Jellystone National Park, WY

We woke early on Thursday morning, broke down camp, packed it up and headed out. We were driving through Yellowstone from south to north on our way to Glacier. We opted not to stay overnight as all we’ve heard is how crowded the park is, but I still wanted to see it. The park was indeed crowded, but for good reason. It’s beautiful. And so varied! From the south, to the north, to the east and to the west, each sector of the park is unique! We stopped to see some geothermal action which was cool! We chose not to see Old Faithful based on the bad recommendation from the couple we met who were cycling across the US. They said there are benches set up for people to sit and wait and there were people around them complaining that the geyser was not going off and they had been told 1 hour.... I do not have patience for tourons like that. It’s estimated that the geyser goes off every hour or hour fifteen. But I mean, it’s nature…. So! We stopped and saw some other neat geothermal action!

Here is a super short video of a boiling mud puddle, how neat is that?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTAxvqEtATs&feature=youtu.be

The Abyss Pool

Bones of an animal (or unattended child?) in the geothermal waters...

Then we stopped for lunch at Gull Point. We had a lovely trunk lunch at a picnic table on the lake. We met a big family from Wisconsin! They felt bad for us and gave us cake! They saw us eating our backpacking food and brought us chocolate cake, saying we’d burn off the calories a lot sooner than they would! I don’t really like cake so Daveed got 2 pieces!

After lunch we headed through the northern part of the park and saw tons of wildlifes! TONS of buffalo! Elk! Mule deer! Sheep! And the quintessential black bear! On two separate occasions we saw small juvenile black bears. Little round ears and all. Sweet, now that we’ve seen bears from the safety and comfort of the car, I’m good. Really hoping to not see any on the trail….

We didn't get any pictures of the wildlifes we saw, but we did get this sweet shot of people looking at wildlifes! Do not approach the wildlifes- these people did not listen! They were looking at big ol mule deer and an elk with a huge rack

Yellowstone has beautiful scenery with mountains as the backdrop for the whole southern/south eastern sector

Lunch at Gull Point

We by passed Yellowstone Falls lookout proper due to over crowding, but we got to see this view instead! This is just above the falls.

We stopped in Great Falls, MT which is the hometown of my coworker Amy! One of her favorite childhood food joints was Taco Treat, so we had to stop there! The food was terrible! But it was a fun experience and super fun to send Amy a picture of the Taco Treat sign :) Then it was the final push to Glacier. 

Saw this cool heart shaped cut out in the cloud on our way to Great Falls, MT

Into the west

We drove the last hour in the dark and it was FREAKY. The road is narrow and closed in on the sides with thick trees and brush with plenty of blind curves. Deer. Jack rabbits. Stray dogs. WILD HORSES. Oh my. All of them on the road. All of them scaring the ever livin out of me. Especially the wild horses. Not something I’m accustom to seeing around a blind curve: 5 wild horses in the road. WHOAH NELLY! I think there were 4 or 5 occasions when there were horses on the road. Oi. I was so glad when we finally rolled into the campground and got off that road, I could finally relax! We arrived around 10:30, got our site assignment, set up the tent and crashed.