I woke up just after five this morning and got a few shots of Yellowstone Lake at dawn, but I was still tired so I crawled back into my sleeping bag and slept for a couple more hours. I packed everything up and did the best I could to dry off my rain fly and tarp, and at least managed to get them into part of the car where they wouldn’t get anything else wet. Then it was off to my next destination – Craters of the Moon National Monument. On the way through Yellowstone I passed two markers for the Continental Divide, so I stopped at the second one to take some photos. While I was sitting in my car a large raven hopped on my side mirror apparently wanting to see what was inside my car. I took a few photos and a video and then realized he wanted to get inside the car so I rolled the window all the way up. He didn’t want to leave even when I started driving away, but he finally flew away when he realized he wasn’t going to get anything from me-whew!
I took a side trip to see a beautiful waterfall and also saw a gigantic eagles nest high up in a tree.
When I got back on the main road I had to slow down because of a traffic jam – a bison traffic jam! There were quite a few, it took almost 10 minutes for them to pass by with three national park rangers in cars trying to move them along and keep them all in a group. There were lots of young bison and it was so cool to see them up close. That was such an awesome end to my trip to Yellowstone. I did feel for all the people coming in from the West Yellowstone entrance as traffic was backed up for more than 10 miles. The cars were barely moving, quite a few people were leaning out of their windows, I saw a couple of girls sitting in camp chairs in the back of a pickup truck and two young men walking between cars kicking a soccer ball back-and-forth. Guess you do whatever you can do to get by – I am really glad I was on the other end of that traffic jam.
After I left the park I had a 3 1/2 drive ahead of me. I stopped at The Flat Ranch Preserve that was covered in wildflowers, what a gorgeous spot. It’s a Nature Conservancy site like Heart Mountain in Wyoming. I passed lots of beautiful mountains. I drove through Arco, Idaho, the first atomic city in America. The mountain just outside the little downtown was covered in ‘class of’ signs from years going back 100 years.
I finally made it to Craters of the Moon and snagged a campsite. I’m glad I got there in the afternoon because later, when I was sitting down to have dinner, several cars drove past looking for a site, but apparently the campground was full. It’s a first come first serve place and it’s more popular than I expected. It is an incredible landscape, and it really does feel like this is what it would be like to live on the moon, though there is a lot more plant life than I expected. The wildflowers are just starting to bloom, they’ve had a lot more rain than usual here too. But the main attraction are the incredible lava landscape, lava sculptures and dead trees. I had a ball driving the loop and walking around all different kind of lava flows. I am so glad I stopped here, it is a fascinating place.
