Day 7 – Yellowstone National Park

Got up early, packed, ate the last of our breakfast type food and left Greybull, Wyoming.
Drove through Cody
Drove through beautiful mountains and finally reached the East Entrance to Yellowstone.
After a few minutes winding through forest recovering from forest fire, we came upon a group of people looking at something far off in a field. We pulled over and found out it was a grizzly bear laying down.
We moved on and decided to go first to the Fishing Bridge.
Stopped first in a visitor center to get out for a stretch and then headed down to the fishing bridge where we saw 4 fish.
A dog tried to bite EB’s stuffed white owl he was carrying thinking it was real.
We then headed north to the Hayden Valley and saw herds of bison and then turned around to head back south.
We then stopped at Sulpher Caldron and Mud Volcano – Mud and water bubbling out of holes in the ground. The air smelled of rotten eggs from the sulphur.
We then headed straight to Old Faithful – a 30-40 minute drive which took us a good way around Yellowstone Lake.
We arrived at Old Faithful, grabbed lunch at Old Faithful Lodge and finished up about 20 minutes before Old Faithful erupted.
After watching Old Faithful errupt, we walked through the Upper Geyser Basin – a wooden walkway that went past dozens of other named geysers, which EC loved.
We then headed to Old Faithful lodge to look at the impressive lobby and get some ice cream.
From there we stopped a the visitor center gift shop, then another nearby giftshop for souvenirs.
We then decided Old Faithful was going to be our last stop for the day and we’d better head out.
We started the long drive to the north entrance of Yellowstone.
We were delayed first by construction. As we waited our turn to go on a one-lane pass, we watched a single Bison slowly make his way down the road alongside the cars.
We finally got to take our turn driving, passed the single bison, and were then stopped again by 2 bison walking down the middle of the road.
They finally made their way off the road and we headed out of the park, making one final bathroom break – also seeing 2 moose along the way.
The final few miles were twisty turns out through a canyon.
We finally made it out of the park into Gardiner, Montana where we stayed the night.
We checked in, ordered way too much pizza from a local place next door and fell asleep watching a movie.

Yellowstone was great! It was a lot of driving in between sites, but the scenery (and elevation) was constantly changing. Mountains, fields, lakes, rivers, steam coming from the ground, bison, forests – Yellowstone had it all! We originally had planned to come back the next day but with each stop requiring a drive, unloading 4 kids, walking and reloading 4 kids, we had seen enough for our trip and would get a head start to Spokane the next day.