Beautiful Yellowstone!

We arrived on Thursday night and it was absolutely beautiful as soon as we arrived, and we even saw a few deer on our way in.

We decided to make some chili dogs and soup before we went to bed. We slept in 34 degree weather that night, which we were both a little unprepared for, and it got a little chilly, but we made it! 

We woke up to make breakfast, and then took a bike ride down to Yellowstone Lake! This lake is giant! It is literally 1/10 of the park size and is 410 FT at its deepest point.

Afterwards, we checked out the visitor center to find out where we could see buffalo, and pick up some bison bars and Yellowstone Roadblock beer from the general store.

We made our first stop of the day at Old Faithful! While we were waiting on a boardwalk, the fattest chipmunk we've ever seen came right up to me (Kelsey) and posed for a picture! It was adorable, but he was hanging out there because there were hundreds of people waiting to see the geyser go off. We decided to take a walkway to the less crowded side and got a great view! Old Faithful was a lot more impressive than we thought it would be! It shot up probably 100 FT for a few minutes!

We then took a trail and hiked to Overlook Point, passing some more geysers and hot springs on our way there! It's amazing to think all of these are natural formations. Some of the water was so clear and such a deep blue, they seemed unreal!

Our next stop was Gibbon Falls, which was a pretty cool waterfall, and then we moved onto the Artist Paintpots! These were awesome because they literally look like giant, bubbling pots of paint! This trail had some more hot springs that were green and blue, and small geysers that exploded every few minutes just a foot or two high.

Then we visited the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and it was amazing!!!!! It looks exactly like a miniature version of the Grand Canyon, but with tall waterfalls! 

We were able to hike 600 FT down to stand at the base of where the waterfall started! 

By this time, it was about 5 o'clock so we decided to head back to our campsite. As I said, I really wanted to see some buffalo and we finally saw one! It was probably 100 yards away, but we were so exited to see it! However, we didn't realize we were going to drive right by one (only like 30 FT away) about fifteen minutes later, and then get stuck in stop-and-go traffic for almost an hour because of a herd of buffalo! 

It was so fun and exciting seeing baby buffalo! And so many of them! There were at least 50 to 75 bison in the herd, and they were literally just crossing the street whenever they wanted, and one even came within a few feet of our car! I thought it was going to come right up to our window!

We also saw a huge bull elk, just standing right by the road and eating, on our way back to camp, which just topped off one of the best days of our trip so far!

That night, after some much-needed showers and doing some laundry, we ate Ramen and chicken pasta by the campfire slept in 31 degree weather in 50 degree sleeping bags... So I slept in a sweater, hoodie, light winter jacket, denim pants, and two pairs of socks, and Michael slept in something similar. We didn't even get cold :) 

We said goodbye to our Yellowstone home this morning after we slept in until 9:30. We packed up and are now heading to Bozeman, Montana! Of course, we didn't leave Yellowstone without seeing a herd of elk :)

We are leaving Yellowstone at 1,057 miles and a 38 mpg average.