Amy & Michael in North America: Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park was our first stop on our journey East. We packed up the van, said goodbye to our Vancouver friends and started out for our approximate 5,500km trip to Montreal. Yellowstone is an amazing park. It was the first ever National Park in the world and the size of the park is massive (bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined). As a result, we spent 4 nights camping in the wilderness at 3 different camp sites throughout the park. Although we hiked and saw lots of things, most of our time in the park consisted of driving.

There are many different 'faces' of Yellowstone. Our first night we stayed at Madison Campground which is super close to the western entrance. It gave us easy accessibility to Mammoth Hot Springs which we explored our first day. I don't really understand how these hot springs work, but basically they are a very large and complex rock system that involves heat, water, limestone and allows hot water to reach the earth's surface. If you're interested in this and my explanation doesn't quite cut it then just check our what Yellowstone has to say about it here.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Our next two nights were at Grant Canyon Campsite, which was great. It was halfway between Old Faithful and all the other Geysers and Basins in that area, such as Grand Prismatic Spring the Fishing Bridge/Yellowstone Lake area. We explored these areas pretty well. We saw Old Faithful erupt, and also the Beehive Geyser which in my opinion was better than Old Faithful. The Beehive only erupts once, maybe twice a day but it lasts for 4-5 minutes and I think was stronger and more powerful than the Old Faithful eruption we saw. We also did a hike from the biscuit basin and we saw Old Faithful erupt again, which was pretty cool considering we were quite a few km's away. Again, I have no idea how Geyers work, so if you want to read about it, just click on this.

Biscuit Basin

Grand Prismatic Spring - It was quite the hike to this view! A non-trailed mountain climb!

View of Yellowstone & Old Faithful from the Mystic Falls Hike

Mystic Falls Trail

After that, we packed up our stuff again and headed for the Canyon area via Mt Washburn. It was a beautiful hike that took us to our highest hiked elevation of 10,243 ft. It was an elevation gain of 1,491 ft and was about 10km return. It wasn't as hard as I thought, but I sure did feel it the next day! We then hopped back in our car, and headed for the Canyon area which was beautiful. I didn't actually realise Yellowstone has its own Grand Canyon but it was beautiful. The colours and the waterfalls were just not what I was expecting.

Us on the top of Mt Washburn

Grand Canyon - Upper Falls

View of the Canyon

On our way out of the park we went through Lamar Valley which is where the animals run free. Between Lamar Valley and our trip between Mt Washburn and the Grand Canyon I think we saw all 4000 Bison within the Park. It was crazy just how many there were on and near the roads.

Some of the many Bison

Our last stop was just outside of Yellowstone, and it was on our way to Chicago. It is this little scenic stretch called Beartooth Pass and it's stunning. It was beautiful in the summer, but would be stunning with a little more snow on the mountains. A great way to finish a wonderful trip.