After our day at Big Sky which was outside of the Yellowstone NP, we returned to the National Park itself for our last 2 days in the area. We were concerned about the weather as it was forecast to be rainy a lot over the weekend, but actually it turned out pretty nice, and we didn’t get soaked like we had on our first day there! It was cooler, but mostly clear and even sunny in spells.

Yellowstone Day 2

On Saturday we drove from West Yellowstone where we were staying up to the Northern area of the park, to an area called Mammoth Hot Springs. It’s about 1.5 hours away, plus stops and sights.

Along the way we stopped to see “Gibbon Falls” which were impressive and viewed right from the side of the road pull-out.

And also a place called “Roaring Mountain” where you can sometimes hear all the steam vents from the mountain side. It looked like it had been snowing here as you can see, but it’s actually just all the deposited minerals and microorganisms which colour the ground across Yellowstone.

As we got up to the main Mammoth Springs area we veered off for a short 30 mins hike to see Wraith Falls and then travelled back to the Mammoth Springs section where there’s a “town” area with hotel, visitor centre etc. There’s also a big boardwalk area which takes you around a large area of springs and thermal features.

I’ll try not to bore you with too many pics of these, you’re probably sick of them all by now and the pictures don’t really do them justice anyway compared with seeing them active, steaming and bubbling in person. There were some different features here though so they were varied compared with what we’d seen on our first day in the park.

From the top of the boardwalk area you could see out over the town area too.

The town was set up by the army in 1886 I think it was, so all the buildings were re-used barracks and offices etc.

We got back home in time to (of course) head back down to the Yellowstone Brewing Co for some happy hour drinks and some food that day.

Yellowstone Day 3

On Sunday, our last day in Yellowstone, we headed over to the Eastern side of the park to the Yellowstone Lake area. We went clockwise round the circular route shown on the map, stopping at various points the visitor centre had recommended. That included:

Norris Back Basin, an unexpectedly large boardwalk area which took us around a large range of different thermal features, geysers, mud pools etc.

This was a really nice area actually, very varied with lots of different colours and different features. Many had inventive names like the “Puff-N-Stuff Geyser”, “Green Dragon Spring” and “Palpitator Spring”.

Then we went to the “lower falls” which features a steep switchback walk down a path to get from the valley rim down to the “brink” of the waterfall itself.

There were amazing views down the valley which they call the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone” as well from this vantage point. This was a really popular trail down to the brink of the falls but we couldn’t help feel that most people had under-estimated it. There were even families pushing prams with kids in down there, and it was not an easy climb back up!

You could see along the valley to the “Upper falls” in the distance as well which were further up the river.

When we got back up to the top we walked along the rim for 0.5 miles of so, and there was another path down, nearly as steep but not quite as long, which went down to another lookout platform where you got a proper full view of the falls, so that was worth heading down to as well.

We continued on our route clockwise round the circular route, stopping at the self-explanatory “mud volcano” area. Loads of bison in the fields and by the road on our drive here too.

Then we head to “Storm point” for an eventful hike round a 2.5 mile loop which goes through a forest area and then along the lake side. A short way round the hike there was a bottle neck of people because there was a massive bison casually just plonked in the middle of the path, eating some of the vegetation. We waited a while but he seemed happy where he was, so in the end we scrambled up an embankment, through the trees and managed to circle past him and back on to the path. He was further along in a field by the time we got back round so thankfully out of the way. There were great views out of the lake on this hike, including of “Frank Island” out in the middle 🙂

to get back home we could either go back anti-clockwise round the circular route, or carry on clockwise which took us past the Old Faithful geyser area, so we opted for the latter to give us chance to stop at the lovely lodge again for a coffee and sit down on our way back.

That was our last day in Yellowstone and we’re now moving on in to Montana, our 4th US state of the trip (Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho were the others) for a few days stay in Billings.

Keep the comments coming, we enjoy checking and reading them!

Si