We left Madison CG at 7:30. I was immediately scanning for bison…nothing. Did see a fresh looking pile on the road though.
We arrived at the first thing to see. It was Fountain Flat. Of all the things we would see, we could have skipped this out-and-back. What it was was one small bubbling hot spring, then the road dead ended to a gravel bike path (which would have been cool to take, but would bypass some of the other things).
We went back to the main road. Soon, we were seeing more plumes of steam. We climbed a hill, and could see a blue steaming pool from the road. We arrived at the parking area for Fountain Paint Pot. Okay, now we were getting somewhere! Amongst the hoards of people and vehicles, we parked our bikes, and headed for the boardwalk path. This was an all-inclusive stop with pools, geysers, and hot bubbling mud.
This is the one we saw from the road.
Fountain Paint Pot.
This was a Red Spouter. This one wasn’t here until the 1959 earthquake.
Fountain Geyser was quite active. There was another one called Jewel Geyser that is normally active. It wasn’t today.
We returned to the bikes, and moved on. I’m just gonna say here, it was much easier being on bikes than in a car. No waiting for parking, no getting stuck in traffic!
Next on the route was Lower Geyser Basin. Again, we pulled in amongst all the cars, parked, and set off to see all the things at this spot.
Hot streams from Excelsior Crater flowing into the river.
Excelsior Crater
Excelsior when the wind had blown the steam away a bit.
Grand Prismatic
This is the iconic one you see in all the Yellowstone photos. Grand Prismatic was my favorite. The colors were amazing!
Note: There were numerous pools and geysers at every stop, and I took photos of all of them, but I’m picking and choosing so this post isn’t 100s of photos long.
Back on the bikes, we went to a place where we could get up above Grand Prismatic. It was the other end of the bike path, so we were able to ride our bikes as far as the trail that then climbed up to the overlook. It saved us a lot of walking. Unfortunately, the view wasn’t as spectacular as I had hoped. Some clouds had rolled in, and muted the colors.
We had been down on that boardwalk earlier.
We saw Jordan at the base of the trail, back where we had parked the bikes. He said he had seen a bison near Madison when he left in the morning. I was bummed we didn’t see it. He didn’t get a photo because he said it wouldn’t have been good…too far away. I said I would even take a crappy photo!
We left the parking lot, and headed up the road. Before long, there was a traffic jam with cars pulled over, and people out of their cars (even though there are numerous signs that say not to stop on the road, but to use pullouts). Well, guess what! It was a BISON!!!
Finally!!! Yes, that is a bison!!!
Just munching on the grass…oblivious to all the people watching.
Again, it was advantageous being on bikes. We could scoot in between the cars, and get good photos. Then we could move on.
Next up was Biscuit Basin.
More colorful pools
Closeup of the oranges (bacteria)
Stream from a pool
The clear blue of Sapphire Pool.
We wanted to eat some lunch at Biscuit Basin, but just as we were going to head over to the one picnic table, someone beat us to it. We opted to continue on to Black Sand Basin.
We ate some lunch first at Black Sand before then walking around.
This geyser was going off again and again.
Water bubbling up.
There is, apparently, life in the thermals.
The “best” was last…Old Faithful (I bet you were wondering when we’d get there). Old Faithful Village is quite massive. There’s everything there, lodging (but not camping), a store, gas, restaurants, and…oh yeah…a big geyser. We parked our bikes and walked over. There was every chance we would have to wait up to 35-45 minutes for Old Faithful to do its thing. Nope! We were there for about 5 minutes when it started spouting.
Oooo…ahhh!
Then the one behind it went off.
We stopped over at the store to get something to drink and a snack. Filled our bottles, and headed out. We still had about 20 miles to go, a Pass, and another Pass to get to Grant Village.
As we were riding out of Old Faithful Village, I saw traffic backing up, and a Park Ranger vehicle block the road. Since I was on my trusting steed, Tilmann, I just rode up to see what was happening. Well, looky there! It’s another BISON!
He was huge!
BBB (Big Bison Butt)
He was huge!
BBB (Big Bison Butt)
We discovered there was a bike path shortcut back to the main road. Perfect! Then, we were coming down a hill to a bridge. Again, a slowdown of traffic. You guessed it! Another BISON!
Number 3!
Shortly after, we started climbing Craig Pass. We made a brief stop at Kepler Cascades.
Long way down!
The climb went on for quite awhile. At the top, not only were we at Craig Pass, but also our first Continental Divide crossing.
Number 1
Isa Lake. Half flows to the Pacific, half to the Atlantic (or Gulf of Mexico?).
We came down some, then started climbing again. We were headed for another Divide crossing. Strangely, we climbed higher than Craig Pass, but it wasn’t a Pass. Then we came down to the second Divide crossing.
From there, it was 6 miles more to the turnoff to Grant Village. It was mostly downhill, with a few rollers thrown in. When I got to one point, there was more backed up traffic. This time it was an elk. More precisely, an elk cow butt.
Elk butt.
We finally made the turn to Grant Village. It’s another full service village that also has a campground (with H/B area). There are showers, but we’ll have to ride to them.
We’ve decided to take a day off since we got here at almost 6:00 (we did indeed take the whole day to do all the things). Tomorrow we will explore the lake (Yellowstone Lake), go to the Visitor Center, and…take showers (even though it’s $5.00).
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