Day 46. Yellowstone National Park, WY

Our intention, when planning our route home was to loop through Yellowstone Park and hopefully, finally get to ride the Beartooth Highway to Red Lodge, Montana. We have been thwarted in riding this iconic motorcycle road on two of our previous road trips. Both times, once in August and once in September, the road was closed due to ice and / or snow. Would this years attempt be successful?

Ironically enough, as we dodged smoke, wildfires and sweltered in 90 degree weather we could see the forecast beginning to "turn"and get colder with winter weather advisories! We made the call when in Tahoe to alter our plans slightly and cancelled our stay in Red Lodge which is a small town up in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana. We were delighted to find a place to stay in Yellowstone itself after spending some time repeatedly searching the lodging website. It would seem that cancellations happen quite often, so we swooped in and booked a cabin in Mammoth Hot Springs. This would still give us the option of riding the Beartooth if the weather co-operated.

We were dismayed to arrive in West Yellowstone on Sunday evening to see piles of snow in the parking lot of our motel from a winter storm that swept through a few days ago. Sure enough the Beartooth was closed - bugger! We were even more dismayed to see another winter storm on its way for Monday night and Tuesday with several inches of snow forecast to settle within the park itself. We reminded ourselves that most of the park is at a high elevation and therefore quite likely to see snow as forecast. We reluctantly decided that it would not be prudent to spend the night in the park with snow in the forecast - so we abandoned the idea of staying at Mammoth Hot Springs and made a reservation for  2 nights in Cody, WY instead - bugger again!!

Sure enough when we woke up on Monday, as forecast, the temperature was in the 30's!! Thankfully once the sun started shining things warmed up a little bit and it was a balmy 47 degrees when we set off at 8:00 am! West Yellowstone is a perfect place to stay for easy access to Yellowstone. Within 5 minutes we were into the Park and as always, we were astounded by the awesome beauty of this place. Traffic was light and we had an amazing ride through the park, stopping frequently to marvel at the various geothermal features. Even though we have been through the Park before we would never tire of this place.

 Immediately we were greeted with the sight of steam rising into the cold atmosphere.

And spotted a lone bull Bison in a safely distant pasture.

Then a not so safely distant specimen! The first of several close encounters. Although these massive creatures seem relatively unconcerned with the traffic passing by, I do feel very vulnerable sitting on my suddenly very tiny motorcycle!

We parked the bikes at the Fountain Paint Pots:

Bubbling Mud Pot

 Fumarole!

Another Mud Pot

For some reason a fellow tourist insisted we have our photo taken standing next to the 

"Leather Pool"!

The "Spasm Geyser" erupted as we watched.

Water from the various hot springs and geysers all flows into the Firehole River. The brilliant colors are due to specialized bacteria that thrive in these conditions.

 Wonderfully colored bacterial mats!

A short ride further along the Firehole River brought us to the Grand Prismatic Spring - breathtaking!

It was hard to drag ourselves away but we still had quite a distance to ride across the park to get to Cody on the east side of the Park.

We crossed the continental divide and soon saw the remnants of the winter storm that passed this weekend.

 Thankfully the road was dry!

Next up was the ride around Yellowstone lake. By this time in the day the wind was howling and the lake looked dark and stormy.

Thankfully we found a sheltered place for lunch looking over the lake. We hung onto our hats like this little tree is hanging on to the bank!

After lunch we rode out of the park, again, amazed at the spectacular scenery of the road heading east down to Cody.

What a day!! We were very happy to have had the opportunity to sample the wonders of Yellowstone again and our experience today more than made up for not being able to stay in the Park or to ride the Beartooth. It's always good to have something to come back for!