Yellowstone is a popular park. This was clear from the moment we neared the place, to our free camping spot’s busyness, to the traffic in the park itself – but, given it’s the greatest sights and wonders of Earth humans are drawn to, it was totally conceivable. The world is vast, but so few places are as unnaturally natural as Yellowstone National Park. The waters that come up from the ground have been, very unlike the rivers I am used to, bellowed and stoked with heat from the deep furnaces beneath the soil.
We camped on the edge of a aspen grove, bordering a stretched-out grassland just twenty minutes from the Park. Dispersed camping! Our strategy from Glacier resurfaced again, and after getting in the park, we aimlessly explored the side roads near Firehole, geyser basins, and bounced from wonder to wonder till we arrived at the well-known, and reasonably so, Old Faithful, who gladly blew for us.
We did a double take and went back the way we went, towards the Grand Prismatic. The Grand Prismatic was swarming, and we found a hike that would take us out and over the great spring on a neighboring hillside. We went on, and the trail took us to the Fairy Falls, about two-and-a-half miles out from where we started. I got some epic photos here:
Dinner was, once again, chicken and waffles.
More photos!
Firehole:
Old Faithful:
DAY 2: YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK
When you’ve made your way past Yellowstone’s West Entrance and further in, you are met with two choices: left, or right. The day before we’d gone right, towards Old Faithful, so today we figured it was only sensible to go the other way, to Canyon Town.
I’d read about a certain waterfall in Yellowstone’s ‘Grand Canyon’, and we both agreed it was worth seeing. I’ve found there are two types of waterfalls: gentle, tall ones that appear like spectral pencils standing upright beside a cliff, or big, fat ones that seem as though they would like to crush you, gnash you, and send you reeling under the waves. Both are sublime, but I feel one is more tender than the other.
This particular waterfall was more like the latter, and it was beautiful. Inhale looks very good here, I think:
With a lot of the day left, we crossed over to the Steamboat Geyser, a great force that when blowing, shakes the earth and booms like a thunderclap for miles around. Unfortunately, it remains an unpredictable great force.
For some variety, we had macaroni for dinner tonight, a welcome change.
Yellowstone is a unique jewel of the West. Mountains and foothills are spectacular beauties, but the simmering puddles and geysers sounding like trumpets and thunder that give Yellowstone it’s magnitude give also a feeling of grandiose: That a greater piece of God’s creation, unseen deep beneath our feet in the fires of the Earth, shows itself every now and then for our delight here in Wyoming.
Of course, volcanoes do that too, but I figure that’s more a judgement than a delight.
