We woke up to a beautiful campsite in the woods today. We don’t have any hookups for power, water or septic but, we’ll survive for a few days on the water in our tanks, the solar panels and our generator when needed.
The solar panels I installed in Florida work incredibly well and get us through when we drycamp like this. When you leave for the day to explore, they keep your refrigerator cold and your batteries charged for the next time you need to start the generator or the engine.
We got up and out today after a few business calls and a pancake breakfast. Luke loved Yellowstone and said he wanted to see more. The girls were a bit tired from the last 2 days of chaos but, they were ready for anothet day of exploring.
We started out back at Old Faithful again. We only got to walk around that large area for about an hour yesterday and we wanted to see a little more. There are boardwalks that go in every direction and there are lots of different gisers and thermal ponds everywhere to see.
As we walked we came upon a Bison eating grass about 60 feet off the boardwalk and we took a few pictures, and joked a bit, about how large it was. They are absolutely huge.
Time passes quickly as you walk around. We grabbed a very late lunch and then found a place with rootbeer floats. Yummy.
After we all ate we jumped back in the jeep to visit Black Sands Basin. This area had one very large geiser that seemed to go off every 4 minutes or so and lots of little geisers that just bubbled on the surface.
The signs said they were boiling hot, close to 200 degrees and not to touch them or try to walk off the boardwalk. I’m still surprised they have to write things like this on signs but, they apparently do. We didn’t see any rebels but they must be amongst us.
In the Badlands we saw a sign that said “NO HUNTING” in the national park! We still laugh about that on occasion. I’m just not sure who would pull out their hunting rifle in a national park but, apparently the sign was needed.
As we travelled home from our day in Yellowstone we had one more highlight. We spotted a bear running in an open meadow. Bears are very active in Yellowstone and yet many people who visit the park never get to see one. We were all excited to see our second bear in just 2 days.
We stopped off at Grant Village to pick up a few items on our way home. They have a well stocked general store there that helped us through our ride home and we were able to find a few things that we needed for home.
The drive back from Black Sands Basin was almost a 2 hour drive to Grand Teton’s Colter Bay campground and Grant Village was just about the mid-point. Everyone needed to streach their legs.
We made the final hour journey home and had one more exciting moment when a large elk decided he wanted to stand in the middle on the road. You can’t take you eyes off the road for a second in Yellowstone.
Tomorrow will be another great day.
Luke's Journey Across The USA 