by Old Faithful and north again to Madison and on to West Yellowstone. During that drive, we saw a Grizzly Sow and her cub, along with a lot more Elk and bison. This is a long distant shot of the sow and her cub. The sow shows up ok, but the cub is really hard to see.
Here is a good close up of a cow Elk.
Sunday, we got up early and actually looked for, and found, three physical caches that were hidden near town (not in the park). It was cold and sprinkling rain, so we didn’t stay out long. Good thing we went back to the coach because the skies turned black, and it started to rain very hard. It poured the rest of the day and most of the night. Again, we had to have the heater on because it didn’t get over 59 degrees that day.Monday, the sun was back out and the temps were back up. This time it actually hit 70. Could not believe what a beautiful day it was. We went back into the park and drove south to West Thumb and walked around the basin there. West Thumb is actually a crater within a crater inside the huge Caldera of Yellowstone. Confusing, but with all the earth caches we were doing, we learned a lot about how the whole area was formed. We spent a lot of time in West Thumb and took our time driving back to the coach.
Tuesday, it was again a very nice day, so we drove to Jackson Hole. Now that was a long drive!! We were amazed to see Lewis Lake completely frozen over.
Yes, there was a lot of snow along the Continental Divide, but once down in the Tetons the only snow we saw was in the mountains.Jackson really hasn’t changed since we were there several years ago. We stopped at a couple places and even had lunch there, but everything was so high priced we didn’t buy anything. We spent more time stopping and taking pictures of the Tetons. What amazing mountains. No matter how often we see them, they continue to awe us.
It was late by the time we got back to the coach, so just had a quick snack before cleaning up and calling it a night.Wednesday was a clean the coach day (inside and out) and get ready to leave on Thursday.
Thursday, May 28, we were up early and off to Boise, Idaho. We are now in Ken's brother's driveway (huge parking area) until Monday morning.
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