Yellowstone-Montana Loop 2013: Friday in Yellowstone

Spent this day enjoying Yellowstone National Park. After finding a great coffee shop in West Yellowstone (Morning Glory) aand a delicious bakery (Woodside Bakery) with incredible cinnamon rolls, we headed for the west entrance. Our first stop was a meadow with a bison herd. Great photo ops. We were able to get up very close. Then we hiked a trail to Fairy Falls with some beautiful geyser pools and mineral lakes and gurgling, bubbling mud pots. Then on to Old Faithful where we toured the beautiful Yellowstone Old Faithful Lodge that offers rooms from $103 (with shared bath) to $512 (the penthouse with a view of the geyser), then waited on cold benches with a hundred or so others for the scheduled eruption of the most famous geyser in the world. On the return trip to West Yellowstone and our rv park, we had to drive slowly through an area where the bison herds use the park road as their own thoroughfare. After a stop at the local Dairy Queen for a Blizzard, we headed for camp and a cold beer. The weather continues to be unseasonably cold: hovering in the forties with windchills making it feel like the thirties. Tomorrow promises to be a bit less cloudy and a few degrees warmer.