Yellowstone Exodus

After staying the night in the fabulous Old Faithful Inn, we packed our bags, and headed to the hotel's restaurant for breakfast. We ordered the buffet, which came with juice and a hot chocolate for each of us, but we had to specifically ask our waiter to bring the hot chocolate, since he did not offer to do so. The hot chocolate was VERY GOOD, but Jake spilled his before even taking a sip, which was a real tragedy, especially because they didn't offer to bring us a replacement. We were put off by the poor service, though the food was very good.

After that we went out for a walk along the boardwalk the led out and around the many geysers in this area. We spent some time hanging around Old Faithful to see if it would go, but got tired of waiting and continued up the trail. We arrived at the Grand Geyser and I began reading the information about it. It is the tallest predictable geyser know. It's much larger than old faithful. it erupts about twice daily. Before it erupts, it begins to churn/bubble strongly. As I read all this, the pool in front of us began to churn. I thought, OK, some geysers do that for hours before an eruption. Then it said, "moments later the geyser erupts" So I'm like hey Jake, it's about to go, and there it went. There were several volunteers who document the geysers, and all remarked on what a good show it was putting on. According wikipedia, it gets as much as 200ft tall. It went on for several minutes, and when it finally died down we wandered further up the trail.

We then walked to the morning glory pool, and as we were headed back down the boardwalk there, we noticed a large lone male buffalo drinking from the opposite side of a stream, no more than 40 yards away; this was during breeding season, when males were feeling especially aggressive, too. Well, we stopped along the trail, confident that we were too far out of range to bother him, and watched. A young woman, who had not been reading the signs about saying on the boardwalks, and not harassing the animals, thought that the 15 foot wide stream was enough of a buffer, and left the trail, and cut through some trees to get a much closer and unobstructed view, and began taking pictures. The buffalo, which obviously felt threatened, stopped drinking and gave her a long look. At which point she smartly backed off, but only about 5 feet, until the buffalo returned to his drink. Realizing that she wasn't moving off, the buffalo then crossed the stream, and ambled casually towards her. She, smartly headed back for the boardwalk, and up towards the morning glory pool. Jake and I stayed still to avoid the buffalo's notice while he stood squarely upon the boardwalk and gazed about. Finally, satisfied that he had made his point that he was VERY LARGE, he continued on his way, up into the forest.

We continued our walk and saw lots of other geysers in various stages of activity, when we suddenly realized it was nearly checkout time at the hotel. It was again near time for Old Faithful, so I reserved us some seats while Jake went to get our luggage from the room and check us out. He returned in time for us to watch the geyser, which really isn't anything like as spectacular as the large ones we'd already seen, and in addition to that, the boardwalk is much further away that it is from other geysers, still as probably the most famous geyser in the world, it's a must to see.

From the Old Faithful area, we headed south to West Thumb, then turned east along the norther edge of Yellowstone Lake, finally turning north at Lake Village and cutting through Hayden Valley, which is the place to see buffalo, and wolves possibly. While we saw none of the latter, we got a fairly close encounter with the former. Along the way we saw 2 males butting heads, and further on We noticed a small group of buffalo coming towards the road. 2 females, 1 calf, and a large bull, who was pawing the ground as he came, stirring up dust and grunting. We had pulled into a parking area, but stayed in the car doorways in case he should head our way. This group crossed the road a little behind us and caused a traffic jam.

The main problem was one car. The car would creep up an inch on the buffalo every time it got the chance, and every time, the male would stop and turn and lower his head towards the car. You'd think that driver would have learned to stay still, but he just kept doing it, and managed to make the buffalo pretty angry. He even made a move to headbutt the grill at one point, but stopped short, and finally moved his family off the road.

The sun was setting, and we still had quite a ways to go to leave the park. After darkness had set in, we encountered still more buffalo, having to creep our way through the dark night to avoid a collision with a movable wall. Finally, we exited the park at the north east entrance, and pulled over to sleep at the first shoulder wide enough for our car, completely exhausted, but very satisfied.