After our family’s first full day in Yellowstone, and only seeing the northern half of sites, I was quite surprised just how much there was to see and do. I am also very thankful that my wife opted to download the Gypsy Yellowstone app, as it proved to be an invaluable tool in making sure we saw the most important sites within the park.
Going into the park with little expectations, it was quite exhausting with so many sites to see. It is also quite astonishing how many different landscapes there are to see within Yellowstone. One area will be dense forest, and then the next area you go are boiling mud pots, or barren geyser basins. I could only imagine what earlier pioneers thought upon discovering the beauty of Yellowstone.
Artists’ Paintpots
Probably one of my personal favorite spots within Yellowstone was the Artists’ Paintpots. We got a really early start and arrived at this site at 6:45 in the morning. We were the only ones in the parking lot, at least for a couple moments, and started to make the 1-mile hike back to the site.
Being so early made for some cool scenes with the fog in the partially burned lodgepole forest.
Watching the various boiling pods of water and bubbling mud so close was fascinating!
We ended up spending roughly an hour hiking the trail and enjoying the various scenes, especially since for the most part we had the trail to ourselves.
Following Artists Paintpots, we continued on the journey south and made a quick stop at Gibbon Falls to see the cascading water.
Fountain Paint Pots
At the recommendation of the Gypsy app, we decided to do the short hike and explore the various formations at the Fountain Paint Pots site. The boardwalk gets you up close to various sites, some with boiling water, others gushing steam.
The Clepsydra Geyser was erupting rather violently, but the steam coming out of the formation made for it being rather difficult to actually see anything.
Also near the Fountain Paint Pots was a little road that tended to be well worth investigating, that took us to White Dome Geyser and Pink Cone Geyser.
We happen to be driving through just before 9:00 am and were one of very few cars on the trail. We also got extremely lucky to see Pink Cone Geyser going off for an extended period of time. Apparently this only erupts approximately every 16 hours or so, and you can pull up practically besides the geyser, which was fascinating to watch.
Grand Prismatic
One of the areas we were excited to see was the Grand Prismatic spring in Yellowstone for its beautiful color arrangement.
The short hike from the parking lots takes guests past Excelsior Geyser Crater, which used to be very active but has remained relatively dormant for quite a while.
The boardwalk than takes guests near the Grand Prismatic spring.
While pretty cool to see, you do not really get a good perspective of the colors being at ground level. If the wind blows the steam in the right direction, you might get a glimpse of the colors of the rainbow. However, overall the views were pretty unimpressive.
They really should consider building a higher up platform to really get a good angle looking down into the spring. We hear there might be a trail in the hills behind the spring, but we did not have time to fully explore more.
Old Faithful Geyser
By this point in the day, it was a little past 10:00 am when we arrived at the Old Faithful Geyser site. This massive facility was packed full of vehicles and probably one of the busiest sites we saw the entire time in Yellowstone.
The kids quickly accomplished their Jr Ranger badges and by a couple minutes past 11:00 am, the Old Faithful geyser started to go off in a very quick and small display of power.
So we explored the Old Faithful Inn, had a quick bite to eat, and sat on the deck waiting until the next eruption at 12:49 pm. Fortunately this show was way better than the prior and we could move on with our adventure.
Old Faithful was our last official stop in Yellowstone as we then made our way to Grand Teton National Park.
However, we made one last unexpected stop at the Continental Divide sign, which while nothing spectacular to most, was pretty cool to say we were there.
National Park Road Trip: Cleveland to Los Angeles (Part 1)
National Park Road Trip: Cleveland to Minnesota (Part 2)
National Park Road Trip: Traveling to The Badlands (Part 3)
National Park Road Trip: The Badlands (Part 4)
National Park Road Trip: Mt. Rushmore, Mammoth Site & Needles Highway (Part 5)
National Park Road Trip: Devils Tower and Onto Cody, WY (Part 6)
National Park Road Trip: Yellowstone Day 1 (Part 7)
National Park Road Trip: Yellowstone Day 2 (Part 8)
National Park Road Trip: Grand Teton National Park (Part 9)
National Park Road Trip: California or Bust (Part 10)
National Park Road Trip: Disneyland & Galaxy’s Edge (Part 11)
National Park Road Trip: Knott’s Berry Farm (Part 12)
National Park Road Trip: Journey East (Part 13)
National Park Road Trip: Worlds of Fun (Part 14)