Day 9 - Yellowstone

Woke to the sound of a thousand car doors opening and closing as people retrieved their breakfast food.  Thanks to the bears, as we have been reminded hundreds of times by the park,  food has to be stored in a vehicle or bear proof box located in the vicinity.  Despite our efforts, we were unable to attract a bear to our site ;-)

very cool vanagon passed us in the parking lot
The paint says it all.

We were up and mobile by 10:15am and set our sights on seeing the southern loop of Yellowstone.  We had a false start thinking we would hike to the Lone Star geyser first but opted out after seeing the trail map and figuring out it would take us close to 3 hours round-trip.  Instead we headed on to the Old Faithful show where we knew would would see many different geysers and thermal features in one area.  We arrived and managed to find a parking spot in the enormous parking lot and made it to Old Faithful in time to see it erupt.  We then walked the boardwalk and had really good luck arriving at the gysers right before they erupted.   The whole walk was over 4 miles and took most of the day and we ended up pretty tired.  We did end up seeing old faithful erupt three times during our walk but the most impressive geyser was Grand geyser.  We took hundreds of pictures of thermal features and I can't decide right now which is worthy to post here.

Steam bath anyone?

We realized we didn't have the time or energy to see anything else on the southern loop today so we headed back to camp.  Our campsite was really close to yellowstone lake so we found a trail leading to the lake and explored the shoreline as well as a sand bar that extended out into the lake.  Back at camp we setup the slack line, made a fire, roasted brats, dogs, and smores.   Later that evening I tried to use one of the precious shower tokens you are required to pay for when you pay for a campsite only to find the showers closed.  If anyone needs four shower tokens for yellowstone let us know.  Tomorrow we will try and get going early.