This would be our last morning at the Madison campsite as we planned on moving further east into the park and getting another site elsewhere. Made a big breakfast of eggs and bacon with toast and juice. Packed up our stuff into the Forrester and headed northeast toward Mammoth Hot Springs.
Our first stop was at Artist Paintpots which is a large area of a variety of paint pot type thermal features. There are pools there but most of the features are the muddy kind like this one. Because of the elevation of the area there was an awesome view of the surrounding mountains. Here's Bonnie with Mt. Holmes as a backdrop. The paint pots are really neat to watch and pictures just don't do them justice so here are a few videos:
A muddy mess. This one looks like a meteor crater. This one is super tiny. Here's one that looks like a volcano. This one was the size of a small pond and really soupy.
From Artist Paintpots our next stop was in Norris to get the next campsite. We picked Norris because it's position was conveniently located between Mammoth Hot Springs and Canyon Village. This second campsite was spectacular in that it was on the edge of a beautiful valley and there was our own private thermal feature. Here's the view of the campsite from the thermal feature. Plus there were all kinds of flowers around the campsite and plenty of funky flora around the thermal feature. We were pretty happy with this site!
After we set-up the campsite we headed north on the road to Mammoth. Along the way we stopped at Roaring Mountain which is an entire hillside that has been cooked by heat building up underneath it. Here's a pic of me in front of Roaring Mountain. We continued north past Obsidian Cliff and Sheepeater Cliff until we got to Golden Gate Bridge and Falls. This bridge provides a pass through the mountains that's very important yet this version is only the second attempt at a concrete bridge. Previous versions included a one-lane, wooden structure that looked very rickety in the pictures we saw. Here's Bonnie by the Golden Gate Falls. Also right past the bridge there was another pullout to view the Bunsen Peak Valley. Notice the cabin at the center of the picture, that's a ranger station for a backcountry trail that runs through there.
Here's a video of Golden Gate Falls.
Next stop was Mammoth Hot Springs. We made a stop at the Post Office before hiking around the springs and almost didn't notice the elk chillin' out front. It was incredible to see how the wild animals just intermingled with the town, the tourists, and everything. At the start of the Mammoth trail was Liberty Cap. It's a dormant geyser that stands 37' high and is estimated to be 2500 years old now. Minerva Terrace was next along the trail. Named for the Roman goddess of artists and sculptors, the cascade of travertine were formed in the 1990's. Sometimes the water flows here and sometimes they're dry (they were dry on that day). There were more terraces along the trail and, like this one, some were flowing. At the top of the trail, we could view the huge pool formed at the top of Mammoth Springs. This is New Blue Spring, notice at the back of the spring that the mountain just drops off and the resulting water flow creates the terraces below. After the hike, we decided to go picnicking with the elk before heading back to camp.
On the drive back to camp we were treated to this great view of Electric Peak which is the highest point in the park at 10,969 ft. And as we were pondering how great a day it'd had been, I saw the one thing we were missing.