Who says Congress never does any good?! At least in 1872 they did.
Pretty funny. This sign says that we can't molest the animals so we reckoned that they didn't want us to have any fun!
This was the first thing we say after getting in a little ways. I think it is call soap mountain. Take a close look and you will see miles of board walk way to get to the top. The sign said it takes 2 hours to make the walk so we had to pass. It was too early in our trip to get tired.
We found a place where we could drive around to the top without having to walk! Pretty smart, huh?!
That's me. A lady watching Toni take the picture commented that the best part was in the foreground. Not sure whether she was talking about me or the gravel I was standing on.
This was sort of interesting. It looked like the hill thing was bleeding. There was a guy here setting up a camera and tripod to take some pictures. We took a lot of ours, including this one, while driving along.
More of the soap mountain stuff.
Just to prove I have an artsy and sensitive side, I got out of the pickup risking my life, and took pictures of these flowers beside the road.
This picture doesn't do these falls justice. They are really very large.
They named it this because the Shoshone Indians made their camp here in the early days. They were called sheepeaters because they subsisted mainly by eating mountain sheep and grasshoppers.
Toni was waiting in line for the rest room here at the Sheepeaters Cliff. Take a note of the number of autos here in this area. It was always like this. Most times it was hard finding a place to park our miniature pickup. ha
By now, we were hungry so we found this little private spot (the nearest party eating was about 20 feet away.) BTW, that is me in the picture.
This is named Roaring Mountain. We stayed here several minutes hoping to hear it roar but nary a peep! If you look closely, you can see steam coming out about half way up.
I think this is still Roaring Mountain. See...............this is proof that we didn't take ALL of our pictures just driving along! But...........I made Toni jump out and run over to this spot so I could get her picture. ha
Just one of a jillion lakes in Yellowstone.
This is a bubbling mess right beside the road.
This is the hot bubbling mess the sign warned us about.
We found a sign that directed us toward some paint pots so decided to check them out. There were hundreds of people with the same idea. We had to walk a lot farther than we wanted.
And here is the main spewing mess that the boardwalk took us to.
This is where the spewing water runs to (just to sit there).
One of our good buds (that we begged) took our picture by the stinking bubbling mess. The earth really gives off some pretty offensive smells in these areas.
Pretty blue pool of bubbling mess.
I think this is one our well thought out drive-by pictures. We didn't see any use in stopping ALL the time.
Another really pretty falls. We past this one and had to turn around on a narrow road to go back for a picture.
A wild river. Fact is, all the rivers were wild.
Another wild river picture taken while we drove! Toni did a good job, don't you think!?
We saw a bunch of these geysers. I had a hard time convincing Toni that the smell wasn't coming from me. Once she even commented that I didn't respect her anymore.
Just another spewing stinking mess.
At least they make some pretty blue pools. I figure that the Indians in this area always had plenty of hot water to bath in. The hot water from all these ran on down the hill and mixed with the cold water.
Lots of people everywhere.
Aha! We are finally to the place where Old Faithful thrills all of us!! Yay!
Quite a large facility here, complete with restuarant, ice cream parlour (which we partook of), motel, and curio store.
As you can see, there was a lot of folks waiting on the geyser to erupt.
And more of them to my right.
And here it began. This is taken about 300 feet away with my telephoto lense.
And it got higher and higher.
It got so high that I had to turn my camera sideways to try to capture it all. I should have had my 50 mm lense on but who knew. Not me.
After Old Faithful, we went about our way taking auto pictures. I call them auto because our Nikon is an auto focus camera and we liked to take pictures from our auto. Worked good enough for us.
That is actually an island in the middle of Yellowstone Lake.
Auto picture of a buffalo. Hang on..............they get better!!
Aha! I told you so. I actually had to use my stealth abilities to sneak up real close to the rascals (taking my life into my own hands). Actually, I did get out of the pickup and had to walk closer but I used my telephoto lens!
Another picture of the same group! I can't imagine why the park feels the need to warn people not to molest the animals. I reckon some folks just don't have any sense.
Auto shot.
Auto shot. Trees in an area that had burned.
Another shot of a burn area. A lot of park had burned some years back.
A nice view
.
Auto picture of a great expance.
Auto picture of an odd rock formation.
I actually had to get out of the pickup and walk up several steps on a boardwalk to get this picture of a great gorge with a river at the bottom.
Looking the other direction from my perch (great gorge)
.
More auto pictures of a great view. Again, Toni does a great job getting these! We can now look back and see what we saw.
Auto picture of some elk. I took this one while driving along.
And this was our last picture of Yellowstone! Yay, we were almost back.
We enjoyed Yellowstone but we were both glad that it wasn't our primary destination. I reckon we are both too impatient to spend days there. Plus, there were just too many people. A person took their life in their own hands when you pulled off the road to look at something.
