Yellowstone NP, WY
2022 Parks Road Trip Diary: Days 22-27
Yellowstone: Americaâs first, largest, and most frequently visited national park, known for its various geothermal features and its murderous numerous bison. As our guide book says, rather dramatically, âTouch it. Smell it. Feel it. It is Yellowstone.â
And despite the historic flooding and subsequent damage that occurred in June this year, the park wasnât closed when we got there! Only certain roads were closed: the northern and eastern routes out of the park, which at worst just reduced some of our hiking options.
Day 22: West Thumb Basin
Yellowstone is seriously huge. The parkâs main roads form a 142-mile-long figure-eight called the grand loop. With speed limits typically at 55 mph and the frequent traffic jam due to bison on the road, itâd easily take 3-4 hours to drive the entire thing.
Our home base for the entire five days would be in Canyon Village, which is near the middle, ideal for exploring different parts of the loop on different days. Since we were arriving from the south, we decided to use the first day to stop at the sights in the southwest portion, which is mainly just an area called the West Thumb Geyser Basin.
In Yellowstone at least, the geothermal activity at the surface tends to appear in clusters, resulting in various kinds of colorful pools and interesting structures. West Thumb Geyser Basin is one of those clusters, adjacent to Yellowstone Lake.
West Thumb is definitely not the most spectacular group of geothermal features, but it was a good introduction for our first day here. These pics are only a small sample of what there was to see.
Day 23: A Miserable Hike, and North Yellowstone
Eager to get our legs moving, we consulted our guide book as well as AllTrails for some good hikes in the area. It was apparent after some research that Yellowstone wasnât much of a hiking park. Not to say it had none, but for its size there seemed to be very few popular, difficult hikes.
Our guide book called out one hike, Hellroaring Creek Trail as âdefinitely one of the best hikesâ, so that seemed like an easy first choice. It was on the shorter side too, so it would leave us enough time to explore the rest of north Yellowstone in our car afterwards.
Well, it sucked. Mostly because the mosquitos came in swarms and were relentless. Our bug spray didnât work. There were also lots of these inchworms that suspend themselves from trees waiting for you to walk into them, which youâd find on your clothes hours later. It was hot, and because of a partial trail closure we didnât really get any interesting views. The return hike was uphill, but we still probably set a personal speed record on the way back because we were just so ready to be done and back in the car.
So back in the car we went to see the rest of the northern half of Yellowstoneâs figure-eight. It got a lot better from here.
At the northernmost part of the loop is the Mammoth Hot Springs and Fort Yellowstone area.
What makes Mammoth Hot Springs unique are its colorful ledges formed from silica crystal hardening as hot spring water from the top flows down to the bottom. As with nearly all the colors in Yellowstoneâs geothermal features, they exist due to the bacteria that thrives in that hot environment.
Driving back towards camp, there were a few more pullouts to check out. One of the more interesting ones was the rock structure at Sheepeater Cliff:
Day 24: Yellowstoneâs Most Iconic Features
Today was the day weâd visit the southwest portion of Yellowstone, where several geyser basins are situated. Upper Geyser Basin is the largest attraction, and is home to Old Faithful. The geyser is so called because its eruptions are so predictable.
Eruptions happen every 60-90 minutes, and the visitor center posts the next expected eruption time. They also add â+/- 10 minutesâ to their estimate, but for the first eruption we awaited, they were spot on. For that one we hiked up a short distance to observation point to view it from above.
After, we took a stroll throughout the rest of Upper Geyser Basin; there are so many interesting little springs and other geysers accompanying Old Faithful right nearby.
In the time it took us to tour some of the springs and geysers nearby, Old Faithful was ready to erupt again. We didnât need to know the predicted time â we could tell by the size of the crowd gathered around it when it was close.
This time we were right next to it!
We still had at least 2/3 of the rest of the area to see, so we kept going. The next interesting stop was the beehive geyser. A note about the term âgeyserâ: it just means that it has a behavior corresponding to the release of a pressure buildup, regardless of whether that buildup is big or small, or how often it is released.
We had previously seen the beehive geyser from afar, and it just looked like an inactive little mound in the ground. This time when we passed it, we saw a little steam jet coming from the ground, and weirdly it wasnât even from the mound, but instead right in front of it. âThatâs lame,â we thought, âI would have expected the mound to be where the geyser jet is.â
It turns out that what we were seeing was the beehive geyserâs âindicatorâ, which erupts just minutes prior to the nearby bigger geyserâs eruption. We had no idea at the time and walked right past it. When it started really going off, we had to come back!
Apparently this geyser erupts every 1-5 days and is very difficult to predict in advance (besides the indicator going off), so this was a special treat!
Anyway, here are a few more sights from Upper Geyser Basin as we continued on. Sometimes the geysers and springs had names that matched some attribute of theirs, but you could definitely tell they were running out of ideas for some. Like, âspiteful geyserâ? (I donât have a picture, but what are you expecting to see?)
Also, during our walk on the boardwalk that winds around Upper Geyser Basin, after turning a corner we encountered a bison roaming just ~30 feet away. Bison are dangerous; a woman was killed just this month, right in the same area we were in, when she got too close. We hid and waited for it to get farther, then dashed by. No pics because we moved with haste đŹ
To top off the dayâs activities we drove up the road a bit to see the Grand Prismatic Spring, another iconic Yellowstone sight:
Day 25: Yellowstone Grand Canyon
Today we explored the area adjacent to our campground: the Yellowstone Grand Canyon. We combined a couple of routes from AllTrails (North rim, South rim) for a little more than 10 miles of hiking that wraps around both sides of the canyon and hits a couple of spots with some pretty incredible views.
We were done with this by 2:30 and the rest of the day was a bit slow due to bad weather. We told ourselves that buying chili cheese fries from the snack bar was justified so that we could have a seat inside away from the thunderstorm. Even once we went back to camp, the rain turned into hail, and we had to just⌠sit in the car for a while. You win some, you lose some.
Day 26: A Final Hiking Hurrah
While we had certainly been active over the last few days, the hikes we were doing were closer to walks. No summit, no challenging ascent, and lots of casual tourists. And despite the misery of the first hike, we knew Yellowstone must have more to offer!
Our plan was to do two short hikes in one day: Mount Washburn (6.8 mi, 1400 ft gain) and Avalanche Peak (4.5 mi, 2100 ft gain).
They were great! I highly recommend them to escape the crowds for a bit and add some fun hiking to your Yellowstone trip đ
Mount Washburn
Avalanche Peak
This one was pretty steep! The scree at the top was a bit of a challenge, both going up and down.
This was actually a great deal of hiking in one day! Across both we had done 11.3 mi and 3500 ft gain. At this point for us, thatâs a lot. (Foreshadowing: this would be a âstandardâ hike by the time weâre in CanadaâŚ)
On the way home from the second hike, we passed by a thermal area called Mud Volcano that we didnât get to check out yet. Definitely worth the 30-min stop!
Day 27: Off to Glacier
Next stop: Glacier National Park. But itâs 6 hours away, so this day is devoted to driving.
Oh and, it wouldnât be a trip to Yellowstone if we didnât get a shot of a Bison from our car. (Side note: the traffic jams people would cause just to take pictures of these drove me nuts)
post originally written 8/2, backdated to match reality