Tuesday 8/20
We got a moderately early start heading back into the park, but we stopped briefly for groceries and coupled with it being an hour drive to the closest campground, we weren’t getting there until well past the line-up-to-get-a-site hour. We ended up trying three campgrounds, which might have been nothing more than a waste of time, before finding a site to set up camp at Indian Creek. Mammoth campground technically had spots available, but it didn’t seem like a very pleasant campground – pretty crowded with RVs and also tucked into a bend in the road leading out of the park. Indian Creek on the other hand was very nice – not next to anything too special, but small, a bit secluded and with a decent number of sites that clearly catered to tent camping. Norris CG is, in my opinion, the nicest campground for tent camping (along the river) but it will fill up almost immediately.
For the hiking portion of the day we toured the Norris Basin area checking out the various geysers and other geothermal features there. We had been there before, so there as nothing too surprising, but it’s still an interesting wander through and area very heavy with geothermal activity. Steamboat geyser, near the end, was quite spectacular, though apparently what we saw was actually the residual steam and not the actual eruption which had happened only a few hours earlier.
Afterward we cruised through Hayden Valley looking for wildlife at sunset. There was a small herd of elk laying around, but otherwise not much other than the occasional, solitary bison.
