Wyoming, Cody - Tuesday, July 17, 2018 - Buffalo Bill Center and Yellowstone

There has to be a story behind this.  It is sitting out in the middle of a large pasture field not far from the campground.

We went back for our second day at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.  We checked out the outside areas first.

Our first museum of the day was the Plains Indians Museum.  We’ve been to so many exhibits of Indian artifacts lately that I didn’t take too many pictures here.  We’ve come a long way from the days of this beaded cradleboard. 

This is a Crow shield and cover.  The painting on the tanned deer hide cover depicts a bear emerging from a cave and meeting a volley of bullets.  Four shields are known to exist with this same design.  If the design on a shield was particularly powerful the shields might be copied or traded.

This decorated Crow warrior shirt signified that the man who wore it was important among his people.

More bead work.  This entire vest front (including the white part) is made of beads.

The Draper Natural History Museum is our last museum.  This area has a lot of interactive things for kids to do.  The two story floor plan is circular and mimics starting at the top of a mountain and going down.  The displays depict the animals and plants native to each area as you go down the mountain.

The first display of wolves is an example of the taxidermy talents of Jack Putnam.  He was taxidermist and curator of natural history at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science for 25 years.

I was interested in this explanation of bentonite.  We saw gypsum and bentonite mines after we crossed the Big Horn Mountains.  I am familiar with gypsum but bentonite is new to me.

Chuck wagons amaze me, this one is particularly nice.  It was used during cattle drives and roundups on the Muddy Creek Ranch near Hardin, MT until 1967.

After we left the museum we took the Buffalo Bill Scenic Byway to Yellowstone’s East Gate.  We have been over part of this road as we traveled between Cody and the campground.  It is promoted as one of the most beautiful drives in America, I have to agree.  Here are some of my favorite pictures.

Buffalo Bill Reservoir Lake.

On beyond the reservoir

Entering Yellowstone, snow on the mountains.  Once again we are able to use our senior access pass to get into a national park for free.

Lots of winding roads

Water coming down the side of the mountain

Mountains covered with lodgepole pines.  These pines cover 60% of the park.

Many of the pines are dead or down.  The information I can find on fires in the park shows that the last major fires were in 1988.  I suppose the dead trees could be from those.

But other area are covered with beautiful wildflowers.

This was our first look at Yellowstone Lake.

Yellowstone Lake is America’s largest high altitude lake (above 7,000 ft.).  It is 20 miles long by 14 miles wide with 141 miles of shoreline.  The average depth is 140 ft.  At the deepest it is 410 ft.  Many of the area's 1000 to 3000 annual earthquakes occur under Yellowstone Lake causing events which continue to reshape the water’s edge.

We stopped at a small beach area.  The water felt at least lukewarm.  The average water surface temperature in the summer is supposed to be 60 degrees.

Clouds over the lake.

We stopped for lunch at the Yellowstone Lake Hotel.

This was our view during lunch.  There were a couple of moths that wanted to spoil my picture.  We noted that the hotel apparently doesn’t have air conditioning because the windows were cranked open allowing in a cool breeze from across the lake. 

The hotel dates back to 1891 and has been designated a National Historic Landmark.  It is the oldest operating hotel in a national park.

How would you like to be chauffeured around in this beauty?

As we are leaving the hotel we can see a storm coming in.

I think this is an elk cow.  The picture is fuzzy because I shot it through Greg’s side window as we passed.

We stopped at the Continental Divide pull off to stretch our legs. 

There is a beautiful lily pond here.

This robin was enjoying the view also.

Our big stop for the day was Old Faithful Geyser.  It was first documented in 1870.  It erupts every 40 to 126 minutes and goes for 1.5 to 5 minutes.  The water and steam shoot from 106 to 184 feet.  The crowd here was ridiculous, we finally found a parking space that was probably meant for one of the cabin renters.

This was Old Faithful as we walked up.

No more than five seconds later this is how it looked.

As we drove on through the park we spotted these buffalo alongside the road.

We stopped to view Gibbon Falls.  This is looking downstream from the falls.

Gibbon Falls is 84’ high.

This old bull buffalo was just wandering around by himself.

This view leaving Yellowstone of the Yellowstone Lake at Fisherman’s Bridge is one of my favorites.

This bull buffalo seemed to be checking out the progress of the day’s road construction near the east entrance.