05-16-2009 Random Oddities

A picture down Cooke City, Montana Main Street. Really neat, really small, no stop lights, and the highway is a dirt road coming into town.


Picture of the said dirt road heading from Cooke City to Yellowstone North East Entrance.

Buffalo blocked us while chilling out on the road. They truly are not interested in going anywhere but where they are.

A few buffalo scuffling around and one rolling in the dirt.

We had not been blocked by anything in the road all trip and suddenly in one day and with in 5 miles of each other we are blocked two times. We still enjoyed watching them.

Tower Falls - We walked down the trail to get to the bottom of the falls. We missed the signs that said the trail was washed out. So after going down the mountain for about 10 minutes, we find that...well the trail is completely washed out with multiple land slides. So we go off roading. Climbing bolders, sliding down dirt hill and crawling on our hands and knees. After about 15 minutes we just got to the point that we were seeing several hundred yards forward and the terrain was doing nothing but getting worse. With this presented in front of us, we decided to turn around and scramble back up the mountain eventually climbing several fences to get back on the trail.

If you click on the picture above and look near the closest bush you will notice a snake. With all the snow around there was still a snake scurrying around. Surprised us both...we proceeded to chase it as much as we were able too...we lost it in the grass though.

Going down the trail that was washed out gave us a great view.

Some signs are strange...this is one of those.

Some of the stuff we climbed over at the base of the falls before turning back. Made it quite a bit of fun until we realized we had to climb back up.

The Tower Falls created this river that created this canyon.

A black bear we found...He just seemed happy to chill out in the sun. I dont blame him. It was a beautiful day around mid 60's and sunny.

Now when I say we found him...we didnt find the bear...we found these people on the side of the road and then saw what they were looking at.

This little guy was hanging out by the road. We have no clue what he is. He looks like a beaver but does not have a tail that is like a beaver's....so we havent a clue.

Elk! All with out their horns.

More Elk. These guys were hanging out in Mammoth Springs Village. The same place the buffalo were at the day before. I really think these guy's heads look like kangaroos....but that is just me.

A ground hog thing that was trying to hide from me but I got his picture!

There are tons of these birds in Yellowstone. Not sure what they are. They are good size birds too. This guy was about 5 feet from us so he was fairly tame.

The surveying marker at Mammoth Falls Village.

The sign amused me.

More pictures of the elk hanging out in the Mammoth Springs Village.

Just a bridge leading to Mammoth from the east. Matt said the bridge felt very unstable. I thought it was ok...just needed the decking to be repaired.

This is the picture of an elk in a stand off with a pack of wolves. This was around 2pm and apparently the first person to notice this was at 5am. So it had been going on for a while. See how many wolves you can see. If you count how many there are and tell me I'll buy your lunch(that is if you are correct).

I dont know why this picture came out sideways...the blog messed it up...this is the first spring that came up when we went to steamboat springs.

Infrequent Major Eruptions huh? It has been right at 4 years and this thing hasnt had a major eruption....I think it is broke. We did see it erupt to about 12 feet or so though.

Here is a picture of Steamboat erupting.

While walking around the Steamboat basin - we came upon this sign. I dont know if you can see this but the sign is telling us two different directions and one of the directions is straight in the woods.


The areas pictured above were in the Norris Geyser Basin.

After visiting the Norris Basin, we headed towards the midway and lower geyser basins. Both were closed. This is Matt sitting at the trail head at the midway basin. Both of us were frustrated with the trails being closed.

Looking down the river near the midway geyser basin.
Where water from the midway geyser basin dumps into the river.
Midway Basin sign with information.

This is the reason why we couldnt go on the Midway and Lower Basin trails...

Coyote!

As we were leaving the park we saw more Buffalo!

Mountain on the way out of the park.

Entering Montana again!

Here we are entering Idaho for the first time.

The Tetons from Idaho. Idaho has some of the most varied landscapes I have ever seen. Mountains, Plains, Forest, Grasslands, Deserts and ....

...Sand Dunes!!!! Yes Idaho has sand dunes... What in the world is going on here. They just seem to start and as soon as they begin they end with no apparent rhyme or reason.


Another picture we took while walking in the dunes. The sand is VERY fine and is almost a silt it seems. Climbing these things is actually incredibly hard and going down them is harder then one would expect. You would expect to sorta slide down but instead of sliding down you slid then sink. The sand also did everything in it's power to claim your footwear as if it was starving and only shoes would satisfy the desire.

More sand! We enjoyed playing on this dune for 20 or 30 minutes before heading off to bigger and better things.

Matt on the dune...I refuse to add mine as I look mad at the world. I guess that is what I get for not reviewing pictures until the night after.


This night we spent the night at Idaho Fall, Idaho. Fairly interesting town. Ate dinner at a Mexican place...they had no cheese dip there...but they were planning on getting it soon...odd we thought.