On to Smellystone…Yellowstone, MT

Leaving Teton was tough. The park and Jackson Hole are super laid back and beautiful, there’s tons to do and see, and even when the park is full it doesn’t feel that crowded. Not to mention we had prime real estate for a campsite – we had a ton of space, the sunsets were amazing, we had the beach right there for Murph to run around and the lake to swim, and after the first almost two weeks of bouncing around, it was nice to be in one place for a few nights. But we knew we had a lot more ground to cover, so reluctantly we packed up, gave up our site to the next bunch of campsite stalkers, and made the short drive north to Yellowstone.

Everyone we spoke to prior to us getting to Yellowstone said the same thing – there is a lot to see, but it’s like the Disney of national parks – lines of people everywhere, tour buses, traffic, hard to get around…and that Teton, and later Glacier in Montana, were way more impressive and just overall nicer places to be. Within five minutes of driving into Yellowstone, Derek and I knew exactly what they meant. It’s huge, and there is a lot to see, tons of wildlife, and the landscape changes dramatically depending on which part of the park you’re in, but it is a pain to get anywhere and it’s really crowded. There’s one main road that does a big figure 8 through the park, so even if it says 18 miles on the map from one point to the next, that 18 miles is going to take you an hour depending on traffic, road work delays, and stopping for wildlife crossing the road. And wherever you stop, the parking lots are jam packed with tourists piling out of tour buses. Not to mention, Yellowstone is filled with volcanic activity, geysers, and hot springs, which is pretty cool to see (although they make the western part of Yellowstone smell pretty bad) but it’s not like you are passing through all this on hikes, they are all mapped out along boardwalks, again packed with tourists throwing up peace signs.

Anyway, we had made it all this way so we were going to see it all and make the best of it, even if it took us hours of driving through the park. We spent two nights at Yellowstone. The first day we spent in the Northeastern corner, saw Mammoth Hot Springs which was near where we camped, and drove through Lamar Valley where wolves are known to be spotted.

Mammoth Hot Springs

We didn’t see any wolves, but we did get caught in a big herd of buffalo that caused a pretty big traffic jam and literally surrounded our truck.

We did see some pretty good wildlife and birds while we were there, including a lot of mule deer and elk, bald eagles, osprey, and this big guy we spotted outside someone’s from porch taking a nap.

It’s also worth mentioning that while we were at Yellowstone, at least two forest fires burned at a time each day; the first night we were there it was so bad that even before the sunset the whole sky was a smoky orangish color and everywhere you went smelt like bonfire. It’s pretty incredible to see the scale of the fires and that they actually let them burn because they’ve found it to be a healthy part of the ecosystem. We later found out that the fires we had seen in Teton had led to them closing down the the north entrance, which is the one we drove through to get to Yellowstone.

The following day we headed out to see the rest of the park. The western side is mostly geysers and hot springs, with Old Faithful being the biggest. It only erupts every 90 minutes or so, but thankfully we made it there just before it went off. Super anticlimactic, but again, we were in Yellowstone so we couldn’t not go see it.

We also stopped in to the Old Faithful Inn, which is an historic inn and definitely worth seeing.

From there, we drove around ginormous Yellowstone Lake, stopping for lunch and to see the views of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

And just when Derek had basically thrown his hands up in the air because he was so sick of driving, and Yellowstone in general, we saw a huge black bear in the river. And it was eating a bison that it had dragged away from another bear into the river. So that turned things around because how often do you get to see something like that?

After a long day of driving around and seeing the sights, we knew it would be our last night in Wyoming before heading north to Montana, so we made the most of it with some relaxing in our hammock, a fire, and a good ole fashion game of Rummy and some whiskey…a pretty good way to end the day.