C & L On The Road: Yellowstone

C & L On The Road left the Mt. Rushmore area on the morning of the third day heading west to a place called Yellowstone. Clara had never been there, it was high on her bucket list. I had been once as a teenager (yeah about 50 years ago) so I had some bucket left to fill on this one too.

The day was too long and after a stroll on the Interstate looking for Smokey Joe's lid and a lot of driving, we called it a day at the Cody Wy. Walmart RV park. The next morning found us looking at this sign at the east entrance of the park. Having narrowed our campground choices to two, Norris and Indian Creek we still had 50 to 75 miles to drive across the Park. As we dropped down the hill toward Yellowstone Lake Clara caught her first glimpse of steaming earth. The bucket is not empty any more.

This is at Steamboat Point. If you find a map you can follow along.

Our route took us to Fishing Bridge and north through the Hayden Valley where a traffic jam was encountered. More aptly a Bison Jam. The bucket is filling quickly.

The C & L train survived the Bison jam, made a left at Canyon Village and arrived uneventfully at Norris only to find the campground full sign posted in all it's glory. As luck would have it, there is road work being done on US 89 between Norris and Indian Creek. You know, the kind of road work where one lane is closed so they stop traffic and you follow a lead car through. I don't know how long we waited but I was sweating it just knowing there would be no campsites at Indian Creek. Finally got there and there were sites available.

There it is complete with a bear proof food locker and long list don'ts to keep from attracting the bears.

Well it was tired out that day so instead of going out for some adventure we ventured north to Gardiner Mt. to do, of all things, laundry.

The shot on the left is the Norris Geyser Basin. There just isn't enough room in this post for all the pictures I took so I'm trying to do highlights.

Just down the road from Norris is Old Faithful. You know that one thing that everybody has to see when they go to Yellowstone. Well you guessed it, we had to also. Little did we know there was a special treat in store for us at the home of predictable Old Faithful. It turns out there is another geyser just to the northwest of Old Faithful they call Beehive. Now Beehive is not predictable at all. It will erupt twice a day sometimes and not at all others. Today it erupted just seconds before Old Faithful. I pulled the still shots below out of the video I shot of both eruptions so they may not be the best of either but hey a double feature non the less.