If you’re new to my blog: welcome! I’m recapping a big trip my family just took. It involved:
This will covering days 6 & 7 and National Park #2: Yellowstone!
Yellowstone: Diverse, gigantic, alive
- Miles hiked in Yellowstone Day 2: about 9 miles
- Campground: Grizzly RV Park, West Yellowstone WY
Day 2 at Yellowstone was still driving around, because that’s what you do there. The place is so big! We had purchased a great audio tour app, and listened to “Stan”, our tour guide. Along the tour, Stan told us some interesting information and urged us to stop and view the Sour Lake area if we had time. He promised we would not be disappointed. So we did! Here’s what we found – a cave that was hissing and splashing hot water!
The funny part was that as I was viewing the hot spring I said to my family, “Stan was right. This was a good stop!”. The lady next to me said “Is that what you named the guy in your app? We call ours George!”. What the heck, they were using the same app we had!
I’m sure you have heard of Old Faithful, but we found this geyser even more interesting. There are people who spend time hanging out at the geysers recording when they will go off and other stats. We ended up waiting 45 mins to see this one erupt, but it was worth it. *Trust me, geysers are way better to view in real life than look at pictures of them. If you didn’t know, there is a sulphur smell at the geysers (like rotten eggs). It’s quite memorable!
I was looking forward to seeing the Grand Prismatic pool. We arrived first thing in the morning, which was disappointing because it was so steamy due to the cool air temps. Boo, this is a bummer 🙁
Huh. Where is it Mom??
However, at the end of the day, when I was exhausted, my family agreed that we should go on one last hike. It was to a viewing area for the Grand Prismatic pool. Wow!! The view was amazing!!! I’m so glad we went on that hike.
The other pools were very pretty too!
The other part of the park was very “woodsy”…
You gotta love this shot. It’s got it all…. hot spring, elk, big lake, and huge mountains!!
Here come all of the pictures… It was baby season. The baby bison were so cute!
So were the bears!
I was very lucky that my Dad let me borrow his DSLR, which had a nice zoom lens. This mountain goat was across the river area (far away!), and I got to see this baby with it’s mom.
Look at these baby marmots. How cute!
Look at at the size of this raven. Huge!
Did I mention the cute elk (or is this a deer??)?
As we were leaving the park we got stuck in this traffic jam. This can only mean one thing… animals. Maybe bears?
Nope… it was bison!
Here is our bear sighting #2:
And bear sighting #3! Awww, how peaceful!
I’ll close my Yellowstone recap with a fun picture of my kids playing “push your sister off the log”. LOL
No wait – here’s the money shot of a the falls, AND a rainbow. Score!
Yellowstone was pretty amazing. Day 7 was spent on the road again. We were having serious Stan withdrawals. Too bad they don’t have an app for every national park. Next stop, Bryce Canyon (Utah)!
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Q: Have you ever heard of a marmot?
They are not common to Ohio, but our ground hogs look kinda close!
Q: Have you ever seen Old Faithful, or any other geysers?
What beautiful photos! Thanks for sharing them. I found your blog through a comment you made on Hungry Runner Girl.
Thanks for stopping by! So glad I got to borrow my Dad’s camera. A big lenses makes all the difference!!
We were in Yellowstone almost exactly 17 years ago when I was 9. It was a neat park but not my favorite of the ones out west mostly because I hated the smell. My dad almost had a run in with a grizzly by the outlook to the falls which was scary crazy. It was an awesome trip! We were gone for 5-6 weeks traveling across the country.
Wow! I’m glad the bears were far away from us. There was a lady who did get gored by an bison while we were there (we didn’t see it, just heard the report). Yikes!! I kept my distance for sure. That sounds like a great trip! What were your favorite parks/places?
We have seen yellow bellied marmots in the Rocky Mountains, I’m not sure if they are the exact same thing you saw or a different kind? We actually saw two having sex hahaha. How close were you to the bears? Was it really crowded, and if so, did the people annoy you?
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We were pretty far away from the bears (thank you fabulous camera!!). The park rangers some how got word of where the bears were spotted and did a great job at keeping the idiots from getting too close to them. I’m glad because I would hate to think that we were disturbing them from their natural routine.
Yellowstone wasn’t really too crowded. At least not enough that we couldn’t park, or were bothered by anyone when visiting the sights. Old Faithful was pretty busy, but honestly, there were so many other cool things to see. I think Old Faithful was a bit over rated!