August 12, 2020 - Yellowstone National Park

Today we headed back into the park to finish our grand tour. We hadn’t stopped to take our picture at the Yellowstone sign, so today was the day! We needed to confirm that we are still tourists!Near Fishing Bridge we spotted our first wildlife – a small deer heading toward the river in the construction zone!From there, we headed back to finish the section between Midway Geyser Basin and Madison that we missed yesterday. We took the one-way Firehole Canyon Drive south. It has beautiful views of the Firehole River and Firehole Falls. There is a swimming area in the river but it is closed this summer because of the Covid virus. It is usually jammed with people swimming, so there would be NO social distancing. That was disappointing because it is really fun to swim there in the thermal water!Firehole FallsWe stopped at a small geyser basin pullout and saw the “bobby socks” trees. They are a common sight near active thermal features. The lodgepole pines drowned in the super-heated water of the shifting thermal activity. Silica penetrates the trees and hardens their bases and turns them white and they look like bobby socks.

The next section we missed was the Firehole Lake Drive. Tobey and I have been to Yellowstone several times and this was the first time we took this drive which was quite interesting! The massive dome of the White Dome Geyser  (above) indicates that it has probably been erupting for hundreds of years. It has a narrow vent, so nearly the height of the eruption is only about 30 feet. Afterwards, we continued north to Gibbons Falls. There is an interesting sign there describing how the “new” road that is currently in use was built in the 1920s. It only took about 120 days!Artists Paint Pots was our next stop on the way to Mammoth Hot Springs. The walking tour is just over 1/2 mile and provided amazing views. Our last destination of the day was Mammoth Hot Springs. We stopped in the village and saw some of the old historic fort buildings. Unfortunately, the visitor’s center here, as well as all the locations in the park, are closed. The gift shop was open so we stopped in for ice cream before tackling the trail! Outside next to the parking lot, elk were grazing in town. On the trail of the Lower Terrace, we stopped by the Opal Terrace. In 1926, Opal Terrace began depositing up to one foot of travertine per year.Following the trail we also saw the Minerva Terrace and Palette Spring. We all decided that the Lower Terraces walk was enough for us for the day! We had walked over seven miles today so we headed back to the campground. After dinner we played a couple games of cards and called it a day! It is hard to believe that tomorrow will be our last day here.