Day 3-August 4th

We went to Yellowstone National Park yesterday and had a fabulous time. I was so wiped by the time we got back to our room that I'm actually writing this as we are en route to South Dakota on Day 4.

But going back to yesterday....it was so beautiful! I couldn’t believe it and by the end of the day Walker and I concluded that the park was just full of “intense beauty”. haha

We entered from the West entrance and went south from there to Old Faithful first but stopped at some other geysers first along the way.

Old faithful was very cool to see—the water shot so high in the air!! There were two little kids sitting next to us that made us laugh because one of them called old faithful “unfaithful” because I think he was tired of waiting around for it. And then the other little kid yelled out “that’s it?!” after the eruption. Here’s my favorite picture that I got:

Then we looked at another hot spring area before heading over to Yellowstone lake which followed suit in the beauty department. We found a little turn off around the lake around lunch time and had a picnic lunch there which was so nice because a) it was beautiful and b) we were successful at avoiding crazy tourist crowds!

After lunch we continued on our drive around the park and hit Hayden Valley, which is where you are likely to see the most wildlife in the park. This also fell in the beautiful category and it really was amazing that 20 miles before that there are volcanic geysers and there it was all gorgeous plain filled with bison. After that was the grand canyon of Yellowstone which was breathtaking! I can’t imagine what the real grand canyon looks like but this was definitely very pretty!

Here is a picture of me and Walker with the lower falls behind us:

We kept heading around the park and next stopped at Tower fall to see yet another waterfall. The best part about this stop though was the cool hike we took down to the Yellowstone river which was just under a mile down. It was soooo unbearable gorgeous down there as well. And-I can now say I have stuck my feet in the freezing cold water of the Yellowstone river. Its hard to pick just one picture to post...but here is one with more definitely to come! :)

Then we headed to our last destination of the day....the Mammoth Hot Springs. There is this whole neighborhood/residential area over there with a post office and some other stuff which was super cute. The hot springs themselves were a tiny bit of a let down though just because 95% of them were already dried up. But, the areas that weren’t were really cool looking and I can imagine how cool the area would look if all the springs were running and not dried up.

We hit some traffic on the way out of the park and finally got back to our hotel just before 8p and enjoyed some cheese, crackers, and wine before finish a movie we started the night before.

So—all in all we were in the park for 11 hours and clocked just under 200 miles of driving for the day. Pretty successful, eh? Oh, and here is a picture (per request of my mom) of our little cabin: cabin #5 at the Yellowstone Inn!

off to South Dakota next!

J