Saturday, July 16th

Started our Saturday with an early morning drive to Bozeman, MT through West Yellowstone and up through the Gallatin River Canyon. Lots of steam coming off the geysers and hot springs in the cool morning air that you don't notice when the air temps are warmer.  Caught some elk still bedded down for the morning....  you can just see their heads showing above the grass.  Currently all types of flowers are in bloom and some of the fields are just colored with them.  Hope to include some pictures of them on the next blog.  Went to Bozeman for the essentials -  hair cuts and stops at MacDonald's and WalMart to resupply our junk food, Coke & wine.  Up until now we thought driving to Carmel from Fishers was a long distance to drive for a haircut and will no longer take all our nearby conveniences for granted.

Headed home along I90 out of Bozeman to Livingston, MT then south through valleys that follow the Yellowstone River. Beautiful drive with a lot of dry farming and ranching along the way.  Stopped at Chico Hot Springs in Pray, MT to check out the hot springs. 
Thought we might take a dip but it was 87 degrees and warm water didn't sound
refreshing in that temp so will try again when the weather cools in the fall.


Saw some whitewater rafters along the Yellowstone River but it is hard to consider it "whitewater" rafting as the water is still so high with continued spring flooding. Still can be dangerous though as a rafter drowned on the near by Gallitan about 3 weeks ago.


Short stop at Devil's Slide and Dome mountain.  Millions of years ago the "slide"  was horizontal but has been pushed up over time to a vertical position.

Dome Mountain is along a major migration path out of the park for bighorn sheep, deer and elk in the winter.  They travel this route annually by the thousands to the valleys north of this pass for winter grazing.


We entered back into the park through Gardiner, MT and the north entrance portal.  Stopped in Mammoth Hot Springs to take some pics of elk that hang out there.  Quite a few of them stay close to the buildings all Spring and Summer...most likely for safety reasons although that didn't stop a few grizzly bears from rushing in and snatching several newborn calves just a month ago.


Yellowstone was patrolled by the US army from 1886-1916 until the Park Service was created.  The pictured barracks are now used as employee housing and administrative offices


From Mammoth we headed around the northern loop of the park to Roosevelt Lodge where we stopped and had dinner in the employee dining room and rested in rocking chairs on the lodges' front porch.  Roosevelt lodge is very small compared to others in the park and guests stay in  "primitive" cabins  (which translates to "no bathrooms").  Only communal showers are provide for their guests.  They have a large horse stable there and offer stagecoach rides out to an evening chuck wagon dinner in the back country.  This is on our list of to dos but haven't been able to fit it in yet.


Ran into a bighorn sheep road jam at Tower Falls.  They came down the side of the mountain onto the road next to our car and strolled along the road for a few minutes.  They were neat to see because they are pretty rare and not often seen in the park. We eased by them but traffic was stopped for quite awhile.  They were all females and some little ones so no males with the large curved horns.

More to come

Ann & Jim