Driving the Figure 8: Mammoth Hot Springs

Taking pictures (at least they're not selfies) at the Jupiter Terrace

The final major intended stop on the Figure 8 drive around Yellowstone National Park is Mammoth Hot Springs.

You drive into the Mammoth Hot Springs area and it looks like normal.  Like a small town in Middle America.

This is the old Fort Yellowstone area.  These buildings, since repurposed into a Visitors Center and the like, were the core of the old fort.

This area sits well outside the caldera, which accounts for the normal look.  In fact, Mammoth Hot Springs is the only major attraction within Yellowstone outside the caldera.  (And if you correct me and say that such-and-such is outside the caldera, too, then my comeback will be "yes, but it is not a major attraction."  This argument will work with pretty much every sight to see within Yellowstone but for Old Faithful.  And that one is most definitely within the caldera.)

Elk break:

Elks grazing in the downtown.  I saw a bear and about 150 tons of bison on the driving loop.  The bison were too far off in the distance (at that time) to be worthy of a picture without a telescopic lens.  The bear was close enough, but I was not interested interested in becoming shredded bear food while I tried to snap the bears picture.

Anyway, Mammoth Hot Springs has a normal area.  But it also has this:

Liberty Cap, a geyser that became dormant, but not before it left this nifty cone in shape of a cap.  It may be dormant now, but like all these geysers, one decent earthquake and the living geysers shut down and the dead ones come back to life.

First stop:  Jupiter Terrace.

Is the better picture with or without?  People that is.

Moving along to Minerva Terrace:

Two views of the same terrace?  I believe this is made of travertine.  Very upscale.

Crowds were light here on the north part of the loop.

Moving along the trail:

Water.  But don't drink.  All the water in the geyser areas is either scalding or poisonous or both.

Climbing higher on the trail:

This another feature.  It has a name.  Mound Terrace?

This is most definitely Mound Spring:

Yes, I cheated by taking a picture of the name plate:

That's a much easier way to remember these names.

Finally, I reached the summit of the trail and could look down on all the lands before me.

You can see the normal and the weird in this one picture.

Time to get back on the loop and start heading for the hotel, which would make for an almost complete Figure 8.  At the Norris ranger station, I saw a grazing buffalo.

There was a river separating us, likely the Gibbon River, so I felt comfortable getting as close as I did.

I supped at the Canyon Village diner.  I feasted on elk sausage.

Washed down with some huckleberry enhanced water, which is quite huckleberry.  The elk was delicious in sausage form.

More buffalo!

Or bison, if you prefer.

And with that, my long one full day in Yellowstone National Park comes to its conclusion.