Jacqueline’s Jaunts

Today’s destination is Lamar Valley. This valley is supposed to be full of wildlife if you get into the area around 5:30 or 6:30 AM. From Fishing Bridge, it was an hour-and-a-half drive, so an early morning was not possible for us.  I think if we ever come back, we would stay in West Yellowstone and get there early in the morning. West Yellowstone has a nice-looking RV park.   We did stop at an overlook area, and a person who works for Yellowstone Forever had a scope hooked up to her iPhone. She let us look through it. We saw a black wolf running through the valley. Such a beautiful sight. Barry and I decided we are going to get a scope as she has. It will be great for all the NP Sites we plan on visiting. She had a map that showed each area where the different wolf packs hang out. The name of each pack is in the colored area of the map.  We stopped at the Tower Falls area and took photos. I could hear a bird but could not see it. I pulled out my Merlin app and recorded...

We woke up to SNOW!!! A lot of snow for us, 8-10 inches on top of the Jeep and all the RVs and vehicles in the campground. It snowed all morning. We spent some time trying to see the webcams and figure out if it was snowing in the Mammoth Hot Springs area. Most of the webcams were offline, but the Mammoth Hot Springs one was working. It looked like a nice spring day and no snow, so we decided to head out after breakfast burritos. We also made sandwiches for the day and packed our cooler.  The Fishing Bridge area was so pretty. The Hayden Valley area was beautiful with Bison here and there. I was able to take some great photos of snow along the Yellowstone River.  Driving over Fishing Bridge. Hayden Valley Yellowstone River Our first stop was just north of Norris at Roaring Mountain. The side of the mountain has fumaroles, which are steam vents. We could barely hear them, but supposedly they are really loud at times. The pine trees along our route were dusted with snow. Such a ...

Today, we started out going north from Fishing Bridge toward Hayden Valley. Our goal was to make it to the Gibbons Fall, south of Norris, and we did. We had rain and off-and-on snow flurries. We did a lot today and are exhausted.  Our first stop was Mud Volcano. We walked the boardwalk all around this area. Just amazing. The colors are so bright. We saw lots of bison prints all around the area. I took a few videos of the active mud pots to show their activity. Dragon’s Mouth Spring was a favorite. Be sure to watch the video below. It was named around 1912. The Mud Volcano area was fun to observe, and I learned about the difference between a Mud Pot and a Fumarole. Mud Pots are muddy springs, and Fumaroles are steam vents. See the photo below. Black Dragon’s Caldron and Cooking Hillside both have an interesting history, too. See the photos and videos below.  As we drove into Hayden Valley, we saw bison everywhere. Sometimes it was only a few together. There was one feeding by t...