Yellowstone National park

West Yellowstone, Montana

126 Miles


Yellowstone is quite a unique place. Two things impressed me most about this place. One is the geothermal features. These are unique to Yellowstone; to my knowledge you won't find these in any other national park. Yes, you feel like a tourist as you stand around waiting for Old Faithful to blow, but it's worth it.






If you're in Yellowstone and get to Old Faithful some time during the 90 minutes between eruptions, don't miss the opportunity to check out the Old Faithful Inn. This a grand old lodge, and definitely worth the price of admission (free). They almost lost this lodge during the 1988 fires.



Another thing that is impressive about Yellowstone is just it's sheer size. Yellowstone occupies almost 3,500 square miles. It would take probably three days to drive down all of the main roads, much less explore any of the trails.

In the spirit of “keeping expectations real” there are a couple of things that I feel that I should mention to anyone planning to visit Yellowstone. The first is the damage to the park from fires. Although the big fire was twenty years ago, the growing season is rather short in these parts, so the new growth trees are only about head high. We watched a DVD about Yellowstone that was produced by the National Park Service. A significant portion of the video talked about the fire, and how it was good for the park in the long run (forest regeneration, new growth, circle of life, and all that jazz). The reality is that this park burned to the ground in 1988.

I'm not sure how much of the park burned, but driving through it appears that the entire park burned. It will probably take two generations for the park to return to it's former beauty.

The other thing keep in mind is that Yellowstone is the most well-known National Park in the country (maybe in the world... we saw a lot of international visitors). This translates into a lot of people.

When you see pictures from Yellowstone, you'll usually see pictures of the wildlife or some beautiful landscape:




What you usually don't see is the line of cars and people who are lined up trying to get the same shot as you.

We saw a couple of bears while we were in the park, and both times we knew there was a bear nearby because of the line of stopped cars and the presence of two park rangers directing traffic.


There was an eagle's nest near the west road headed toward the West Entrance.

I really felt sorry for this family of eagles, having to put-up with a long line of cars stopping to photograph them day-in and day-out. We felt like jumping out of the car and yelling “stop the madness!”. Did we do this?
No.
Instead we snapped a picture like the rest of the gawker's.


All in all, Yellowstone is a beautiful place. I think everyone should go there once in their lifetime if they're able. If we ever go again, we'll spend most of our time enjoying the geyser basin since this is something you can't see anywhere else. The rest of the park... the mountains, the rolling hills, the canyons; you can see prettier examples at other parks... especially since the fire.