BlackHills/Yellowstone Day 5

Being that the Old Faithful Inn IS very "Historic" it lacked certain modern convienciences such as air conditioning and/or a ceiling fan. And also because it was so wooden, I could hear every move, every person in the entire hotel made! So being the optimist that I am, I am thankful for that, because I was up at sunrise to capture some shots of Old Faithful erupting.

Or room is the 3rd from the right on the first floor, behind the pine tree. A little later in the morning the kids watched it erupt right from that window. Again, it was more like, "Look Kids!.....Old Faithful!" The kids love water, but more along the lines of, "Can we go to the pool?" Because we hadn't really had time to do any swimming at any of our late night hotel stays, I was hoping we would be able to find a Hot Spring that you could actually swim in at Yellowstone. There are a couple, but none of them worked into our schedule. We did hit the Firehole Lake Area, which does have a swimming spot, and also a very loud and steamy guyser, on the way to meeting my Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin near the West Entrance, but no swiming for us. "Places to Go!" Off to the meeting spot at Lower Geyser Basin and Fountain Paint Pot. Next up, the spot on my wish-to-photograph-list, Grand Prismatic Spring at Midway Guyser Basin. Wow! You can tell it's Friday! Good luck trying to find a parking spot. Our truck is pretty big, and add in my Uncle's car, we're as long as a bus, bus parking it is! And Wow! Prismatic it was!

My sad little girl had found the day before, and forgotten at the prior stop, a perfect walking stick. It really was just her size. She couldn't quite cheer up for yet, ANOTHER picture.

In my opinion, our most spectacular stop of the day, for more reasons than scenery was Fairy Falls. Here is how I presented it. "One Mile to the trail head, then 1.6 miles to the falls." You think anyone of us took that as almost a 6 mile hike?!?!? Over the river and through the woods, 2nd star on the left and straight on til waaaaay past lunch time! If Callie was thirsty yesterday, she was even hungrier today! Luckily I had a stache of old candy crane rejects in my camera bag from the hockey season. She didn't want em back then, but now it was like gold! All and all worth the time and effort.

After our long hike, our picnic lunch was well recieved. Ice cream at Yellowstone Lake was also well recieved. Thanks Aunt Laurie. My cousin and I were reminicing about how IceCream was a favorite with our Grammie. This was a nice way to honor her memory.

We found equally spectacular scenery with our last Yellowstone stop of the day at the Upper and Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

Good bye Yellowstone, thanks for showing us the wonder of nature. Can you believe I missed getting a picture of the, "You are leaving Yellowstone National Park" sign! Finally we made it to Cody, but once again too late to see the Firearms Museum and the Shootout! We still did enjoy dinner at the Irma Hotel.

Our 3rd and final scenic byway took us on a very late night drive on the Bighorn Scenic Drive. All we wanted to see was the next town where our hotel would be.