We decided to spend a 3rd day at
Yellowstone! Our plan was to
see the Rainbow Geyser because we missed it on Thursday. We were eating breakfast. Pat was in the pantry pouring her java
when she looked out the window and saw a MOOSE!
She screamed for Beth and the moose looked directly at her in
the window. Beth came running, looked and then ran
to get her phone to call her sister, Peg.
“Peg there’s a moose in the yard! It’s going around the back near the porch!” The moose just
stopped and stared at both of us.
It could hear us.
Peg shouted, “Beth, Beth, stop screaming and get away from
the windows! It might charge at
you through the window!”
Both of us moved away so it wouldn’t see us. We watched the moose munch the leaves on
the trees next to the house for a short time before it traipsed
on down the hill.
That was an experience we will never forget!
After breakfast we packed the car for the trip to the
park. The ride was slower today because
of traffic. We noticed a lot of
cars pulled over to the side of road. This we have come to know means animal sightings. We were curious.
We pulled over and parked when we could. We ran with the
camera in hand to see a large herd of elk! They were bathing and grazing across
the river and didn’t seem phased with the crowd of bystanders.
We headed straight for the Midway Geyser Basin to see the
Rainbow Geyser. We were not disappointed.
It was awesome. The bacteria mats were so colorful. We were told that we could see the
geyser better from the lookout at Biscuit Basin so we drove there to see it.
We walked over by the river to the trail and looked at the
map to see how the trail went. (We
learned from our mistake yesterday.) We both figured we could do this trail easily. We walked around the wide boardwalk to get
on the trail and noticed two Rangers waving at people to go away. We looked to see what they were waving
for. There in the center of the boardwalk were two very large bison, a bull
with very long horns and a female.
The male seemed a little agitated. They were both lying down but the male was blowing
dust from his nostrils. We kept
our eyes on the two and found the trail. The trail was about a mile, no problem we thought….but soon we
realized that this was going to be a lot tougher than we thought. The heat, the height, (Pat
was really getting uncomfortable with the height) and the mosquitoes made this
trail a real challenge! We both
decided that this was just too much for today. We descended but
didn’t forget to look for the two bison again. This time they were both standing and walking around
and walked over the boardwalk. The
male was following the female. We
watched and waited. We just hoped
they didn’t turn and run toward us.
They ambled farther away from us so we darted out of the park. “Phew!”
With all of the excitement, we decided to call it a day but
not before we had one more ice cream from down town and headed for our home
away from home, Big Sky.
After a short drive we saw another group of cars and people. We slowed down and asked what they were looking
at. “An eagle,” a woman
shouted. There high in the tree
was a large eagle. Cool to see and
certainly a lot less intimidating.
We arrived home to await some more visitors. These ones were expected and very
welcome! Pat Chalmers (a colleague
from school )and company were
traveling across the country and arrived in Montana this morning. They planned on spending the night with
us before they journeyed to Yellowstone.
We had a great day with them and talked till late in the evening,
actually it was early morn.
Tomorrow we head home to Natick and Ashland. We both feel so lucky to have had this vacation. The sights we saw were indescribable. We can’t thank Beth’s sister Peg
enough for letting us use her home. God’s beautiful country is right out there to
see. Everyone should be so lucky
to have the opportunities we had.
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