100 Miles!

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7:16 am - Tuesday - September 5th - 38º F, 84% humidity, wind - CALM - partly cloudy and very hazy.....forecast high for Gardiner, MT is 81º F, and 76º F for Mammoth Hot Springs, WY.

We drove almost 100 miles round trip Monday in pursuit of our 100th mile of hiking in Yellowstone National Park since June 26th.  TLE is in charge of planning our weekly hikes and Monday she chose the Fairy Falls trailhead alongside the Firehole River....about 48 miles from Gardiner on the Grand Loop Road.  We left the Newell around 9 am......we just couldn't bring ourselves to get up earlier than 7 am.  There is something iniquitous about getting up earlier on your days off than on the days you work.  Nevertheless, if we want to get our hiking in before the heat of the day it is what we must do.  

Fortunately, it was Labor Day, and the ubiquitous road construction which has been in progress all summer on US-89 ceased for the day allowing us to avoid long wait lines.....we just drove right through at 20 mph.  We arrived at the Fair Falls trailhead around 10:30, and were on the trail by 10:40.....just 100 feet in to the hike we saw our first steaming pool......

......at about the 1/2 mile mark we took the Grand Prismatic trail spur to the overlook....we had been told this overlook gave you a very nice view of Grand Prismatic without all the crowds......

 Took spur trail off Fair Falls trail to Grand Prismatic overlook

.....the view from the overlook was as promised....if only the wildfires had cooperated.....the increasing haze from the smoke  really changes the colors and background, but it was still amazing.....

 Grand Prismatic from Fair Falls overlook spur trail 

 Pano of Grand Prismatic at the Mid Geyser Basin

.....we came to the sign for Fairy Falls at about the 1.6 mile mark......the sign said it was another 1.6 mile to the falls and it was right on the money......

 

Must be over 100' high....beautiful!

 Fairy Falls

 There is a very large pool at the base of the falls

.....from Fairy Falls we continued our hike to Imperial Geyser....we encountered an unnamed geyser along the way......

 Unknown small geyser

 Imperial Geyser in the distance

.....we arrived at Imperial Geyser after having covered 4 miles exactly........on 6.15 miles to go to hit 100 miles......

Imperial Geyser

Imperial Geyser.....my voice sounds funny because I had the temple piece of my sunglasses in my mouth......😏

Stream flowing from Imperial Geyser

.....since we needed a total of 10.15 miles this day to reach the magic 100 mile goal we opted to hike another mile up the Biscuit Basin Trail and reached that mark in another 25 minutes....we turned around just as the trail was beginning to descend into the Biscuit Basin drainage......enough uphill for Monday.....

 Our turn around point.....5 miles of hiking so far....at 7,667 ' elevation

......as we descended back to Imperial Geyser we were struck by how bad the smoke haze had become.......we're breathing that stuff......

 Fire smoke.....bad

......we reached the Geyser Flats Road at the 8.6 mile mark so we hike out another 3/10's of a mile to get a view of the Firehole River before turning around at the 9.2 mile mark........

 Firehole River River

 Haze getting worse by the hour

One last hot pool before the parking lot

.....we reached the car just as the mileage for our hike hit 10.8 miles and put us over the 100 mile mark by .65 miles.........100.65 miles hiked since June 26th.......

 Average better than 3 mph for 10.8 miles!

10.8 miles hiked, 1,950 calories incinerated, 1,060' of elevation gain and better than 3 mph.  Total moving time for 10.8 miles was 3 hours 30+ minutes.

.......by the time we got in the VW for the drive home it was around 3 pm.....we were beat.  As we came abreast of the parking area for the Norris Geyser Basin we saw there were no cars in line so we make a quick decision to drive in and see a few more boiling water features......in all we covered another 1.2 miles raising our total mileage to 101.85 before we returned to our car.......

 Hahaha.....this geyser blows every 4 days to 50 years......unlikely to be there when it goes again....

 Norris Geyser Basin.....we're smiling, but we were beat after 12 miles of hiking

......we continued our drive home and as we passed through Mammoth Hot Springs I got a text message from my friend Charles Wilson that he and his wife Bobbi had arrived at Yellowstone RV Park and were in site #6 until Thursday......we got home around 5:15, took showers and walked over to their Landmark 5th wheel for appetizers and wine.  Around 8 pm we drove into town to have pizza at K-Bar Pizza (4 stars on 115 reviews)....we were the last folks served.......they close at 9:30 pm.

Yelp photo of exterior

At the K-Bar for pizza with Charles and Bobbi

When we joined the 100 Mile Hiking Club I wondered if we would be able to get in 100 miles before we left, but here we are on September 4th having hiked 101.85 miles since June 26th.....WOW!  Hooray for our team!

We made it!  100.65 miles of hiking in YNP!

By the time we arrived home around 9:40 we were beat.....I fell asleep in my recliner about 10 minutes later....TLE woke me up about 10:30 to go to bed.

Thanks for stopping by!

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