26/05/10

After a nice undisturbed night we headed off to check out Buffalo Springs before going off for a walk. The springs are not as dramatic as the big geysers, but the colours and the sediment terraces are really so intricate and interesting.

Anyway, we went for a shortish walk in the Fort-Roosevelt area. It was nice to get away from the car for a while and into the peace of the park. We didn’t have any close encounters with wildlife, but there were some deer and bison fairly nearby. The route had a suspension bridge, which bounced quite nicely when you jump in rhythm :).  We also met a group of guys from San Diego, who were out camping in the wilderness, something that sounds really cool if I ever come back.

After the walk we went for a well deserved shower at the hotel before hitting the road. We decided to leave via a different route than the one we came in on so we got so see more of the park. As far as travel time goes this turned out to be a bad idea as we kept stopping to see more wildlife and more spectacular views. We even got to see a grizzly bear! We ended up seeing a good selection of wildlife in the park: bison, elk, various types of deer, black bear, grizzly bear, moose, smaller critters, amazingly colourful birds and an apparently rare blue grouse. The acme (another word from the book) of the sites for me was actually not the geology or the wildlife, but Yellowstone Lake. It is America’s largest alpine lake and at 7733ft above sea level was still almost entirely frozen over. Seeing the huge expanse of ice in front of snow capped mountains and forests was simply breathtaking.

We spent the evening driving across Wyoming, through Buffalo Bill’s roaming ground. We went through the town named after him: Cody. Interesting factoid: Buffalo Bill is actually a misleading name for him as he probably never saw a buffalo. The animals he is famed for having slaughtered were in fact bison, so he should be called “Bison Bill”. Thank you QI :D. That evening had some powerful thunderstorms rolling around that put on quite a show for us. After Cody we were driving across the planes watching the lightning bolts coming down to the ground whilst in the distance we could see the tops of another storm flashing orange beyond a line of mountains. It was great but it did mean that I didn’t get very far in the organisation of the 350+ photos that I took in the 2 days of Yellowstone.

Cube out