Our second entrance into the park from West Yellowstone was earlier but even more chaotic. Today, the far right lane for park pass holders was closed, but no notice of that was given before you got close enough around a corner to see it. We all had to merge back over into the lanes where people were paying for entrance—ugh. But then, the trip in was not stopped by wildlife, so we still spent about the same 1.5 hours getting to our first stop, which was to hike up and see the Grand Prismatic Pool from a higher position. My pictures do not do it justice. If I wanted a hot tub and could hire an artist to build me one, I would want it to look like this:)

This is Star Trek Day, so this picture from the park service is very cute and apropos to Yellowstone:

We then took a scenic drive over the Continental Divide at 8391 ft to the West Thumb Geyser Basin. West Thumb is the suspiciously round and deep, western part of Yellowstone Lake. An explosion about 125,000 years ago formed this crater portion of the lake, and it is still active with thermal features along the shore and on the bottom. Winter ice cover has holes above these hotspots on the lake bottom. The information sign showed otters fishing in the ice holes.

There were kayaks out in the crystal clear water, and this one was a tandem pedal craft that we had not seen before. Looks like fun!

We checked into our new campsite this afternoon for a two-night stay at the recently renovated Fishing Bridge RV park. No tents or pop-up campers are allowed because this is in the thick of bear country. Our check-in volunteer said they hadn’t seen a bear in camp for three weeks, but they are around.

We did have to wait a bit before walking into the laundry/shower building because a bison was chomping on plants right by the entrance. This building is very nice and we were given a “shower ration card” for six showers to use during our stay. We won’t need all six, but it is nice to have these available. Cost is $5.15/shower if you are not camping here, ouch!