On Thursday the 30th we got an earlier start to the day and decided we were finally going to finish the lower loop by turning left at Fishing Bridge and go past Old Faithful, which we saw on our first day.

We drove the 16 miles from our campground to the East Entrance again.

By the way – Here’s a sign listing all the campgrounds within the park.  Most are managed by a subcontractor called Xanterra Parks & Resorts Inc.  It would be nice to stay at one of the campgrounds within the park and cut down the travel time.  We have to travel about 27 miles from the East Entrance to Fishing Bridge over Sylvan Pass each day.  But that’s OK 🙂

This time we took the 1 mile turnoff up Late Butte Overlook when we got close to Yellowstone Lake.  We’d passed this Overlook on our other trips into the park.

As I mentioned before, the east side still shows heavy fire damage from the 1988 ‘Summer of Fire‘.

This time we also stopped at the Fishing Bridge Visitors Center.

The visitors center had a pretty cool raised-relief map laid out on a table.

And this visitors center’s theme was on the fires in Yellowstone.

Yellowstone Lake behind the Fishing Bridge Visitor Center.

After crossing Fishing Bridge, we turned west to do our clockwise lower loop tour.

By the way – I think they need to rename Fishing Bridge to “No-Fishing Bridge” since it is permanently closed to fishing.  That’s just false advertising, don’t you think?

We stopped along the lake a couple more times since the route skirts the northwest edge of the lake until you get to West Thumb.

Here’s another picture of one of the cool old buses that still take people on tours.  We saw these many times during our visit to the park.  A 1936 National Park Bus.

We passed by Old Faithful since we saw it on Monday and stopped at Black Sand Basin… one of the many geyser stops along the route.

And we stopped at more geysers…

And waterfalls…

And more geysers…

Here’s an Elk trying to hide during the day from the masses of people trying to take pictures (us included).

During one of our stops, Kaan was startled by this female Elk hanging out in a heavily wooded pull-off.

And here’s some more pictures of geysers and stuff we took during our tour of the lower loop around Yellowstone…  because you just can’t get enough, right?

We drove up a side road called the Firehole Canyon Drive near Madison and the West Entrance.

We wanted to stop and go swimming but didn’t have the foresight to bring any swim gear 🙁

And we made it!  We finally completed the entire lower loop.  I think we put about 150 miles on the truck today.  Tomorrow, our goal will be the upper loop.   We relaxed for the evening with a campfire back at Rex Hale National Forest Campgound.

Authors Note:  It is now Monday morning on the 3rd of August and we are in Thermopolis, WY.  I’ll try to catch you up with our Yellowstone trip as soon as possible… we didn’t have internet or cell phone coverage the entire time we were at our campground, and only very limited phone connectivity while touring the park.

Check back in for our 31 July northern loop tour which includes Mammoth Hot Springs.