Our campground is the Grizzly RV Park and Campground, and it's located in West Yellowstone just a couple of miles from the park entrance. It's a very nice campground, as is the town which is close enough to walk to. Lots of buildings with tall flat front facades to make it resemble an old western town, and that just adds to the wilderness atmosphere. Of course if you look closely, you can see Arby's, KFC, and McDonald's, but that's about the extent of the franchises - which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Yellowstone National Park is made up of two "loops", similar to a figure 8. Old Faithful is located in the lower loop as are several of the hot springs and geyser basins. This was our first trek into the park, and unfortunately, I went off without the camera (who goes to YNP without a camera??). Of course, I didn't do it on purpose, but really?? Anyway, we started in the lower loop, driving along Firehole Canyon, the Madison River, Upper and Lower Geyser Basins, and of course, Old Faithful, and that only covered a portion of the lower loop. We picked up a lot of info at the visitor center, then went home for a while, and started out again in the afternoon.
This time (with camera), we decided to try the upper loop. This is Terrace Springs, our first chance to see hot springs, and we were pretty impressed, but we had no idea the beauty of the springs we'd be seeing later in the trip.
We were told that the Upper Loop was supposed to have the most wildlife, and we weren't disappointed!. Our very first sighting was a huge bison, laying on the ground right next to the road. He was accommodating enough to lay right next to a turn out, so we parked about 20 feet from him and had a great chance to check him out and snap these pictures (from the truck). On the way back later, he was grazing across the road.
As we continued on, we were fortunate enough to see deer and also a couple of cranes (dancing/mating?), but weren't quick enough to get pictures.
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| Roaring Mountain |
Roaring Mountain is a hillside with thermal features called fumaroles. You can see the steam and hear the hissing from water escaping due to the thermal activity below.
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| Gibbon Falls |
Gibbon Falls was our next stop.
Beautiful!
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