Date: 27 May 2001 (Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend)

Start:

End: Fishing Bridge RV Park, Yellowstone National Park, WY (0 miles)

We got up to a cloudy, cool, damp morning, with a west wind and 41f.

During breakfast the clouds rolled away, and it looked like the day might turn nice.

So we did a little more of the park.

We went out the east entry road till we could get up on an overlook of Yellowstone Lake, about 600’ above the lake. The pictures would have been beautiful but for a line of clouds rolling in. The Tetons, 60 miles south, are usually visible from here according to the park literature.

We went back to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and took video tapes of the Upper and Lower Falls for the scrapbook. We had to wait a bit for good position at the viewing place for the Lower Falls – two busses full of Japanese tourists had just unloaded and cameras were pointing everywhere.

All through these drives, we were surprised how many fewer animals we saw today as opposed to yesterday. It’s as though they decided it was tourist season and moved back from the roads. We saw some bison and a coyote, but that was that.

We drove a little in the vicinity of the campground and did errands at a couple of the stores, bought postage, and bought groceries. I bought a Yellowstone mouse pad that’s hilarious. All this as the clouds rolled back in with intermittent thunder.

We had lunch in the Fishing Bridge snack bar and returned to the little house.

Part of the plan for the day had been to replace the fuel filter in the pickup, which has reached its life span. But with thunder every 10 minutes and dark clouds, I decided to postpone that.

While looking around the trailer for something that needed doing, I spotted a nail head in the right rear tire. I put on a spare (lifting the tire with pickup jack under the center spring shackle mount, under the rear shackle portion of the mount) and took the holed tire to Fishing Bridge gas station.

I was somewhat surprised that they were working this weekend. Two young ladies, one a trainee, plugged the hole in the tire in short order for $20. I re-mounted that tire rather than keep the spare on the ground.

Just before I finished putting the tire back on, the rain that had been threatening started, first lightly, then with the appearance of a long, dragged out, affair. That’s really good for the park, since they’ve had several years of less-than-normal rainfall. The park isn’t really dry, but they worry when lightning comes along.

Several small storms passed over us during the afternoon, so we stayed in, ate dinner, and read our books.