August 10, 2010 - Yellowstone National Park

What a crazy day this was! We were up before 5 am and headed into Bridge Bay campground in Yellowstone hoping to get a “first-come, first-served” campground. It is approximately an hour drive and the campground office doesn’t open until 7am. Well, we were the first in line but there were NO “first-come” sites available and the computers were down, so they couldn’t check any of the other campgrounds. Apparently, the park service didn’t open seven of the campgrounds this year, so almost everything is full from reservations. Yikes. We decided to not chance driving to another campground and having it full, so we turned around and headed back to Threemile campground. We waited for two sites to open up and got settled before heading back in to the park.It was almost 11 am before we were on our way!

On the drive in we could still see plenty of dead trees. I am not sure if these were from pine beetle kill or trees that are still standing after almost 20 years from the last fire.The road construction crew near Fishing Bridge was going full force when we returned.

We headed north from the Lake Village intersection toward the Canyon area and stopped for a picnic lunch then on to the Mud Volcano area. Black Dragon CauldronTobey and Sue at Sour LakeView near Sulphur Cauldron

Further north we took the South Rim Drive to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. Our first stop was Artist Point. Artist Point is one of the most photographed views in all of Yellowstone. The river drops more than 308 feet over the Lower Falls. We hiked from Artist Point almost to Point Sublime and back (about 1-1/2 miles) for some beautiful views of the canyon. On the North Rim Drive we stopped at the Lookout Point and could see the Upper Falls. From the overlook you can see the old Canyon Bridge in the distance and the water drops about 110 feet over the lip of volcanic rock. Our next stop was Norris Geyser Basin. It is a beautiful spot in the park with boardwalks that take you around much of the basin.The last geyser we stopped at in Norris Basin was Steamboat Geyser. They call it “Old Unpredictable,” unlike Old Faithful, because eruptions can occur anywhere between 4 days and 50 years apart! It was just our luck it had erupted at 11 pm last night! Steam can last for up to 24 hours after the eruption and that is all we saw. When it does erupt, it can spout up to 300 feet in the air – three times higher than Old Faithful!It was a long day, so our last stop was to take the Virginia Cascade Drive between Norris and Canyon before heading back to our camp. It was a long day, but we saw many beautiful sights. Tomorrow we will get an earlier start after a good night's rest.