Yellowstone Nat'l Park

Here are some pics from our 3 days here: the first is from the Geyser part of the park. This portion of the park seemed so otherworldly: like Mars with water!! Of course, had to see Old Faithful and it wasn't the biggest or best geyser but it did erupt as predicted unlike the Riverside Geyser which we waited for almost an hour in the rain, I might add! The geysers stink like rotten eggs due to the sulfur, couldn't wait to shower.... Other cool features were the mud pots, loved their splattering!

The second day we spent around the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone area, lots of waterfalls too....really gorgeous, how Yellowstone got its' name (2nd pic). We saw the most wildlife this day as well....grizzly bear with 2 cubs!!!, 2 bald eagles and a baby, bear tracks on a hike, and a huge herd of buffalo crossing the road. In fact, 1 buffalo hit a car very close to us, road rage??? Crazy enough the best wildlife was not on any of our daily hikes but from the road. As we are not adept at wildlife spotting we relied on other cars parking and assumed it was a sighting, which almost always worked.

So here's my "scary" buffalo story. We sought out an area that was known to have bears, I was nervous and was using the park ranger's advice of making loud noises, etc. Well, of course, we didn't see any bears but there was a huge herd of buffalo way off in the distance. It was about 3 miles across a meadow and forested area when we came upon this herd on the trail (see last pic). They were loud, the males were grunting but they weren't agitated as their tails weren't sticking way up. I was getting nervous anyway but not Ryan. We were just hanging out in their territory for a while and they kept grunting and looking at us, I just couldn't take it much longer. I am most definitely a city slicker.

Overall, really enjoyed Yellowstone. We stayed in West Yellowstone, Montana, a 5 min. drive to the park (which is in Wyoming). Just the driving to hikes was scenic and wildlife was spotted. It'd be fun to go back and visit with friends/family!! Out of all of the parks we visited, it had the most to offer even if it was a bit crowded in certain places.