Week 58: Our AdVANture Continues at Yellowstone National Park
Grizzly, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and Geysers Galore!
Hey, hi, howdy, hello! Welcome back to another weekly update. This was our second week at Yellowstone National Park — catch up on week one here and here — and what a week it was!
Heads up: this is a loooooong post — we had way too much fun! I tried to shorten it, but I just couldn’t leave anything else out. Think of it like a mini tour of Yellowstone. :)
Let’s get right to the recap!
Sunday: Sheepeater Cliff
Today we moved from where we’d been staying at Indian Creek Campground over to Lewis Lake Campground — with tons of adventures along the way. We were so tired from last week’s fun that we didn’t get our dishes washed before the 10 am checkout time, so we stopped in at Sheepeater Cliff to finish our chores check it out.
According to the park website:
Sheepeater Cliff is made up of columnar basalt deposited by lava flows roughly 500,000 years ago. The Gardner River flows through the valley, exposing the flow and forming the cliff. The basalt of Sheepeater Cliff are known as columnar basalt due to the hexagonal fracture lines that formed in the basalt when it cooled.
The cliff and associated picnic area are named after the Tukudika, or Sheep Eaters— a band of Eastern Shoshone Indians.
We found the columns of basalt right away — this geology nerd thought they were super cool. Then looking closer, we saw several Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels running here and there.
They’re super cute!
The Gardner River was glorious:
What a great stop!
Obsidian Cliffs
After finishing up the dishes we headed a short distance down the road to the Obsidian Cliffs. After my residency at Valles Caldera I’ve loved seeing other obsidian sources on our travels.
Roaring Mountain
Then we made a brief stop at Roaring Mountain — named for the fumaroles making hissing/roaring sounds — too bad none of my pictures came out that great, darn! It was still cool to see.
It was like being on another planet!
Sunday: Clearwater Springs
Our next stop was Clearwater Springs — can confirm the water is really clear:
It was nice to have a thermal feature all to ourselves. And look at the color of that mat around the edge! Classic Yellowstone.
Sunday: Madison River Elk!
Why did the elk cross the road?
To get to the Madison River on the other side! :)
We loved seeing them — especially the babies. And it’s too funny, because we had just read a sign about the Madison River elk herd — the river stays warm year-round, so the elk hang out here year-round, too!
Our niece is named Madison, so of course we had to send a ton of pictures to her — hi, Madi!
Sunday: Grand Prismatic Spring/Fairy Falls Overlook
Our next stop was the Fairy Falls Trail to check out Grand Prismatic Spring from the overlook. Grand Prismatic is Yellowstone’s largest hot spring at 200-300 feet in diameter and more than 121 feet deep. You need to get up high in order to see the famous postcard-like view, and the overlook is the highest point in the park where you can see it.
Parking was a zoo, and the crowds were crazy!
We went to Midway Geyser Basin later in the week to see Grand Prismatic up close — more on that below.
It was cool to see — but we were glad to get out of the crowds.
Sunday: Black Sand Geyser Basin
The parking lot for Black Sand Geyser Basin was pretty empty so we decided to pop in since it was on our way back to camp. I’m so glad we did, because it was beautiful!
My favorite feature was Rainbow Pool — from the park website:
Rainbow Pool is a large, 100-foot (30.5-m) diameter pool that has a few sporadic eruptions in the history of the park, the last being in 1996. The pool overflows its sinter rim and runoff travels down the sinter shelf and eventually reaches the Firehole River. The clear blue pool is surrounded by orange thermophiles at the pool rim, and those thermophiles continue growing into the outwash channels.
I couldn’t stop taking photos of it — what a surprise, right? :)
We hit the light just right — the colors were like abstract art.
Other thermal features were glowing, too:
I’m so glad we stopped.
We made it back to camp before dark for the first time in a long while. What an awesome day!
Monday: West Thumb Geyser Basin
Monday we got up early so we could be sure to get a parking spot at West Thumb Geyser Basin. After eating breakfast in the picnic area we set out to explore the basin.
This was my favorite geyser basin of the trip! Yellowstone Lake provides the perfect backdrop/contrast to the thermal pools, and the crowds weren’t too bad since we got there so early.
Here’s Fishing Cone Geyser — it was called that because people used to catch fish from the lake and drop them in the geyser to cook them — still on the hook!
One of my favorite features was Bluebell Pool — just look at those colors:
Just so amazing.
By this time the crowds had picked up — and we were getting hungry — so we said farewell to West Thumb and went searching for a spot where we could have a picnic lunch.
Monday: Lake Lunch Spot
We found the perfect lunch spot at a pullout near Gull Point off Yellowstone Lake. Just look at these views:
It felt like we had a little slice of Yellowstone all to ourselves. I ended up making tempeh, roasted red pepper and caramelized onion sandwiches. Yum!
Then we followed a trail down to the shore:
We discovered a yellow columbine (Aquilegia flavescens) colony on the way:
The lakeshore had awesome views and cool breezes — so peaceful and relaxing.
We could see the van from the shore:
We loved this spot so much we ended up coming back two more times during our stay at Lewis Lake Campground. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone about this spot, ha!
Monday: Hayden Valley Grizzly!
After our lunch break we decided to head up to check out the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone via Hayden Valley. Pretty soon we saw a TON of people parked all along the side of the road. When in Yellowstone, that usually means something there’s something cool to see, so we joined the crowd — and it turned out to be a grizzly!
Our first one in the wild!
Can you spot him?
Give up trying to spot him? Here he is!
We could see him great through binoculars, but my phone pictures weren’t cutting it.
Luckily we made friends with Robyn, who had a spotting scope and a cool gadget so she could send photos to her phone, and she kindly shared the photo below with me. Follow Robyn on Instagram (@robyneckersley).
Thanks so much, Robyn!
There was another crowd a few stops down the road and I got to see wolves! Unfortunately they moved on before Jason could see them. We decided to head on to the canyon and then stop back again later on our way back to camp.
Monday: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
Our first stop on the Grand Canyon adventure was the Upper Falls Viewpoint — it was amazing:
Then we made our way to Artist Point — wow! Just wow.
What a view. I can see why it inspired so many — and I can’t wait to try and paint it myself someday.
Monday: Hayden Valley/More Wolves!
By this time it was almost 8:00 pm, so I told J to head back to Hayden Valley so that hopefully he would get to see wolves…
…and he did! YEAH! First day seeing wild wolves — and a grizzly — and all in the same day!
Unfortunately we didn’t get any great wolf pictures to share. J did manage to get this photo of a wolf and a cub by holding our monocular up to his phone:
We could see them through binoculars and some kind wolf watchers let us peek through their spotting scopes, too. It was cool getting to hang out with the wolf gang for a bit — you could tell they were all friends and they had their own language.
We ate dinner at a pullout and then made the hour long drive back to camp.
Another amazing day in Yellowstone.
Tuesday: Rest Day
We didn’t get back to camp until after 11 pm, so we decided to take it easy today and have a rest day. We really needed it!
Wednesday: Midway Geyser Basin
Today we set our alarm so we could get to Midway Geyser Basin and see the Grand Prismatic Pool from the ground — and we’re glad we got there when we did, because parking was nuts!
But it was worth it!
I took a bunch of photos of the other thermal pools in the basin, but I’ll just share Grand Prismatic here since the post is so long. I brought a postcard with me as a prop to show the rings of color since you can’t see them as well at ground level:
You can see the overlook where we were earlier in the week — it’s the bare patch in the trees towards the center of the photo:
The colors were so unreal.
We spotted bear and bison tracks in the bacterial mats along the pool — whoa!
How is this even real?
Wednesday: Nez Perce Trail
After leaving Midway Geyser Basin we decided to take a break from the crowds and hike part of the Nez Perce Trail. We were lucky to have this thermal feature all to ourselves:
It was so peaceful.
There were also lots of harebells blooming along the trail — so darn beautiful.
Wednesday: Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Part 2!
We finally made back to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and it turned out we saved the best parts for last.
We hiked down to the Brink of Lower Falls to the observation platform where we saw this amazing view — plus a rainbow! Whoa!
Here at another overlook you can see the platform we were on when I took the photo above. I wish you could hear the roar of the water and feel the mist. It was amazing.
I couldn’t get over all of the colors on the canyon walls. Just so beautiful!
We were in awe.
Wednesday: Elk!
As we were driving along traffic started moving reaaaallly slowly — as we got closer I noticed a bull elk walking right along the side of the road! I grabbed the camera and got a few quick shots:
He looks like he’s done with people, right? I felt the same way.
Wednesday: Back to Yellowstone Lake
Then we headed back through Hayden Valley to our spot on the lake to have dinner.
It was so quiet and peaceful after the crowds at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. We watched the sunset and were so grateful for another amazing day.
Yellowstone had one more stunning view in store for us as the moon rose over the lake:
What an incredible day.
Thursday: Farewell, Lewis Lake!
Thursday we left Lewis Lake Campground and headed to Slough Creek Campground. We thought we were going to have an easy day, but Yellowstone had other plans for us!
First we stopped by Lewis Lake so that we could finally see it up close — we’d been so busy that we hadn’t seen it in the daytime yet!
Hopefully next time we’re here we can spend more time at the lake.
Thursday: Farewell, Yellowstone Lake!
Then we stopped by our lunch spot one last time to say farewell to it, too. We had lunch and then lounged around for a bit — we were still tired from all of our adventures yesterday.
Really gonna miss our spot.
Thursday: Lamar Valley/Black Bears
I can never get enough of these sweeping views heading into Lamar Valley:
Just wow.
Pretty soon we saw a crowd of people pulled off on the side of the road — and you know what that means — a wildlife sighting!
It turned out to be a mama black bear and her cub! The mama was brown — yes, there are brown “black bears”:
While the baby was black:
So cool to see!
Thursday: Bison Jam!
It wasn’t long until we hit a bison jam! There was a river of bison heading from one side of the valley to the other. Look at them all:
The river of bison crossed the road — which was cool because you can really appreciate just how big they are compared to the vehicles. We noticed that the babies have grown so much in just a week’s time. (Baby bison pictures here.)
Thursday: Lamar Valley Sunset (and a Surprise Bison!)
We stopped at a pullout to let the bison jam settle down and make dinner, and we discovered that there was a bison carcass about 2 miles away from us.
Apparently wolves and grizzlies had been feeding on it that morning and the night before, so there was a group of people waiting to see if any more wolves would show up.
Jason saw two wolves through binoculars, then they were gone and nothing else happened. We ate dinner around 8:30 and decided we may as well stay to watch the sunset.
We were out taking sunset photos when all of a sudden we saw movement — and a lone bison was peeking around the van!
We hopped in the van ASAP to give him his space. It was like he was waiting for us to move, because as soon as we were out of sight he calmly crossed the road.
Wow! Just so cool.
And the sunset was spectacular!
We’ll treasure this day forever.
Friday: Camp Day
We didn’t get to camp until 10:00 pm, so we decided to sleep in and have a camp day. Our big excitement for the day was watching a mule train loaded down with supplies cross the creek:
Gotta find out what they’re carrying — and where they’re carrying it to.
We also had a lone bison cross the creek — wonder where he was off to?
Saturday: Hike From Camp at Slough Creek
Saturday we packed snacks, grabbed the bear spray, and set out on a hike right from camp.
It wasn’t long until we saw a bison near the trail!
We went off-trail to give him plenty of space:
Then we rounded a corner about a mile and a half later and saw a whole herd! They were right on the trail, so we took a break and watched them from a safe distance for almost an hour.
It was so amazing to see wild bison this close.
We heard them making funny sounds (click to hear examples) — I did some research when we got back and it turns out these are the sounds they make during the rut! Hope you can hear them in the video below:
Just so cool!
I got out my monocular and pen to do some blind contour sketches of them — some of them are pretty funny and some aren’t half bad! You can watch a video with more bison footage over here on Instagram.
I’m glad I took the time to do it so I could remember this moment forever. (Supply list over here on my art blog.)
The bison didn’t seem like they were going to move out of the area anytime soon — and we didn’t think it was wise to bushwack around them in grizzly country — so we turned around and headed back to camp.
Hiking through a burn scar we encountered another lone bison — and plenty of fireweed:
The van was waiting for us after we crossed the creek — we brought our water shoes so our hiking shoes didn’t get soaked — the creek is deeper than it looks — it came up to my butt lol!
It always lifts my heart to see the van:
Awesome hike!
That’s a Wrap
Annnnnd that’s a wrap for this week’s update! Whew! Thanks SO MUCH for reading — that was a long one!
We’re here at Yellowstone for a few more days — but I miss this place already. Just don’t want to leave. Do you ever feel like that? Everything we’ve done so far has been incredible — a trip of a lifetime.
We’re not sure where we’re going next — tune in next week to find out.
Thanks again for following along on our adventures! — Lisa, Jason, Walter-the-Van and the bison :)
More lovely photos and stories! Thank you for sharing and repeating safety and good visitor messages!
I LOVED THIS POST! 💛🧡❤️ It felt like I was back in that magical place that I haven’t seen in so many years… thank you for loving it and respecting it (and sharing it, too) 👏✨🦬🐿️😎