It was a long, but wonderful day. I never get tired of this drive, even though Josie sometimes doesn't agree. Yesterday, we both enjoyed the drive. It was a very clear morning and the forecast was right-on for the entire day as we reached into the high 70's and had bright sunshine the entire day. We took lots of photos and, as usual, it was difficult to decide which to include in the post for today.
We'll start with this shot of the mountains with a bison herd as we entered the Teton National Park:
At this location, the bison were everywhere and we got this shot of the herd on the opposite side of the road:
As we passed Jackson Lake, we stopped at a location to watch these trumpeter swans:
As we entered Yellowstone, our plan was to travel the entire outside loop around the Park, beginning with Old Faithful. We didn't plan to stay around and wait for the eruption as we've done that before, but we were looking for specific items that we wanted to buy from the Visitor's Center at each of the main stops along this loop. As we were approaching Old Faithful, we were held up for about a half hour due to road construction. There are planned closures of this section of road and one farther north that were scheduled to begin on September 4, so we wanted to time this final trip to beat the closures. Even though these sections weren't closed, they should have been as the road was one-lane travel only, and the wait was long. We spotted this lone cow elk along this section of road:
Much of the trip was through familiar territory, so some of the photos were of areas we've already shown. This is one that we haven't shown before of the Golden Gate Bridge (not to be confused with the San Francisco bridge):
The drive north to Mammoth Hot Springs was through some beautiful country. The views of the mineral deposits and springs around Mammoth were spectacular:
and we drove by the Yellowstone River in several places while driving from Mammoth to the Tower Roosevelt section of the Park:
We had brought all kinds of food to stop along the way to have a picnic lunch which we finally did at around 4 PM. We were so busy enjoying the drive and scenery, that we didn't feel like stopping until we almost reached the Canyon area of the Park. We found a nice picnic area and made our sandwiches and relaxed:
An interesting event happened on the way south from Canyon to Fishing Bridge where a park ranger was herding bison off the highway. We have seen bison crossing the road before, but this time a ranger was there and he had his flashers going while pushing them to the side:
Another goal of ours was to stop at the Bridge Bay Marina and campground to say goodbye to our friends Scott and Valerie. We stopped at the store where they were working and said our farewells as they are leaving next week to travel back to Campbellsville to work for Amazon again this winter season.
We arrived at the northern edge of the Tetons about the time the sun was sinking in the west. We did get one pretty good shot of the mountains with the sun going down behind them:
One last bit of excitement occurred as we were almost through the park when we spotted this herd of elk, grazing in the last light of the evening:
It was another terrific day in Yellowstone and we will miss that park until we (hopefully) return next year.
Our mission today is to drive to Idaho Falls to take care of some shopping needs at Sam's Club and Michael's. So, we'll see 'ya tomorrow...
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