Yellowstone, Part IV

On our way from Lake Yellowstone to Old Faithful we crossed the Continental Divide twice in a matter of minutes.

Everything said about Old Faithful is true and we have nothing to add except the crowds love it.

North of Old Faithful are three geyser basins, Upper, Midway and Lower.  Each competes for being the most beautiful and most odorous. 

Artist Paintpots have even more luminescent colors.

A drive off the main road led to more waterfalls.  It also led to a surprise, a swimming hole.  Perched on a rock was a bird so tame swimmers were petting it.  It looks a lot like an eagle, any guesses?

Pianist and amateur Yellowstone historian Randy Ingersoll entertains each evening in the Map Room of the Mammoth Hotel.  The wooden map created of exotic woods in the late 1800s overlooks the audience in the Map Room.

We went to enjoy Ingersoll’s ragtime and to see the slide show, “Yellowstone 1902–On The Grand Tour,” a scrapbook tour of William and Mary Carland of Albany, NY.  Ingersoll found the scrapbook while vacationing in Arizona.  It sat on his shelf for years until he began to research the photos and the couple who had traveled 9,000 miles cross country by train  with a Shriner’s group stopping to tour Yellowstone by stagecoach.  This show gave an excellent history of the early days of Yellowstone as a tourist destination.  It also showed the disregard for the environment that was common back then.  Tourists walked on the crust of geysers, garbage was piled up for the bears to eat, and geyser holes were the target of rock throwing.  That all changed in the 1960s when Park Rangers created the rules that have returned Yellowstone to its natural wonder.

As we packed up the RV, this elk wandered into the campground.

This spectacular park created by massive earthquakes, eruptions, and fires is an ever changing landscape.  We look forward to seeing what changes and what remains on our next visit.  Our time in Yellowstone is best summed up by the words of a fellow camper, “We were gobsmacked.”