October 5, 2022
This is Day 3 of 3 at Yellowstone. Our plan is to travel from the bottom right of the “8” to traverse the entire upper circle. Again we saw a couple of elk cows dining along the roadside. Our first stop is Roaring Mountain. In May of 1988 a lightning strike started a small forest fire. By the end of the day it was extinguished. This is quite common. However, the summer of 1988 became very dry. This became known as the Summer of Smoke. Between June and September 50 fires had burned the forests of Yellowstone. Drought conditions, dry lightning, high winds all contributed to the destruction of Benson Peak. The fires were smothered on September 11, 1988 with a heavy snowfall and continued to smolder thru the remainder of the year.
We went on to Sheepeater Cliff. We traveled on to the main course of the day, Mammoth Hot Springs. Once we got there we started to walk the maze of boardwalks to the site. We talked to someone on the boardwalk and they recommended that we take the Upper Terrace Drive. That involves less walking and a bird’s eye view. That’s what we did. It was an awesome sight. In addition as we were coming back down the mountain we got to see Orange Spring Mound.
It was time to refuel. Just a few minutes up the road was a fuel station. A whopping $5.79 for a gallon of diesel fuel. WOW!! But it was the only game around and we were leaving in the morning. As we pulled up, there were a few park rangers and yellow banner tape up. It seems that a herd of elk just love this one spot to rest under the shade of a big tree. They cordon off the area to keep people from getting too close to the wild animals. Go figure!! After this excitement we headed toward home. However instead of taking the main road we took another side road, Blacktail Plateau Dr. It was an interesting dirt road with lots of potholes and beautiful views. There were a couple of times Nancy had to lean her head out of the window to let me know where the road was. We finally made it back home.
The plan was to rest for an hour and then go back to Hayden Valley to take a few pictures of the sunset. I went out to start the truck and Nancy was locking up the RV. I wasn’t paying any attention and walked around to the driver’s side and had to suddenly stop. About 8 feet away was a bull bison. Let’s call him Ferdinand. We had seen him the last couple of days at various times at sites not too far from us. But this time he was really close. He paid us no mind and went on eating. We waited a few minutes and Ferdinand strolled through the park to various patches of grass for dinner. Talking with a park ranger Ferdinand is a resident of the campground. So when he moved on, we headed out to Hayden Valley to get our pictures.
