I realized how little I update this when I had to pay to renew this domain today and have only posted a handful of times this year. Couple that with about 16 inches of snow outside today and it was the perfect excuse to write a post!
I left off on day 3 of driving across the country from Seattle back to New York. This was the only time that we took to detour off our route home so that we could drive South to see Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Even though we went in May it was still very cold in Wyoming and at the higher elevations we were in white out conditions in the snow.
We drove from Idaho to Wyoming on day 2 and decided if we wanted the best chance to see everything in Yellowstone the next day we should stay right in the park at one of the lodges. Even in May half the lodges were still closed for winter, and some of the roads in the park were also closed. The road from Yellowstone to Grand Teton was one of these closed roads so it altered our plans some. We ended up having to drive back through Idaho and enter Wyoming farther south where the roads were passable.
Here’s a few more shots of driving into Yellowstone on day 2:
It only took about 2 days to not even think twice when I saw a whole heard of animals at the gas station.
Yellowstone was the first national park in the world dating back to 1872. It is considered a supervolcano and is also an active volcano. You are heavily discouraged from leaving designated paths for this reason. Many areas you could see the earth boiling up right under a walkway and it would make you think twice where you stepped. The fog in these pictures is actually steam from extremely hot lava breaking through in areas.
It was clear right away that animals were allowed to roam free anywhere in the park they wished. We didn’t see any animals driving in and woke up to elk hanging out right outside the hotel lobby and soon after learned that bison had the final say in who stops on the roads. They were pretty much everywhere you looked. One of the coolest moments of the entire trip was being less than 3 feet from a beautiful wolf next to the road. Both of us were too amazed to see a giant wolf just looking at us to grab the camera sadly.
It was a really strange day because as we would go up and down in elevation we would experience completely different weather. We went back and forth a few times between sun and snow depending on where we were in the park.
This is one of the craters that had cracked open we were able to get pretty close to…
Sadly, when we made it to The Grand Canyon of The Yellowstone it was so snowy you could barely make out where the crater actually was.
This giant bird flying into our Uhaul hung out with us for awhile. I should mention that it was a lot of fun navigating Yellowstone with this huge truck. It was also towing a car behind it so there were a few times I really questioned if we would make it around a turn, or to the top of an incredibly steep hill.
Our last stop of the day was of course to go see Old Faithful!
It was very chilly out even with the sun out waiting for her to erupt. They give you an approximate window of when to expect her to start, but it can be within 10-20 minutes so we ended up waiting about 25-30 minutes.
It starts off slow at first as you can hear and see the earth literally bowling over.
It was pretty windy so all the water went flying in the wind as soon as she started erupting!
It was one of those moments that I really couldn’t believe I was just standing in the middle of Wyoming watching Old Faithful shoot water sky high into the air. I’m so glad I made it to Yellowstone to see how absolutely beautiful our country really is. It’s so undisturbed and truly breathtaking around every turn out there I don’t think my photos or descriptions are really doing it enough justice.
Beer.Band.Go. 