Yellowstone where the Buffalo Roam

We made an one night stand in Great Falls and on Saturday drove to Yellowstone Edge RV Park between Livingston and Emigrant. It is 31 miles to the north entrance of Yellowstone. We plan to be here most of the week. It is a nice full service campground right on Yellowstone River. Unfortunately we weren't able to get a site on the water but still nice views of the hills

Sunday we just went into Bozeman to do some grocery shopping.  Just relaxed back at the site the rest of the day, catching up on blogs, updating ours and reading our favorites and Joe catching up on work. Also getting use to the heat as weather was mild during our Canada time. Monday it was almost noon before we headed for Yellowstone. We are taking Savannah and so will drive through the park, stopping at various sites. However, we will come back another day without her to walk some of the trails that dogs are not allow on. We were here in early June of 2003 and stayed at Fishing Bridge, which is right in the middle of the park.
This time, we weren't sure if everything would be booked and so decided to stay out of the park. Yellowstone is just huge and has so much variety in this volcano area, known for its geysers and waterfalls as well as its abundant wildlife. We decided to take the big loop, going down from the Mammoth Hot Springs down to Old Faithful and then around to West Thumb and Grant Village area to check out possible kayak spots and up past Yellowstone Lake towards Tower Falls.

                                                   
 We stopped at a creek to watch our first sighting of wildlife in Yellowstone and a man fly fishing. He looked like he knew what he was doing  We stopped at a creek to eat the lunch we packed.

Onto Old Faithful, which is always an experience. Eruptions can shoot 3,700 to 8,400 US gallons of boiling water to a height of 106 to 185 feet lasting from around 1.5 to 5 minutes. The average height of an eruption is 145 feet (44 m).^[7] The highest recorded eruption was 185 feet high. Intervals between eruptions are between 65 to 90 minutes apart these days.


Old Faithful




Another shot




Another geyser just down the way

We checked out West Thumb and Grant Village and will most likely kayak in this area later in the week Our drive continued along Yellowstone Lake. This lake is the largest in the park and covers 136 square miles with 110 miles of shoreline. We took a boat cruise on the lake the last time we were here,  which was definitely worthwhile.

What a great drive. We were wondering if we would see any bison and had about given up when we saw a bunch of cars at the side of the road WOW, a whole herd up the side of the road. One was even standing in the parking turnout. What an experience!!!!

In an average year, there are about 3,000 bison in the park. They are the largest land mammal in North America and are very impressive. We watched them for awhile. Savannah, of course, had to stay in the car, and was checking them out and barking. She wanted to play with the big "dogs". We continued on with just more beautiful scenery and an Elk right at the North Entrance.

Roosevelt Arch

It was after 7 o'clock by the time we got back to our site and topped off the drive with a rainbow.  It rained in the evening, which was fine by us as we had a gorgeous day.