Dusty woke up early and went arrived at the visitor center when it opened at 8am.  He found the 5 geysers that they predict on the map, and asked about wildlife sightings.  They told me about the buffalo – already seen them, what about moose?  They told me there’s been no recent moose sightings in the park, and moose are seen primarily in Grand Teton NP.  Dusty then went on walk around the geyser basin, and eventually met up with 2 older volunteers who were picking up trash along the walkways.  Since they kept walking off the path, which everyone is advised not to do since you can fall thought the crust and into hot water, he asked one of them ‘Do they tell you where you can get off the path?’   The old man almost winked and said ‘at this point we tell them where they can get off the path’.  He was a ‘geyser gazer’ – a die hard fan of geysers, who’d spent every summer for 40 years coming here from Ohio.  When he retired 10 years ago, he moved to the park – the park service provides him with an apartment across the road.  As we walked along he told me about the various geysers; how they think Aurum geyser needs a layer of cold water on top of the hot water before it will erupt; how Lion often has a 2^nd and 3^rd eruption 80 minutes after the first unpredictable eruption; how geysers around Spasmodic were related – if one went off, the others wouldn’t, since their energy had been spent.  

Once he woke up Robby was feeling much better.  We headed north to Mammoth Hot Springs.  We spent half an hour walking around the lower springs, and another half an hour driving the upper springs loop saw the springs.  The lower springs were much more colorful when I was Robby’s age.  

Mammoth Hot Springs - Canary Spring

Orange Spring Mound - probably the most colorful and active formation at Mammoth

We exited the national park, driving 5 miles north to escape to fabulous Gardiner, Montana to eat pizza – anything to avoid another national park service meal.  After lunch we headed east, and quickly found pronghorn antelope. 

Antelope

Then we stopped at Tower Falls – I have memories of hiking to the bottom of Tower Falls as a kids.  CJ & Dusty headed down the trail to see the falls, only to find a the trail blocked about 50’ above the river with signs that the trail to the falls was washed out.  Not only was the trail blocked, it was blocked with about 100’ of log fence – if they’d spent half the time fixing the trail that they’d spent building this fence, they’d have fixed the trail. I was pretty disappointed that I’d wasted time on a hike to essentially nowhere, and hadn’t seen any signs telling me the trail was washed out.  I had noticed a sign at the top of the trail telling us how they’d restored the trail in 1985, so please don’t take shortcuts.  When we got to the top of the trail I saw one sign – 8-1/2” by 11”, on the left side opposite the ‘we restored this trail in 1985’ sign, in quite small lettering, telling us that us that as of May 2006 the trail was indeed washed out.  This was the most pathetic notice I’d ever seen.  In the words of Stephen Colbert, this place was on notice.  We found Kathy and Robby at the ice cream shop.  After a much needed ice cream break we found the facilities… closed for cleaning.  That’s it, this place is dead to me. 

We continued south, and stopped at the top of Antelope Creek valley where the folks with telescopes find grizzlies and wolves.  The crowd had just seen wolves playing, but the wolves had just lied down to nap, and despite looking for half and hour or so through binoculars, we saw nothing.   Dusty took a quick peek through one telescope to sight the wolves – he saw a doglike shadow under a tree, but couldn’t find it again with the binoculars.  We left that spot disappointed. We went further up the valley, saw more folks stopped, and asked what they’d seen – the ranger responded that they’d seen bears, moose, and wolves, but they were all lieing down in the grass right now.  We’d already seen that show, so we didn’t stop.  Minutes later, we saw another crowd.  Dusty’s learned to park first, asks questions later when a good sized crowd appeared. This crowd was for a moose – no antlers - less than 100’ up the embankment on the side of the road under the trees.  

The lighting was poor since the moose was quite shaded, but we took plenty of pictures since the moose was close.  A short while later, we saw another crowd and pulled over again…Mrs. Moose and Baby Moose, eating a few hundred feet below the road in perfect sunlight.  We got plenty of pictures of the Meese.  

We continued south, and pulled into Canyon again.  I had distinct memories of Uncle Tom’s trail, over 300 stairs down into the canyon, and hadn’t done the trail since I was Robby’s age.  CJ, Robby and Dusty hiked the trail down and out uneventfully, and had a good time doing it.   Kathy stopped about halfway down cause the trail becomes pretty vertical and not fear of heights friendly.

Lower Yellowstone Falls from the bottom of Uncle Tom's Trail

At this point it was around 6pm, and the signs told us the shortest way to Old Faithful was the same way we went yesterday.  I didn’t like that way much, and wanted better pictures of buffalo.  I assumed that with 500 or so buffalo and decent sunlight, I had a good chance of getting good pictures.  I was right.  We hit a huge line of traffic where a few dozen buffalo where quite near the road and the river. We parked a few hundred yards from the buffalo, then CJ, Robby and Dusty walked up the road.  As we walked 3 buffalo crossed the road in front of us, and I had second thoughts about the wisdom of this decision.  We reached the parking lot where dozens of others were taking pictures and joined them in picture taking. 

A nearby bull was grunting and gathering up his heirem.  Eventually he decided to cross the road within a hundred feet of so of the crowd – made things quite interesting for us.  I tried to keep the kids on the opposed side a parked car from the bull – I figured there were plenty of less clever tourists closer to the buffalo than us, so we were relatively safe.  I did not want to walk back to the car, though.   Around this time we watched 4 buffalo cross the road right in front of our van.  Kathy reports the buffalo were close enough to reach out and touch if she’d opened the window, and at least one of them looked at her as it walked by.  We waved for Kathy to come drive up and pick us up, but she misunderstood and started walking over instead, so we walked back to the van.  

We had dinner at the cafeteria, then we all played 20 questions on the 3^rd floor of the hotel lobby.  We also listened to the piano player, and watched all the people. Dusty took pictures of the ‘candlelit’ lobby to assemble digitally later.