I am finally sharing our vacation we took earlier this month! Fair warning: this is a long post but mostly pictures. Wyatt and I went on a family vacation with his parents out west. Our first stop was Yellowstone. I had been to Yellowstone when I was pretty young so I had only a memory or two from that visit. We flew in to Salt Lake City and drove four hours to West Yellowstone. We stayed there two nights and then moved into the park and stayed at Washburn Lodge in Canyon Village. Our first day in the park was dedicated to the geysers. We got their early and made our way around the geyser basins. Wyatt and I hiked back to Mystic falls when we were at the Biscuit Basin. We finally made it up to Old Faithful. We waited for it to erupt and then we had lunch at the Old Faithful Inn. After lunch we walked around to see Castle Geyser, the Grand Geyser (which we were lucky enough to catch), and geyser hill. When we were on the boardwalk a ranger stopped the visitors and only allowed us through five or so at a time due to a bison being near the boardwalk. After this stop we made our way towards West Thumb and over the continental divid. We made a loop back around the park and came upon a traffic jam in Hayden Valley. We were lucky enough to be near the beginning of the line of traffic our direct AND we saw a grizzly bear eating on a bison carcass. We tried to catch the bears the days following but were unsuccessful. We heard they were out there each of the days after that that we were in the park!
The second day in the park we drove north. We went through Norris on our way towards Mammoth Hot Springs. We had lunch at Mammoth Hot Springs and then drove ahead up to the north entrance. My great great uncle worked on the Roosevelt Arch that is located at that entrance. It was amazing to get to see that. There were three elk grazing near the Yellowstone sign at the entrance and we were able to get a family photo with them in the background. We don't even care that it ended up being of three elk butts, ha. We drove back into the park and to Canyon Village where we checked into Washburn Lodge. The lodge was so cute and it's LEED certified! We had a two bedroom suite that had a balcony! Wyatt dropped his parents and me off to get food at the dining hall while he went back out in hopes of seeing the grizzlies again. We ate and then took the shuttle back to the lodge. I had just walked onto the balcony after noticing a gorgeous red sky when I noticed an elk just below eating across the sidewalk from our lodge!
We got up and made it on the road by 6:30 the next morning to head towards Lamar Valley in search of some wildlife. We spotted some here and there along the way. We took a hike to Trout Lake. After the hike we drove on ahead to the northeast entrance and had lunch in Cooke City before going back into the park. Wyatt and I dropped his parents off and then we drove to the east entrance through Sylvan Pass.
The next day we went to see Yellowstone Falls in the morning when the sun wouldn't be in our eyes. Then we made our way down through the south entrance on our way to Jackson. When we were driving past Yellowstone Lake Steve spotted some animals in the water swimming towards shore. Luckily, we were right by a pull out so Wyatt pulled over. We watched a mamma elk and her young one swimming from a sandbar back to shore. It was about the cutest thing ever!
We packed a lot into a few days but we felt like we accomplished what we wanted to do. Here are our takeaways. Stay in the park a night or two if you can. Get up early and get out there. The food service in the park is not stellar so definitely plan ahead accordingly. We wouldn't recommend eating that for your 3 squares a day every day you are in the park, that is for sure. I'll be back soon with part two of our trip recapping Jackson, WY, Park City, UT, and Moab, UT.
Ps. Most of the photos in this post are from Wyatt. He had so much fun photographing our trip!
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