Yellowstone National Park 2018, Day 5: Return to Lamar Valley

Today was, in a sense, our "make-up day." Although I say this is Day 5 of the trip, we only arrived in this town of West Yellowstone, Montana in the late evening on the first day, which was Monday; actual days in the park have numbered four, from Tuesday through today. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, we had pre-planned itineraries: Tuesday we would take Grand Loop Road, the northern loop all the way around, with a detour to Lamar Valley, because Gabriel had told me that was his favorite part of the park and that was where there were wolves. Wednesday we would take the lower loop, Norris Canyon Rd over to Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and then down the northwest portio of Yellowstone Lake, driving straight through past Old Faithful on Grand Loop Rd on our way back that evening. That was becuse we went back down that road on Thursday (yesterday), saving Old Faithful -- and all the points of interest on that road to it -- for the actual day of our anniversary. All of that covered both the full loops that exist within the park, andd really only leaves the entrance roads leading to those loops, from the North Entrance, the Northeast Entrance, and the South Entrance, unexplored. Thus, I estimate we've now seen about 75% of what there is to see in the park -- which is so huge, that's pretty good for four full days here. As for today, because we never saw any wolves in Lamar Valley on Tuesday, Shobhit wanted to go back today, via Mammoth Hot Springs. We stopped at what points of interest we didn't manage the first time around -- in a few cases, because the smaller map from AAA did not identify all of the spots identified on the larger map given to us at the park entrance, which we did not get until Wednesday -- along the way. In any case, we still nevere saw any wolves today, but because today was rainy about half the time and cloudy most of the time, we saw far more wildlife today than we did on the previous days, which were pretty much all sunny and warm. Today I wore both my hoodie and my jacket pretty much all day, and my fingerless gloves maybe half the time. Anyway! Today's photo count is the lowest of all four days spent in Yellowstone National Park, but still amounts to 85 shots, two of them videos. It also numbered the least amount of points of interest I could list, and yet even that amounts to eight! So, here's a shot from each spot: Museum of the National Park Ranger. A spot Shobhit and I deliberately avoided until today because it sounded somewhat dull, but this morning was very wet and it was a place to spend some time indoors. We chatted with a very nice lady park ranger. Frying Pan Spring. Not identified on the map, but we saw the sign on the road and went to check it out. Honestly not one of the best of the hot springs areas, although to be fair it would be pretty fascinating if none of the other ones existed. Undine Falls Lamar Valley. Look closely and you can see the line of bison! I took a lot of photos of bison today -- and also learned it's the largest land mammal in North America. Clearwater Springs Norris Geyser Basin (Porcelain Basin). This was the "Porccelain Basin" of Norris Geyser Basin that we did not walk on Wednesday, because we were so exhausted from that hike up to Monument Geyser Basin to start that day. So we went back today. Steamboat Geyser. This gets its own entry on the list because, even though it's part of Norris Geyser Basin, it's over on the "Back Basin" that we had already walked around on Wednesday, but Steamboat Geyser was not erupting -- it apparently erupts between 4 days to 50 years apart. As it happens, when we returned today, it was erupting. Lucky us! Artists Paintpots. Not a sideshow of artists selling works of their own making -- that assumption being why we avoided it until now -- but actually yet another basin of geysers, and thus the last of them we visited today before heading back to West Yellowstone. We looked at it on our way out to Lamar Valley and decided against it at first, because it was a mile hike and it was raining too hard. But on our way back the rain had let up so we went ahead and walked it. Note that in this picture Shobhit can be seen, so the hot spring -- which bubbled slowly although you can't see it in this photo -- is given some scale. . . . Also note, that quite a lot of photos in today's full photo set were taken between these eight points of interest, many of those being of the aforementioned wildlife, seen from the road as we made our way back from Lamar Valley. [posted 11:07 pm]