Yellowstone National Park - Highly Recommended (Part 1)

While staying at Henry’s Lake State Park in east Idaho, we were only about 20 minutes away from the West Yellowstone, Montana and the west entrance of Yellowstone NP. Can’t be that close and not go, and boy are we glad we did.

The campground and the views from our site were great, but they were nothing compared to Yellowstone.

Below is a map of Yellowstone. The entire north loop is currently closed because of all the flooding and road damage that occurred in early June. We stopped in the visitor center the day before we went and got some great pointers from one of the rangers on areas that we shouldn’t miss. We spent and entire day there and only had time to see the five locations that we numbered on the map.

Our first stop was Old Faithful. We saw a lot of bison on the way there. Having just been at the bison ranch and up close and personal with them, we were hoping to see other wild animals. There were cars pulling off the road all over the place to look at the bison. We pressed on to our southern most spot.

We arrived at the Old Faithful information center and checked the board to see when the next geyser show would be. You can actually see the information here https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm including a webcam of the geysers. We only had a short time to to wait.

Waiting on Old Faithful!

As expected, Old Faithful did not disappoint!

Watch the video below.

Our next location was the midway geyser basin. In this area like many of the areas, there is a boardwalk so that you can get closer to the geysers and springs. The first area is called the Excelsior geyser crater. It is a very large pool with beautiful colors that look like the waters in the Caribbean. It flows into the Firehole River.

Also in this area is the Grand Prismatic Spring. The colors of this spring were just amazing. The locals say that as it gets warmer in the summer, the colors get even more intense.

Come back and see the next post. It will include amazing pictures of Gibbon Falls, Canyon Village and the ‘Grand Canyon of Yellowstone’, and the Norris Geyser Basin.