Yellowstone: Day 5 Mammoth Springs and Roosevelt Tower Area

This was our last day of our stay in Yellowstone. We started early to go to the Tower area. We stopped at the Tower falls and used our new walking sticks to wind our way down to the river. We’ve found that all the walking up and down hills has been hard on the knees and feet so we bought some hiking poles. We’ve noticed lots of people using them and now we know why, they add stability and support to complaining knees. After the falls, we drove on to the Roosevelt Lodge area. This is a rustic lodge and cabin area with horse corrals for horseback riding and campfire cookouts. We ate lunch at the lodge and then went on a stagecoach ride. It took you out a ways and then to a turn around where the “shotgun” got out and took pictures for everyone and told about the early park days where stagecoaches were the only transportation. The kids on board enjoyed it and so did those of us in our second childhood.




Next, we headed to Mammoth Hot Springs near the north entrance of the park. This was the location of Ft. Yellowstone where the army protected the park before the park rangers. The Mammoth hot springs are on the side of the mountains. Rain threatened most of the day but waited until we tried to see the hot springs to let loose. The area was very congested and there was no place to park except about ½ mile from the springs. We grabbed our walking sticks and hiked over to the mountain side with all the white travertine dripping down the mountain side. About the time we got to top of the stairs, lightning
flashed all around us and thunder boomed. Everyone else hurried down the stairs and as much as I wanted to see it all, we followed just in time to get
soaked. I was disappointed by hot springs because there were really few
active springs. We were the only things dripping at the springs that day. We were headed back to the trailer when we were stopped at a turnout by park rangers holding guns. They were staring up the cliff but we couldn’t see anything up there. One of the rangers loaded his gun
and then shot up the cliff. Apparently, that took care of the problem and
they let us through. Our speculation was that a grizzly or mountain lion had gotten too close to the people and they were scaring it away. Wildlife have the right away here and much is said about not feeding the wildlife because they become aggressive. Bears are not allowed too close people now and vice versa. The days of stopping to feed the bears is over. However, some people still do not use good sense. They stop their cars in the middle of a heavily traveled road to take a picture and create a traffic jam. There are lots of pullouts if you want to pull over to look at things. Bison are everywhere and we saw people get out of cars within feet of these huge horned animals. I have enjoyed seeing Yellowstone…it’s been a lifelong dream but I will be glad to leave the hoards of people and traffic behind. There were just too many people…and this was supposed to be wilderness.