Yellowstone: Mammoth Hot Springs

We arrived late last night at our Airbnb in Billings, so we took their recommendation and dined out at Walkers Restaurant in town, excellent food.

This morning we walked several blocks beneath pretty blossom trees and by cute shingled homes to Harper and Madison’s Cafe for a good breakfast and came away with pastries for lunch. We had a chat with our host, Russ, before packing the car and heading to Scheels Store for..... bear spray! Scheels had a glass aquarium arch in the entrance and a Ferris wheel in the atrium! If we’d had more time it would have been good to explore (apart from the guns section!) but it was time to get on the road to Yellowstone National Park. The drive towards the park entrance on the north side was more interesting than yesterday’s rather featureless Grasslands. We were soon in to low forested hillsides with tantalising views of snow capped mountains ahead and to the right of us.

Just before we reached the gate, we stopped off in Gardiner for lunch in the Iron Horse Burger and Grill. Tony and Rob had their first taste of elk burger, having already eaten buffalo burger earlier in the holiday.

Then it was in to Yellowstone and to Mammoth Hot Springs where bison, including young, and elk, were hanging out around the car parks.

We passed an enjoyable couple of hours walking the boardwalks around the spectacular hot springs with their tapestries of colour created by the thermophiles - heat loving micro-organisms. According to the guide book, colourless and yellow thermophiles grown in the hottest water; orange, brown and green thermophiles thrive in cooler waters. Colours also change with the seasons due to differ8ng amounts of sunlight. The terraces of travertine spill down the mountainside, ever changing and developing. The dramatic one in my blip is Canary Spring.

From the hot springs we drove through the park to our cabin accommodation for the next few days in West Yellowstone. Hopefully tomorrow we will be able to hike one of the trails, with our bear spray of course!

For some reason my blip looks sharper on the black background?