Buffalo jam and the Lake, Epic Yellowstone 2013, Day 3

Epic Yellowstone 2013

 A herd of b near the road leads to a buffalo jam!  

After lunch at the old style diner we continued the loop south toward Fishing Bridge.  Along the way we got into a buffalo jam.   The herd is quite large and they are not in any real hurry-great wild life viewing.

When a herd of buffalo decide to cross the road, you just stop and let them.

We made it to the Mud Volcano area.  No geysers, but steamy and bubbly and smelly.

Yup, that's sulphurous smelly.

A particularly vile green.

And such bubbling and belching.

This area was not so hot as to deter some buffalo.   Yes, there is a lot of mud around Mud Volcano area. 

This is the second dragon in the park-well named.

Meanwhile in the parking lot, if you see a fence,

maybe don't drive too near.

 Great views of Yellowstone lake on the drive to the West Thumb area.  This is the day when we come up on a group of motorcyclists stopped in the road.  Their case of Pabst had come off the back and they were on the road rescuing what they could.  We saw that one had a hole in the side, so the guy was drinking it as is rather than let it go to waste.  E- drove carefully, but the RV is large and there was a one can casualty from us.  Later we heard the ambulance and found out that a motorcyclist had gone down...have to assume it was from the same bunch-save the beer for after the ride!

The West Thumb area thermal features (mostly springs) have the gorgeous lake as the background.  It was extra windy here, so keep you hats close.  We caught part of a talk by a ranger and learned that back in the day people would catch fish from the lake and then cook them in the hot spring-luckily they don't allow that today!

And on the road back home

we crossed the Continental Divide.  This little stream has a nice set of lilies and you are totally in forest.  This is the evening that we pull out the telescope and see very very far away.  It was cloudy on the night that the rangers were going to do the astronomy talk, so we were lucky that we had one clear evening.