Old Faithful

Old Faithful, a set on Flickr.

We have been waiting to catch a sunset on old faithful to get the elusive double rainbow at Old Faithful. So, late yesterday evening we headed down to Old Faithful.

As with most plans in Yellowstone in the Spring the weather always plays games with you. The later it got the greater the cloud buildup in the West got ... and there went our chances at the double rainbow.

Still we got some decent shots of the eruption just before sunset..

We waited for the next eruption and so it was about 9:30 and dark as we left Old Faithful to head back to Mammoth and Gardiner, Montana. It turned out to be a very eventful drive back home.

As you may know the 56 mile drive from Old Faithful to Gardiner is over mountain roads with lots of twists, turns and most importantly the YNP wildlife.

We weren't to far out of Old Faithful when we encountered our first group of buffalo on the road. When you are driving in YNP at night you have to be very alert. You can see pretty good when there are no approaching cars coming towards you. In this case there was a car in the distance and as we approached there were three buffalo walking down the yellow stripe in the highway. We did not see them until they were right at my front fender. Luckily, we got by them.

On the rest of the drive we got into one more of those situations and then three more with no approaching cars. Also a few elk along the roadway.

We got home about 11:00 and felt lucky not to have dented fenders or worse.

Hope you enjoy these four photos.