After staying up late to see the stars, we got up early to see more geysers before leaving the geyser basis area for our next hotel, the Lake Yellowstone Hotel. But first we went back to visit our favorite, Castle Geyser, and hike the paved trail back to Morning Glory Pool. It was a drizzly morning and we wanted to get back to the inn in time for the brunch buffet (William's favorite part of any hotel stay!), so we were only out about 90 minutes.
These are bear tracks in the mud. We had no idea how close we would see both bison and bear in just hours....As we loaded up the car after brunch, we saw a crowd on the walkway near (but not watching) Old Faithful. I asked someone what was happening and they said a bison sighting. So of course we had to look, too! It was crazy to see two bison walking near the paved paths of the geyser field. This was our first encounter with people getting TOO CLOSE to the wildlife. After we watched from afar, we got in our car to leave and ended up having to drive right past one. We pulled into a parking space for a closer view, but stayed safely inside the car!
After that exciting start to the day, we worked our way through the various natural wonders of the geyser trail - seeing more famous geysers, pools and mud pots. Considering it took us something like 4 hours to get 30 miles, I suddenly understood why everyone suggested multiple days in Yellowstone! Parking was horrible at many of the spots. We were thankful for a small rental car instead of a big SUV or one of the rental RVs. Especially when we needed to pull off the road to get out for an animal sighting, which was a frequent occurrence.
The haze and drizzle cleared off for a nice day and we saw our first bear! We were glad to have that out of the way! We met people throughout the trip who said they had not seen one after multiple days. Our grand total was 8 over the course of three days. Our bison total was more like 4,000! Though I have no idea how many of the same bison we saw multiple times as we drove through Hayden Valley to/from the Lake Yellowstone Hotel. Pronghorn are the third animal below.
The Mudpots were particularly smelly! And crazy enough bison were hanging out near some. As I was trying to back away from one, I didn't notice another behind me and stepped in a pile of bison poop. Luckily I didn't step into any bison!
We finally made our way over to our new digs and were very pleased with the accommodations. The shower was warm and had good pressure and William had this living room area to call his own. I actually had forgotten that I booked this room layout and thought we were upgraded. But I went back and looked at the description of what I booked and realized I had paid for it. The only thing that totally escaped me about Yellowstone was that there would be no wifi. We told William he had to keep a travel journal on his Chromebook. But I didn't realize that Chromebooks didn't work without internet, so that never happened. (Seriously....those things are stupid....what a marketing ploy since I have now bought two - one through school and one for home - without realizing their worthlessness)
After cleaning up we enjoyed a drink in the lobby and then had dinner in the dining room. It was a lovely meal and clearly the finest dining available at Yellowstone. We ended up going there the second night, too, since dining choices were so scarce. It never occurred to me that there weren't places to just drop in for meals!
After dinner we walked along the parking lot in front of the hotel which overlooks the lake. But it was a steep cliff so we didn't get to go down to the water and there wasn't any beach.
