4/29/14

Woke up at 4:30 this morning. Looked up through the skylight over the shower and saw a beautiful clear sk,y with tons of stars. Unfortunately, it was 15 degrees outside, so we weren't going to get dressed to go outside in the cold. There should be more stars, on a warmer morning, in the future.

This afternoon, I took a drive to Old Faithful village, while Penny was working. Needed to get dinner tickets for a shakedown dinner at the Snow Lodge Thursday. It will be a test of the cook and wait staff at the lodge. For less than $7 per person, it should be ok.

We took a walk down to the confluence of the Firehole and Gibbon River's, which become the Madison River.

This is the Firehole River coming down from geyser basins.

Here is the Gibbon River coming down from the Norris area.

 

 And here is the confluence with the Madison flowing out.

 

Penny also got a few pictures of a pair of geese and an Osprey flying by.

At 6 o'clock this evening, it's mostly sunny and snowing. This place has really interesting weather. I think it's the moisture in the air freezing out and falling as snow, rather than a real snow storm.

5/1/14

This was our last day off before, before the campground opens. We decided to take a drive to Bozeman and get a few supplies. It's a nice drive along US 191 except for the construction south of Big Sky. They are blasting an outcropping of rock at a curve next to the river. It's a one lane road for a mile or so, where you have to follow a pilot car. Not something I'd want to drag our trailer through. On the way north, we had to wait about 15 minutes for them to get all the south bound traffic through.

 

 

We saw a pair of moose along the way but Penny wasn't able to get a picture of them and we couldn't turn around easily. When we got back through the west entrance to Yellowstone, we saw a pair of Osprey in an eagles nest just west of seven mile bridge (that crosses the Madison River half way between the gate and the Madison Campground. There was no place to pull off and get out to take pictures so we turned around three times to give Penny the time to take a good picture of them.

 

 5/2/14

Today is the first day of work with campers in the campground. Penny 's working 9am to 3pm. Don's working 3pm to 8pm. We don't expect too many campers this early in the season.

Well, the first day exceeded our expectations. There were a bunch of campers checking in, not only those that had reservations but many that had no reservations. When the day started, there were about 50 reservations expected to check in during the day. Don checked in more drop-ins than people with reservations. There was a line of campers at the windows when the office was supposed to close at 9pm. Lots of people bought firewood too, at $8 a box.

Don had people from Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, British Columbia, Manitoba, France and Germany check in to camp. His paperwork was a little off at the end of the night, but he had the right amount of money in his cash drawer, so it was fixable. He still has to figure out this computer program and what money they want accounted for, where.

5/3/14

We got a report that there was a grizzly bear sighting about a half mile north of the campground. We didn't get to check it out though.

Lot's of campers checking in still. Even though the snow is melting quickly, we still have to do a lot of searching to find sites for the people that are camping in tents. Apparently they don't like pitching their tents on snow. Don had three or four international parties (French, Canadian and two German). Everyone's money came out right tonight, even though Don thought he was off by a dime, until someone found the coin he had missed.

 5/4/14

Today someone saw a wolf just a mile or so up the road. Someone else reported seeing a moose around the Norris geyser basin, where the area is closed to out of vehicle treks, due to bear activity. Penny and I will be taking a drive on our days off to see if we can't find some of these allusive critters.

Work in the office was slow today, finally. Being a rainy Sunday, not many people were checking in. Sixty camp sites checked out today.

This evening we had a brief thunderstorm with some rain. It knocked out power, off and on, for a few seconds at a time, over the course of a half hour.

Don came up a dime short again today. I think the guy that counted my bank yesterday miscounted. So we stuck another dime in the bank and will see how things turn out tomorrow afternoon.

5/5/14

A slow day for check-ins today. We plan on driving around the park tomorrow, to see what there is to see. Someone said there were at least six red dogs up around Mammoth yesterday.

5/6/14

We took two drives today. One in the morning, one in the afternoon. All we saw was snow in the morning when we went to Canyon Village and half way to Mammoth. This afternoon we went towards West Yellowstone. No animals either trip. They must have heard we were coming.