Road to Old Faithful, Thursday 13th August

During the night I got up to see the Pleides but it was a bit of a waste of time as the smoke obscured any potential sighting. We left Glacier National Park to take the road south and soon e were out of the forested area and crossing open grassland and finally the air quality was much better except for the occasional road works.

It was a long drive day and the rolling grassy plains finally gave way to more mountains and we followed the Missouri River upstream into the hills.

 Part of the side of a mountain had collapsed following an earthquake in 1980 and had created a new lake, flooding the valley bottom upstream of the natural dam and flooding trees.

We entered Yellowstone National Park which uses a bear as its symbol and drove straight to Old Faithful.

 

 It erupts every 91 minutes and the next eruption was just minutes away so along with a fistful of other tourists we sat about and waited until it erupted and it was all over.

 And within minutes the crowd had disappeared and we were off to our campsite to set up camp.

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