Today was an exciting day full of driving and walking, some of both. We started off the day in Gardiner since last night was the last night in the Victorian inn, which I have to say was very cute. We all awoke from a very deep sleep since we had been bombarded with loud fireworks last night. I have to say they were pretty spectacular so I’m glad that we got to see them. Well then back to today, we all woke up and then went down to breakfast. This morning I had a muffin, a donut, some yogurt, and some cereal.
After breakfast we packed up the car and then headed out into Yellowstone. We first drove through Mammoth and kept on got until we reached Norris where we got out and went to find the Norris geyser basin.
The loop around was around 1.6 miles but Ollie and I handled it fine. As we walked around there were many geysers and hot springs, each one was different in some way. They either were different colors, had a different shape or erupted differently. We went by one called The Steamboat Geyser which had erupted more than 300 feet in the air just last year.
The Steamboat is the tallest geyser in the world when it goes off. Also let’s just say that these geysers are very stinky and smell of rotten eggs because of the sulfur. This bothered us a bit but mostly mummy and Ollie. As you can see above it was quite stinky sometimes because we had to hold our noses. After we got back in the car and drove to a nice place by the Yellowstone river and had a picnic. There we ate lunch and Ollie and I played around the logs. After a nice lunch we headed to the mud volcano which was also another patch of geyser basins and hot springs. When we got there, there was a lot of people standing on one side of the boardwalk, looking at a bison rolling around in the dirt and making quite the show for everyone. The was a loop so we wandered on it and saw the mud volcano, the dragon’s cauldron and many others.
A bison and I even had a staring competition (as seen above) I won because he started to puff and made a noise at me and he moved. Afterwards we got back in the car and drove along the Yellowstone lake, and while driving we saw a bunch of cars parked and a bunch of people. So we parked our car and got out, it turns out they were a bunch of elk just grazing and eating. It was pretty cool to see them so close.
We then were back on the road again and after a little drive we got to Grand Prismatic spring. We walked around and saw a spring that was made of so many colors it was really beautiful. After a little while we were back on the road again and headed out so that we could get to our hotel.
We reached our hotel check in, took all our stuff and and then headed out for dinner. We had dinner at Wild West Pizzeria and Saloon which is known for the best pizza in West Yellowstone. And I have to agree because it was pretty darn good. We came back to the hotel, I helped mom with laundry and then Ollie and I went for a swim. After a nice swim we came back to our room and got ready for bed.