Yellowstone National Park

My goodness, what a huge park that offers such diverse landscapes and vistas! Yellowstone has geysers, waterfalls, mountains, lakes, bears, moose, and other diverse wildlife, not to mention most of the park sits within the caldera of a super volcano!

Trip Details:

Where: Yellowstone National Park

Campsite: Yellowstone Grizzly RV Park (spot 120) - This campground was located just next to the west entrance to the park. Only downside was it was lacking a pool and dog park!

Length: 5 days

Itinerary:

Day 1 - Travel Day

Day 2 - Yellowstone NP - Lower Loop (geysers)

Day 3 - Yellowstone NP - Lower Loop (hikes/lake)

Day 4 - Snow Day!/Yellowstone NP

Day 5 - Yellowstone NP - Upper Loop

Highlights:

Paige: I liked seeing the Prismatic Hot Springs.

Charlotte: We got to see the Fountain Geyser twice!

Mary: I loved seeing Yellowstone in the snow!

Aaron: I liked the early morning hike to Mystic Falls.

Hooray! After a very long day of driving from Hill City, SD to West Yellowstone, we were happy to be out of the car! The next day, we got our group into the Yellowstone National Park at 8am, and let's just say, that was considered late. It took a while to get through the gate and into the park. But there were some Elk to greet us when we got inside!

Have I said this park is huge? Well, it is. It's over 3,400 square miles! Needless to say, it certainly is a driving park. There are two loops to this park, Upper Loop is 68 miles long (in blue) and Lower Loop is almost 100 miles (in yellow). The Lower Loop has your main attractions of Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic Hot Springs. This is where we dedicated our first and second days!

As we headed to Old Faithful, our first top was at Fountain Paint Pots. This was an easy half-mile boardwalk trail through some hydrothermal areas. Here we found some beautiful, yet stinky geysers and mudpots. We quickly learned that geysers have inconsistent eruption patterns. For example, Charlotte's favorite geyser, Fountain Geyser, would go off every 9 to 15 hours, but would erupt for about 45 minutes! We were lucky to not only see it the first day, but also on our way toward Grand Tetons later that week. Also, we learned about the mudpots at this stop. The mudpots need a mix of heat (from Yellowstone's volcano), gas, water and volcanic rock to make it bubble up. In the spring, the mudpots are more soupy, but as summer comes and dries it up, it has a more muddy gurgle!

Once we were back on the road, we had a pit stop at Old Faithful Inn. This Inn was built in the early 1900s and it a 6-story log building made with resources from around the area. There is a beautiful stone fireplace with a giant handmade clock in the main room. It would be cool to get a room in this inn, as some of their rooms overlook Old Faithful, so you could enjoy a coffee in the morning or a glass of wine in the evening while watching Old Faithful being faithful.

It's now time for Old Faithful Geyser, named for it's consistent and reliable timing going off every 90 minutes. We had to wait about 30-minutes and once it went off, it lasted for a couple of minutes and Old Faithful normally shoots as high as 180 feet high!

After watching the show Old Faithful performed, we hiked tup to Geyser Hill to see all these little geysers going off at different times and lasting different lengths before heading to Grand Geyser.

We felt Grand Geyser was actually more impressive than Old Faithful (shhh... don't Old Faithful). The benches were closer to the geyser than Old Faithful and we learned it is higher than Old Faithful - up to 200 feet high. The downside of Grand Geyser is that it only erupts every 6-15 hours. The parks geyser predictions chart showed that the Grand Geyser would erupt that day at approx. 2pm (+/- 90 minutes.... yep, plus or minus 1 1/2 hours). Now if we were jelly-side up (😉 Katie), it would have erupted after lunch around 1pm then we could have gone on our merry way. But unfortunately, we don't have that luck that day. We waited almost 3 hours before it erupted at 3pm. The eruption lasted about 9 minutes and it was like watching a fireworks show, as Grand's buddy geysers, Vent and Turban Geysers joined in on the show.

The second full day of Yellowstone, we focused more on hikes! We learned from the previous day to get into the park earlier so we got up and got into the park by 7 am and the early morning view in was worth it!

Our first stop for the day was at Midway Geyser Basin where you find the famous and colorful Grand Prismatic Spring. The Grand Prismatic is Yellowstone's largest hot spring (think less stinky, but very hot and boiling). This was an easy half mile boardwalk trail around the basin.

After the hike, we learned that we should hike up Fairy Falls Trailhead to the Grand Prismatic Overlook. This was a 1.5 hike up to the overlook and provided us the opportunity to see the colorful Grand Prismatic from above. If you only have time to do one hike - this one is the one to do to see the angled view.

Since we got into the park so early, we enjoyed a longer and quieter hike called Mystic Falls. This hike is 2.8 miles from Biscuit Basin. Now Biscuit Basin was closed due to the aggressive eruption in 2024, so we had a little longer of a hike. This hike had gorgeous views and a long waterfall after our hike out there! We'd recommend it!

After crossing over the Continental Divide, we made it to our picnic lunch at the beautiful Yellowstone Lake!

We then found another hike that would take us around part of the lake. Stormy Point Trail was a 2.5 hike loop that took us up to the lake and through some forest.

To finish our long second day in Yellowstone, we ended it with a quick visit to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone River. This was a drastic and colorful canyon carved by the Yellowstone River. The Lower Falls Waterfall is found here as well. The canyon is about 20 miles long, 1200 feet deep and anywhere from 1500-400 feet wide in parts. This is where Yellowstone got its name, based on the yellow-colored rocks in the area.

The 3rd day at Yellowstone came with a fun surprise! Snow Day! We chose to stay in the camper and stay warm for the morning. Got some laundry done and watched some Locke & Key on Netflix! We then went into Downtown West Yellowstone for lunch and enjoyed the snow storm. We decided to to into the park to see it in the wintertime, even though it was June 22! It was a fun experience. We cranked up the Christmas tunes and Aaron wished the Park Ranger a Merry Christmas! The Gurleys were not prepared for the weather, so the Kuhlmans trekked into Norris Geyser Basin in the snowstorm!

The last day in Yellowstone, we got up early again to set off to the Upper Loop and got lucky with our animal sightings! We saw a moose in the early fog at the river and then we saw 4 black bears (from afar!) - no bear spray needed.

We stopped for a quick second to check out Gibbon Falls and enjoyed the snow-covered trees in the morning. Once the sun came out, we captured some amazing views at the Gallatin Range, The Upper Loop had some breathtaking views.

We enjoyed another hike to a waterfall, Upper and Lower Undine Falls via Lava Creek. This was almost 2 mile out and back hike that took about 1 hour. We hiked through sagebrush, saw some beautiful flowers, cool waterfall and on our way out, a mule deer!

Our next stop was a Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces. This was a unique formation - made from years of hot calcium carbonate rich water flowing over the rocks and forming a travertine terraces. We enjoyed lunch around the area and then got some much needed ice cream for dessert!

From there, we headed north to Rosevelt Arch which was the original main entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The arch at the top reads, "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People."

Heading east around the Upper Loop, we hiked Wraith Falls Trail which was an easy 1 mile out and back trail that took less than a half hour. We grabbed our picture with the waterfall and headed back to the car!

We stopped at the Petrified Tree and saw our first black bear! It was pretty cool to see one from afar! Our final stop was to see the Tower Falls where we saw stunning views of the falls and the Yellowstone River.

Tired and goofy after a long day.

Onward to Grand Tetons! Until next time...

Mary