- two wolves seen through another park visitor's telescope
- Bighorns and other black bears faced
- Look down at Grand Prismatic Spring from above
When the alarm clock rings at 7 a.m., it is not raining, but everything is heavily overcast. We decide to doze off for another hour. At 8 o'clock the cloud cover lifted a bit, so we get up and dismantle our camp. We start our drive through the Lamar Valley where we come across a large group of parked cars. That is of course always promising. We also stop and ask what there is to see. Through the telescope of a retired and above all passionate park visitor, we see two wolves at a great distance. Thanks to the 60x magnification of your Swarovski binoculars, they can be clearly seen. The two of them don't currently belong to any pack and roam freely through the park, the woman tells us.
After this first highlight we leave the Lamar Valley and drive over the Dunraven Pass down into the wide Hayden Valley. On the way in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone we see bighorn sheep in the steep terrain and a young falcon. In the region around the Tower Junction and after the pass we see - well, what do you think - black bears again. Unfortunately, no grizzley can be seen here either. We have a late but lavish breakfast in the Hayden Valley right on the idyllic and water-rich Yellowstone River. Since short dry sections alternate with rain and even a little hail, we stop for a shower at Canyon Village. Now we continue to the western part of the park to Norris. The best places in this wonderful campground are already occupied. So we're going to Madison. We will stay here again for one night.
Then we visit the section from here in a southerly direction to the Midway Geyser Basin. We make a detour through the rough Firehole Canyon. In the meantime the sunny sections predominate, so we spontaneously decide to go on a hike to the fairy falls, which are moderately worth seeing. On the way back we climb the hill near the unique Grand Prismatic Spring. The largest and most colorful pool in the park literally glows in the afternoon sun. Fortunately, we still tackled this climb. One of the absolute highlights of my two visits to Yellowstone, although they weren't exactly sparse. Now we're going back to Madison Campground. We cook delicious alpine agarons on the fire and drink a beer. After we have roughly agreed the further route planning using the travel guide, we go to bed. Today I sleep my first night in the tent, while the two Retos spend the night in the roof tent.
