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.