July 5 Old Faithful to Mammoth Hot Springs

Roger and Thomas took off for a 10.5 mile round trip bike ride to Lone Star Geyser this morning, a beautiful trip along the Firehole River. Unfortunately, the geyser didn’t erupt during their visit. Marjory, Jacob and I stayed to play around the hotel. We took a tour of Old Faithful Inn. It is wonderful- it was built in 1903-4 in one year. It is made of lodge pole pine (from Indians using this to make their lodge-teepee).
We left to travel north – getting lower in altitude as we drive. We saw beautiful, very hot pools, geysers, and mud pots – very funny. We stopped for lunch by the Firehole River while Roger fly fished and we napped. (You should have seen the one that got away!) We saw Norris which is a huge white, hissing, popping, sulfur smelling place-very different indeed. On to Mammoth Hot Springs – there are many waterfalls and the terrain changes again – it is a combination of everything we have seen on this trip – tall Utah mountains, white sulfite places, canyons, deep rivers, hoodoos, large boulders, burned forests, renewed forests. We check into the Mammoth Hot Springs cabin where there are hundreds of prairie dogs out entertaining everyone.
We decided to drive into Gardiner, Montana to add another state to our list. We saw the northern entrance to Yellowstone where the early tours met and left on a stagecoach. We ate dinner and returned to a huge herd of elk all over the Mammoth Hot Springs area. They are all sizes including many babies. They are so big and beautiful.