Baby Buffalo, Horses, Lava and Travertine

Baby bison

We checked out of the Lake Hotel and drove to the Mammoth Terraces. Along the way, we stopped at Sheepeater Cliffs. Those exposed columns of hexagonal rock was a lava flow from the super volcano that is Yellowstone Park. A marmot lives among those stones, which we got to see.

Further up the road we visited the travertine terraces that are Mammoth Hot Springs. Here, unlike the other thermal areas of Yellowstone, the waters bring up dissolved limestone which precipitates out as travertine. The hot water actually comes from the Norris Geyser Basin, some twenty miles to the south. Mammoth can be thought of as a limestone cavern turned inside out.

Continuing around the upper loop, we stopped at Roosevelt to go on a horseback ride on the range to a steak dinner, and back. As we rode through Pleasant Valley, a thunderstorm passed to our south. The steak dinner was great, complete with cowboy coffee (brewed over an open fire), soda, coleslaw and potato salad, cowboy beans, peach cobbler, NY strip steak, and the like.


Here is the recipe for the beans.


8 oz. ground beef or sausage
8 oz. bacon, dice ¼-in
1 onion, dice ¼-in
1 can pork & beans
1 can kidney beans
1 can lima beans
1 can butter beans
½ cup brown sugar
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp spicy brown mustand
½ cup ketchup
1 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste

Brown meats in a skillet and drain.
Saute onions with meat.
Stir in remaining ingredients (beans drained and rinsed).
Bake @ 325 F for 45 minutes or simmer for 1 hour.

Once the day was over, we went to Canyon Lodge where we had a Western Cabin reserved. This was, for a family of four, the very best place we stayed. I was figuring the opposite, quite frankly, but we had a quiet cabin (no one in the adjoining unit) with a nice view and a very large room.

Road buffalo

Sheepeater Cliffs

Mammoth Hot Springs

Stop for a drink at Lamar Valley

Jim on Dually

Dinner on the High Plains