We awoke to another crisp morning at Fishing Bridge. Today we travel north to stay in Livingston, the original gateway city to Yellowstone. First stop on our way out is the South Rim Drive of the Yellowstone Canyon to see the Upper Falls and the colorful canyon walls. There are two major places to park with trails along the rim—Brink of the Upper Falls and Artist Point.

The park road between Canyon Village and Tower Fall is very scenic and my favorite of the park loop. There are some places to hike here, and the road is not super busy like it is on the west side along the geyser basins.

We did stop to see the Petrifed Tree just past the Roosevelt Lodge area on the way to Mammoth Hot Springs. This single rock tree is caged to protect it—there used to be three here before tourists carted off the other two. This is a 50 million year old redwood and this process has happened at Mount St. Helens after the 1980 eruption. The tree cells take in silica from the volcanic ash flow which prevents decay.

The ranger at Mammoth Hot Springs Campground kindly let us load up some water as we neglected to do so before leaving Fishing Bridge this morning, and need some for lunch dishes and the bathroom. We stopped at a turnout along the road between Mammoth Hot Springs and Gardiner to have a nice view for lunch. This road drops in elevation quite a bit in the four-mile stretch from MHS to the Roosevelt Arch.

Gardiner has lots of places to eat and shop like West Yellowstone, but it is older and a more authentic-looking western town. This was the premier gate into Yellowstone when this first-of-the-nation’s national parks was new. We grabbed some groceries and had a nice conversation with two born-and-raised Des Moines residents who now travel and live elsewhere. They saw our Polk Co. plates.

Osen Rv in Livingston, MT is our home spot for two nights. The campground is very nice with clean facilities and healthy ecological footprint initiatives. I was able to purchase fresh eggs here. We drove into Livingston to eat at a Mexican Restaurant. My, my, two nights in a row eating out? Paul and Roxann would approve!