yellowstone day 2

the entrance

as it says

midway geyser basin

geyser

old faithful

just outside the visitor info centre

and then there was snow!

chromatic pool

more snow

the morning glory pool

a cute bison calf

Thursday 17th June

Waking up this morning felt some what different as our room was not hot like it had been almost everyday that we had been away. All of the motels are well insulated and the rooms seem to heat up during the night. I got out of bed and went to the window to look and yes outside was snow! It was actually snowing and everything was covered in snow. It is obviously June and summer here in the states and we have snow, fresh snow. I got on the net to check the weather and the temp was 0 degrees now and the low of the night was minus 8. This was going to make our 2nd day at Yellowstone really cool.

Today we were going to drive the southern loop and head out of Yellowstone through Grand Teton National Park to Jackson Hole. First stop was a small detour off the main road for 2 miles to a water fall, Firehole Falls. We got back onto the main road and came along the midway geyser basin. As we drove towards it you could see the steam in the distance. We stopped and walked around and looked at the different geysers and the paint pots, (boiling mud) it is amazing just to have boiling water and mud in the ground 24-7.

From there to Old Faithful where we parked the car and planned to spend the rest of the day there. We had some lunch and Old Faithful was scheduled to go off at 2.05 pm + or - 10 mins. Well it did and it was just after 15 past when it went off, it was cool spurting boiling water 30 to 56 metres into the air, pushing out some 14000 to 32000 litres of water, lasting about 2 to 3 mins.

There was a walk that took us past litteraly 100's of geysers and hot water pools that went for 4.4 km round trip past the morning glory pool. We took 100's of photos of most of what we saw and they have all turned out really good. We will have to show them to you when we are back. While walking around the geysers the weather in true Yellowstone style changed from sunny to snowing on two or three occasions. We also ran into 2 bisons with their baby calves, so we took a photo of them, the calves were so cute. We kept walking and got back to Old Faithful in time to see it go off again. By this time it was 5.30 pm and we had to drive to Jackson Hole. As we drove we ended up going through the Grand Teton National Park which we had driven to before. 2 years ago we drove the PT cruiser to the entrance gate through snow and ice to find the park closed. This time we could drive through and wow the scenery was spectacular as we could see it!

We arrived into Jackson by about 7.30 pm and checked into our motel. It had been a big day and we both felt tired. I found a menu in the motel room for Chinese, so I went and got some takeaway and we ate it in the room. Tomorrow we are going to look around Jackson, without snow and then make our way to Salt Lake City.