Travel With Me: Yellowstone National Park (Day One)
Long time no see (or read, I guess)! I've been on a bit of a hiatus after a semester's end medical emergency, final grading, moving back to Kentucky for the summer, and starting a new job all converged around the end of April/beginning of May. But now I'm back with your regularly scheduled programming!
Last week, I was given the amazing opportunity to travel to Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park as research for a novella. This trip was funded by a grant I was awarded by the English department at Minnesota State University, Mankato, where I'm currently obtaining my MFA in Creative Writing. (Subscribe to my newsletter via the box at the bottom of the page to hear about exciting life updates like winning this grant!)
The trip was nine days in total, including four 12-13 hour driving days, and I brought along my forever traveling partner, Mary, and my brother. Using research from other bloggers' itineraries and improvisations due to time constraints and weather, we conquered almost all of Yellowstone's coolest spots in four jam-packed days. Let's get started with day one!
Hotel: Yellowstone Valley Inn—Wapiti, WY
The population of Wapiti, WY, is a whopping 177, and the entire unincorporated territory consists of houses, lodges, a post office, and one gas station. However, if you're going to enter Yellowstone through the East Gate and don't want to drive the 40 minutes from Cody, WY, to the park every day, it's got stunning views of the Shoshone River and puts you smack in the middle of Cody and the East Gate. While in Yellowstone, we also visited Cooke City, MT (the Northeast Gate), West Yellowstone, MT (West Gate), and Jackson, WY (South Gate), and it seemed Cody had the best balance of tourists-to-amenities—as in, it actually had a Walmart and cell service (unlike Cooke City), and the gas prices weren't $3.50+ (like they were in West Yellowstone). The hotel itself is kitschy (as seen above), but everything about it exceeded expectations: the staff (seriously the nicest people I've ever met), the free breakfast (biscuits and gravy, fruit, eggs, bacon, pancakes, etc. made by an actual chef), the cleanliness and water pressure in the shower... I could go on.
Yellowstone Lake Turnout
The first thing you'll notice about Yellowstone is that there are turnouts and pullouts at every turn because almost every sight will make you want to stop the car to take a picture. Our first stop-the-car moment happened within five minutes, at Yellowstone Lake. The lake is the largest high elevation lake in North America, situated 7,733 feet above sea level, and every sign indicated that it was dangerously cold, as it stays a brisk 41 degrees year-round.
Mud Volcano
Our first real stop in Yellowstone was Mud Volcano, and it was also our first introduction to Yellowstone's thermal features—what make the park such a breathtaking and surreal environment. Mud Volcano is the ghost of a volcano that blew itself apart in 1872, leaving behind bubbling mud pots and steaming springs. The Dragon's Mouth spring (pictured: top middle) sloshes and gurgles like a sleeping dragon's breath as hot water and gases explode in a turbulent exchange.
Hayden Valley
One of the most beautiful and underrated parts of Yellowstone are its valleys. These wide plains carved from massive glaciers are home to roaming herds of bison, elk, and deer, as well as winding creeks and rivers (where, if you're lucky, you might spot a playful otter). We drove through Hayden Valley almost every day, and the view always took my breath away.
Norris Geyser Basin
Porcelain Basin & Back Basin
Norris is the hottest and most changeable geyser basin in Yellowstone, and though it doesn't get the same attention as Old Faithful and the Midway/Upper Geyser Basin, it ended up being my favorite. The fumaroles (or steam vents) here can reach up to 280 degrees, and this basin contains the world's tallest active geyser, Steamboat Geyser (pictured: third row, right), which shoots water more than 300 feet in the air. The lime-green colorful streams overflowing from the geysers and hot springs in this basin are Cyanidium algae that thrive in the acidic water.
Norris is so unpredictable that its thermal features often change overnight, and we found this to be the case when we visited Steamboat. Though Steamboat eruptions are usually rare (its last major eruption was in 2014), the crowd with umbrellas gathered around the churning geyser, which was spitting out water regularly, prompted us to do a little research, and we found that Steamboat had already erupted six times in 2018. If we had visited the very next day, we would have seen its seventh eruption this year!
Mammoth Hot Springs
Mammoth Hot Springs is the largest known carbonate-depositing spring in the world, created by a hot water flow from Norris Geyser Basin through a fault line in the limestone rock underground. The travertine terraces are normally covered in water, but minor earthquake activity has recently shifted the spring vent, causing them to dry up (pictured: bottom left).
Wildlife
Prairie Dogs & Ground Squirrels
On a hike at a random waterfall, prairie dogs and ground squirrels scurried across our path. These were a common sight throughout our time in Yellowstone.
Elk
In one of the picturesque valleys on our first day, we witnessed three adorable elk lounging by a pond in the evening sun.
Black bears & Grizzly Bears
On our trip to Yellowstone this May, we were incredibly lucky when it came to bear sightings. Our very first day, we saw a black bear strolling through a field, a mama black bear and her cub (who was unfortunately just a black ball high in a pine tree), and a mama grizzly with her three-year-old cub. The grizzlies were close enough to get the awesome shots you see above (don't worry—we were inside our car), and it felt surreal to see the cub scratching his back like something straight out of The Jungle Book (pictured: middle). We later learned that these were some of the last moments the mama grizzly and her cub would share together, as this summer she will go into heat and the male suitors will chase away her nearly full-grown son.
Check out the rest of this series: Part Two, Part Three, Part Four. And don't forget to hit the like button below!