Today we did the east side of Yellowstone National Park. Our motorhome is parked just outside the north entrance to the park in Gardiner so we took the loop road that runs down the entire east side of the park. We actually took the loop road around the entire park but only looked at the sites on the north, east, and south sides. We are saving the west side sites that you have to get out of the car in order to see for Sunday. The park is very large so we knew it would take more than one day to see the sites. I think the park is 62 miles long north to south and 54 miles wide east to west. We left at 9:00 and got back around 4:30 pm. We wanted to get back by three but some unexpected delays didn't allow that to happen. We were worried about leaving the dogs (TJ) this long but they did fine and we made up for it by spending the evening outside with them. Sunday we are going back into the park to do the west side which will include Old Faithful. We drove by it today but didn't want to stop since we are coming back Sunday.
When we first got into the park there were some buffalo by the road which we thought was kind of cool and would make an interesting picture. When trying to return home going north on the west side of the loop road we got delayed about 30 to 45 minutes. We thought it was construction but when we finally got to the obstacle we learned it was two big buffalo walking down the road just taking their time. After finally getting past the buffalo we were stopped for another 30 minutes or so due to road construction. While the park is only 62 miles long it takes about two plus hours to drive it due to the speed limit being 35 mph in many places because of the twists and turns in the road.
The park is very beautiful and while you can still see the remnants of previous fires you can also see the new growth trees that are just perfect. I now understand why the park tries to allow fires to burn themselves out that are started by mother nature since it revitalizes the park with new growth trees. We stopped at the Yellowstone Lake and had a picnic lunch but other than that we stopped at all of the major sites to see the scenery. While we had been here before close to 30 years ago neither Huli nor I remembered too much about the park. We haven't seen any bears yet but did see some elk, buffalo, coyotes, and a moose but I didn't have time to get a picture since we passed it in the car.
Below are a few of the pictures we took today. Hope you enjoy them.
These were the first buffalo that we saw that we thought were neat.
These are of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
This boat came by as we were eating lunch by the lake.
