congrats on the safe trip.

 

Yup, All these places and animals just were not an accident or a freak occuance in nature. This world is unique and designed to be that way. Yellowstone is like no other place on earth. You can take all the hot springs and geisars in the world COMBINED, and Yellowstone has more. This was the first national park in the world, created in 1872 and preserved that way as best the could since then. Its really cool since the re-introduction of wolves back in 1995. The entire eco system changed immediately. The wolves help keep the elk herd in check, and provide for other scavengers to feed on. Kind of like being at a natural zoo without the cages !!

 

You took some darn good photos and it makes me want to go buy a new 8 meg Camera and go take some new ones. Maybe next year after we get our kid married off this December we can find the $$ and go back to the park for 8 days of camping as you can't see it all in 3 or 4 days. Oh many of the grades in the park are between 6 and 10% up and down. I also think a few that I was on were about 12% even though they don't post what all of them are and some of them were not fit to have any RV, camper or trailer on them.

 

Awesome Pics!!! Last time in Yellowstone I ended up sick and it was all I could do to just see the touristy sites... next time I want to hike more in the back country...

Did you guys get to do much hiking off the beaten paths?

 

How do you guy's know what "grade" a hill is if it isn't marked?

 

Hey Steve, yes, I took my wife and daughters down a few loop trails for day hiking only. Back in the eighties, I was there but stayed in the back country. It was good to return, I was able to check out all the things I missed on the first trip. __________________________________________________ _____ Mayfair, alot of the steep hills are posted as you mentioned, but I've ran across a few that were butt ugly steep that I think should have been marked. I'm not sure how that is estimated, just glad I didn't become a monument there !! __________________________________________________ _______________________________ __________________________________________________ ______________________________ __________________________________________________ ______________________________

 

Well after going up and down a few hills in Yellowstone Park that are marked 10% grade and then you drive on a road that has a sign telling you to not drive RV's, trucks with trailer or campers on it the next part of the road.

On top of that you place your CTD with auto transmission in first gear when you only have 1500 lbs. in the truck and wish you didn’t have any extra weight in the truck while your on the way down. It could be becasue you noticed that your foot is on the brake all the way down and you hope the brakes will not fail before you get to the bottom wonder if you should stop to cool them off. Oh and if you do stop along the way down you notice when you get out that its hard to walk to the back of the truck and then notice that the rear bumper sits 4 feet higher then the front bumper.

So to make it easy for you Mayfair its called guesstamate, your guessing what the grade is when going down it and then you look at it from below after being on a 10% down grade 1/2-hour before. The only way to be 100% sure is to have a GPS to track exactly how many feet you have dropped over the course of X amount of miles that you just drove.