The next day we decided to do laundry and go for a ride in the park. Our way into Mammoth was through very long road construction waits and extremely rough roads – which was not fun for the two who were on two-wheeled bikes, and not much fun for us, either. I think we all felt like we’d been beaten up when we first arrived. We decided we did not want to go that route on our Yellowstone exploratory rides.

The laundry facilities were outside the north gate in the town of Gardiner, so we were back in MT to wash clothes. We ate lunch in a very nice little cafe – Teddy’s – and had homemade sourdough bread sandwiches and potato soup. Yum. After our clothes were clean, we packed up and re-entered the park – this gate was not anywhere near as busy as the west entrance had been.

We spent the day riding around the Roosevelt area and visiting Undine and Tower waterfalls, and then rode to check out the hot springs area.

On our return to the cabin, we discovered a visitor, who had stopped by to digest his meal (we suspected it was a ground squirrel, from the size of the bulge). I had never seen a bull snake (see the video on FB).

We also discovered the restroom changing of the guard was occurring.

At about the time we were heading to the cafeteria to eat dinner, we were deluged with another thunderstorm. The thunder crashed throughout the canyon and echoed off the hills. It was a pretty frightening experience to just walk the several blocks to eat!

The water swirled around the cabins, but as always, the end has been promised.