Yellowstone National Park Loop

Slideshow of All Today's Images

At 8:00am this morning, we entered Yellowstone Park through the West Gate entrance to start the loop that would take us to Old Faithful Geyser, Fishing Bridge and the Yellowstone Grand Canyon as well as other great sites.

From Yellowstone National Park

From Yellowstone National Park

It was a beautiful drive with all kinds of different scenery - geysers, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, streams, flatlands, canyons and mountains! Along the way we saw all kinds of wildlife including herds of Elk and Bisons.

From Yellowstone National Park

The geysers were especially interesting as it is something we don't see at home - they are everywhere throughout Yellowstone. You don't have to drive too far to see plumes of steam coming out of the ground. We were extremely lucky when we arrived at the Old Faithful Geyser as it started to erupt just 2 minutes after we got there - otherwise, we might have had a 90 minute wait. It was something to see as steam from the eruption rose several hundred feet into the air.

From Yellowstone National Park

The other type of geyser that was intersting was the 'mud geyser' - big pools of boiling, frothing mud - not something you'd ever want to fall into. Some people are complete idiots as they walk off the boardwalks and approach the geysers to look into them - not realizing they are standing on what could be a very thin crust of earth that is all that is holding them from falling down into a very deep, boiling steam bath.

From Yellowstone National Park

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was also pretty spectacular. The canyon walls are up to 1,200 feet deep with the river flowing through the bottom. It looks pretty much what you see of scenes from the Grand Canyon in Arizona only on a smaller scale. The waterfalls along the canyon were pretty awsome as well.

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From Yellowstone National Park

With all the stops and viewpoints, the drive took us a little over 5 hours although I don't think we travelled more than 100 miles in total. We probably made over 2 dozen stops along the way.

From Yellowstone National Park

That tour pretty much ended the sightseeing portion of this year's summer vacation. Tomorrow, we head out for a one night stay in Missoula, then the next night we'll be in Ellensburg, WA. Finally, after 28 days on the road we expect to be home on Sunday, August 5th.