I was worried when planning the day that we wouldn't have much to do in the morning. At noon we had booked a fishing trip on Yellowstone Lake from Bridge Bay marina but we didn't need to get there until half past noon. So what to do in the morning? Well, by the time we got breakfast at the Soda Fountain, turned in the Junior Ranger books at the Visitor Center, and got on the road it was 10:30. Still, it wouldn't take 2 hours to go the 20 or so miles from Canyon to the marina, would it?
Almost immediately after turning south on the Grand Loop road we encountered traffic. There were multiple herds of Bison in Haydon Valley and as we all know the grass is greener on the other side of the road it was time to migrate. Some of the herd wasn't quite sure, though, so we sat and watched with everyone else as the last couple of stragglers finally decided to cross.
We road to Gull Creek was closed on the Bridge Bay side (flooded, the water is really high) but we found the other end of the road and drove back to the picnic area. There we found a really nice lakeside table where we could eat our bagels and drink our chocolate milk and watch the boats on the lake and take pictures. Of course as we walked closer to the lake to take pictures, leaving our bagels on the tables, the local birds got interested and swooped down to bite off pieces. Luckily we had broken the bagels into small pieces to prevent anyone from choking. After shooing off the marauders with some well timed photo shots we headed for the harbor.
Tommy from Tennessee was our guide for the fishing trip, a 2 hour ride to the southern part of the lake, near the West Thumb inlet. Naturally the kids were quite excited about the ride, and even more excited about the prospect of catching some of the native cutthroat trout and the lake trout that were infesting the waters. The fishing method was trolling; get close to the edge of the lake in about 10 feet of water and troll some lures out the back. We were lucky; in the first hour each boy caught a cutthroat which was released back into the lake. Sadly however Leslie didn't catch anything and Devyn was quite upset about the fact that we didn't catch any of those lake trout. If you catch lake trout you can take it to one of the restaurants and they'll cook it up for you!
We then headed over the Continental Divide twice on the way to Old Faithful and our lodging in the Snow Lodge cabins. Instead of checking in though we headed for the Visitor's Center and caught a bench to watch Old Faithful erupt. Still impressive after all these years! And the kids loved it! Then we had dinner, dropped off our bags in the cabin and headed out to see if we could catch Castle Geyser erupting.
The skeeters were swarming badly when we arrived at Castle. The predictions for Castle and Grand are for a specific time plus or minus an hour for Castle and 2 hours for Grand! So that meant we could be waiting for 2 hours for Castle. While we deliberated Beehive went off up near Geyser Hill; that was nice. As we looked down towards Grand we could see and heard from passerby's that it hadn't gone off yet; even though it was into it's last hour. Hmm, Castle or Grand? We took a chance that Grand would go off and we could return to Castle if it went off. Well, halfway to Grand Castle did go off; Corwyn returned and enjoyed a close-up view of it as we watched from the benches at Grand. Then Corwyn rejoined us at Grand. Which was late. Really late! And the skeeters were about ready to drive us off and the sun set. But then...
Grand is very impressive right up next to it. Bursts way over your head and lots of steam and mist! It went off for about 15 minutes and then went quiet and caught us off guard with a second big burst as we were starting to walk off. Wow! Once it was done though we got out of there quickly; the skeeters had gotten enough blood and it was almost dark. In the room we thought about what we had done and felt very fortunate to have had a full day!
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