Yellowstone

We woke up in Grand Teton and headed towards Yellowstone for the day.

We had to drive all through Grand Teton, passing the mountains and we made a quick stop at the historic barns.

We also passed a field of horses, which were so picturesque we had to pull over on the opposite side of the road and stare at them for a long time.

My favorites were these white and black horses, which were posing perfectly in front of the mountains. The white horse was actually asleep, which was so cute!

We then headed to Yellowstone. It took us at least an hour and a half to get to the south entrance, because there was some construction going on.

When we got into the park, our first stop was Lewis Falls, which was a pleasant surprise. We wanted to stop at as many waterfalls as we could, but we did eventually have to stop doing that because there were so many!

Our next big stop was Old Faithful. We got there just about 15 minutes before it was going to errupt/spew water.

So we grabbed a seat around the edge of the platform that goes all the way around. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people. Then we saw it!

Apparently the reason Old Faithful isn’t so faithful now is because people have thrown things into the geyser for years, which makes it hard for the water and steam to come out, so it blows less frequently than it used to. Apparently it used to blow every hour on the hour!

Then we drove up north through the park along the main highway. I think these pictures are from the Sapphire Pool area.

The rust-colored formations underwater were particularly fascinating.

Then we stopped at the Grand Prismatic Spring area.

The first thing you see is a boiling waterfall, which is the runoff from Excelsior Geyser, which is like a crystal-clear boiling lake.

Then we followed the platform/boardwalk to Prismatic Spring. It was really scary because the platform was only a few feet wide and on either side was the hot water. But the colors were amazing! The bright teal faded into mustard yellow, which then turned into bright orange and rusty reds.

The yellow parts make it look poisonous somehow. Plus the whole place smells like sulfur. But it’s pretty amazing.

Continuing north, we found a scenic road down by the river called Firehole Canyon Road, where you could get down near the water and see some more waterfalls.

At one stop, the paw prints on the road coming out of the river looked a lot like bear prints, which made us head on pretty quickly.

The next thing we wanted to see was the Artists’ Paint Pots. When we arrived, we saw this sign warning us what would happen if you left the wooden platform…

Once again, the ground was covered in boiling water, but this time there was also boiling mud.

We climbed up the hill and got a view of the area.

We also got an up-close view of the paintpots.

Then we headed towards Mammoth Hot Springs, which was at the very north edge of the park. That was going to be our last stop before turning around and heading home.

By this point in the park, it seemed like the geography had changed completely!

We saw the terraces. By then we were so tired and it was getting late. We went to the little shop there. I got a coke to keep myself awake on the long drive back. James bought a pair of binoculars, which he had kind of been wishing he had. Then we took the smaller road around so we could see some different stuff on the way back.

When the sun started to get lower, I had to be more careful, because I knew we were likely to see a lot more animals. I was really worried one out come out in the road and we might hit it.

We did see a buffalo chilling right next to the road. That was really cute. I also saw a big deer near the road, but we couldn’t get a good picture. This sort of confirmed my fears, so we were driving a lot slower.

At one point, we pulled over because there were a lot of people looking out with binoculars. We asked them if they saw anything. They told us they had spotted a wolf! So James broke out his brand new pair of binoculars and we were able to see a wolf way off in the distance.

Shortly after that, we ended up getting stuck for about 30 minutes. The traffic was all completely stopped and backed up. We figured some animals were in the road. While we were waiting, a coyote walked right in front of our car and went into the woods!

Slowly, the cars started moving. We realized it was a herd of bison were crossing the road very slowly.

Eventually, we got up to the bison and were able to cross. We found out the next day that apparently there was a news story a few weeks before about a bison ramming a car and destroying their rental. We weren’t too worried about this at the time, but we’re glad nothing like this happened.

There must have been at least a hundred bison!

Eventually, we got through all the road blocks. We ended up making better time after dark. It was at least a 4-hour drive back to our campsite according to Google Maps, but that did not take into account our buffalo crossing.

I looked on Google Maps and the rough route that we did that day was about ten and a half hours of driving, not taking into account any of the stops. It was a loooooong day. I sort of wish we hadn’t done this as a day trip. There’s obviously so much that we couldn’t see in just one day. But I’m glad we prioritized Grand Teton, because I enjoyed it a lot more as a park experience. There were fewer people, it was more relaxing to walk around, be at the viewing areas, and it was a more manageable park.

We got back to the campsite that night at 11pm. We basically just ate a granola bar and went to bed. Even though it was a hassle to do the day trip, it was nice to come back to a campsite that was already set up.