Experiencing America’s Oldest and Most Iconic National Park; Yellowstone.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.
Albert Camus, Nobel Prize of Lit. 1957

Each visitor creates their own experience here and there’s definitely no wrong way to go about it. So, in writing this blogpost, I decided to simply share a few tips and showcase the visual highlights we discovered during our visit to Yellowstone National Park.

We explored Yellowstone across 3 days and this amount of time felt like a good pace for our go-getting selves. This park is SO BIG and there is SO MUCH to see but, we rocked it, putting in the planning effort and sacrificing a little bit of sleep. Of course, we could have spent an entire week here, but here is how we did Yellowstone in the time we allowed.

Before you go – buy or print a park map and physically mark your must see spots. Odds are, you won’t have access to fast (or any) cell phone service and you won’t want to backtrack once you’re in the park. The main “loop” takes over 1 hour to drive, without stopping, and you most certainly will have some impromptu stops. 

Here is link to the official Yellowstone National Park map.
Here is a link to unofficial but extremely useful detailed maps.

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Day 1

We arrived through the South Entrance (via Grand Tetons National Park) in early afternoon and explored the following highlights.

• West Thumb Geyser Basin
• Yellowstone Lake
• Dragon Mouth Spring
• Grand Canyon of Yellowstone 
• Upper Falls
• Artist Point
• Inspiration Point
• Artist Paint Pots
• The best damn sunset en route to West Yellowstone

Tip: Stay in the park as late as possible. The boardwalks and viewpoints are much less crowded and the evening light is favorable for photos.

At the end of day one we arrived in West Yellowstone, a tourist town with high hotel rates in off-brand accommodations. Every single fast food drive thru was jam packed, despite it being well past dinner time.

Tip – Pack a cooler full of food and water. Scott and I ate almost exclusively from our iceless cooler all three days. When we got hungry, it was very easy to find a place to pull over and picnic. Restaurants inside the park and out are few and far between and crazy busy.

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Day 2

We plunged back into the park, via the West Entrance, well before sunrise the next morning. We met very few cars on the road and just one parked at our sunrise destination – the Grand Prismatic Spring overlook, accessible via the Fairy Falls trailhead. Day 2 started with a bang! Here are day two’s highlights:

• Sunrise sprint to Grand Prismatic Spring overlook
• Old Faithful
• Upper Geyser Basin
• Old Faithful again
• Hike to Mystic Falls via Biscuit Basin (2 miles round trip)
• Upper Geyser Basin to Morning Glory Pool
• Grand Prismatic Spring boardwalk
• Fountain Paint Pots
• Swan Lake
• Mammoth Hot Spring Terraces

Tip: Watch Old Faithful erupt when children are present. I’m not a kid person, but the sounds of them oooh-ing and aaah-ing made the blast of water seem so much more cool.

Tip: The Visitor’s Center right next to Old Faithful keeps track of Old Faithful’s eruption times and posts this information online and on the building. It erupts about every 1 hour and 15 minutes, within a 10 minute variation. Waiting for the moment of eruption is half the fun and the tall fountain of water lasts anywhere from 1-3 minutes.

Tip: The Grand Prismatic Spring parking lot is always busy but don’t pass it up. Traffic flow through the parking lot is steady as people walk the short boardwalk loop and then back to their cars.

Tip: Save some energy to explore the Mammoth Springs area. This area is unique because the hot springs are on the side of a hill creating countless waterfalls cascading from top to bottom with a boardwalk intertwined throughout. There’s a lot of stairs involved but these hot springs are absolutely worth exploring.

Not far from Mammoth Springs is the North Entrance which we drove through en route to our destination city at the end of day two; Livingston, MT. This town was almost an hour away through a mountain valley but we stayed in a brand new Fairfield Marriott hotel that was absolute bliss. 

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Day 3

We leave our hotel before dawn again and watch the tops of the mountains glow above us as we jet back through the mountain valley to Yellowstone’s North Entrance gates. Before we even enter the park we stop to let some Elk cross the road in front of us. Turns out, this day was made for wildlife viewing! Once inside the park we head straight for the glistening, dew covered mountains in the Lamar Valley and the buffalo. Here are the highlights from day three.

• Lamar Valley Ridge Trail out and back hike
• Buffalo traffic jam in the “Serengeti of Yellowstone”
• Yellow River wildlife viewing
• Soda Butte Creek

The Lamar Valley is aptly nicknamed the “Serengeti of Yellowstone.” The thriving buffalo population makes driving down this stretch of road without stopping for a buffalo traffic jam impossible. Pulling off the road and hanging your head out the window to capture a picture of the dust-kicking, grumbling creatures is a must-do!

Tip: Plan on heading into the valley early in the morning or in the evening when the buffalo are most active. Our early morning hike took us through a heard of buffalo as they headed down into the valley for the day and we watched them cross the road amongst a half a dozen vehicles filled with thrilled spectators.

This stretch of road in Yellowstone is also quite popular for motorcyclists, their grumbling engines matching the grumbling buffalo. We maintained our motorcyclist company as we exited Yellowstone for the last time, stopping for a late lunch next to Soda Butte creek near the Northeast Entrance. The motorcyclists were headed the same direction as we were, through the Bear Tooth Pass in Montana!

I hope these pictures paint a worthy picture of how beautiful and diverse Yellowstone National Park is. Scott and I thoroughly enjoyed our time here and it’s one of those places we hope to return to when we are in a different stage of our lives, just to see how much we all have (or haven’t) changed. The thermal springs are wonderfully bizarre, the canyons and waterfalls are stunning, and the wildlife and wilderness is big and amazing so, plan accordingly and soak it in.