After two nights the Old Faithful Snow Lodge we are now back in Gardiner for the next 5 days until we are going to drive back to Seattle and then fly back home. With the weather still way to warm for the season and the snow levels being lower than 50% of the regular amount at this time even the interior of the park looks more like at the beginning of spring. Even the bears are already seen at various places.
Still the only way to get into the park is to go either by snow coach or snowmobile. We took the snow coach as part of our package with Xanterra. Although wolf and bobcat activity has been reported almost every day especially near Madision we had no luck either going toward Old Faithful, nor on our phototour or on our way back. It is not only about being prepared for that trip and be patient. Luck is a factor you certainly should not underestimate.
Still with the weather not being cooperative all the time as well we were able to get some nice shots.
This one was taken on our way towards Old Faithful close to the Fountain Paintpots area:
Old Faithful rewarded us with a nice eruption and some additional blue sky. Due to the warm weather not a single ghost tree and snow is almost absent there.
We walked along the boardwalk towards Morning Glory Pool and a group of bison crossed our path multiple times. It was fun to watch them going slowly through the thermal areas and they just pretended as it was -20°F.
The next day we started early with our photosafari where we hoped to see wolves or even the bobcat that was seen the past days along the area between Old Faithful and Madison. To make a long story short: We were not lucky this time. Nonetheless, we had an entertaining guide and nice crewmembers, learned much about the park as well and enjoyed the ride.
We have seen the bald eagles along the Madison river:
On our way back the sky once in a while cleared and landscape was nicer to shoot as well.
Our final day at Old Faithful started very grey and made nice scenic shots almost impossible. We found some bison and some squirrels along our way up to observation point. The view from there is awesome and seeing Old Faithful erupt from there is well recommended. With the weather not being perfect for postcard shots I tried something different. I used my 70-200mm lens and used 1/4 of a second as exposure time and zoomed while the shutter opens and closes:
Not too many existing things happened on our way back in the snow coach to Mammoth and we returned pretty late to Gardiner. We will see what the next couple of days are going to bring.
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