We spent two amazing days in Yellowstone National Park, mostly off the grid and immersed in the natural wonderland. So, this update will cover both our days. Tonight, we are in Cody, WY, making our trek back eastward to South Dakota.
We knew from research that the most popular park spots - Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful, fill up quickly and can get crazy. So we planned our days so that we could get to each of them early. We entered through the North Gate of Yellowstone around 8AM on Saturday and didn’t have to wait in line. (Surprisingly, we rarely encountered traffic outside of parking lots the entire trip.) We found an RV parking spot and headed over to the trails of the Hot Springs. We weren’t 100 yards from the RV when an elk crossed right in front of us. I actually had to grab Ryan so he didn’t get too close. It was a fun wildlife encounter right upon arrival.
The Hot Springs were spectacular. The minerals change the color of the landscape and it’s all still active. One section actually looked like snow. We were able to see the formations from below and then parked at the top to take in another section.
David downloaded an app called Just Ahead, which was recommended to us by the campground in Gardiner. The narration works off GPS and downloads the content locally, so while we had no cell service for two days we did have our drives and descriptions of the geology on the speaker system. It was so helpful to find cool hikes, but also to understand how things were formed and the origins of the park.
The app recommended a walk by a river to look for beavers. We saw some abandoned dens, but also frogs and tadpoles. It was peaceful and fun.
We were making great time, so we went over to the Yellowstone Canyon. We hadn’t planned to see it on this trip, but are very glad it worked out. The canyon is huge with views from both sides. David was able to parallel park the RV and we had some time to look around. Not the most socially distanced spot, as only about half the crowds of the park were wearing masks. People were generally good about moving along and not crowding.
We spend the evening of Day 5 at the Madison Campground in the park. The kids had a fairy gnome house project to finish for a virtual camp, and they spent over an hour gathering materials and building a rather impressive house. We left it there, as the boys decided ants could live in it and be protected from predators.
This camp had no hookups, so our first night boondocking ever, and despite batteries everyone had a screen-free night too.
Sunday morning (Day 6) we set out early for Old Faithful. The Madison campground had an old landline phone that you could use to call the hotline for geyser times, so we knew we could make the 8:56 eruption. Old Faithful showed up a little late, closer to 9:10. It was fun to see, and we were happy we got to see a geyser erupt!
We headed over to sign the kids up for the Junior Ranger program and found out that the Grand Geyser was scheduled to go in an hour. This one has a +/- 45 minute window, but the kids wanted to wait it out. They worked on their ranger books and the Grand Geyser blew on the early side of the schedule.
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It was very impressive - much larger than Old Faithful - and most of our favorite things of the trip. There were lots of other geysers and geological features in that area. We were there for almost three hours.
There is a 300 acre forest fire in Yellowstone that started yesterday, so they closed the south loop road. We had to change our plans and take the long way around to head out the East Entrance. We were able to see some more vent fields on the way, including a mud volcano. That route also took us through a valley with herds of bison. We saw dozens of solo males over the two days, but these were the only herds. They felt very traditional Yellowstone.
The drive out through the East Gate was long and isolated. While there were some nice views of Yellowstone lake and mountains, there wasn’t much in terms of stops. We had about a two hour drive over to Cody for the night, and enjoyed the landscape on the way.
We cannot recommend Yellowstone enough, it was one of the most amazing places we have seen.
Since Jason is now in fourth grade, we are seeing these parks on his National Park Pass. We will have another one next year for Ryan, so we are already looking at options.
Tonight, we enjoyed some hot showers and bounce pad fun at the KOA. Tomorrow we set out to Buffalo, WY.
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