Day Fifteen - Morning

[Posted by Sarah] So we awaken to Day 3 in Yellowstone and we have seen one bison. One and only one. And I was on the hook. On the hook because I had reminisced so fondly for so many years about the hundreds of bison Kay and I had seen while in the park 12 years earlier. And so far we had seen....one (you can see his picture in the Day 13 - Afternoon post).

As soon as we all awakened I said we should get in the car as early as possible and head up to Canyon Village for breakfast. This would take us on the southeast part of the Grand Loop through Hayden Valley, the supposed haven for Yellowstone bison.

Luckily everyone was too dazed to protest much and we were on the road around 8:30am (hey, it only took us an hour and a half to get from awake to in the car!!). And not only were the wide open prairies of Hayden Valley beautiful, they were also FULL of bison.

At first we saw one...then another two...then another solo....and as we drove out of the thinning trees there they were. We think we saw two different large herds and in total probably 250 bison. Whew!!! I was off the hook.

As you can see in some of the pictures of the bison the air was often rather smoke-filled. The wildfire we had seen earlier while we stopped at Lake Lodge had flared up again. The inside of the van smelled like a camp fire.

We got to Canyon Village around 11am and went into the lodge to have breakfast. We were one of the last two or three tables served for we had arrived just minutes before the close of the breakfast buffet.

Canyon Village Lodge was likely built in the 50's to 70's so it doesn't have the rustic feel that the lodges at Old Faithful and Lake have but it is less trafficked and has a large lounge area with comfortable chairs as well as a small gift shop. It ended up being a very comfortable way to let Joshua be un-confined and allow each of us do some final shopping at Yellowstone.

We got into the van after breakfast and shopping and headed back the way we came. We had decided to stop at Lake Lodge again, which was on the way back to our room in Grant Village. This would let us do our laundry and have lunch and enjoy the lodge's amazing front porch and view of the lake. Along the way we got a first hand glimpse of the flames from the reignited wild fire (see pic above).

More on our last hours in Yellowstone in the next post....