Tuesday, 6 September

Hello!

Wow, had a wild evening to tell you about! We headed over to Old Faithful Snow Lodge to see about internet access. Not difficult to log in, but it turns out that our power cord is 3-pronged, and the power strip installed along the floor would not work for us! So, had to rely on battery power, which is always problematic – but everything worked well, and I was able to post WITH pictures; hope you enjoyed!
After posting (and also checking some tennis and baseball scores…) we headed back to Old Faithful Inn around 8:45 p.m. for our 9 p.m. reservation. Got seated early, actually, and ordered: R had a house salad and I had their spinach salad with candied walnuts and dried cranberries. This was followed for R by his long-awaited trout. Having had such a nice lunch, I opted for a bowl of their red pepper gouda cheese soup – which was incredible, by the way…need to find a recipe! We had just received our main courses, and taken the first bites when, believe it or not, the fire alarm went off! At first nobody seemed to pay much attention, so we kept on eating … but finally the service people came in and told us we had to leave! So, grabbing our bags, we headed out on to the front porch. Fire dept. came; fire alarm continued – we must have been outside for at least half an hour – there were people in pj’s and bathrobes who had obviously been rousted out of their sleep! Finally the alarm was shut off, and it turned out that apparently a sprinkler pipe had broken somewhere in the main building, which automatically set off the alarm. How fun! We decided to go back and see what was left of our dinner. Fortunately, my soup had been VERY hot, so it was fine, and R said his trout was also fine, even though they offered to bring him a new one – but by this time it was WAY late, and we really wanted to get to bed! Left our window open all night; only got down to about 51 degrees, so it was very comfortable sleeping weather!

I woke up at 4:29 a.m. and, as we had wanted to get on the road early this morning, in the hopes of seeing animals, got R up as well. We headed out a little before 5 a.m. – only to find, as we walked toward the main part of the hotel, that everyone in the main section was once again all standing around the front entrance, with the fire alarm going off…there are certainly going to be some cranky people today!
Took a long drive in the dark toward Lamar Valley, which is supposed to be one of the best places to see animals. And we did!

We drove through absolute herds of bison – big and little (and their BIG is truly huge!) – stopped to allow two grouse (sorry, Zappala, still haven’t identified the type, but we will!) to walk slowly across the road, and finally spotted a grizzly bear near a river!

The bear was magic – fortunately, he was quite a distance away, which made us feel fairly safe – but watching him lumber along the floor of the valley was incredible; definitely something I will never forget!

From Lamar Valley, we turned the car back west, and this time headed to Mammoth Hot Springs. It is really a lovely area – surrounded by both mountains and thermal hot springs. As we had gone out without breakfast, we had the breakfast buffet at the Mammoth Hot Springs hotel restaurant – very good food; looking forward to going back there tomorrow for our last two nights in the park.
From Mammoth, we decided to head back to Old Faithful – in all, we had been on the road over 7 hours, and thought that naps were definitely called for!
So – we’re both now napped, and I’ve seen several eruptions of Old Faithful. While R finished his nap, I had Moose Tracks ice cream from the deli here, and have taken my new mystery book (thanks, Hil!) to the second floor of the hotel’s lobby to read and relax!

Tonight we’re eating at Old Faithful Snow Lodge, so will kill two birds – (for a birder, that is NOT a very good saying!) eating and computing! Tomorrow we move on to Mammoth, stopping along the way to take in Yellowstone Lake and environs!

More later!
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