A Look Around West Yellowstone

One of the unique little motels in West Yellowstone has a lamp sitting outside of it.

When they have a vacancy, they leave the light on for you.

The Yellowstone Family apparently lives here on Yellowstone Avenue.

The building actually used to be Yellowstone Family Pharmacy, but we guess the family got out of the pharmacy business.

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To be continued...

Farnsworth TV & Pioneer Museum, Rigby, Idaho

Do you know where the "Birthplace of Television" is? It's about 100 miles south of West Yellowstone, Montana in Rigby, Idaho.

It is here that we found the Farnsworth TV & Pioneer Museum, housed in the old Bond Motel building.

Philo Farnsworth came up with the idea for an all-electronic television while he was working in his potato field. He envisioned lines, similar to those in a planted field, which together formed an image.

This is an original tube Farnsworth used in his invention.

As an alumni of Rigby High School, he presented his original television tubes to the school in 1956.

The museum has a pretty large collection of items that can be viewed through a glass window.

Since there can be a lot of snow in this area, this collection of skis might come in handy.

The Pioneer Museum portion of the museum is run by the Jefferson County Historical Society. Each city in the county is given a room in which to create a display however it sees fit to.

This bathtub is the 1910 model. It was used by the Drakes in Cedron, Idaho. The bathhouse had a stream of water that ran under the tub into a creek and then drained into the pasture.

This looks like a great way to get a perm or an electrocution.

Which typewriter did you learn on? We learned on the IBM Selectric, the one on the right-hand side of the bottom row.

A local resident square dance caller donated this state of the art sound system to the museum.

The museum has quite a collection of wild animals with big teeth.

The Jefferson County Historical Society is able to lease this building for annual rent of $1.

Returning to West Yellowstone...

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To be continued...

New Old Faithful Education & Visitor Center

On our way to see the new visitor center at Old Faithful, we could see what appeared to be a new mountain; actually, it was the smoke from the Antelope Fire.
A bull elk watches over his harem.

One last stop before the visitor center was the Firehole swimming area. Very popular in the summer, there were only a few here today even though it was a nice warm day in the 70s.

The Firehole is warmed by the runoff of distant hot springs and geysers.

Marlon couldn't resist taking this picture of the sun while here.

We finally made it to the NEW Old Faithful Education and Visitor Center which opened on August 25th.

Looks like snow on the roof already. Nope, just a design to make it look that way.

The 26,000 square foot building's price tag was $27 million, funded by both public and private sources.

The large windows provide a direct view of Old Faithful, which will be quite nice when winter arrives.

The building is filled with many different interactive displays providing information about all the natural features and wildlife of the park.

Here at Yellowstone, there are more hot springs and geysers than the rest of the world combined.

In the Young Scientist area geared to kids, you can watch a working model of a geyser build up pressure and erupt.

Here's a view of the new building from the walkway to Old Faithful.

The Old Faithful Observation Point can be reached via a moderate 1/2 mile hike ascending 200 feet above the Old Faithful Geyser Basin. We made it to the top with time to spare.

Doug decides not to get scalded by following the boardwalk since a small geyser was continuously erupting and landing on the walkway.

By the time we finished walking about the Old Faithful Geyser Basin it was getting late. Here's the visitor center at night.

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To be continued...