We "slept in" this morning until 7AM and then drove into the North Yellowstone National Park entrance. Usually on trips we're up with the sun which means we typically wake up by 6AM. One of the best parts about driving into the park through the North entrance is getting to drive under the Roosevelt Arch.
Once we got into the park, we immediately drove to Indian Creek Campground to get a camping spot. We saw some deer and our first buffalo of the park as we drove into the campground. The buffalo looked exhausted.
Next, we drove to Mammoth to get stamps for me to mail postcards and ice. Although, visitor's centers at other parks had been open to this point, because of an increase in COVID cases (as we traveled the Delta variant started becoming more prominent) the visitor's centers were closed. Instead the rangers had tents outside, so I could still get my stamps. Yellowstone National Park had a lot of people in it, so I was glad that this was our third trip here so we felt okay missing some things. We couldn't park at Norris because the parking was too full. We drove out to Tower-Roosevelt and back and saw a beaver. While we were there the road between Roosevelt and Canyon Village was closed so we had to drive all the way back around. When we got to Canyon Village we tried to have lunch but everything was too full. Realizing how packed everything was, we decided to drive out to the Walmart in Cody, Wyoming to resupply our food so we could just have sandwiches the next few days. At the Canyon Village we saw some autonomous vehicles which were being tested to be used as a shuttle service to help with the crowds.
On the way to Cody, we checked out the campsite which I had reserved for the next night, which we ended up not staying in. We were so hungry when we got to Cody we had McDonald's for a late lunch. After shopping at Walmart, we headed back to our campsite. On the way we stopped at Artist Point in Yellowstone. By this point it had started raining so there was hardly anyone there. It was beautiful.
When we got back to our campsite, the college students in the spot beside us gave our dog, Nellie, a hot dog, so she thought it was a great evening. Jerry walked to Obsidian Creek to look at the pieces of obsidian there.