This Makes Me Laugh: Yellowstone Part 1 (Days 1 & 2)

In September (I know, I know) J and I drove to Yellowstone National Park for three nights of camping and two full days of exploring (though we were able to fit in a lot of exploring on day 1 and saw some gorgeous ice-covered landscape on day 4 as we left early in the morning). I decided to do this mostly as a photo essay, as I think I was able to document all the big moments, activities we accomplished, and sights we saw, with a pictures. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND enlarging for detail. Part two will hopefully be published tomorrow when I can gather a few more pictures to fill in some blanks in our plans.

DAY 1:

On the first day J and I drove up from Colorado to Yellowstone. Not for the faint of heart, it is about a 10 hour drive. This was our view as we drove from the south through Grand Teton.

After entering the park from the south entrance we decided - instead of heading to our campsite - to head in the opposite direction and see Lake Yellowstone since we weren't sure where that would fit in and we also wanted to have drinks at the beautiful Lake Yellowstone Lake Hotel. Lake Yellowstone is huge.

Lake Yellowstone Hotel.

The grand sitting room area where we enjoyed our drinks. :)

After leaving Lake Yellowstone we could either partially retrace our drive and head to Madison taking the south portion of a large loop around the park or we could do the north loop (our campground was on the opposite end of where we were). Since we didn't have a reason the rest of our trip for us to drive the road between Lake Yellowstone and Canyon Village we opted to take the northern route. On our way we pulled over and J took a photograph of his first buffalo. We also saw pronghorn, coyote, buffalo, and a bear of some sort (we couldn't tell if it was a black bear or grizzly).

DAY 2:

We set up camp late just as the sun was setting and were up early the next morning to make the drive all the way to the Lamar Valley, where wildlife watching is great at dawn. We had to wake up at some ridiculous time like 4:45AM to make the drive out there, which we did in the dark. We saw a bear on the side of the road and didn't stop but now we wish we had. As dawn unfolded we saw lots of buffalo and moose (here is a moose with a baby!)

Lamar Valley.

The buffalo were so prevalent that a ranger actually came out and herded them off the road using the car and a giant speaker making buffalo noises.

So many buffalo!

Our next sight to see was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, ridiculously huge, with several waterfalls and, my personal favorite, shear drops.

Downstream.

Upstream.

This is the same fall from as seen from the platform picture a few images above. You can see the platform to the right of the top of the falls.

The weather was cold and wet but we decided to carry on and see Norris Geyser basin. Home to a ton of geysers. Jeremy is excited about geysers. First up, a tour of the Back Basin.

The gray day, combined with all of the steam, made for a dazzling a chromatic landscape.

Looking out over the geysers. Right in the middle of this image is one of the pools it is bright, bright blue.

Another view looking our over the geysers.

Then we moved on the Porcelain Basin. Keep this view in mind, we would night hike here the next evening along the wooden paths as we went on an astronomy hike.

We then left Norris Geyser Basin to head past our campground and down to the Old Faithful Hotel where we heard that one could buy warm showers. After our cold, wet day we decided that was a splendid idea. But first we stopped at Artists' Paintpots along the way. More bubbling water and mud.

The weather took a new turn and it started snowing while we were at Old Faithful Hotel. You could see Old Faithful off the side of this deck (to the right of this photo). We actually saw a full eruption at this same time, but enjoyed the view and didn't take any pictures (although I don't know how well they would have come out with the white water and steam from the geyser blending with the snow and white sky.

On the way back up to Madison campground the sun was spectacularly setting. And then this gorgeous scene happened. J and another buffalo.

Classic Yellowstone.

As we were driving up the light was so unbelievable that even though we were warm, showered, and had changed into our Chacos, we still decided to make a run for it and see if we could view the Grand Prismatic Spring at dusk. It was worth the frostbite on our toes.