There was frost on the ground when Ted got up this morning. The thermometer read twenty-nine. I know we are at a high altitude but this is still August. Across the lake there is fresh snow on the high peaks. I am thinking of heading south! I am glad that I soaked the steel cut oatmeal last night so we had a good hot breakfast to start out with.
By the time we headed out to the Fishing Bridge Visitors Center the temperature had risen to forty-four. The building was built by the CCC and had a large display of the birds found in the park. We walked out to the lake in front of the center and stuck our hands in the cold water. Brrr! We could walk for miles on the black sand but had places to go so didn't.
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| Fishing Bridge Visitors Center |
Lake Village is about a mile down the road from the turnoff to Fishing Bridge. The bridge crosses the outlet to Yellowstone Lake and you are not allowed to fish from it. Lake Village is the home of the huge Yellowstone Lake Hotel and Cabins all of which are painted yellow. We drove around the hotel and down by the water to get some photos of this grand old building of the past. The hotel sits up away from the water and reminds me of the Mt. Washington Hotel in New Hampshire except for the lack of a veranda. It certainly is long enough.
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| The Back of Yellowstone Lake Hotel |
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| Yellow Cabins |
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| Yellowstone Lake Hotel From a Distance |
We drove back to check out the Lake Lodge and then on down the road to Bridge Bay. Bridge Bay consists of a campground, a picnic area and a marina. It is a narrow inlet off Yellowstone Lake on the west side of the road where a boat would have to navigate under the road to reach. Hence its name. We took some photos and then headed toward West Thumb.
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| Marina at Bridge Bay |
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| Looking Back Toward Lake |
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| Marina From Bridge |
A side road, Gull Point Drive, right after Bridge Bay takes you right beside the lake for a couple miles. The view was beautiful and we had a great view of the mountains across the lake. West Thumb is a cove on the western side of the lake. It is a caldera within the greater caldera of Yellowstone and is hydrothermally active. There is a large geyser basin right next to the lake and some of the springs and geysers are actually in the lake. One of the geysers that was underwater had minnows swimming in what must be much warmer water than the surrounding lake. We walked the outer and inner loops visiting all the springs and geysers.
When we were done walking the boardwalks, it was time to get my passport stamp. I went into the old log cabin built by the CCC that houses a small bookstore and to my surprise the guy working there had on a Santa Clause hat with Yellowstone printed on the fake fur. He said that on August 25th in 1906 the park had a huge snowstorm. The stagecoaches were not able to reach the Old Faithful Inn to take the guests back to the railroad station which was probably close to seventy miles away in Gardiner. The guests decided that they would celebrate Christmas together, cut down a tree and decorated it and the park has been celebrating Christmas on this date every year since. The old building had a fire going in the stove and Santa told us it is used as a warming hut in the winter and is open 24/7.
We stopped at Grant Village a few miles further on and saw a film on the effects of the 1988 fire. It showed the controversy in the media at the time of the fires due to the park's policy to let fires burn for ecological purposes, then it showed the growth after just a year and then how healthy the forests were after ten years. Besides being interesting, there were beautiful photos of the park and its flora and fauna. The rest of the visitors center had more information on the positive effects of fire. We walked out the back door to the veranda overlooking the lake and then drove a very short way to a picnic area where we walked down and sat on a log overlooking the lake while we ate lunch.
The road between West Thumb and Old Faithful crosses the Continental Divide twice. We stopped to take a picture of the sign and stopped again at Kepler Cascade, a beautiful set of falls into a deep, deep canyon. At Old Faithful we cheated and parked in the inn parking lot. We only wanted to do the section from there to Morning Glory which has always been said to be the most beautiful spring in the park. I saw it about ten years ago and was really disappointed. People have thrown coins and debris into the spring, changing the flow of water and cooling it down so the color has changed from a beautiful turquoise blue to orange, yellow and green with just a hint of blue way down in the spring. The walk to get there was over a mile on boardwalks passing many other springs and geysers and a mile back on what was a road that Jesse and I took to get there when we were here before.
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| Keplar Falls |
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| Morning Glory Spring |
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| Close Up of Morning Glory Spring |
Tired from our hike, we just had to have an ice cream when we got back to the inn. There was a decorated Christmas tree in the lobby in honor of their holiday. We went upstairs on the balcony to eat our treat but it had been sprinkling off and on and was getting chilly so we returned to the car and headed for home. It started to rain just as we got back on the road. It has rained every afternoon for over a week and the temperature dropped at least eleven degrees on our way back to the campground. Again, time to head south.
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