Ho, long time no update, yeah? This is why. Like I said before, we’d saved my Canon camera memory card to take the video of Old Faithful with; I also had my old Nikon, and Nolemana had his Olympus and his small Panasonic.

My Canon had no memory left, so we started using whatever camera was the most handy, and so in trying to make some kind of consecutive narrative here, I had to try figure out which photo came next according to the time stamps on the photos. Because we weren’t nearly as organized as we were on our Montana trip this year. It took me a lot longer than I’d thought, because the other problem was that we forgot to set the correct time stamps before we left; and of course there were the time changes, too.

At any rate, I think I have them in some sort of cohesive order. Not perfect, but okay. Enough to make a fairly interesting post, though. I hope. Complete with elk butts. Heh heh.

K’den. We left Old Faithful and headed into the rumble strips. Notice the snow on the ground. It took us quite awhile to get warm after sitting outside for over an hour in 32-degree weather.

We’re just past the Old Faithful area, but try look the other big geyser!

In just a few minutes, try look what we saw right next to the road!

Awesome, yeah?

It really is hard to believe that they were so close to us, totally ignoring us as they walked along.

We were so excited. You’d think that we’d kinda be used to seeing them by now, but nah. They are awesome animals up close.

Nolemana got this shot right out the window.

I grabbed my Numbah Two camera and shot this video. You can hear Kukui small kine barking in the background; she’d never seen bison before either, except the ones in Hayden Valley.

After that exciting time, up the road we went, seeing geysers everywhere.

Seeing all these was just amazing. This trip to Yellowstone was turning out to be more fabulous the further along the road we went. Seeing all these sights was just breathtaking, and we probably were seeing maybe ten percent of the whole park. We gotta go back!

Shadows were beginning to lengthen and we were really getting tired. By this time we’d been on the road for eight hours already and we still had a long way to go to get to our motel. All the same, we were so glad we’d had the chance to see part of Yellowstone.

Where hills and tall firs and pines weren’t in the way, we still had wonderful vistas before us.

Geysers were everywhere!

We’re now heading North on Highways 20/89/191 on the Grand Loop Highway. Which is closed in winter, by the way. We passed through both Upper and Lower Geyser Basins.

Remember the elk lemu I mentioned earlier? Well, we came across two elk. But would they turn around? Nope. So this is what we got.

We finally made it to Madison Junction. All along the way we’ve been travelling alongside the Firehole River. From here on, we’ll follow the Madison River for awhile. At this elevation it’s still plenny cold outside and we definitely needed the car heater!

We’re now headed makai, towards the ocean. The Pacific Ocean. And we still have to be careful to watch for bison.

This is the Madison River, which looked lovely in the dusk. By this time we knew we weren’t going to make it to our motel before dark. But it was really okay. We’d rather have whatever daylight was left while we were still inside Yellowstone.

At times we were right next to the river; it was incredibly beautiful at this time of day especially. And see the snow still?

This was a neat part of the drive; we’d go from sunlight to shadow and back again depending on where we were on the highway. And of course, we’d never been here before so we had no idea what was up ahead. As usual.

In the dusk, the hills were beautiful.

We saw some pretty major blowdown.

And then! More bison!

Well, Musubi wanted his photo taken with them. So of course, we did.

Up close.

And then, oh my gosh, they began to cross the road right in front of us! Sorry the photos are blurry.

Of course, when bison cross the road, people stop.

Not just because they’re big and have the right of way, but also because they’re just so amazing to watch!

If you’re a bison, you don’t care how long cars have to wait. And maybe you’ll walk down the middle of the road if you want to. Just because you can.

But then, thinking there’s more to eat on the other side, you finally decide to cross all the way over.

Speed zone ahead. Wonder wassap? Not that we’d been going very fast.

And oh my gosh, in the cold river, at dusk, we saw a fisherman! I hope the cold was worth it!

Here’s the GoogleMap so far; zoom in to see more stuffs. And see that yellow road coming in from the north at Madison Junction? That’s where we had originally planned to go! Now look at all where we did go!

Hopefully I have all these photos in the right order. But if not, just enjoy anyway. That’s what’s important, yeah? Thanks for riding along… I’m gonna get busy and get the next installment ready.