Yellowstone National Park, WY

  Yellowstone, Wyoming, United States
Saturday, July 30, 2005

Hello everyone! We've spent three amazing days in Yellowstone where we saw volcanic features and loads of wildlife. Yellowstone was the world's first national park which was established in 1872. It's basically a huge super-volcano. We drove for four hours from Great Falls, Montana, to get to the north entrance of Yellowstone and had a further four hours to reach our campsite which was at the south end of the park called Grant's Village. One of the first sights to welcome us was Mammoth Hot Springs with this amazing landscape.




As we travelled south it became very apparent the sheer magnitude of the volcanic presence as we stopped off at many geysers, hot springs and steam vents.





Towards the middle of the park there are three main areas of volcanic activity; lower, midway and upper geyser basins. These areas have many different features including fumaroles and mud pots, all of which stunk so badly. Those who know Chris's disposition to bad smells would have laughed to see him running down the trail heaving trying not to throw up!!





We decided on the way to camp to visit 'Old Faithful' as it was on the way.

This is before the eruption!!



And during........



Old Faithful isn't the biggest or highest geysers, but one of the most predictable. It erupts approximately every ninety minutes.

We finally arrived at our campsite, set up and planned the next days activities.

The park is home to a variety of wildlife including bison, elk, grizzly bears, deer, wolves...to name a few.

It also has a varied terrain from flat, grassy plains to mountainous wooded areas and rivers and lakes.




The second day we spent eight hours exploring the park. We headed to a region called 'Canyon Village', this is the 'Grand Canyon of Yellowstone' and plunges 1000 feet. This is a picture of the Lower Falls.



Hot water acting on the volcanic rock created the canyons colours.



This is a picture of Upper Falls, which is one mile upriver.



We then entered 'Hayden Valley', the road follows the Yellowstone River which meanders across a former lake bed.



Soil here permits little tree growth and the shrubs and grassland plants are used by grazing animals. Everything from small rodents to large animals such as elk, moose, and bison graze here. White pelicans being seen here isn't out of place either.



We had a few close encounters with the Bison also!!!! This one took a fancy to Kelly!





These guys weigh up to 2000 lbs and can run at 30mph.

Next stop was Mud Volcano, which again is full of thermal features.



It's hard to describe how fantastic this place is, but as parks go it's one of our favourites due to all the different aspects.

There are a lot of other pictures of Yellowstone above, so please check them out!!!

As well as big dangerous animals, Yellowstone is full of big, mean, tough bikers, riding through on their loud Harley Davidsons being really macho and it really made me laugh to see them taking pictures of pretty waterfalls and scrambling across fences to take pictures of deer. When we were on one trail, a guy head to toe in leathers aprroached us and asked if there was any little critters to be seen....it was so funny...hey just don't tell them that it was me that told you.....I wonder if they tell the guys at the bar about it!!!!!hehe

The campground we stayed in was very good as it was at the south entrance we did a day trip to Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone's sister park thirty miles away. Grand Teton just consisted of a fifty mile road with a view of the Teton Mountain range which was spectacular.



Fourty miles on from there we visited Jackson, Wyoming, home of the world famous Jackson Hole ski resort.



We popped into the Million Dollar Cowboy bar for some lunch and a beer. Check out Chris below, he got saddle sore from sitting at the bar for too long.




As we are coming to the end of the U.S. leg of our trip our plans are changing day by day. We had planned to stay at Yellowstone for four days but as part of the park was inaccessible from the south we decided to move on to Bryce Canyon National Park. Bryce Canyon National Park is 550 miles away at the bottom of Utah. Again we had planned to take three days getting to the park and our first stop was in Montpelier, Idaho (sorry Baggers it was cloudy). We entered Utah and drove through Salt Lake City. We had planned to stop just outside but we decided to plod along as the drive was pretty good. We ended up being at our next campsite which was one mile outside the entrance to Bryce Canyon around 6 pm. We passed an area called Red Canyon and you can see why.





This is where we are now, at Bryce Canyon National Park. We should be here for three days and we will explore Zion National Park as we head for Las Vegas. Yet another change of plans, we will be spending two nights in Las Vegas and then move onto Yosemite. So until the next time.......