Day 7 - A Little Of This A Little Of That

We are enjoying Gardiner, MT. It is the north, and orginal, entrance to Yellowstone Park. It is a small town, not a lone place out in the woods where we were before. Easy to get in and out of the park. Today we started north to visit Chico Hot Springs resort, which was recommended by our trail ride guide in Cody. We swam in their 2 naturally fed hot spring pools.

Traveling The Back Roads Looking For Bear

On the way we detoured onto some rough roads that wound up the side of the mountain, past several ranches, looking for bears because some guy at the Antler Bar last night guaranteed we would see bears there. We didn't.

In the afternoon we came back south into Yellowstone to visit the Mammouth Springs and Norris Geyser Basins. Mammouth Springs is the park headquarters and where the rangers live. The large hot springs that formed the landscape were probably beautiful a few years ago, but most of them are dormant now. September is elk mating season. The rangers were very protective because the males get very agressive if you get too close to the females. There are a lot of elk in the Mammouth area.

The old spring here at Mammouth
left the limestone behind that you see here

Phil acting like a bull elk. I'm in trouble!

This is the male elk that the rangers
were tracking and making sure
we didn't get too close to his females.

These terraces are no longer fed by the springs

The Norris Geyser Basin was amazing. This was the crater of the volcano that erupted and created all the geo thermal areas we see around Yellowstone and surrounding areas. We are assured the volcano will not erupt again anytime soon but the bubbling hot springs and geysers remind us of how devastating that would be.

Landscape and hot steam at Norris
Basins, the crater of the volcano

Colorful runoff from the hot springs
and geysers created by the minerals 
pulled up with the water

Sorry to see that Carlos Alcaraz lost in the US Open Tennis semifinals todays.