Yellowstone National Park

For some reason, fishing has taken a higher priority than writing. 

We have gone to Yellowstone National Park for two days now.  The first-day objective was to kayak Yellowstone Lake.  From our campsite, Yellowstone Lake is much further than I expected, even though we left early (for us) and didn’t have any delays at the entrance or on the roads; it was lunchtime before we arrived.  The wind picked up while we were eating and we canceled the kayak trip and left the kayaks on the car. Now the kayaks are on the beach in front of our RV and are used daily. Instead of kayaking, we drove the east half of the south loop sightseeing and stopping at each interesting location.

Yellowstone is huge

It looks big on the map and looks bigger in person, especially without freeway speeds.  The center of the park is defined by two loops laid out in a figure-eight fashion.  Each loop seems to be around one-hundred miles long.  There are spurs leading north, south, east, northeast, and west from the loops adding at least twenty miles to a drive to enter or exit.  Plan on long days; don’t expect to even drive all the roads in a single day. The park is larger than two states, Rhode Island and Delaware.

Lamar Valley

On Thursday we drove the north loop and a small section of Lamar Valley.  There are at least two packs of wolves in the Lamar Valley.  Grizzly bears come and go at will and are well established, black bears are now afraid, after having the run of the place to themselves for the last hundred years, the re-introduced grizzly bears have black bears as part of their menu.  Coyotes have the same concern about the wolf population. Not long ago the park supported 30,000 elk but that was before the re-introduction of the wolf packs.

We saw a few elk, one Pronghorn Buck and lots of buffalo.  After our visit to Custer State Park and Theodore Roosevelt National Park, we didn’t stop for the buffalo — except when a ranger was herding two strays off the mountain pass down the middle of the road. The terrain was too steep to walk anywhere except down the road.

Geysers

Thermal geysers are the star attractions of the park and I was shocked to find out how spread apart they were.  More than half the geysers in the entire world are in the park.  It seems like there is a surprise around every corner.  They are all beautiful in their own fashion and it seems that still, pictures don’t do them justice so I started taking small videos.  I wonder if they will turn out. 

We are not going into the park this weekend (Labor Day) and will go back in Tuesday, hopefully, the park will be quiet and parking more available at each attraction.  We saved the two big attractions for next week: Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic Spring. 

Here is a link to the google map for the area.

Link to our 2019 Route

Link to our route Minot North Dakota to Boise

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