August 28, 2003 The end of the Yellowstone sojourn 

Marc’s good friends from Santa Cruz, CA, Don & Ellen Pfeiffer, made arrangements to spend a couple of days with us at the KOA and ride the park together. They just purchased a new motorhome and also brought along their Fat Boy Harley. On this, our last day in the area, the morning dawned beautiful and we were ready to ride by 9:30 a.m. Off to Yellowstone Park!

Don, Ellen, Marc, Claudia leaving the KOA

 With Claudia leading so the others wouldn’t leave her smaller bike in the dust, the first stop was at Midway Geyser Basin, whose main feature is a beautiful deep blue pool, puffing steam, and the renown Grand Prismatic Pool. Grand Prismatic is actually best seen from the air since it is large and hard to get perspective of the colors from ground level.

         Vapor comes off the blue pool                           Grand Prismatic Spring

Our next stop was the Upper Geyser Basin loop walk, which is located at Old Faithful. It was more like a saunter and we were fortunate to catch Castle Geyser erupting for at least 30 minutes, an occurrence which only happens twice a day. This walk features many interesting geysers and pools and is the best one in our opinion and not to be missed. In addition to Castle erupting, Sawmill geyser was also erupting. Just as we got back to Old Faithful Inn, Old Faithful also started erupting. Talk about timing!

                 Castle Geyser                                               Castle Geyser

       Sawmill Geyser starts to erupt                             Eerie pool with growths

                                                            Mineral flow into Firehole River

                 Sponge Geyser                                       The group on the loop walk

      Sawmill Geyser throws hot water

 From there, we rode back the way we had come to Whiskey Flat picnic area where we enjoyed a pleasant lunch in the woods. Marc & I figured we had enough of riding and needed to do some things in anticipation of leaving tomorrow morning, so we headed back while Don & Ellen continued riding the park.  

One last evening, where we plan to all enjoy a home made lasagna dinner and our sojourn in Yellowstone comes to a close. Next up: the red rock country of Utah.

        Our sunrise view from the KOA