National park number #12 for us! Similar to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone is one of the most talked about national parks. Millions of visitors come every year hoping to see picturesque Old Faithful blow with a buffalo standing nearby. We had that exact experience when we visited! We spent 1 day in the park and felt like we saw enough that we don’t need to return. However, it’s now early fall and I’ve heard that there’s snowfall in Yellowstone! We may go back in the winter to experience the winter wonderland that Yellowstone becomes.
COVID was still present during our visit so sections of the park were closed off. We entered the park through the south entrance since we were coming from Grand Teton and drove the Grand Loop Road all the way to the northern section of the park before exiting. The south entrance road hugs the Lewis River with multiple pull-offs along the way. The pull-offs rarely had anyone stopped because most people spend their time at the large geysers. This is a great time to stop and take in the scenery and snap a few photos with no one around.
After our pit stops along the Lewis River, we made it to west thumb. You can find the thumb geyser here. This geyser overlooks Yellowstone Lake and has a short wooden walking path that does a loop around the geysers. The pathway is not dog friendly, so you’ll have to leave your pets behind for this stop. There are over 300 geysers in Yellowstone so there are plenty of opportunities to see the unique pools!
After the geysers, we drove to Old Faithful to see the busiest section of the park. Old faithful erupts around 20x a day. When we arrived it had just erupted, so we waited another hour for the next eruption. There’s some concrete seating that surrounds old faithful but beware that it gets packed pretty quickly. If you’d like a front row seat to the eruption, then you should arrive early to secure a seat. The eruption lasts around a minute and then it rests for another hour before the next eruption. There are multiple geysers in the area and you can walk along a wooden path to different viewing decks.
Our last stop at Yellowstone was near the river for a quick lunch. This was one of our favorite parts of our tour in the park. There were a few fisherman on the river and we just relaxed and enjoyed the scenery.
There was another section of the park with a few additional geysers but we had plans to head to Montana, so we didn’t make any additional stops. The river was our favorite spot in the park and if camping was allowed we would have posted up here for the night!
