We stopped at the visitors center and got our passport stamped. This visitors center was in the center of what looked like a small town. There was an engineers office building, a post office, a lodge, a restaurant, and other buildings. Just above these buildings was Mammoth Hot Springs. It is an amazing sight! The smell is terrible because it is hot sulfur, but there was steam rising and there was a flow of the hot sulfur that had hardened. A walkway has been built all around the area and has several levels to walk on to get up close and personal with the hot springs. All around the loop in the park are small pools with hot bubbling water with signs warning people not to get close to the hot bubbling area.
There were also signs warning not to approach the bison because they are wild animals, which we already knew. Boy, do we ever know! A couple chased us on the bike for several yards before going off into the woods when we were in Custer State Park several years ago. Julie Moats was able to get a picture of that and she presented us a copy of the chase! LOL We had stopped for Pam to get a picture while they were lying down, but there was something they didn't like and, before we knew it, one was actually blowing steam through his nostrils, jumped up, and started toward us. They may look slow and sluggish, but, man, are they fast!
Anyway, today as we rounded a curve, we saw what looked like a big yellow rock on the side of the road. However, when we got to it, we realized it was a bison that had not shed it's winter coat! We breathed a sigh of relief because this one was not interested in chasing us and just laid there.
We were lucky enough to be first in line when an elk crossed the road in front of us. She stopped on the side of the road to graze on some tender tree leaves and paid no attention to the cars stopping to take pictures.
We saw a coyote in the pounce stance and had gotten a couple of pictures of it when someone in a car pulled between us and the coyote. Never even realized we were there! So we did not get a picture of him when he pounced on whatever it was. What a disappointment.
We saw several other small herds of bison on either side of the road and then we saw a HUGE herd of them near a pond. There were several baby ones with the herds. They were all up and were grazing.
We started to notice that several trees had the bark knocked off the trunk from 3-4 feet from the ground and we thought maybe it was from the snow plows, but then we saw some damaged trees not close enough to the road. We wondered then if maybe the bison or some other animal had been chewing the bark because there were so many damaged trees. A park employees told us it was the bison. He said it is mating season and they must be showing their frustration! LOL
After we got our motel room, we went to the Sierra Trading Post Outlet. Pam orders quite a bit of things from their Internet store, so she thought it would be fun to visit one of the actual stores. She was disappointed in the size of the store. She did find a jacket and a carabiner and got a deal on the jacket since she was in their computer system, and got a 35% discount. She was very pleased with that.
Our goal had been to ride the Chief Joseph Highway today also, but we missed the road to take us out to it, so we ended up a little lower down in the state, but it was a scenic highway, too, so we were not too disappointed. We plan to get up tomorrow and ride it up and back and then head on back toward Tennessee with a few more stops between here and there. We are in for the night at Cody, Wyoming.
We'll add pictures later because of terribly slowwwwww internet at our motel.
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