The roads in Yellowstone make up a "figure eight".  We decided to do the lower portion the first day and the upper portion the second day.  We started from our cabin in Lake Village, on the east side of the lower loop.  We stopped first at Pumice Point on Lake Yellowstone.  We snagged a few pictures and moved on.  The next stop was Potts Hot Springs Basin.  There's a bunch of pools and steam there, but not much else.  You can't get very close, as there are no trails or anything.  Still, it was our first sighting of geysers, so we had to stop.

Then we hit the West Thumb Basin.  Way cool!  There's a whole area of springs and geysers.  There's a nice boardwalk that goes right through the basin and you can get really close to a lot of the features.  We spent a fair bit of time here and this was probably the main cause of my camera battery dying later that day. ;)

On the south portion of the loop, I noticed a large male elk at Scaup Lake.  Unfortunately, by the time we'd parked the bikes and gotten out cameras, he'd decided he liked hiding in the bushes.  We hung around for a few minutes, but he was uncooperative, so we continued on until we found Kepler Cascades.

Kepler Cascades is a set of falls on the Firehole River.  There's a viewing platform, but the best views are afforded to those who are brave enough to climb out on some rocks (that would be me).  We took the requisite pictures and then headed to Old Faithful.

Old Faithful was still faithful and spewed pretty much on time.  It was hot and crowded and honestly not that impressive.  But, it's one of those things you have to see if you're there.  We then had lunch at one of the restaurants. Food, acceptable.   Service, horrible.

We then saddled back up and headed to the Prismatic Spring.  This is a really big spring with a lot of bacterial/algae growth.  It flows down into the river and it's a pretty cool place with boardwalks to get you out over the area.  Elk and bison don't use the boardwalks, as we did see quite a few hoof prints in the hot muck.  I guess the local critters are used to it.

We then headed up through Madison to the northern part of the loop.  We stopped to get some pictures of a bison who was hanging out on the side of the road.  They are actually bison...  buffalo are in Asia and Africa.  BTW... the picture doesn't do it justice.  Bison are HUGE!  Especially at night, when driving down the road. :S

We also stopped at another set of falls on the Gibbon River.   I think it's just called the Gibbon Rapids.  I left Jim and Rich for a few minutes and ran up to the next overlook.  That gave me an opportunity to get pictures of them riding (trust me when I tell you that it's a rare thing to actually get a picture of yourself on a bike in motion).  They weren't great shots, but they'll do.

From there, we continued on to Artist Point.  I managed to get a few pictures, but that's where my camera battery called it quits.  After hte sun set, we headed back to the lodge. We passed another couple of bison and some elk.  There were a lot of people stopped to look at the elk, so we didn't bother. I started some laundry, had a "frosty beverage" or two and settled down on the lodge porch to write up some of the ride.  While waiting, I saw a coyote go trotting down the road in front of the lodge.  A few minutes later I saw a baby deer (I think) come flying up the road from the lake.  Then, there were all sorts of hoots, howls, yips and other strange noises before a pack of coyotes surrounded it and pounced on the thing.  They demolished it in no time flat!  Coyotes make some weird noises when they're getting ready to tackle smthng.  It was truly creepy, but way cool.

Anyway, I finished up my laundry and turned in for some much needed sleepz.