Adventures of David and Paul: 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.