Friday July 6, 2012

Dave and I woke up at 6:30.  It was quite chilly so I decided to wear my long pants and sweatshirt.  I made eggs and sausages for breakfast this morning and, of course, we all had hot cocoa to warm our bones.  We cleaned up after breakfast and drove down to a large geyser basin at West Thumb.  We took a long walk down the boardwalk and stopped to see hot mud pools as well as hot water pool.  The minerals in the water caused some of the pools to be different colors – green, blue, orange – they were all beautiful.  Some of them were very shallow and others were extremely deep.  We stopped at the visitor’s center and learned about the fire of 1988.  It was quite devastating, but the re-growth is amazing.  There have been other fires here, of course, but none as large as the one in 1988.  The most interesting fact I learned was that the lodge pole pine (80% of the pines in Yellowstone) has two types of pinecones.  One opens and falls every year and the other will stay on the tree for up to 20 years until a fire comes along and melts the waxy substance coating it.  It then falls to the ground (about 1 million per acre) and begins seeding the forest among the ashes.  We ate lunch at near the visitor’s center and then drove to Old Faithful.  On the way we passed the Continental Divide twice.  We sat for about 40 minutes waiting for the eruption, but it was well worth the wait – it is quite spectacular!  We came back to camp to pick up our towels and clean clothes and headed to Fishing Bridge where the showers are located.  We stopped at the general store where we bought everyone a hooded sweatshirt in anticipation of another cold night.  We camp back to camp to catch up on our journals.  We had burgers and beans for dinner and snickerdoodles for dessert.  Everyone voted them okay, but not nearly as good as homemade.  After dinner we read several chapters of Tucket’s Travels – we haven
T read for the last two nights.  The boys and I went to the ranger program on The Flight of the Nez Perce Tribe.  It was interesting, but it didn’t start until 9:30 and it was really cold out so we left before the end.  Dave was reading in his sleeping bag and was toasty warm.