VISITING YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK

Yellowstone National Park was crowded with a lot of summer tourists.  Many of the places we pulled into to visit were so crowded there wasn't any accessible parking.  We were able to see some incredible sites on this partly cloudy day.

The first stop was at Firehole Canyon.  The river and waterfalls surrounded by rock walls were incredible.

The next stop was at the Middle Geyser Basin that featured the Prism Geyser.  Words and pictures don't do this area justice.

Last year when we visited Old Faithful we didn't take the Upper Geyser trail behind Old Faithful.  This is the area we wanted to visit this year while the rest of the world gathered around to wait for Old Faithful to blow.  Anyone visiting this park needs to visit the Upper Geyser area.  There were lots of different types of geysers in this area.

This is the backside of Old Faithful and the river that leads to the Upper Basin.

Things seen in the Upper Basin

After visiting Yellowstone National Park on 7/10/15, we discovered a water line to the water pump that services the moho and provides for our water needs was leaking.  All of the storage areas in the belly of the motorhome were flooded with water.  What we had thought was due to road spray the day before, turned out to be a failed connection to a  plumbing fitting.  We had stocked up on spare plumbing parts before leaving home in anticipation of such an event.  When you drive on rough, bumpy roads, things are going to jiggle loose.

Joe was able to make the repairs, but airing and drying out the compartments was a chore.  Everything had to be unloaded and towels were used to dry the floor and other things off.  By the time we were ready to leave on 7/12/15, everything was back to normal. 

We made some cowboy potatoes with melted cheese and slices of marinated pork roast for dinner.  Cowboy potatoes was a specialty of the Cowboy Cafe and so we tried our hand at making some.  They turned out pretty good.

The next morning we got an early start to visit the northern part of Yellowstone National Park. We departed the RV park about 9:45 to travel up to our destination - the Norris Geyser Basin. On our way into the park we saw a buffalo grazing in the field next to the road.

Gibbons Falls are on the Gibbon river that the road north on the west side of the park.

Norris Geyser Basin is one of the more interesting and spectacular basins in Yellowstone. The vistas beyond the basin were also particularly beautiful. We hiked a short trail around the basin, the main trail was closed for reconstruction.

Our entry and travel north through the park this Saturday morning was easy and without traffic congestion probably because we were through the park gates before 9AM. As we began our return trip back to West Yellowstone and the RV park shortly after noon  we were shocked at the incredible volume of cars and the miles of  traffic jams that had developed along the main route we had breezed through coming into the park about 3 hours earlier.  Traffic that was now entering the park  was backed up roughly 10 miles and moving at a crawl . Outside the gates traffic was backed up from the gates into West Yellowstone trying to enter.  One buffalo and a herd of elk grazing in a river contributed to the jams. But the line waiting to get in was even more indicative of a ridiculously  overstressed park that does not have the capacity for these crowds. As has been said- we in America are loving our parks to death. And it's not just Americans and our Canadian friends visiting the parks. The number of international visitors seemed to be far greater than the number of visitors from North America.

We took the remainder of the day off to rest and start loading the rig (retract slide, flushed tanks, cleaned the moho interior, loaded the car back on the dolly , strapped and chained down car to dolly etc) . We went the extra mile to experience a fine dining experience while in West Yellowstone. We grabbed a few hot wings at a local grocery store and hit the local McDonald's. Nothing but the best for this crowd! Planning to head out to east Glacier National Park at daybreak Sunday morning which will probably be a long slog on rough road run northbound on US 287. In anticipation of the road conditions we set up the protection screening for the toad being the moho -- hoping to protect the toad from flying rocks from the rear wheels of the moho.