Wednesday, the Crack of Dawn

On Wednesday, the day we were checking out of our little hotel in West Yellowstone and heading to the booming town of Gardiner, some brilliant person decided it would be cool to get up early and see if we could spot some wildlife in the park on the way in (yes, yes - that's me with my hand raised up in the air. Call me brilliant!). How early is early? Well, the alarm went off at 4:30. Which for me wasn't terrible - I was still kind of working on East Coast time, so that was 6:30 for me. Sleeping in! I'm not sure John was amused, though.

We packed up all our stuff in to our trusty Maxima and headed in to the park. Ah, the best laid plans... Didn't work out quite as well as we had hoped, because it was foggy as all get-out that morning. Fog plus mist from warm rivers that have hot springs running in to them = poor wildlife viewing!

We did manage, however, to spot a little herd of elk cows and an elk baby (what do you call them? Elklets? Calves, I suppose). It helps to spot them when they walk out in to the road in front of you...

Thanks, elk, for helping us out!

And pictures of Yellowstone in the fog at dawn are really not half bad. PLUS - added bonus - there's lots fewer cars on the road at 6AM. Got to get up early to beat all those darned tourists!
We headed down Firehole Canyon Drive, which was a one way scenic little road along a river, with some cascades and lots of fog:

Trees in the mist...

As we kept driving we came across a guy kind of hiding behind his car, looking through a scope or taking photos (I can't remember). as we're fabulous as spotting people spotting wildlife, we pulled over and walked back to the guy. He was looking at some sort of big bird in a tree, which we were hoping was an eagle. Not to be - it was an osprey that flew away as we walked up. Apparently they are a bit shy. Ah, well. Sorry, guy, for scaring your osprey away!

Turned in to Sentinel Meadows to see what was down there. There were some gorgeous shots to be had of the nice misty river in the morning sun:

As I was taking these shots, John was going "Psssssst! Alissa!" to me the whole time. Which, of course, I didn't hear. As I walked back up to the car, he said - "did you see the buffalo you just walked three feet from?" Well, no. No, I didn't. Apparently I walked right past a buffalo and was completely oblivious. Go, me! Anyway - he stuck around for a while so we took some shots of him, too. He was kind of a mangy looking guy - hair all falling out, looking ribby. Hope he makes it for another year!

Got an itch...

Mangy buffalo in the mist

Look what I found, Mom!

After we had our fill of Mr. Buffalo (again, we're jaded with buffalo. No need to stop for them unless they are 1) in the road or 2) really cool) we continued down the road to the Fountain Paint Pots. This was a little boardwalk that wandered past bubbling mud (fun!) and some little geysers:

Boiling mud
All about boiling mud
A little geyser that was putting on an impressive show
A decidedly un-shy coyote, trotting along the side of the boardwalk right by the parking lot.

Our final stop before heading to Camp Hall was the Midway Geyser Basin - we HAD to see what was causing this HUGE plume of steam up ahead of us!
Turned out the steam was coming from the Grand Prismatic Spring (to the left) and the Excelsior Spring to the right, which pump out 4,000 gallons of boiling water a minute in to the Firehole River. No wonder that river is so steamy!

Spring water running in to the Firehole River.
Bacterial mat at the edge of Grand Prismatic

Apparently the wildlife don't read the signs...
It's hard to capture how amazing this place is. The steam is different colors - reflecting off the colors in the pool. The colors were amazing. And we decided we needed to come back later in the day some time, when perhaps the warmer air would make it not quite so misty.
Mist? What mist?
Yes, I froze my butt off this morning. It's COLD there in the mornings!
A little spring off to the side of Grand Prismatic, with some mountains in the background
Hiker in the mist (ok, the hiker is really just walking on a boardwalk. And it's John. But the mist is certainly there. Or is it correctly called steam?).

Off to change some laundry - we've got to get things clean and ready to pack again for a four day trip to NY. We leave on Friday. Nothing like a little relaxing time at home, eh? Hope to post back tonight about the rest of Wednesday. What, you thought we were done? Hey - it wasn't even 8:30 AM yet!