August 13th on the road

Since I last wrote, we’ve seen a lot of great stuff. At Devil’s Tower, we not only saw the tower but also “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, Andy’s favorite movie and part of going to DT and we saw the prairie dogs! We love the prairie dogs. Just inside the DT monument park, there is Prairie Dog Town – a giant field full of little mounds and holes with prairie dogs all over. They come out of their tunnels and bark at each other and eat the grass and other goodies around the field. They are the cutest things ever and we spent plenty of time watching and photographing them. Some are like sentinels that come out of their holes and when they see us (threats) they bark a lot to warn the others. Their barks sound like little yips. We always enjoy getting a kabin at the KOA just outside of DT. You can watch the sunset behind the tower and wake up in the morning to see it on your way to the bathroom. It’s pretty cool.

The second morning we were there, we got up super early – 4:00 am to see the Persiod meteor shower. We saw about 2 dozen or so shooting stars before we got too cold and had to go back to bed. They were very cool, though.

Now we’re in Yellowstone park, another of my favorite stops on this trip. Yellowstone is great for seeing wildlife – especially bison, this time. The bison is my favorite thing to look for up here – they are so majestic and to think that they were once on the verge of extinction just makes me so excited to see so many! Today, as we drove along, there was a herd of them by the road and at times, a few would just start crossing the road or even getting in the road and just walking along it. It slows the traffic way down but I just love the thought of these great animals taking charge of their world and not caring about these big cars on the road.
We saw them frolicking! They would chase each other, roll around in the dust and even play like they were children. We, of course got out of the car to take pictures and even though we were instructed quite a lot not to approach them – they approached us! Well, they got close to us because they wanted to get by us. They would stop and wait for us to move and then go past us. Many people in cars told us we were crazy and about to get killed but there were plenty of others doing the same thing and the bison were actually quite docile and didn’t care about us in the least. I felt very safe the whole time.

Last night was no fun, though. We camped at the Bay Bridge campground, which would have been fine except the temperature was in the 30’s – not at all fun. Vienna slept in the car but Andy and I spent the night curled up together and rolling over at the same times so that we could maintain body heat. It was freezing! Andy was quite smart this morning and switched our reservation to a cabin at the Old Faithful lodge. Much more comfortable!

Speaking of Old Faithful, Andy and I spent the evening watching it erupt and touring the geysers and hot springs in the area. They are quite beautiful in the sunset. Andy, in particular loves the geysers. He got some great footage of Old Faithful erupting.
He also got to swim, today in a river at the Firehole area. He’s been looking forward to swimming here in the park and at first it didn’t look possible. It was cold, today and cloudy. When we got there, it started to drizzle, there were a lot of rocks to step on the current was pretty strong. But, he saw some kids jumping right into the white-water and getting whooshed into the current and just had to do it. Vienna didn’t like that idea at all after her experience in the tube the other day but no one can stop Andy when he gets an idea in his head. Luckily, he didn’t get hurt and he said he had a great time. We may go there again in the morning if the sun is out and it’s warmer.
The only thing we haven’t seen that we wanted to was a bear. We’ve been trying to see a bear the whole time here in Yellowstone with no luck. Vienna especially wants to see one. We’ll try again in the morning but I think it’s really hard to see one. Apparently, there are only about 600 or 700 of them in the whole park – and it’s a huge park. Otherwise, we have seen mule deer, chipmunks, antelopes and birds like geese and ravens. The mountains, lakes and other landscapes are gorgeous, too. Just a few more days left of this trip. I have to say, I’m going to be sad to see it end.