Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Well what an amazing time we have had for the past 2 full days in Yellowstone National Park. We were out on the road by 8:30 am and not back until 7:00 pm putting in 10 ½ hours sightseeing days. We put 640 km on the truck.
If someone was to ask about what to see and do here it would be so hard to name only one thing as this is an area of great contrasts.
First take the weather. We have had beautiful sunny days but the temperatures have ranged from 6 degrees Celsius to 25 degrees - it all depends on where you are and how high up the mountain you are. We have seen wide open lakes, frozen lakes, snow melting, green areas, snow covered mountains and 10 ft snow banks.
Second of all is the question of what kind of roads do you want to drive on. Let me tell you that we have been on some pretty scary ones - with switchbacks coming down a mountain like I have never seen before.
Also there is a whole host of sport activities we have seen over the past 2 days from hiking, jogging, biking, kayaking, white water rafting, skiing, snow boarding and snowmobiling. You could do them all in a day here!
Then there is the landscape. There are wide open plains, mountains that rise high into the sky, canyons, granite rock formations, rivers, streams and lakes. Then you have all of the geothermal formations - boiling mud, hot springs, hot steam coming out of the earth and geysers. The most famous of these is Old Faithful and it did not disappoint. Right now it rises up about every 90 minutes and when we arrived the next estimated time was that it would erupt at 3:09 pm - well it was only 1 minute late and it lasted just over 5 minutes. What a amazing sight.
We saw the Continental Divide line - which is a natural boundary line separating waters that flow into the Atlantic Ocean from those that flow into the Pacific Ocean. We also saw the 45th Parallel - which is halfway between the North Pole and the Equator.
But the animals have been the favourite part I think. Although we did not see any Grizzly bears or wolves and we could not pull over where everyone was looking at a moose we did see a host of other animals: Buffalo by the hundreds, Elk some alone and even 3 herds of at least 2 dozen, Pronghorns, White tail deer including a set of twins, Mountain goats (they are hard to spot up on the mountain, Canada geese, chipmunks and prairie dogs, a female black bear and her 3 cubs, another lone black bear. When I looked at the information for the area I saw lots of pictures with cars being stopped by animals crossing the road and I thought that it was just propaganda but I found out that it is an actual occurrence. We were stopped several times with animals crossing but mostly by the buffalo that can cross singly or in a huge herd - or they walk down the centre of the road.
We also went right across the northern section of the park and out the northeast entry to the Bear Tooth Highway - reported as USA's most scenic highways. What an awesome drive. We reached an altitude of 10,959 ft. The scenery was breathtaking with lots of snow covered mountains in the distance and we were surrounded by snow. We even walked on it in our runners. It struck me as funny that we go to Mexico for 4 months a year to get away from the snow and then here we are driving up a mountain looking for it.
All in all a wonderful 2 ½ days in the park.
- comments
Trish Alexander WOW! That's the best report of Yellowstone we've ever heard. Haven't been there since I was 11. Now I want to go again! Thanks, Sharon.