Wyoming

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
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Yellowstone NP: Wyoming
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Yellowstone National Park, Montana/Wyoming	

	Neither of us knew what to expect from Yellowstone.  Yeah, there is Old Faithful, and there are some buffalo at home on the range, but we had no idea that Yellowstone has so much to offer, including being gored by a bison, scalded to death by boiling water, swept over a waterfall, or attacked by a grizzly bear.  Some of the park’s warning logos are awesome.  Although we did not get a picture of the person being tossed in the air by the bison’s horns, we did get one of the tourist being blown in the air by an erupting geyser.  Pretty funny, although there are apparently a few people every year who are injured (or die) in one of these ways, so maybe it is not that funny after all.  

Dangers aside, Yellowstone is another fabulous and gorgeous park.  It actually is the first national park established by the national park system, and perhaps because of this, it has the grandest entrance of the parks we have seen so far – a huge stone archway just outside the town of Gardiner, Montana.  It is a bit built up and touristy compared to most of the other parks. In fact, we likened it to the “Disneyland” of the National Park System.  But, this makes it really accessible, allowing people to get a taste of the entire park, including the wild life, canyons, rivers, lakes, and geysers, from their cars.  And, it also offers some great backcountry camping for those who want to get away from all of the hubbub.

Mammoth and Norris Hot Springs, along with several others in the park, have some of the most amazing and unique geothermal systems in the entire world (Yellowstone has approximately 300 geysers and hot springs, of all different shapes and sizes).  There are petrified trees, calcite waterfalls, standing pools, bubbling and churning hot springs, and active and inactive geysers.  Some of the active geysers have steam and/or water billowing out, like Steamboat Geyser – the tallest geyser in the world when it actually erupts, which it does something like every four days to two years (so we did not stick around to wait for it, although we did catch a small eruption (about 2 to 5 feet high)). Then there is Dragon’s Breath.  The water lapping against the walls inside of the cave, and the steam billowing out of it really makes it look and sound like Smaug the Dragon is hiding out in there.  Our pictures do not do these geysers and hot springs justice, nor do they depict the stinky sulfur smell emanating from most of them.  As one little boy said, “they smell like rotten eggs.”  

Ruthie’s favorite part of the park was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River cuts through this deep and gorgeous canyon and flows for over 60 miles.  At the Northern end of the canyon, the colors are phenomenal – the yellow, red, brown, grey and white of the canyon walls contrasts sharply with the emerald green of the river below, and the forest green of the pine trees dotting the canyon.  The views are spectacular, and we were lucky enough to saw a bald eagle gliding in the trees looking for food down below.  

Then there are the lakes, grasslands, and prairies where we saw beaver, elk (male and females, although the females seemed to hang out with the females and the males with the males – either way, they were all beautiful).  We also saw tons of bison roaming off in the distance, and got some great close ups when a few of them crossed the road in front of our car (after looking both ways to make sure no one was going to hit them).   They really seemed habituated to people, almost as if they liked the attention of everyone leaning out of their cars to gawk at them.

We inadvertently timed our adventures in Yellowstone so that we ended up catching Old Faithful at sunset. Although Old Faithful is “faithful” in that the geyser generally erupts every 30 to 90 minutes, shoots scalding water up in the air anywhere from an average of 70 to 130 feet between 2 to 5 minutes, we were surprised to learn that Old Faithful does not erupt on the hour, every hour in the exact same way as many people expect.  When we got to the Old Faithful Lodge, they estimated the next eruption to be at 8:10 pm, but the geyser was nice enough to wait for us to use the restroom and get some ice cream.  When it finally did “go off” the sun had just set over the mountains behind, leaving enough light to illuminate the eruption, making it the perfect end to a perfect day.
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