Found where the buffalo (bison) roam ...

Rangers call traffic jams caused by visitors trying to photograph a bear from their car while stopped in the roadway (or poorly parked to the side of the road) "bear jams".  This morning we found a "bison jam" or "buff jam".  We were traveling through the Hayden Valley along the Yellowstone River early in the morning and a large bull bison decided to "protect" his herd of females and their calves by simply standing "guard" in the middle of the road.  Perhaps that was his way of playing with the tourists ... perhaps he was protecting his herd ... perhaps he was just  mindlessly standing on the road for the heck of it ... but it afforded us a wonderful opportunity to photograph the females and their calves as we waited.

Next stop was the Norris Geyser Basin where the Steamboat Geyser is located ... Steamboat Geyser is the world's largest active geyser, but erupts very intermittently (last eruption was in September 13, 2014) ... needless to say, we didn't stick around to wait for an eruption, but we did photograph it blowing off steam and walked through the Norris Geyser Basin where there were a multitude of geysers, fumaroles, hot springs and mud pots.

On to the northern reaches of the Yellowstone National Park, to the Mammoth Hot Springs area, where the hot springs run off mounds and form terraces.  The water creates the mineralized mounds eventually closing off the stream of hot water and creating new portals with new mounds and terraces.  The water forming these hot springs has been drying up ... many of the features are now dry formations.  This may change the landscape in years to come ...

We had lunch at Mammoth Hot Springs Lodge.  The road from Mammoth Hot Springs run through the northern section of the park with dramatic mountainous terrain.  We took a short hike to Wraith Falls, but the falls would have been more significant with greater water.  What was lovely were all the wildflowers lining the trail ... this higher elevation yielded yet more spring wildflowers still in bloom.

The roadway turned southward after Mount Washburn and we returned to our campground at Fishing Bridge.  We continue to be struck by the size and scope of this national park ... the diverse and stunning terrain that all belongs to the public as a result of heroic efforts by Theodore and later by Franklin Roosevelt to protect these amazing public resources ... and we continue to experience the impact of our "loving our national parks to death" as people pour into this park to create their own memories of the wild, and, in doing so, we all make it a little less wild and a little more impacted by our very presence ...

We find ourselves disliking being crowded in an RV ghetto ... living a life as crowded and dense as any large inner city ... struggling to carve out some sense of privacy ... hoping for some taste of the wilderness we just drove through ... we need to move on ... Bambi agrees.