Bison are cool!

When you first drive into Yellowstone you’ll probably see a giant buffalo by the side of the road. You’ll think this some amazingly unusal thing and you must stop to take a picture of it now because no one would believe the buffalo was just standing there in the road. Then you’ll drive a couple more miles and again there will be another buffallo standing in the middle of the road. Then a few miles futher they’ll be a hold heard blocking the road and causing a traffic jam, once again you’ll whip out you’re camera and take few more pictures, this time because there are baby buffalo with them and they’re even cuter than the big guys. However, much like with the gysers by the time you leave Yellow Stone you’ll be another one of those drivers that screams at the idiots stopping there cars in the middle of the road take a picture of a buffalo. You’ll curse at the buffalo themselves for deciding to stand in the middle of the road for ten minutes blocking traffic in both directions. You’ll lament that there are so few bears and moose and wolves in Yellowstone, if only you could have seen one of them instead of all these freaking buffalo all over the place. Why are people stopping like this is some rare event. Well I tried really hard not to lose my patience with the buffalo or my fellow sightseers today. I think I actually did a pretty good job of it. On the final leg out of the park I even pulled over took a few more photos of the buffalos once agian blocking the road, but realizing just how beaitful they are and how long it’d be before I saw another one.

I started the day in Madison campground in Yellowstone. It was a slow start to the day after a cold night. I took my time with breakfast, and then reviewed my maps for an hour or so to think about where I wanted to go and when I might get there. Then I also made a quick trip by one of the visitor centers to ask for some advice from a ranger as to what I should not to miss on my way out of Yellow Stone. I got a pleasant surprise when they told me that the Great Fountian gyser was predicticed to erupt at 11am plus/minus 15 minutes. It was 10:15 which left just enough time to get there. Great Fountian erupts much taller than Old Faithful, but without Old Faithful’s frequency. So I took the oppurtunity and am glad I did. Much more exciting than Old Faithful, a great start to the day.

After the gyser show I made my was around to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Which is home to a pair of spectacular waterfalls. Then made my way down to to Yellowstone Lake and up to a look out over the lake for a very nice view. From there I backtracked a ways and went searching for an ellusive bear, moose or wolf… I’m sorry to say I had no luck finding any of the ellusive three.

I left the park to the north east through the Bear Tooth and into Montana where I’m camping for the night in the nicest campground I’ve been to so far, called Soda Butte. It’s the kind of campground I love, spaced out sites, trees everywhere, not to many people, in fact it’s half empty. Most significantly it’s the kind of campground it’d be impossible to drive an RV into.