Yellowstone National Park – July 30th

Yellowstone National Park is massive. So much so that there are several sections to visit, surrounded by long stretches of road in a figure 8 shape. So we decided that as there was pretty much no chance of being able to camp the night in one of the campsites (they book out completely, and very early too), we’d drive one side of each loop road, and camp somewhere outside the park that night. It still took us almost all day!

Yellowstone is apparently the oldest National Park in the United States, and is definitely one of the more well known – there were SO many people there it was almost funny! Trying to find somewhere to park at most of the spots was interesting, and the amount of people at some of the places was ridiculous! Possibly a better time to visit would be in Spring or Autumn… But in saying that, it was pretty amazing all the same! Just in terms of wildlife (ie. Bears and moose in particular!) we may have picked the wrong time, it was just way too crowded – as Lawrie said, if you were a bear, why would you hang out anywhere near the roads when you have the rest of the park?

There are heaps of walks even in the parts of the park which we went to, but as it was both crowded and raining on and off, we only did a few of the smaller ones – around the West Thumb Geyser Basin (well, Lawrie slept in the car while I had a look!), the Midway Geyser Basin (Lawrie may have slept again instead…), the Grand Prismatic Spring, and Mammoth Hot Springs. So these areas, as well as the Upper Geyser Basin where the famous Old Faithful Geyser is, are the main thermal areas of the park, while the eastern side of the park (where we didn’t go) has a lot more canyons and lakes and wide open spaces, and therefore a lot more bear (and moose and bison and who knows what else!) territory. So although we didn’t see any of those (even bison, which we were assured that we couldn’t go to Yellowstone without seeing thousands of!) we did see a LOT of areas of thermal activity – Yellowstone has the highest concentration of thermal areas around the world.

There were several geyser basins, some with tiny geysers and some gigantic – Old Faithful is the most well known, and although it isn’t the biggest or most impressive, at about 150-200 feet (45-60m) high when it erupts, it’s the most likely to be seen, as it erupts faithfully around every 90 minutes. As such, there are BIG crowds waiting to see this!

As well as geyser basins, there are many many hot springs and colourful pools or HOT water, some boiling, and some areas of bubbling mud. The water in the hot pools is ridiculously clear, and so much deeper than I would have thought, most looked quite beautiful. Having been to Rotorua in New Zealand before, and seen a lot of bubbling mud and hot pools etc, I was expecting much the same, but Yellowstone was much more impressive with its water clarity and colours, massive amounts of geysers (ok, so we only saw the one erupt, but still!) and most importantly the lack of sulphurous smell! J

What we saw when we pushed through the bushes to see what all the cars were stopped for - clearly those people hadn't been to Rocky Mtns NP!

Part of the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Bubbling mud in the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Awesome colourful pools in the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Geysers in the lake at the West Thumb Geyser Basin

A small part of the crowd at Old Faithful geyser

Some of the crowd waiting for Old Faithful to erupt

Old Faithful

Lawrie heading into the back for another nap...

Pretty deep blue pool alongside the walking track - there were so many!

Beautiful deep clear blue pool in the Midway Geyser Basin

Steaming thermal pool in the Midway Geyser Basin

Midway Geyser Basin

Part of the very colourful Grand Prismatic Spring in the Midway Geyser Basin

Waterfall on our way to the next spot in the park

The parts we didn't see too much of, but were more over the other side of the park

Lower Mammoth Hot Springs