Day 22: First day at Yellowstone

Miles driven to-date: 6,120
States visited to-date: 21



This morning was a little crazy as we needed to get a few supplies and some camping food before heading to Yellowstone, plus there was a problem with the dryer at the hotel in Bozeman so most of our clothes were still slightly wet when we loaded up the car. . . ugh! By late morning, though, we pulled into the west entrance of Yellowstone and almost immediately spotted two bald eagles overhead. It was quite a welcome to the park!

As you probably know, Yellowstone is huge – at 2.2 million acres, it’s our biggest national park outside of Alaska (both Rhode Island and Delaware could fit within its boundaries). We noticed right away that there were SO many people there. In retrospect, being there during the week of July 4^th was probably not the best planning but we couldn’t really help the timing. Anyway, the views driving in were beautiful though as a first-timer, when I saw the steam from my first geyser from far away I assumed it was a fire!

We decided to spend a few hours seeing the sights around Old Faithful. Because this most famous of Yellowstone geysers is so predictable, the visitor center posts the expected time of eruptions and they’re usually accurate to within 10 minutes. Fortunately, we arrived just before she blew so we had a great view of Old Faithful’s eruption.

Of course there were many other tourists crowded around us but it was still very cool to see. I was very glad that I could record video on our camera because I got some great footage of the eruption.

Old Faithful sits in the Upper Geyser Basin which is home to the largest concentration of geysers in the world. We meandered down the boardwalk that connects them all and liked seeing the different types of geothermal features. Some had nice turquoise water, while others bubbled up mud and foam. Steve thought many of them looked just like inviting hot tubs and he thought it would be great to be able to take one home to put on our new deck in Williamsburg. The end of our walk brought us to the beautiful Morning Glory Pool:

We really enjoyed the walk and seeing all of the very unusual rock formations and eruptions. On our way back to the car, we happened to catch Old Faithful erupting again so we saw it from a different angle. By then, it was time to head to the campground to get set up before night fell.

After arriving at Grant Village Campground (on the west side of Yellowstone Lake), I checked in and learned from a ranger that a bear had been spotted just a few hundred yards from our campsite two hours earlier. There was no time for fear, though, because the skies were threatening and we knew it was about to rain. After debating whether we’d rather sleep in the van or potentially get soaked in the tent, we decided to pitch the tent and hope for the best. We got it up before it rained but a few minutes later big drops started falling. I decided I would probably enjoy my dinner (complete with Moose Drool beer!) more in the car:

After dinner, I retired to the tent to read by flashlight – feeling very glad that we had decided to buy that air mattress after all – while Steve watched an episode of “Alias” in the van. The expensive new laptop I just bought for school has been giving us some trouble and one of its lovely “features” is that it skips when you watch a DVD without having it plugged in, hence Steve’s needing to have it hooked up to the power outlet in the car. We really know how to rough it in the wilderness, huh?

In spite of the rain, fairly cold temperature, threat of bears, and a Loud Talker at the campsite next door, we slept really well. We felt grateful that the Macioleks had given us such a sturdy tent for an engagement gift because we didn’t get wet at all! :)