Back through the southeast quadrant of the park today, since we'd made minimal stops on that same route in from Grand Teton. We started slowly to let the girls catch up on sleep after their thunderstorm car sleeping night, and they needed showers too. Plenty of days in the park meant we didn't have to rush, for which everyone was much happier. We also realized at breakfast that between our coffee, chai, and oatmilk, we could make a pretty decent dirty chai latte for Ruth. Not too shabby for a campground!
In our trip bible page for today, we noted this was a big bison day - "bison, bison everywhere!" We hit our first bison traffic jam today. We were amazed every time we got to see the bison close up, and were surprised at the super mad and honking guy - guess he was over it. We never bored of bison. We saw herds of bison for the first time in Yellowstone today (having seen only the one herd previously in Teton), and especially loved seeing all the baby bison including babies nursing. It was fun spotting the little black distant dots of single bison on hills or across fields. We also loved seeing the bison rolling around in the dirt (they get back up so quickly!), or resting under shady trees (those were "tree bison").
We stopped at the mud volcano - lots of neat stuff to see here, including the Dragon's Mouth Spring. When we arrived, there were 7 or 8 bison hanging around the hot springs, which looked so cool through all the fog/steam:
There was a ton of bison poop around this area - no surprise given all the bison, but we always laughed when seeing bison poop in locations where people weren't allowed to walk because it was too dangerous and you theoretically might fall through. We also saw what we thought might be bear poop, which Zadie later confirmed using the gift shop's helpful "Who Pooped?" book. :)
After a picnic lunch, we stopped at the Sulfur Caldron overview, where Ruth got some great video of a bison rolling in the dirt, then on to the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". We stopped here at the Upper Falls overlook then over to Artist Point. A beautiful view, but that area was packed! After that, we drove back across the river to another viewpoint at the top of the falls. Throughout these drives, we saw more animals, including a bald eagle on top of a tree in its nest, and more deer thanks to eagle-eye Ruth spotting them in the forest.
Those walks to viewpoints were each very short hikes, but by that point in the afternoon we were tired and hot! Back to the Canyon Visitor Center (air-conditioning!) for another short movie, gift shop, and exhibits. We hit the camp store again for more supplies and huckleberry ice cream, delicious. Returned to camp to chill for a bit, then made an easy black bean, rice, and mango pico de gallo dinner.
After dinner, we headed back out for another animal sighting drive to the northeast. No luck with animals given the landscape here, but we got beautiful views of the canyon, mountains, and ghost forests (swaths of bleached out dead trees) as well as pretty pics of what we named "Grandma Nancy Mountain" due to the number of wildflowers there. Back to the southeast, we saw more bison, including another close-up walking in the road, plus a "lady elk" right next to the road. There was even a perfect rainbow in the sky. Headed back to camp for more cards before bed. All in all, another great day.
