k-strat: Yellowstone

The next day we drove to Montana and went to Yellowstone!

We were greeted by snow and bison!

Our first item on the agenda was Grand Prismatic Overlook. After driving to the park, the kids were ready to get out for a walk. It was truly beautiful - I've never seen anything like the things we saw in Yellowstone. Yellowstone sits on an active volcano and there are just incredible geological features throughout the park. While the mountains aren't as breathtaking, it's definitely the most unique park I have ever been to!

From there we hiked back and headed south on the lower loop to Old Faithful and the Upper Geyser Basin. We saw Old Faithful erupt, saw lots of bison in the area, and then walked the (somewhat icy and slippery) boardwalks to other cool features.

We saw Castle Geyser...

Shield Spring...

More bison...

Many other springs and geysers...

Spiteful Geyser...

And finally made it to Morning Glory Pool, which was amazing!

We saw Riverside Geyser...

Chromatic Pool...

In the next two pictures you can just see how many geological features: geysers, springs, fumeroles, etc. were just active...I believe it's over 500 in the park.

We also got to see Grand Geyser (along with Turban Geyser in the middle and Vent Geyser on the far left) erupt. We waited an hour for this one, the kids were cold, but I was glad we saw it. It's the tallest predictable geyser at 180 feet.

We saw Sawmill Geyser (in the video at the bottom of this post) and many other springs on the walk back through.

From there we headed back to the car to warm up a bit and drove to see Mud Volcano. The smell of sulphur was intense. There were videos (below) and fumeroles, here, too.

Dragon's Mouth:

Then we went through Hayden Valley looking for wildlife.

We crossed the Continental Divide like 8 times this day...

And then we drove north on the lower loop to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It was beautiful! This was Upper Falls Viewpoint.

We did three or four short-ish hikes around the upper and lower falls. I believe this was Artist Point.

Then we went to Brink of Upper Falls.

And then we hiked 10 very steep switchbacks to Brink of Lower Falls.

This may have been Inspiration Point.

At this point it was getting late and everyone was getting tired, so we headed back to Montana for dinner. We saw baby bison on the way out! And then we got stuck in a bison jam (maybe the third of the day).