We got up early and had our showers. We went up to the Snow lodge for our final breakfast at Old Faithful as we were returning to Mammoth today. After breakfast we returned to the cabin and finished packing, which wasn’t much as we had done most of the packing last night. We went up to the Snow Lodge to check out and met Matthew (Funkygeyserman) and Michael (Mic L) in the lobby. Michael checked cabin availability for our spring trip and said if we were willing to change out schedule we may be able to get a Frontier Cabin at the lodge for 3 nights. We would need to make reservations by phone if we wanted to do this. We checked out and then headed over to the Visitor Center.

It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The temperature was 4 degrees having gone from a low of -1. The sun made it feel like it was 40. We both removed our jackets when we got to the Visitor Center. Grand was predicted to go off in a little over and hour and Riverside in about 2 1/2 hours. We had planned on sitting at the end of the Old Faithful viewing platform until lunch but decided to go out in the basin for a final Grand.

We started out for Grand. Before we got to Castle Old Faithful erupted. We watched it from the path. When we got to Castle we met Carol. She is retired now so she spends a lot more time in the basin. We had a nice chat. While we were there Grand erupted (G1C) so we watched it from that viewpoint. Since the temperature was so low there was a lot of steam. We heard that Riverside had started overflow at 11:00. That meant it would erupt around 12:30.

The big question was whether to go back to Old Faithful or go down to Riverside. If Riverside erupted by 12:45 we would have just enough time to get back to the Snow Lodge to get on our Snow Coach for Mammoth. If we went back to Old Faithful, we could watch the upper basin and Beehive for a while and then go for lunch at the Geyser Grill. You can probably guess our decision.

We started out for Riverside. There was a lot of graffiti in the snow, some of it in bad taste. Deb had a ball stomping out the graffiti. We took our time and just took in the beauty of the basin and Yellowstone. Grotto was i.e. so we stopped for a while to watch it.

When we arrived at Riverside it was in heavy overflow and there was a lot of splashing. Riverside erupted at 12:17. We reported it to the Visitor Center but since we were in the hole they did not get everything. We had a little time to watch it before we had to start back. There was no wind and the steam went straight up. It was a sight to see. It was now time to head back to the Snow Lodge.

When we got back on the path we got a call from Visitor Center to confirm our Riverside time. After I finished talking to the Visitor Center, Deb said “There’s Oblong”. We had been trying to get an Oblong but were unsuccessful during the whole trip. We called in Oblong i.e. at 11:31. We sat and watched the Oblong eruption. After Oblong finished we headed back to the Visitor Center. We saw a Lion minor and Plume. It was getting real late when we got to the Visitor Center but Carolyn was on duty and we had to stop and chat a bit with here. We confirmed all of our sightings be fore we left. Old Faithful was predicted for this time but did not erupt before we left.

We got back to the Snow Lodge just in time to catch our snow coach. The driver (Jennifer) that brought us in was driving the prinoth. We didn’t have much time to chat. We were on one the van conversions. They have a track on the back but skis on the front. We left Old Faithful and headed for Fountain Paint Pot, our first scheduled stop. The road was worse than when we came in. The road was either bare or had wood chips from the exit ramp from Old Faithful until just past Black Sand Basin. This would prove to be the norm for the trip.

There were a lot of bison and a few elk along the Firehole. Our driver stopped a few times so we could look at them. This was the first visit to Yellowstone for the other passengers. We got to Fountain Paint Pots and toured the basin. Fountain was i.e. and Jet erupted several times while we were there. We could not see Clepsydra or Spasm due to the steam from Fountain. When we returned to the snow coach, we noticed some raven opening the snowmobile packs. They have become experts at this.

We continued on to Madison. We saw the same group of swans in the Firehole that we saw on the way down to Old Faithful. We stopped to look at them. The driver had a fixation on ouzels so we stopped several times to watch them. We saw an eagle across the Firehole so we stopped and got out of the snow coach for a photo op.

We continued up to Mammoth. We stopped at Gibbon Falls and everyone got out for a photo op. Shortly after Gibbon Falls we had to stop for a bison jam. There was very little shoulder on the road and a very steep bank so the driver waited for the bison to move. The bison were in no hurry to move so we waited for about half an hour. The bison didn’t really start to move until a Xanterra employee heading south on a snowmobile started to push them. We saw a coyote and an eagle at Gibbon Meadows. We stopped but did not get out of the snow coach.

The road from the Chocolate Pots was worse then near Old Faithful. There were a lot more bare spots. There is talk about plowing the roads after President’s Day and maybe before it there is not a significant snowfall. Since we were so late we opted to skip the potty break at Norris. This would later prove to be a bad decision. The road did not improve north of Norris and if anything was even worse. We did not get any snow on the road until Twin Lakes. At Apollinaris Spring, the passenger who was riding shotgun decided he really should have stopped at Norris and requested a stop. He had to posthole down to and back from the pit toilets while the rest of us waited in the snow coach.

We continued on towards Mammoth. There was nothing of interest, except some more dippers! We stopped at Swan Lake Flats so the driver could put on the “driving wheel”. This is a wheel that attaches to a single ski to improve steering on dry pavement. The last 6 miles to the Mammoth Warming Hut was all dry road. We got the bus at the warming hut and arrived in Mammoth at 7:00. That was an hour later than scheduled.

We went back to the Best Western and got our room. It had a high speed internet connection in the room. We unpacked and had supper. I downloaded our email. We got over 1,000 email messages, mostly spam, while we were at Old Faithful. We checked our voice mail at home and the pet sitter had left a very nice message. Heidi was doing well and the pet sitter left the TV on so Heidi would not feel she was alone.

Since it was getting very late, we decided to call it a night. We planned to download the cameras in the morning.