Yellowstone…not the series.

  
























































9/21/25:  On this day 5 years ago, we sold our house between Bend and Sisters and moved into our TT at Bend Sisters Garden RV Resort.  On this day 45 years ago, I was born.  I’ve been trying to take pictures as we travel, saying this is 40 and so on.  40 was at Bend Sisters Garden RV, 41 was in Vermont, 42 was at Marquette General Hospital, 43 was Mackinac Island, 44 Kenai Fjords Cruise and 45 is Gardiner MT with a view of Mammoth Village in Yellowstone.  


Our drive down from Helena only took 3.5 hours.  What a beautiful drive from Livingston.  First impression of the Timbren SES, I like em.  Way less bounce/rocking-horse motion when hitting dips or bumps.  We saw a large bull elk with his herd of ladies in a farmers field, some deer and passed through some cute towns.  


We landed at Eagle Creek Campground just outside of Gardiner.  It’s a nice spot with 20 spaces and we scored a spot next to a small beaver dam on a creek.  It was a little tricky getting leveled out, but we got er close enough.  


We played a bunch of games in the sun and made on our money back on the lotto tickets.  It was a nice afternoon in the high 70s and we had a few storms pass by to the east.  I cooked up a large Snake River Farms, waygu chuck steak on the Blackstone.  It turned out pretty darn good and had a nice crust on it.  We split a bottle of wine, watched some shows and called it an early night.  


9/22/25:  It rained pretty hard over night and off/on until about 10:30am.  We left right after the rain stopped and headed for Yellowstone NP.  On the drive to the park we saw numerous elk, inside the park we saw a lot of elk and a few pronghorn.  


The drive up to Mammoth is steep, winding and slow.  Mammoth was busy, but not packed.  We were here 11-ish years ago and I’d honestly have to go through old photos to see the changes.  We hiked around Mammoth Hot Springs, did the upper terrace drive and then rolled back into the town of Mammoth. 


We wandered around town, checked out the visitor center and looked at some elk.  There are some poor rangers with reflective traffic vests and bullhorns who have to protect the elk from the tourons.  When an 8x7 bull elk is using his antlers to fling dirt, mud and grass in the air, it should be self explanatory to stay back.  Add to it that he is bugling like crazy and running around.  The rangers should let nature run its course.  


Speaking of Tourons, we saw several groups of them just hiking off trail in a few geothermal areas.  One group even had a dog with them.  Can’t make this stuff up.  After our walkabout in town we checked out Mammoth Campground.  It’s in a beautiful spot in the park, down in a canyon.  It’s full basically until October 1 and it’s also full of elk.  


We made it back to the campsite for a cool

and clear afternoon.  We made some tacos and hung out.  The temp significantly dropped after the sun went down.  It got down to 33* in the campground overnight.  

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