When you live this close, you just have to go to Yellowstone!

We have been at Falls Campground for five days, and we have kept busy. We have found so many wonderful things to do in this area! What shall we do on our last day here in Wyoming? Well, when you live this close, you just have to go to Yellowstone National Park! We were there for a week in 2017, and it feels like we have seen this national park pretty thoroughly. So our priority this time is seeing the wildlife. We know they are most visible early in the morning, so we set the alarm for 4:30 a.m.! Yikes! We were on the road at 5:02, and it was dark and 43 degrees outside. We've never approached Yellowstone from the southern entrance, and we found that we had many miles of forest to drive through. But by 7:10, we got our first good wildlife sighting--a herd of elk right beside the road.

Denisa loves to take pictures of the babies, including the one in the picture above having his breakfast. She also liked the little one below that seemed curious about that pickup that just stopped and rolled down the window.

We are now getting deeper into the park, and Yellowstone River is running beside the road. It was certainly surprising this morning to see a big bison swimming across the river. We were so surprised that we didn't take a picture until the soggy bison came onto the river bank.

A couple other bison were grazing beside the river, and a small crowd had already gathered to take pictures.

We were leaving in the pickup, when we spotted this bull scratching an itch with this young sapling. The young tree was bending under the weight of that big boy.

Denisa had the passenger side window down on the pickup, as she was taking pictures. She was still taking pictures as the bison finished scratching and headed our way.  We were on the side of the road, and the bison had to get up speed to make it up that rise to the road. It all happened pretty fast, but Denisa was moving across the pickup into Mark's lap, screaming for Mark to drive forward because she was pretty sure that this charging bison was coming in our pickup window. In the meantime, Mark can't drive forward because Denisa is in his lap, and besides, he is laughing too hard at her reaction. No pictures of the charging bull before he veered off right before he hit the side of the pickup, because Denisa was screaming and hiding her eyes. The whole fiasco was the highlight of Mark's day--and it's only 7:20 a.m.

You know that you are really in Yellowstone National Park when you see your first flume of steam randomly rising out of the ground, and you think it is normal.

With all the wildlife sightings so far, we didn't arrive at Hayden Valley until 7:40. According to our google search, this beautiful green valley is one of the best places to see wildlife in Yellowstone National Park. 

The sizable parking area is almost full, but we managed to squeeze in. It's a good sign when everyone has their cameras and binoculars out and pointing in the same direction. They are trained on the little hill on the other side of the water. The next pictures aren't great because of the distance, but we were in for a great treat this morning. A lone elk cow is in the sage brush, with a black wolf stalking her.

We counted as many as eleven wolves in the pack. In the fuzzy picture below, most of the group is quite close to the larger elk. On the far hill, we can see a herd of 50 or more elk cows and their calves. We're not sure why this one elk is alone with the wolves.

At times the elk was running with the wolves chasing.

Several Yellowstone employees, and other people very knowledgeable of the wolves, were watching this special wolf sighting. They said that the wolves hadn't been seen for ten days, and this is actually closer than usual. They knew that the white one is the alpha female and the leader of the pack. 

People with spotter scopes were letting members of the crowd see the pack up close. But we could see quite well with our binoculars. We just couldn't get good pictures with the camera. At one point we saw the younger wolf pups wrestling and rolling down the grassy hill. Then the pack disappeared for a while, and reappeared further away where a second single elk cow was grazing. This is the first time we have ever seen wolves in the wild, and we watched them for over an hour.

In the course of that hour, a couple bison bulls ambled out of the woods and came quite close. But the eyes of the crowd were trained on the wolves this morning. 

We were still wearing our jackets because of the chilly morning weather, when the wolves left and we finally decided to leave the Hayden Valley overlook. Even without any wildlife in the picture, this is a beautiful valley.

The trumpeter swans were swimming in the Yellowstone River this morning.

It's now 10:30, and the park has really filled up. It feels like we have seen the animals we wanted to see, so is it time to go home? True wanderers can't leave so early! So we decided to go deeper into the national park, and make this a loop drive. We stopped in at Canyon Village, and saw that the new TEDDY vehicles were resting in the parking lot. TEDDY stands for The Electric Driverless Demonstration in Yellowstone. 

From there, we headed west for a stop at the Norris Geyser Basin. We decided to make just one geyser stop, and this one is very popular. We know it is popular because it took a 15-minute wait just to get a parking space. Then we headed into the basin, where the Ledge Geyser was the star performer with its steam spewing high into the air.

Our loop hike took us beside the Porcelain Springs, known for the milky color of the mineral deposits here.

 We also walked by Emerald Springs, with its emerald green clear deep waters.

It was a nice walk, and we're beginning to feel how crowded the national parks are this summer.

We've seen some awesome examples of geothermal wonders, but the best is Steamboat Geyser. It's the tallest active geyser in the world! In fact, there were warning signs in the parking lot about the damage that can occur to your car if the Steamboat Geyser has one of its 400-foot-tall extreme eruptions while your car is parked way out there. That last happened on July 8.  But the sign at Steamboat Geyser pointed out that it has more frequent eruptions of 10-40 feet (3-12 M). We thought a 3-12 minutes wait wasn't too long, so we sat with a growing crowd of people, waiting for one of those smaller frequent eruptions. We had been there closer to 20 minutes, thinking that the eruption was certainly late this time. That's when we realized that (3-12 M) means 3-12 Meters high--not 3-12 Minutes! When we asked the ranger on the way out, we found out that Steamboat Geyser hasn't erupted again since that big one on July 8, so we could have been waiting a very long time for that smaller, more frequent eruption.

Well, we've seen our wildlife, geysers and springs, so we should be ready to leave. But wait, if we're making a trip to Yellowstone, don't we have to stop in to see the Giant Prismatic Spring?  It's our favorite thing here, and when we visited four years ago they had a new trail that allowed visitors to see it from above. So we found a parking place and stopped by the very hot pool on our way to the grand one. The water is so hot here that you start sweating as soon as you pause long enough to take a picture.

It's a one-mile hike on a warm day, with some elevation gain. Obviously most of Yellowstone's visitors aren't used to this much exercise. We felt like a couple rock stars, passing so many people on this trail. But we all agree that the view of the Giant Prismatic Spring is worth that effort.

At the viewpoint at the top, Mark somehow got this picture that looks like Denisa is the only one looking at this amazingly colored hot spring.

The truth of the matter is that the viewpoint was very crowded with so many people in the park today.

We have to include one more picture of the world's largest hot springs. It's hard to tell the size until you look at the tiny dots on the other side. Those are people. But more than the size, it's the amazing colors that make the Grand Prismatic so unique. We learned on our last visit that the colors are much better from this upper view, rather than being on the board walk right beside the spring.  We also learned that Yellowstone is full of God's wonders!

Well, we've seen our wildlife, geysers, and the Grand Prismatic Spring, so it must be time to head home. But wait, if we're so close, shouldn't we go see Old Faithful? So we turned into the huge parking lot, and made the walk to the viewing area. The visitor center posts the approximate times for different geyser eruptions in this area of the park. We've got plenty of time for that 3:21 p.m. date with Old Faithful.

It's 85 degrees now, and it's hot sitting in the full sun in the afternoon. But we are not alone. There are people poised and ready as far as we can see to our left.

Tension is growing in the the crowd, as we are getting big puffs of steam and little spurts of water from the white mound in front of us.

Everyone is sitting up with cameras poised as far as we can see to our right. There are thousands of people here to witness this faithful phenomenon.

Finally, at 3:26--a fashionable five minutes late--Old Faithful once again makes that amazing appearance as water splashes high into the air.

We sat beside a delightful young couple, seeing Old Faithful for their very first time. They are on their way to Oregon to start new jobs, enjoying some of God's wonders as they travel across the country on this relocation trip. We meet some of the nicest people in epic places.

After the eruption, the crowd dispersed in all directions. The direction we dispersed was toward the Old Faithful Inn for a late lunch. In the foyer, the fireplace is amazingly big and tall.

The curved natural wood on the stairwells and support beams of each floor make this is a fun and rustic stop while in the park.

We've had a very full day, and we're ready to head home. From here it will take two hours to get to our campground, so we continued south through the national park. But wait, don't you remember our favorite pool from our last visit? Wasn't it next to the water? Maybe we should stop in at West Thumb Geyser Basin to see if we can find it. This basin is right next to the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake, and it has craters that look like miniature volcanoes at the lake's edge.

We also found "The Abyss," a hot springs that is so deep you can't see the bottom.

But walking on the farthest loop next to the lake, we found "it."

This is the prettiest pool that Denisa remembers, with its orange tentacle-like arms stretching all the way to the lake.

This pool is curiously named "Black Pool" but we will always remember it as that 'hard-to-find-beautiful-blue-spring-with-orange-tentacles-by-the-water-pool."

Okay, there really are no more stops after West Thumb, and we are serious about heading home. With all our stops, we managed to walk 8.4 miles today. We drove 265 miles in the pickup today, so that was a longer road trip than usual. But Yellowstone National Park is a special place filled with God's wonders. When you live this close, you just have to go!