Favorite Yellowstone Days, Part Two

After our day trip to Cody, our last two days in Yellowstone were fantastic. Our first outing was taking the Firehole Canyon drive, which was a scenic one-way drive (and not accessible to tour buses, bonus!). 

We just have one photo here, as we didn't take our camera down to the swimming hole. (Yes, for the water issue, but also, I don't think cameras and swimsuits really mix well for me.)

There is a great swimming hole near the end of the drive, and while the 'fire' in the title may lead you to think that it's really hot, it's just warm-ish. Still, you can feel the effect of the thermal springs, and the river temperature is easy to get acclimated to. We stayed in the river the better part of the afternoon, swimming upstream and floating down. Our oldest declared it the best day ever. He and another boy were taking turns jumping into the rapids and catching big waves. All of those hours on swim team paid off! The rest of us were happy to meander around in the water, watch the college kids jump off the cliff edge (yikes!), and just generally frolic around.

This is downstream from the swimming hole; we didn't play near any falls.

The last day we planned on hiking Mt. Washburn. We saved this for last to give ourselves time to adjust to the altitude (as it's a 10K high peak). Right away, literally seconds after we read a sign asking hikers to stay of the fragile alpine tundra, and on the trail, we saw three tourists plowing away at full speed towards us through the tundra. ?!? They stopped right behind us, and told us there was a bison on the trail ahead. Aahhh. . . that explains it. (We did have a chuckle that these guys put three kids between them and the bison. Super tough move.)

Here it comes down the trail.

 

And here it is passing us. I'm surprised that this turned out, as we were hoofing it onto the tundra and out of its way.

This was about as far as we got on the trail before the approaching thunderstorm made us turn back. I think that this is the first hiking trail that we didn't complete, but being on a mountain peak in the storm seemed a bit dicey.

We had to stop by the ranger station later, as one of our children was really upset that we walked on the tundra (to give the bison the space to get by us in peace). We asked if we made the right choice, or what we should have done, and he kindly let us know that giving the bison space was the right call. Whew. I'm not sure we would have lived that down if we had made the wrong call.

We did get another great drive through Hayden Valley, my favorite section of the park.

 

 

Stopped to check out a pelican eat its lunch.

 

 A group of trumpeter swans.

 

We then had enough time to fit in another hike, along the north rim of the Yellowstone Canyon. This is a great trail, with good views of the canyon and very few other hikers.

 

 Enjoying the pacific northwest-like scenery.

Lots of great viewpoints along the trail.

As we were ready to call our Yellowstone adventure closed on our drive home, we saw the sign that Mud Volcano was open. It had been closed the entire week due to the fires; so this was a nice surprise.

The dragon's mouth.

 

Mud, lots of awesome mud.

Then, farewell to the beautiful Yellowstone Park as we head toward the Grand Tetons.

Cody, Wyoming

After five days in Yellowstone, we decided to spend our sixth on a day trip to Cody, Wyoming. Our neighbors in the park recommended the Buffalo Bill museum, raving about the displays. 

The drive out through the eastern entrance/exit of Yellowstone to Cody did not disappoint. It was beautiful!

Our first stop was the Buffalo Bill Center of the West museum.

Given the amount of gun shops and bbq in Cody, I was bracing myself for a real macho 'yay cowboys and railroads' sort of experience. However, it was a fantastic museum that was really well done.

The kids were hooked at the start with the Wild Bill hologram welcoming them.

The collection of western artifacts, with good descriptions of their importance, was super interesting.

 The Peregrine Falcon was someone's favorite.

Loved seeing the Annie Oakley exhibit!

 

 
Yes, there were lots of gunslinger, entertainer, and outlaw displays. But also lots of exhibits on the natural environment and Native Americans. The images and artistry had a lot of impact.

 

There was so much to see, that we thought we may never finish. Exhaustion led to this being declared the last exhibit they would look at. 

After walking around town, picking up some salsa and looking at the requisite tourist shops, we succumbed to the necessary bbq dinner. Thumbs up for Bubba's!

Favorite Yellowstone Days, Part One

After two 'tourist' days in the park we started our third by taking the Storm Point trail near Mary Bay. This is a great hike that goes through four different ecosystems. You start off in a meadow, go through a lodgepole pine forest, and at the midpoint you're at the sandy lakeshore with surprise thermal features. You return through a wetter forest, with more wildlife. We saw lots of butterflies and evidence of a fox. 

 There's a butterfly in there, I think.

Feeling beachy.

The lake at the end of the Storm Point loop.

That afternoon a huge rainstorm came through, so we played some board games in the RV and breathed a huge sigh of relief that wet and cooler weather was there. It made venturing further off trail easier knowing that the likelihood of needing to evacuate without our RV, should we be too far away, was minimal. (It probably already was, but we can be worrywarts.)

Day four we wound around to the Fountain Paint Pots. This was a great walk, and a short hike up a hill to view the thermal features from above. We didn't bring the camera (?), but I'd recommend this side trip, as it's very quiet. We then went on the Firehole lake drive, which isn't open to tour buses. We met a nice ranger, and she also let us know about the Firehole Canyon (coming up in a later post). 

Geyser on the Firehole Lake route.

 Ice cream at the lodge after the crowds are gone.

Yellowstone Tourist Sights

Our first couple of days in Yellowstone we hit the 'highlights' of the tourist route--Artist Falls, Mammoth Hot Springs, Old Faithful, and the geyser walk. It was good to see these sights, but in some ways I think I was mentally 'getting these out of the way' before we really got off the tour loop and started to have a great time. Of course, these sights are popular because they are amazing and iconic--like the bison on the side of the road. 

Going to a ranger talk at night; we must have been too dorky to sit with, right?

Bison on a smoky day--this guy ruled the road!

We hiked to see the petrified tree. There's a fence around it because people kept taking pieces of it.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Chromatic spring 

Thermal features along the river.

Old Faithful

Grand Gyser, way more dramatic than old faithful, if you're patient enough to wait for it. The kids said this was the best sight of the day (other than the bison).

But it was moments like this that were my favorite part of the day. 

Checking out the visitor center.

Taking an extended trip means that sometimes you have to be 'that guy' working whenever you can get an internet signal. At Yellowstone that place was at Old Faithful.

The fire made for dramatic sunsets.

There's sort of a Disneyland mentality though, as "Le Bus" pulls up and the masses rush out with their ipads in front of their faces to snap as many pics in the few minutes they have. Seriously, grab your kids out of the way if you see this group coming, as they won't look or think twice before pushing them off the boardwalk into the hot springs so they can get a good profile pic or hundred (hooray for quick reflexes, as we avoided disaster on that front).  

At the end of the second day our daughter summed it up quite well after another pushy group shared the trail with us, "Ugh, I am sooo over European tourists! Except for British toddlers. They have the best accents."

After this loop of main sights though, we can happily say that it is possible to avoid the "Le Bus" crowd and find lots of beautiful park moments off of the beaten path.

Yellowstone National Park

We were so excited to get to Yellowstone after the long drive across Idaho. We arrived through the west entrance, which I think is the least striking visually, but has the most traffic and tourists. Our base for the week was the fishing bridge campground, full of rv's packed in like sardines. This was our worst parking job yet; it took us half an hour and led to a nice traffic back up. Oops, sorry. Luckily our fellow rv'ers there were a patient lot.

This fire was across the lake, one of about three in the park while we were there.

Keeping with the theme of the trip so far, there was a forest fire just two miles away from us. Those first two nights we didn't sleep so well! Part of that was the miscommunication (or lack of) between the park rangers and the Zanterra people running the park. The Zanterra employees evacuated, and told us the fire jumped the river. Being just down that road we weren't sure this was right, and went to check with the rangers. Sure enough, they were baffled, too, and assured us we were good to stay. Nevertheless, we didn't venture too far from camp those first couple of days, just so that we could hitch up if the fire conditions changed. 

This was the smoke from the fire near our camp.

That first full day we went to the canyon and checked out artist falls. 

It looks like I've done some filter here on the photo, but that's just the smoke.

 

This was early in the morning, hence the hoodies. It warmed up every afternoon we were there.