Day 115 - Yellowstone (Day 1), WY

In 2009, I remember watching the BBC documentary Yellowstone and being completely awestruck by the landscape, the animals and the people. I have wanted to visit Yellowstone ever since and for me, it was a highlight of the trip I just couldn't wait to do.

We stayed for 3 nights which I think is the minimal amount of time you would need to get around all the main sights. Had we stayed for longer, we would have had some contingency should the weather have been bad, we could have tried some back country hikes to explore the less touristy areas of the park and maybe reduce the pressure we had on ourselves to try to get as much into our days as we could.

There were just so many pictures, videos and things to talk about in Yellowstone that we decided to split the blog into three separate entries to make it easier for me to produce but also for people to read.

Here is day one:

Grand Tetons National Park and Yellowstone are next to each other, connected via the John D Rockefeller, Jr Memorial Parkway. As we followed this road, I think we both expected an instant change from the mountains and lakes of the Tetons to the volcanic landscape of Yellowstone but we didn't see any volcanic activity, just very pretty vistas of hills, mountains and the Yellowstone River.

We briefly stopped at the side of the road to check out Lewis Falls located just before before Lewis Lake, where we also stopped to stretch our legs and enjoy the view. There was no one else at this lake, it probably isn't a 'top Yellowstone attraction' so most tourists pass it by but it was incredibly beautiful, maybe more so due to the complete seclusion.

We continued onto Grant Village where there was a visitors center we wanted to use to learn more about the park and find the best place to see some hot springs.

We didn't need to go far, next to the Visitor Center was one of the largest geyser basins on the shores of the Yellowstone Lake, West Thumb Geyser Basin. It's difficult to explain just how amazing it is to go from what feels like a 'normal' landscape of trees with fields of grass and little streams to a geyser basin. It's extreme. You're going from an area filled with life to what feels like an area with no life but in fact there is a lot of life here with all the different algae and the creatures that thrive in these pools.

We joined one of the ranger presentations which run every 30 minutes and explain a little more about the pools, why they are here and what we were looking at. The ranger was an excellent presenter and we both felt we learnt a lot which we would later put in practice in other areas of the park when identifying the different geothermal features.

We spent a couple of hours walking around the boardwalks in West Thumb Geyser Basin, eventually deciding that we needed to get to our campsite otherwise we'd be pitching in the dark! The route to the campsite was along the shores of the Yellowstone Lake to Canyon Village where as well as being a campsite, there is a lodge, visitors center, gas station, several shops and a huge canteen style food area. We could not believe how many facilities there were here and the amount of choice there was for visitors. Canyon Village is just one of the concessions areas in Yellowstone, we were interested to see if the others were as impressive as this.

We pitched the tent and settled in for the night, as the temperature dropped, I had a little surprise for Lee. I had taken our two water flasks, filled them with boiling water and stuffed them into our sleeping bags. It could have easily gone wrong with the water flasks melting, them leaking all over our sleeping bags or Lee burning himself on them getting into bed but I was lucky and everything worked out OK plus we had lovely hot water bottles to keep us warm as the temperature dropped to below freezing.