Yellowstone National Park

If you have never been to Yellowstone NP, the best way to describe it is HUGE.  The park encompasses 2.2 million acres.  That is a lot!  This is our third trip to Yellowstone and despite that there are still more thing and areas that we haven’t seen or been to.  

There are five entrances to Yellowstone.  The west entrance, which is home to the town of West Yellowstone is the area where we have stayed each time we have visited.  The other entrances are at the North end (Mammoth Hot Springs Area), the Northeast, the East side which heads into the town of Cody, WY) and the South entrance (access to the Grand Tetons NP). You can learn more about these areas here. Yellowstone Plan Your Visit

The Grand Loop road in the park is a 142 mile road.  As its name suggests, it goes all around the park.  The Norris Canyon road bisects the Grand Loop to create and Upper Loop (70 Miles) and a Lower Loop (96 miles).

For most people, the main draws to Yellowstone are the hydrothermal features, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and the wildlife.  The hydrothermal features include, hot springs, travertine terraces, fumaroles, mudpots and of course geysers. 

Here are some of the new areas we explored.

Fountain Paint pot was a really cool area or should I say hot!  Here you could see Mudpots, fumaroles, geysers and hot springs all in one area.   The NPS website has self guided tours that you can download and use in the parks where there is no internet service.  I used this service to learn about the features on the Fountain Paint Pot Trail as I was walking around.

I had walked right past this area because it just looked like a pile of rock. No steam, nothing to look at. I had my back to it filming the geyser above when all of a sudden I heard noise behind me. I turned around to see this!

The other new place that I explored was the West Thumb Geyser Basin on the southeast end of the park.  This area goes right out along Yellowstone Lake.

We also revisited several stops. We drove up to Mammoth Hot Springs where the boys had a chance to stretch their legs and have some lunch.

When we are driving, sometimes Maverik likes to sightsee.  This is how he rides when he wants to see what is up ahead.

We also went back to the Lake Village area.  We stopped in the gift store and we met a really nice lady who fell in love with Cole and Maverik.  She showed us pictures of her babies who had passed on that looked just like our guys.  She was super nice and had the ladies in the Cafe make them pup cups with ice cream and whipped cream. They ate them so fast I couldn’t even get a picture!

We saw lots of wildlife as always.  Each day that we enter we saw a herd of elk, mostly females and several bison.  You can generally tell when there is wildlife right near the roads because traffic slows to a crawl.   We saw this guy when we were heading up to Mammoth.

We stopped at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone to see the falls and the beautiful river.  

I was taking Cole for a walk and came upon this guy.  He was less than 20 feet from the parking lot and most people were oblivious that he was even there!

We decided to go through the park on our way to Cody, Wyoming.  It was a lot shorter than going north around the park and we were able to stay in the cool weather for another day. We made it most of the way through the park without seeing any wildlife traffic slow downs.  When we got to the Haden Valley area, the bison were on both sides of the road and moving all over the place.

This guy decided that he wanted to be with his friends on the left side of the road and crossed right in front of us while we were in motion!

Yellowstone is an absolutely amazing place.  If this type of place interests you, it is well worth the trip.  Just make sure you have a few days to visit.  There is so much to see and do it takes multiple days and some planning to make the most of your time.