More Adventures in Yellowstone

Yellowstone is a huge park, and after our first day we had barely scratched the surface. We spent the next two full days exploring the different areas of the park, going on hikes, and watching for wildlife. Day two began with an early morning drive up through Dunraven Pass (8,859 ft), which was still covered in thick snow even though it was almost June. After taking in the amazing views, we descended down toward the road leading to the Lamar Valley. We saw a bear with two cubs, who came very close to our car. Second day, second bear sighting! We continued past an awesome columnar basalt formation, and saw some bighorn sheep before stopping for our big hike of the trip, the Specimen Ridge Trail. This was a great un-crowded hike through a meadow and up a mountain for a fantastic view across the Lamar Valley. We saw a couple of bison, some North American pronghorn, and ground squirrels while hiking. At one point a bison decided to walk right on the trail towards us, so we had to step out of the way for a while.

Driving through the Hayden Valley in the morning.

Snowy Dunraven pass. Doesn't look like summer!

Beautiful views of the snowy mountains and foggy valleys.

A bear with two cubs!

We watched them walk around for a while (from the safety of our car). The cubs were adorable!

Huge basalt formation alongside the road.

First bighorn sighting!

Walking across the first park of the Specimen Ridge Trail. It was a bit chilly at first.

Great views from the trail across the meadow.

David and his Dad with the Lamar Valley in the background.

Specimen Ridge Trail is worth it for the views alone.

Paul on the trail.

We saw a ton of these guys in the meadow on the first part of the trail.

After the hike, we drove through the Lamar Valley, seeing several huge herds of bison. We exited the park's northeast entrance for lunch in Cooke City, Montana. Cooke City is interesting as there's just one road that goes through town from east to west. In the winter the road east is closed and it had still not opened for the season when we arrived. All winter folks living in Cooke City have to drive west through Yellowstone to leave town, which can take a very long time to reach anywhere.

After lunch, we found an ice cream shop while heading back towards Yellowstone. The couple that owned the store were actually retiree school teachers from Fayetteville, near Atlanta. Small world! While eating our ice cream we noticed a moose across the street chilling in a small city park. We spent a little time watching it graze and then headed back into the park. This was the only moose sighting of the trip.

Heading east through the Lamar Valley, near the northeast entrance of Yellowstone.

It's a bit more mountainous on this side of the park.

Obligatory Yellowstone sign shot!

Lunch was at a beer-friendly place. Someone else wrote Atlanta.

Hi Mr. Moose!

The next stop on our tour was Mammoth Hot Springs, which was more than an hour drive from Cooke City. Along the way we stopped at Undine Falls to check out the view. Mammoth Hot Springs is the northern entrance to the park, and has one of the busier visitor areas. There were quite a few elk chilling in the little village center, and lots of tourists running around.

The springs themselves are a series of cascading geothermal features that built up over time. They sort of look like stalagmites; as they both form from the build up of minerals from ground water over time. The springs look different depending on the time of year and rain. The weather was a bit bad when we arrived so we didn't linger.

Undine Falls.

David in front of the Mammoth Hot Springs. 

Completing our visit to the north side of the park, we swung around the west loop road to check out Norris Geyser Basin before returning to the Lake Lodge for the evening. The Norris Geyser Basin hosts a large collection of geysers, mudpots and other geothermal features. Paul really loves checking these out! Norris is one of the most geothermally active areas of the park, and probably the most impressive geyser basin.

Back at the hotel, we had a late reservation for dinner at 8:45 (way past David's Dad's dinner time). The food was expensive for what it was, but it was still the nicest meal we had in Yellowstone, where the food is in general just ok.

Overview of the Norris Geyser Basin.

Steam rising all around in Norris.

Paul with some steam vents.

Boiling water and bacteria.

Norris has fascinating streams of hot geyser water. The different colors are different species of bacteria and microorganisms that live at different temperatures.

Back at Lake Lodge there's still ice built up on Yellowstone Lake.

Paul's dinner.

On our third and final full day in Yellowstone, we focused on the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, one of the central features of the park. It has two huge waterfalls, and multiple scenic viewpoints. Unfortunately a couple of the viewpoints and trails were closed for renovation, but we still had some amazing views of the falls and canyon.

Classic viewpoint of Lower Falls.

The canyon has a beautiful variety of colors from minerals in the rock.

We hiked down to the brink of the lower falls. You can get really close.

Paul at the brink of the falls.

We also stopped at the Canyon visitor center, which had some excellent exhibits on the geology of Yellowstone. This was our favorite visitor center in the park. We had breakfast at the Canyon diner next door, and visited the mud volcano area on our way back to lake lodge. It was a rainy day, but the mud volcano area had some amazing roiling mudpots that were worth getting a little wet for.

A giant model of the park at the canyon visitors center.

A bubbling lake at mud volcano.

This was an impressive steaming, roiling mud lake.

Walking the boardwalk through the steam.

The dragon's mouth, steaming and bubbling.

After mud volcano, we dropped David's Dad off at the hotel to rest, then drove to the West Thumb Geyser Basin, despite the rain. West Thumb is a small but interesting basin with some geothermal features right on the shore of the Lake. We saw a baby elk there too, but didn't linger long due to the soggy weather. We rested back a the hotel for a bit and had a quick dinner at the deli in Lake Lodge, before a short evening drive past LeHardy's Rapids and some wildlife viewing in the Hayden Valley again.

An overview of Lake Yellowstone from a burned hilltop.

This was a pretty cool fact. The other side of lake Yellowstone is farther from a road than anywhere else in the continental US!

Yeah it was a bit rainy all day.

A big blue steaming hot spring in West Thumb.

There was still quite a bit of ice on Lake Yellowstone.

An elk wandering around West Thumb. Her baby was hiding nearby under a tree.

Another cool colorful hot stream full of bacteria.

Quick stop at the rapids.

That wrapped up our final day at Yellowstone. It's a spectacular place, and should be on everyone's bucket list. Our next stop is Grand Teton on the way back to Salt Lake City.

Salt Lake City & First Day in Yellowstone

Over Memorial Day weekend we took a trip to visit one of the world's greatest natural wonders, Yellowstone National Park. Paul visited Yellowstone back in 2006 and loved it, and has wanted to return ever since. David's Dad hates to fly, but has always wanted to visit Yellowstone, so was willing to take a flight for this special trip. We booked our Yellowstone accommodations 6 months in advance, and most of the hotels were already full - make sure you plan early if you want to sleep in the park!

Our trip started in Salt Lake City. There's not a major city near Yellowstone, and flights to closer airports (like Jackson Hole) were insanely expensive on this holiday weekend. Salt Lake City is about a five hour drive from the west entrance of Yellowstone. David had never visited Salt Lake City before, and fortuitously there happened to be an Atlanta United game vs Real Salt Lake, so it worked out to add a little city flavor and bonus soccer match to our National Park vacation.

Flying over the Great Salt Lake.

We had a great view of Denver and the front range of the Rocky Mountains on the flight in.

Our first stop was the state capitol building. We love to visit these, and have seen quite a few together, including capitols in Phoenix, Honolulu, and Des Moines. Utah's capitol did not disappoint. It's a classic, styled similarly to the US capitol. The interior has impressive paintings and a nice little temporary exhibit on the completion of the first trans-continental railroad, which connected the east and west coast with the final golden spike in Utah. From there we went to the nearby Mormon Square. You can't enter the church, but we looked at the outside and walked through the City Center shopping area next door before having an early dinner at Taqueria 27. We made a quick stop at Harmon's grocery store to stock up on food and snacks for the week, before driving south of town to Rio Tinto stadium for the Atlanta United game. ATL lost in stoppage time, but it's always great to go to an away game (we go to at least one every year).

Utah's impressive capitol sits on top of a hill north of downtown.

Jumping picture!

Pioneer painting.

The impressive soaring interior.

Looking downtown from the capitol.

The Mormon Temple.

Salt Lake has a light rail system.

Dinner at Taqueria 27. Mole enchiladas!

Us at the stadium, in the Atlanta supporters section.

David and his Dad.

At one point it started raining - while it was still sunny...

...which resulted in a rainbow!

Night in the stadium. It was a nice stadium with good views.

That night we made the almost 4 hour drive to our hotel near Rexburg, Idaho. It was a long late drive in the dark, but good to get some of the driving out of the way since we'd be on the road a lot the next few days. On the way we saw a monster run across the road. It may have just been a large skunk, but it was probably a monster.

Saturday morning we drove the remaining hour and 20 minutes to the west entrance of Yellowstone. It was a rainy day, but we had some nice views of the Tetons in the distance, and Caribou-Targhee National Forest. We made a quick stop in the visitor's center in the town of West Yellowstone to buy a new annual national park pass and get info on road closures, then drove in to the park. We saw a small herd of bison alongside the Madison River, and continued along a one-way loop next to the Firehole river where we saw our first elk. Our first major stop was the Lower Geyser Basin (AKA Fountain Paint Pot), where we saw a number of geothermal features. Since it was late spring, there was a lot of snowmelt and rain that made the mudpots extra splattery.

First bison sighting.

Firehole Falls.

Best illustration ever?

"Bobby socks trees" that were killed by hydrothermal activity.

David with the geyser field.

Don't be fooled by the other pictures, it was crowded.

A big splashing mud pot.

A hot spring next to the boardwalk.

We continued on to Midway Geyser Basin, which contains one of Yellowstone's most famous sites: Grand Prismatic Spring. After walking around the boardwalk, we took the 1.2 mile round trip overlook trail, which gives astounding views of Grand Prismatic Spring. Don't miss it!

Next came lunch at the very crowded Old Faithful Inn before watching Old Faithful erupt. Hundreds of people lined the boardwalk to watch.

Hot water from the springs flows into the river.

Excelsior geyser has a huge pool with big clouds of steam.

The warm water in the geyser basin is full of organisms.

David and his Dad at the Grand Prismatic Springs overlook.

Grand Prismatic Springs money shot (instagram filtered to hell!)

The Old Faithful Inn interior was really cool.

The food was just OK, but there aren't many lunch options in the area.

You can see the geyser getting ready to do its thing in the background.

So many people!

After seeing Old Faithful, we took a quick look around the visitor center's exhibits and then it started to rain. Instead of wandering around the geyser fields in the wet weather, we decided to head towards our hotel to check in. The ride to the hotel by Yellowstone Lake was around 45 minutes. During the trip we climbed up in elevation over the continental divide, where there was still tons of snow.

At the divide signage pointed us to the small, but unique, Lake Isa. This lake sits exactly on the divide and water runs off it in both directions - so the lake drains into both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans!

About 2/3 of the way to the Lake Village, we saw some cars pulled over in an area that burned in a fire not too many years ago. Here we saw a bear rummaging around! This was the first of 4 or 5 bears we would see on the trip. David's Dad was super excited and jumped out of the car for a closer look. David didn't approve.

After the bear went on his way, we continued the drive to Lake Village, where we checked in and got the keys to our cabins. The cabins here are very modest; basically they're one medium-sized room and one small bathroom. It was hard to not track mud/leaves in every time we went out so the place ended up being kinda dirty by the end of the trip. These cabins, like everything in Yellowstone, aren't cheap either. Planning accommodations here can be pretty tricky.

After a couple hour siesta, we went for an evening drive to Sulfur Cauldron before wildlife viewing at Hayden Valley, one of the two main valleys where wildlife tend to congregate. We saw bison, elk, eagles, and other random critters. Yellowstone is a great place to watch animals in the wild! We ended our day at the hotel, ready for an early start to explore more of the park.

Lake Isa - on the Continental Divide and still covered in snow/ice in late May.

Paul representing ATL United on the Continental Divide!

Our first glimpse of Lake Yellowstone, a massive alpine lake in the Yellowstone caldera.

Bear jam!

The culprit. A large black bear.

Sulphur cauldron is a smelly muddy mess.

Hayden Valley

Road Bison.

Huckleberry everything in the northwest!