Today was my last day in Yellowstone with my family. We decided to do part of the Northern loop and see Mammoth Hot Springs. I mistakenly convinced everyone that you could swim in these hot springs but after 4 hours of driving we realized that they were just as hot as the others and we would die if we went in. plus there wasn’t much to see there anyway. We must have come on a bad day. There was only one spring coming out of a rock wall.
It would have been a pretty bad day but it was saved by two things. The first is XM Radio with stations like 20 on 20, Love, and The Highway. We probably heard Jordan Sparks 4 times, Lady Gaga 5 times, and Taylor Swift 7 times. I didn’t hate it. The second thing was some great animal sightings. It started off weak with only one buffalo sighting but once we got close to Mammoth it got great. A few miles before the springs we saw our first moose/elk of the trip. We could tell which it was because it ran into the brush pretty fast but we all got a good look. After the springs, during the drive to West Yellowstone was a major highlight of the trip. A few miles after Mammoth we saw a male moose with huge antlers about 150 feet away. I got a good video and Ali got some good pictures but it was raining hard and was tough to take pics. Then there was the elk. There was a huge traffic jam and people were getting out of their cars to look at something along the side of the road. There was a HUGE male elk with giant antlers. It was less than 20 feet away and didn’t seem to care that 75 people were standing around taking pictures of it. It was amazing. On the way out of the park I caught a glimpse of another animal off on the side of the road. It was another moose so we pulled off and found a whole herd. There were 15 lying around or walking about. They were about 150 feet away and on the other side of a river.
The fam dropped me off in West Yellowstone to save me two days of riding. It’s a cool town and very different from Jackson. This is more of a cowboy sort of town with a rustic feel while Jackson is more of a ski town. We ate at some restaurant which was just alright where I got another buffalo burger. While we were there we saw a man in a suit and mom wanted to ask if that was the mayor. She thought that in a town like this only the mayor would ever wear a suit. We told her that would be embarrassing so she asked the waiter “Is that man famous?” but he didn’t know. DQ for dessert. I miss Rita’s. Every camp site in town was full so mom put me up in a hotel for the night. I spent the night writing in my journal while the newer Planet of the Apes was on TV.
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