Day 2 in Yellowstone National Park (12 Jul 2009)

12 Jul 2009, our second day in Yellowstone NP, we stayed inside the park at Grant Village for our first night, so that we could start our trip at the early morning before the entrance opened to public.

We woke up at 5 in the morning and proceeded to West Thumb, it's just near to our lodge in walking distance, to see sunrise in Yellowstone NP, it was so cold in the morning and I was trembling all the way, but the sunrise was so beautiful and I liked the sky so much, why we couldn't find this scence in Malaysia?



After taking some breakfast, we just started our journey, we started our trip at Grant Village area, geyser and hot spring in at second day (Grant Village, Lake Village and Canyon Village) are not as much as we could find in first day, but we could see a lot of beautiful view today, and wildlives of course.

We started our trip at West Thumb Geyser Basin at Grant Village area, there was nice and we could see the Yellowstone Lake from there too, where Yellowstone Lake is the largest lake in US.




After Grant Village, we headed north to Lake Village and arrived to Fishing Bridge, where we could see river and beautiful view.







There was an extra earning on the day, as we stopped at a view point and abled to see some bisons are crossing from another side of river to our side, then they were playing on field to dry their fur, later they just went away by crossing the street, they were so close to us and I was scared if they would attack us, but we are safe, I think bisons are too used to see human near to them, maybe they are too bored to meet us as a curious feature :P





Later, we went to Mud Volcano, which was just like a boiling crater, that we could hear it kept boiling with steam. Still, we were abled to see some bisons here, whcih we were so escited to see it at our first day, then we just found they are so common to find in Yellowstone NP, just as BM told us, that we would find it is normal to see a bison in Yellowston NP.









There is something to share about searching a wildlife in Yellowstone NP, it is actually quite hard for a normal person like us to find some rare wildlife (except bison), because we didn't know which spcific area for them, and we don't have a binocular that we couldn't observe them from far distance. In addition, sometime we would only think that was a stone, instead of a wildlife. Therefore, the best known method to get a view on wildlife was to notice the crowd, normally you would find surprise when you follow the crowd, that's why we could find wolf, bear, eagle, elk, etc in the park. Especially for wolf and grizzly bear, wolf was so far that we only could see it throught binocular and grizzly bear was hiden that we only could find it after a person told us with direction.

Because of this, I would like to thank those kind and friendly people, who share us binocular and information :D

Therefore, I think the best way to search a wildlife is following the crowd if you are not abled to spot alone, when you see a lot of cars parked at a place or a lot of people observe the same direction with camera or binocular, that's high possibility to have a wildlife to see there :)

This is a short video of our wolf, but it was so tiny in far distance, therefore we couldn't capture a full image of it.


Next, we were at Canyon Village where I love it the most because I was abled to see beautiful and picturesque view there, there is a fall with its grant canyon, which you could find different view from different observation points. Also, we did a lot of hiking (or walking) at Canyon Village as there are so many trails available to see the fall and grant canyon with different observation.

If you were there, you should take as much as trail as you can because you would really amazed with picturesque views there, it is really breathtaking scenery.

There are two falls in Canyon Village, Upper Fall (109 feet height) and Lower Fall (308 feet hieght), both of them could take a beautiful picture with grant canyon, where Upper Fall at upstream and Lower Fall at downstream, they are two famous waterfalls on Yellowstone River.

This is Upper Fall.






This is Lowe Fall.


















Before we farewell with the beautiful Canyon Village, we took a picture with Glacial Boulder, which is as big as a house and was plucked from the Beartooth Mountains by an early Pinedale Glaciar at nearly 80,000 years ago.



Here is more information about Canyon Village viewstop: http://mms.nps.gov/yell/features/canyontour/index.htm

After we left Canyon Village, we directed to Tower-Roosevelt, I think it is named after the President Theodore Roosevelt, there is a tower fall with 132 feet of hieght, where you could see there are some standing tower-stones just near to the fall, I think this is how it's named as Tower Fall.





It was a regret that we could find black bear before Roosevelt-Tower, but we finally saw a mother bear with two cubs when we were leaving the Tower area, where we saw a traffic jam at that area as every car was stopped a while to take some pictures for them and we were lucky to take some pictures and video for them :D Especially SS and I were so excited to see two cubs climbed down a tree and walked away with their mother.





Later, we tried our luck at Lamar Valley, where is from Roosevelt-Tower to East Entrance area, but we couldn't find much wildlife there, except some bisons and deer.

However, we saw a grizzly bear from far distance on our way to Mamoth Hot Spring, I think SS was really a lucky girl as she always had her wishes came true, like black bear, grizzly bear and elk wishes. Although we couldn't see clearer on grizzly bear as it was hidden behind the weed, we still able to meet it :P



Also, we were really lucky to see another black bear on the way to Mammoth Hot Spring, it was bigger than the on at Tower Fall.



Furthermore luck, we saw an elk sat on the feild, which we found it with lot of crowd there.



At last, we were at our final stop of the second day, Mammoth Hot Spring, and weather was turned worse then, it was raining cat and dog for about 20 minutes during our tour, but we didn't want to leave there just like that, so that we continued our tour until we walked through their trail.

According to some reading from SL, Mammoth Hot Spring was misused by nearby residents before Yellowstone became the first National Park of US. In past time, residents liked to pour washing powder into the hot spring and washed their clothes there because the hot spring provided them with hot water, but this was harmful to this area.

This is Liberty Cap.


At our arrival, we saw many deers were gathered at Mammoth Hot Spring area, it was so beautiful, this is the first time we saw so many deers gathered together, we think that would because it was closed to raining time, therefore deers were looking for somewhere warm, that is hot spring :D





Angel Terrace.






Opal Terrace








After an hour walking at Mammoth Hot Spring trail, we finally had our second day tour done and it was about eight at night. Then, we just headed to our accommodation, which is Yellowstone North Travel Lodge at Gardiner just a few minutes outside of North Entrance. All in all, I think we had our trip planned well because we didn't need to spend too much travelling time to get to our accommodation.