Yellowstone National Park, WY | Part 3 (plus a video!)

Click here for Part I and here for Part 2.

The next day was all about geysers. Did you know that Yellowstone possesses near 60 percent of the world's geysers? Inside the park, there are 150 of them within one square mile! You can read more here, if you'd like.

First up, Old Faithful. We grabbed breakfast at the Old Faithful Lodge and awaited the Geyser's eruption (Old Faithful is so named because it's one of the most predictable geographical features on earth and erupts approximately every 91 minutes). 

Next, we drove down the road to the Lower Geyser Basin. We hadn't done any research so we had no idea what to expect... and it was the most amazing sight! The colors were just magical - starting with the emerald green/ocean blues of the deep water pools, and moving to the goldenrod oranges of the shallow hot spring lake. These amazing colors come from a thin layer of bacteria that can survive in hot water.  It's a giant living colony of microorganisms and they are very fragile - visitors are strongly urged (by signs and overbearing mom-tourists) to stay off the rocks and on the wooden boardwalk. And lastly, there are hot waterholes that pump out so much steam that only strong wind gusts can clear it out for a second and allow you a glimpse of the water's surface. Such a volcanically spectacular place!

In summary, our thoughts on Yellowstone: the park is giant and amazing. We stayed only one night but saw so much in those (less than) 24 hours. It was easy for us leave so soon once we agreed to come back again in the future. Hopefully with kids because, seriously, kids need to see wonders of this place. I mean, it would be so easy to spend a week there hiking, fishing, exploring, and wildlife watching!

-Amanda

Be sure to watch this video, guys! Our videography is nothing to write home about, but there is so much natural beauty to see:


Did you catch the part when Taras rescues my hat?!  If you're visiting on a windy day, keep a hand on your hat... mine was definitely not the only one that had fallen! The hat incident put us in quite the predicament - do we leave it? That would be polluting, right? Or rescue it, and in the process mess with the ground we shouldn't be touching? We decided to rescue it - Taras used his belt plus my shoe laces to lasso the darn thing (it was my favorite hat, after all). Unfortunately, the hat got wet and bent out of shape in the process and it's never looked quite the same. :(

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Yellowstone National Park, WY | Part 2

As I mentioned in Part 1, we got into Yellowstone late in the day. After we drove around to see the wildlife, we set out to see as much as possible in the Tower-Roosevelt and Canyon Village areas before dark (we were sleeping on the other side of the park and knew we wouldn't be driving back to these areas).

[Here's a link to the park map. If you want to follow along, we came into the park from the northeast entrance, spotted wildlife all along the drive to the area near Tower-Roosevelt, continued to explore through the Canyon Village area, then drove all the way to the Old Faithful area to sleep.]

It was a beautiful drive through the park as the sun set, watching the sky change colors and to see the light reflecting in the mountain ranges. We managed to see: the Petrified Tree, Tower Fall, Calcite Springs, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and the Lower and Upper Falls of the Yellowstone.

It was a whirlwind few hours! Once it was too dark to see anything else, we made our way to the other side of the park where our cabin was...

Speaking of our cabin, we were lucky to get it. We had planned to camp in Yellowstone, hoping to claim one of the sites that can't be reserved in advance. After our camping experience in the Bighorn National Forest, we knew our camping gear wouldn't keep us warm enough in the even colder temps expected during our night at Yellowstone. A frantic call to the Yellowstone reservation office later, we got THE LAST remaining cabin for the night (everything books up well in advance, as expected). We helped offset the extra lodging cost by missing dinner (somehow we forgot to eat before all the lodges closed?) - yay for granola bars!

-Amanda

Most of these photos were taken without appropriate daylight - sorry for the quality!

 

See more Yellowstone here. 

Yellowstone on Dwellable

Yellowstone National Park, WY | Part 1

I'm so excited to start sharing Yellowstone!

We drove into the park from the North entrance after finishing our drive through Beartooth Highway. We arrived late in the day, near dusk (there wasn't even anyone at the entrance gate to check our pass). After driving a while through the woods we started to see more open fields and a lot of wildlife out for their evening feedings. Watching the wildlife roam against the setting sun was pretty special.

We were short on daylight with a lot to see (and a three hour drive to the cabin where we were sleeping) so, instead of stopping to set up the tripod for photos, we tried to slow down enough to photograph the animals whenever we passed by them. This strategy proved difficult since both we and the animals were in constant motion. It didn't help that the park rangers heavily patrol the roads to ensure the cars don't stops traffic (except if wildlife are crossing), meaning if there's no shoulder or pull out area, then you have no choice but to keep driving.

We learned quickly that we were doing it all wrong.  We started noticing herds of people were lined up on the roadsides, seemingly for hours, with giant (I mean HUGE) camera lenses, binoculars, and tripods. They had staked out their spots and were ready to capture the wildlife as it passed by them. On our next trip to the park we will be sure to plan plenty of time to photograph the animals!

The buffalo seemed to rule the park - they cross roads when they want and seemed to often stop traffic. We were stopped by a herd of buffalo near 10 at night as we were driving to our cabin. It was a nerve-wracking encounter, as the buffalo were circling the car and seemed to be protecting something. This went on for a while and traffic was stopped in both directions. Finally, the buffalo decided to cross the road and, as they started to clear out, we could see that some mama buffalo had been nursing their baby buffalo, right in the middle of the road. The male buffalo were circling the cars to keep them from driving forward, in order to protect the mama and babies. So sweet!

The wildlife we saw: buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, a black bear with its cub, and a wolf. Our next trip to this park will be when we have kids - talk about an exciting vacation for children!

-Amanda