The Wonders of Yellowstone

We've been to Yellowstone National Park before, but there were still things we hadn't seen.  We knew it was going to be a long day.  We are staying about 80 miles from the entrance to the park and we wanted to complete a couple of circle tours in the park.  Since one goal was to see wild animals, we left very early in the morning (5 am) and headed toward Haden Valley.  If there were animals they were hiding, but we finally saw a herd of bison. 

The views of Upper/Lower Falls are spectacular.  We weren't aware of the rainbow that can be seen at a certain time of day....we were there at that time.  The photo turned out pretty good.

The "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone

The Rainbow at Upper Falls

We finally saw something besides bison as we were leaving the falls and Artist Point.  First there was one lone Bull Elk - just hanging out and eating and then he was joined by another one.  They were oblivious to all the people taking photos of them. 

As we approached Mammoth Hot Springs, we had no idea what to expect.  We would be near the North Entrance and the Montana border.  It's a small touristy type of town with a few services, but looming over it is the mammoth mineral formation.  We found the road to take us to the top for spectacular views of the town.
 
The area named Artist Paintpots is always intriguing....how do they do that?  Randy took some awesome close up photos. 

Upper and Lower Geyser Basin have dozens of geysers.  We stopped to to take pictures of several...and then we reached the famous "Old Faithful" Geyser. 

Old Faithful

Old Faithful

Yellowstone Traffic Stoppers

 It was a very long day in Yellowstone.  Randy drove almost 350 mostly slow miles.  But it was a fun day full of cool things to see.