19.05.2012 – 19.05.2012  13 °C

I woke to feel quite a bit better than the day before, esp that my hip doesn’t have the twinge that it had last night! Yeah! Our plan for today was to spend the morning wandering around the Travertines of Mammoth Springs, lunch in the small town north of the park of Gardiner, Montana and spend the afternoon/ evening driving over to the north eastern side of the park in search of more animals.

Mammoth Springs is so named for this huge area of Travertines and natural springs. We started our walk around the terraces at one of the landmarks of the park, the Liberty Cap. The Liberty Cap is this huge torpedo shaped calcite formation that once must have had an active spring (to create the shape). All I could think when looking at this rock formation is how many years this spring must have been active for to create such a huge calcium formation. I guess like this whole park, at some time in the past an earthquake or something must have closed off the water vent meaning that the spring stopped flowing! The walk around the travertines is pretty impressive. Most of the Mammoth Terraces are from old springs, meaning that it isn’t as beautiful as it could be. I can only imagine how beautiful it must be when the whole thing is overflowing with water. The bit that is still active gives you a good idea, white calcite terraces, covered in light orangey algae and dribbles of water.. The bits that are active are pretty amazing to see..  The crowning glory is the Minerva travertines, they are these old calcite formations in a sea shell shape cascading down the mountain! They are also the travertines that must have been used in the old 1900 photos of the ladies in their finery.

After enjoying ourselves in Mammoth we drove down to the little town of Gardiner, just north of the park, for some lunch. Unsurprisingly, the town was very quiet as it was ‘closed for the season’ so we had a look-see at the few shops that were open…. At the only saddlery in town I found my cowboy boots!!! I purchased a pair of brown boots with blue stitching!! V happy to be able to blend in with all the ‘folks’ now!!!

After a snooze we all headed out to the Lamar Valley to check out the animals!! The valley is covered in gorgeous green and yellow grass blowing in the wind, with this beautiful creek flowing thru the centre.. really gorgeous! It was a great trip out. Not long after leaving the town our first sighting was of a couple of bears having a snooze underneath some pine trees! As we descended deeper into the valley we started to see the huge herds of Bison that call Yellowstone home. The crowning glory of our afternoon was seeing a badger! It is the first time, I’ve ever seen one of those critters in the wild! He’s a pretty cute dude with huge back legs and large claws.. In fact, most of the time that I was watching him he was just digging away in his burrow! I later found out he was probably hunting for a gopher or something to eat, not digging a burrow! Badgers are also supposed to be quite aggressive animals so I guess next time I see him I won’t stand quite so close… Dinner saw us have a picnic down by the water side.. cold chicken and salad topped off with a nice cold wind.. Mmmm.. My favourite sought of picnic.. cold food and cold air..

Our trip back was also eventful! We saw a Mummy black bear with her gorgeous little cub up a tree! I was starting to think climbing bears was a bit of a myth, but they actually do climb! The Grizzly’s are ground bound but the black bears climb trees!! The little cub was so cute, just like a little teddy bear…. Aww. We also saw another single black bear and a grizzly!! A very bear-able day!! (pretty lame huh?)

Song of the Day– Nancy Sinatra, These boots are made for walkin’