In many ways, our entire trip was planned around visiting Yellowstone National Park. The park did not dissapoint.
We had a 5-night stay scheduled, which gave us 4 full days of exploring, and that was barely enough. We were camped just outside the park, in West Yellowstone, Montana. The bulk of the park is just across the state line in Wyoming.
Each morning, we set our clock at 06:30 (this is for fun, so as a general rule, we avoid waking up with an alarm). This worked, because even though it was labor day weekend, we got past the park’s entrance gate in less than 10 minutes each day
This is a huge park, and the main road does like a huge 8, with spurs on the edges leading to 5 different entrance gates. On this trip, we got to cross 4 of these entry points, and drove a total of 503 miles between the time we arrive at our campground, and the time we left. Wow!
Yellowstone is actually the largest active volcano in the world. So while it’s stable and not erupting, the proximity of a magma chamber to the surface does result in the unique geological features of the park
- Geysers
Old Faithful Geyser - Mineral Terraces
Mineral Terrace - Hot Springs
Hot Spring - Fumaroles
- Mudpots
Mudpot
Plus plenty of landmarks which can be observed elsewhere, such as waterfalls and canyons.
And then there is the traffic-congestion-causing wildlife sightings. On the three consecutive nights we exited the park at dusk, we were hit with one-extra-hour-of-driving-time traffic jams because of people parking on the roadway and getting out of their car to take pictures, despite very explicit roadside signage not to do that. Thankfully, we did not witness anyone being tossed like a rag doll, as you see on widely shared YouTube videos.
Finally, we did visit the two historic lodges inside the park. We had a drink overlooking Yellowstone Lake from inside the Lake Yellowstone Hotel, and dinner in the dining room at Old Faithful Inn.
Enough said for a summary… in separate day posts, we will cover in more details:
Day 1 – Geysers and the area near Old Faithful
Day 2 – The mineral terraces and the area near Mammoth Hot Sproings
Day 3 – The loop along the lower part of the figure eight
Day 4- The loop along the upper part of the figure eight
In retrospect, we should have planned to have 7 rather than 4 days in the park, so that our days would not have been so jam-packed, and had given us more time for hiking.