Yellowstone

I wanted to love you, first National Park. I wanted to be blown away by your vastness.

Unfortunately, I’m spoiled and had already visited six National Parks in the past three and a half weeks, and the mountains of Yellowstone aren’t majestic. The Bison – you were incredible. The

I’d made reservations at Canyon campground in Yellowstone. Xanterra operates all of the campgrounds at Yellowstone, and the check in procedure was different there than anywhere else (more like checking into a hotel then a campground!).  We got our site and were impressed with how spacious and relatively private it was. Canyon Campground is a huge one with lots of loops and plenty of bathrooms, with shower and laundry facilities at the main building where we checked in.  Two “free” showers per night came with each campsite, which was kind of nice after the pay showers in Glacier. I’d been told we wouldn’t have cell service in Yellowstone, but I had full bars on my Verizon phone whenever we were at the campground, which was a nice added bonus.

Yellowstone is a HUGE park, with a figure-eight road that takes you to all of the main attractions. I had chosen the Canyon area as home base because I wanted to visit Artist’s Point at Sunrise.  The west side of the park was full of most of the geysers and mud pots. The north east had the mountains and canyons, and the south east has the huge Yellowstone Lake.

On our first full day in the park, I got up super early and went to the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone” to see the sunrise. It was quite beautiful, and in classic fashion, my battery died before the sun was completely up, so my photos aren’t as amazing as they could have been, but I enjoyed seeing the early morning light even without the benefit of a camera in front of me.

We headed to the east side of the park and explored the Norris Geyser Basin. We encountered plenty of Bison along the way, but fortunately it was late enough in the season to not have bad traffic jams as a result! Geysers and mud pots are so weird. The smell of egg farts (aka sulfur) is everywhere and the color of the acidic pools is truly incredible. My photos really don’t do the area justice!

Before arriving in Yellowstone I had decided I had no interest in standing around to wait for Old Faithful to do her thing. My idea of a good time does not include standing with hundreds of tourists waiting for hot water to blow out of a hole in the ground. We did, however, want to see the Old Faithful Inn, so that was our next priority.

The Old Faithful Inn is truly a work of art. The timber beams and five story lobby is breathtaking. In typical Propst fashion, we wanted to have a fancy drink in the hotel bar, and saw a sign leading to the hotel lounge on the main floor, but I noticed a smaller sign referring to the “mezzanine bar” upstairs. So up we went, and found a selection of craft beer and wine, and a large outdoor patio overlooking the one and only Old Faithful.