We slept in a little bit on the morning of day 16. We were feeling pretty tired from our long drive the day before. In the daylight we were able to see our campsite and the surrounding area. It wasn’t anything special– it would have been prettier to stay in the park, but it was decent and did the job. After a quick breakfast, we got loaded up to go to Yellowstone.
Our campground was literally 5 minutes from the West entrance to the park and our National Parks Pass that we bought at the Petrified Forest got us in for free! When we were checking in at our campground, I found a flyer for an app that you download on your phone and it gives you a guided audio tour through Yellowstone. It was so informative! It worked by tracking our location via GPS which would trigger the audio to begin depending on where we were in the park. It let us in on little tips and tricks for finding parking in certain crowded areas, which locations to visit and in what order, and which things we could probably skip and not feel like we missed anything important. I wish they had apps like this for all of the places that we have visited!
Yellowstone National Park is huge. The main road that circles the entire park is called the Grand Loop and it is made up by an upper and lower loop that are joined together in the middle– it kind of looks like a figure 8. Here is a map of the route we took on day 1:
Our first stop was to the Madison Information Station. Logan and Atticus wanted to get the junior ranger booklets so they could get another patch for their travel bags. It was a cute little info station with samples of bones, fur, fossils, and minerals for the kids to investigate.
We headed south towards Old Faithful. A storm was rolling in. It looked incredible coming in over the mountains. The thunder was echoing off the mountainsides and lightening was striking in the distance. Apparently forest fires are a common thing in Yellowstone. I’m glad the lightening didn’t start one while we were there!
We made several stops along the way to Old Faithful. The first was to a hot spring. It was so crazy to see the steam rising off the river. When we got out to explore, we were smacked in the face by the strong smell of sulfur.
As we came into the Lower Geyser Basin, it started to rain. We parked at the Fountain Paint Pots and decided to put on our rain gear and push through even though it was so cold. I’m glad we did. This area was really neat. We were able to see 4 types of geothermal features in just a short 1/2 mile walk around the boardwalk area. We saw geysers, mud pots, fumaroles, and hotsprings.
As we continued our drive, we stopped at the Great Fountain Geyser. We didn’t see it erupt, but it was really cool looking.
As we continued around the loop, we stopped in the Midway Geyser Basin to see the Grand Prismatic Springs area. This was the area I was most excited about. Photos I have seen of the Grand Prismatic Springs are amazing. Unfortunately, the weather didn’t quiet cooperate for us to get amazing photos. The cold air from the storm made the steam rising from the hot springs really thick. It was still a fun walk and we saw some awesome things. Like this warning sign… makes us giggle.
It was so steamy my glasses were constantly fogged up.
This is my favorite photo from Yellowstone.
After our trip around the Grand Prismatic Springs area, we headed towards Old Faithful. It was predicted to erupt shortly after we arrived–they have a schedule posted with predicted eruption times (+/- 10 mins) so you can plan your time in the Upper Geyser Basin accordingly. We sat and waited for Old Faithful. The anticipation was fun. Any little change we saw–more steam, less steam, water bubbling, steam moving faster, etc–made us think something was about to happen.
After waiting for about 20 mins, Old Faithful erupted, just 8 mins after the predicted eruption time. It was an incredible sight. And to think, this Geyser has been erupting like this since Yellowstone became a National Park (the first one ever, actually) back in 1872. And even before that– there just isn’t a record of it.
We ended our day in a bison jam. Traffic builds up on the west side of the park due to the bison in the area. If there aren’t bison standing in the middle of the road backing things up, then there are people stopping to take photos of them. There are 4,000-5,000 bison that live in Yellowstone, so it’s no wonder that they can cause traffic jams!
