Day five began, you guessed it, early, despite our being physically drained by all the walking we’d done and the previous night’s sexual escapades. We showered (individually – the shower stall was barely large enough for one of us to be in it at a time!), packed our stuff, and got ready for the 11AM check out. We planned to go walk through the Upper Geyser Basin (UGB), then check out and head out to explore the rest of the thermal areas along the Firehole River.
As we walked along the boardwalk, I took a photo of the Old Faithful Inn as seen across the geyser basin. The building under construction on the left is the new Visitor Center, scheduled to open late next year. It is going to be gorgeous, and will replace the badly outdated center that used to sit on that spot. The webcam you see here is stationed on a tree right outside the VC.
About halfway through the hike of the UGB, I had to go pee! Badly! The only bathroom is at the end of the hike near Morning Glory Pool. So we were kind of moving along, and had passed Grand Geyser when it decided to go off. Gah! Grand is one of the larger geysers and we’d never seen it before, so we had to go back and get some shots of it. This is one I took. The partly-cloudy skies make it seem like a shitty photo. Did I mention that I don’t care for cloudy, rainy days in Yellowstone?
Anyway, after I got a few shots of it erupting, I left Nikki and almost ran toward the bathroom. About halfway there, I encountered a group of bison along the boardwalk, blocking my path. Gah! They finally moved on, I made it to the toilet, and hooked back up with Nik at Grotto Geyser. We made it back down to Morning Glory Pool, one of the prettiest features in the basin.
On the way back toward Old Faithful from the end of the trail, our path was once again blocked by bison – the same herd that had been blocking my path to the toilet earlier. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, they move when they want to move. And they weren’t moving. So we had to backtrack and take the long way back to our cabin. As we walked back, some tourons (tourist morons) tried to wiggle their way through this herd of bison. As a general rule, they don’t like it when you get too close to them. At one point, there used to be a video playing on a continuous loop at the Canyon Visitor Center showing a bull bison head butting a full grown man into the air about 20 feet as if he were a rag doll. So they tell you to stay at least 25 yards from them for a reason.
We stopped to watch what was going on (along with about a dozen other people, I might add), knowing that the bison weren’t likely to take this transgression lying down. I was hoping for an action shot of a bison head butting one of these tourons into the air. Action photography! You can see the two “security” bison in the foreground here. I call them security bison because they appeared to be the ones in charge of ensuring that no one encroached upon the herd. They’d been snorting and grunting, and raising their tails (when you see a bison raise its tail, it is either getting ready to charge or discharge, as one of the rangers used to tell us). After a few starts and stops, and some debating amongst themselves, the tourons decided not to try their luck and backtracked as well. It was classic Darwinism in action. 
We got back to the cabin just in time to see OF go off. Again, poor shot due to the cloudy skies, but you get the picture 
We got back to the room, loaded our stuff in the car, checked out, then headed up toward the other geyser basins along the Old Faithful-Madison road. These are always so colorful. Here you can see part of the algae/bacterial mat around Grand Prismatic, one of the largest thermal features on the planet.
We stopped by Fountain Paint Pots, and got a shot of Clepsydra Geyser, which in an almost constant state of eruption. I got a few shots of the paint pots as well, but none of them turned out good enough for me to post them!
We then headed back to the Old Faithful Inn for a late lunch, and arrived just in time to see Old Faithful go off again. This is a shot of the outdoor mezzanine at the OFI where you can sit outside and watch the geyser go off.
We ate, then headed down to Grant Village to check into our hotel there. We caught a quick nap and headed on up to Lake Hotel for dinner. Nikki and I split a beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, garden salads and drinks. We’ve eaten here each of the last three times we’ve come to YNP, and consider this our most anticipated meal of the trip. Sadly, this wasn’t to be the case in this instance.
Our waiter took our order and we never saw him again. He came and waited other tables near us, but never once revisited us. Another server delivered our food, but no one bothered to come check to make sure our orders were fine, refill our drinks, see if we wanted dessert – nothing. No one even bothered to bring us our check.
We finally got fed up and went to the front desk, where we asked to see the dining room manager. She happened to be standing right there, coincidentally. We took her aside and explained the problem. She offered us free desserts, but by that time we just wanted to pay and leave. Quite honestly, we could’ve left without paying and no one would’ve been the wiser. She did discount our meal, and apologized profusely. We accepted and went on about our business.
We decided to head back up through Hayden Valley, just to see what we could see since the evening is just as good a time to see wildlife as the early morning. As we made it through the halfway point, we encountered a crowd that was obviously left over from some kind of animal jam. We stopped to see what was going on and found out that a bull bison had charged a crowd watching a bear, and had headed straight toward a father carrying a little 4-year old girl. They’d fallen and the ranger there to direct traffic had to fire his weapon into the ground in front of the big animal to stop it from hitting them. Otherwise, they might have been seriously injured.
We finally made it up to Canyon Village and decided to eat our dessert there. I ordered the raspberry cheesecake, and Nikki ordered an apple pie/vanilla ice cream combination. Nik doesn’t like caramel on her apple pie, so she ordered it without that. Apparently, the pie comes pre-made with the caramel on it already, so they couldn’t “remove” it. Rather than come back and ask if that was okay, the waitress just assumed it’d be acceptable, so that’s what she brought us. Nik took one bite of it and couldn’t eat any more of it. I let her taste my cheesecake, and she liked it, so we traded desserts!
With that, we headed back down toward Grant Village. About halfway between Lake and GV, our car started beeping at us. A quick check of the gauges showed that our fuel level was EMPTY! That was odd because we’d just filled up the day before we headed down to GV, and may have driven a total of 80 miles. We figured maybe the fuel tank had sprung a leak or something and kept expecting the car to die on us. That 21-mile drive was excruciatingly long. Yellowstone has sporadic cell phone coverage, so if the car died, we’d be stuck there until a ranger came by. Who knows how long that’d be?
Despite us being “empty,” though, the car kept going. We made it all the way to GV, where I pulled into the gas station and filled the car up. It took about three and a half gallons. That meant the fuel gauge was just fucked up. What a relief.
With that out of the way, we drove to our lodge and hit the sack. The next day was to be our last day in Yellowstone. 
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