Snow in the Morning / Sunny at Mammoth

We woke up to a light covering of frozen snow this morning.  The day was predicted to warm-up and be sunny.  So we packed up the snow covered Fit and headed to the Northwest corner of Yellowstone.  We would be traveling through  the area that hundreds of bison graze and I'd hope to see how they looked with a snowy background.

Grazing in the snowy valley.

It helps to have a buffalo skin coat on a cold morning.

We were headed toward Mammoth Hot Springs area which would be at a lower altitude so as we drove, the snow was replaced by a bright sunny morning. 

Never wanting to miss a good waterfall, we made a detour on a small back road to see Virginia Cascade. It was a very wide falls, that starts from a fast flowing creek that is about 6 feet wide.  The falls spread to 50-60 feet wide and falls about 150 feet.  Not bad for a 6 foot creek.

Our afternoon was a warm and sunny walk around Mammoth Hot Springs. The white stair stepped flows looked like ice but the steam coming from them told a different story.

That's not ice, it's mineral deposits that formed pools as they cascaded down.

I don't know the story here, but as we drove through the Mammoth Village a large male elk was resting on the front lawn of the medical clinic.  Perhaps he was waiting for his doctor's appointment. If I had antlers like that I wouldn't have to sit around waiting.

If the elk don't have a doctor's appointment, they may visit your RV.

 

The North entrance was built long before tour busses and big RV's came to be.  Two small cars have to be careful if passing through at the same time.

Only two more full days in Yellowstone.  We have not made it to everything I wanted to see and we will have to pick carefully as we plan the next two days.  11 days seems like enough time to see a National Park.  It isn't. 

But we must move along because most of the campgrounds in Yellowstone have already closed for the season and ours closes Sunday morning at 11:00am.

We're off to the Grand Tetons for 5 days.  We will be staying at Colter Bay on Jackson Lake inside Teton National Park.  It will be our new home base to explore the Tetons and the Jackson Hole area.  We'll lose a couple thousand feet of altitude and that will be good for breathing.

At least I know where I am now.