Yellowstone

Yellowstone is a huge national park of around 3500 sq miles and is located in 3 states; Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. This was the first official national park of US and has lots of history associated with it. The main highlight of yellowstone is its geothermal features, basically the geysers which are present because of it.

The park is in the shape of number eight (8), so planning would be very simple for any tourists. We were staying in a cabin just outside the west gate of yellowstone. This is exactly on the left middle of the map, once we enter the forest we could go to lower half or the upper half.

We had 2 complete days to cover the park, so we decided to cover the lower half on the first day and the upper half on the second day. Although it looked very simple to have targets of lower half on first day and upper half on the second day it was pretty difficult to allocate time for places considering traffic.

First Day:

On the first day we started at around 9 in the morning and had decided to cover the lower half. We gave a small pitstop in the Visitor center and got the map and some guidance from the park rangers on major spots to visit. For the first day however the must visit spots we had were the old faithful and the Grand Prismatic. Usually the tourists start the lower half in anticlockwise direction starting with the oldFaithful, however the rangers suggested us to go in clockwise direction making oldFaithful as the last spot for the day. It was a very good trick to avoid traffic. The traffic is pretty horrible in yellowstone as its only one lane per direction and it can take up hours. 

The first spot we visited was the gibbon falls, followed by Norris basin, Canyon village-north Rim, south rim, grand view, inspiration point Hayden valley, Mud volcano, Yellowstone lake, Trout creek-Bison, Antler reserve, West thumb. Since we had kept oldFaithful and Grandprismatic at the end, we had to cover these spots well before 5PM in the evening. However we were a little late and reached oldFaithful at around 6:40 PM. In OldFaithful the geysers timing are kind of fixed with a 10 min window on both sides. There was a geyser which was supposed to occur at around 7:20, so we had some time, we had coffee there and took a small walk around the trail looking at some small geysers. Starting at 7 PM, people started gathering around the main geyser point for the natural show. It was an amazing erupt of water which was almost like 100 feet tall. It occurred for around 3 min, which made me realize how much effort we put in to watch a 3 minute water eruption. 

The next spot we visited was the grand prismatic, it has 2 views, one from the same altitude where we can walk around and take a closer view of the water; another view is from a higher altitude where we can see the entire area. Grand prismatic is very famous for its photographic view, it has reddish-yellow border and a blue boiling water in the center. To reach the view point, we need to hike a bit. The main challenge here is the bugs, there are lots and lots and lots and lots of mosquitoes. Bug spray is mandatory if anyone wants to stay there for more than 5 minutes. This was the last spot for the day and we were all pretty exhausted.

Second day:

The plan was to cover the upper half of the park. The main spots to cover Roaring mountain, Obsidian cliff, Mammoth hot springs terraces, Calcite spring, Tower-Roosevelt, Lamar valley-Pebble creek, Observation Peak, My Washburn. There were lots and lots of geysers all around the park. Upper half of the park is little light and can be spaced according to the time we have. There are a few hiking trails like deer creek, but could only be considered if we are too much in to photographs and into nature. From Tower Roosevelt, there is a small detour we took towards Lamar valley, this was just a drive of around 20 miles towards northeast gate. This drive is totally scenic and we could see lots and lots of bysons all the way. Also there are a few spots where we saw bears. Along the way there was a river where we gave a pit stop. The water was freezing cold and literally the feet went numb within seconds. This was the spot where actually we enjoyed and felt like a vacation. Even though all other spots were really good, we were always in the time constraint. After this river, we had no major spot to visit and could take however long we could. We took lots of pictures and relaxed.

On the way back we went to observation peak which was at around 10000 feet altitude, the main purpose of this spot was to enjoy the view of sunset, however since it was a little cloudy we couldn't actually see the sun set. This peak was almost deserted as we had to take a small deviation from the actual path back. We took lots of boomerang and pictures here and called it a day.

Third Day:

The plan was to reach SLC by 8PM, so we decided to visit a natural hot springs on the way and spend a couple of hours. We started yellowstone by around 10 in the morning and visited Lava HotSpring which was around 2 hours drive from yellowstone and one of the amazing things I have experienced. This has natural pools with different water temperatures ranging from 100F to 110F. There were 5 pools with different temperatures. The waters in none of the pools are externally heated, the water gets its temperature from some geothermal mechanism which is over my knowledge of physics and geology. We spent some time here and headed back to SLC. Couple of our friends’ bday was very close and hence we stopped by in CheeseCake factory and celebrated their bday in SLC before heading towards the airport. 

Overall it was an amazing vacation and totally refreshed us.