Now for a quick round up of the rest of our stops while at Yellowstone:
West Thumb Geyser Basin was a nice stop as we were driving around the park and we had a picnic lunch here. It is a quick walk around the boardwalk and gives you a beautiful view of West Thumb lake too! It is a boardwalk and easily accessible for all abilities and ages! We found a “hidden Mickey” hot springs while there! The kids were excited about that!
Hayden Valley is the BEST place to see wildlife. As we drove through this area we saw TONS of Bison and Elk. This is also when we saw people doing really dumb things around wildlife. We stayed safely in our car at a distance. Not true for many people. We’d see people running with their camera towards the animals. Ugh. We saw so many people doing stupid and unsafe things!
Grand Prismatic Spring needs to be seen early in the morning if you want parking! We went first thing on our second day and easily found parking. We then drove down to another geyser basin and by the time we drove back by Grand Prismatic (maybe 45 minutes later?) the line to park was CRAZY long. People were going to be waiting a VERY long time to park. If you want to see this, plan on getting there early – and take coats, even in August. We learned that lesson… Thank goodness we had some airplane blankets in the car! (I mean, it was August. We didn’t bring coats with us!)
We made it to Norris Geyser basin around 10am, we found parking, but it was getting tight! Lots of geysers to see – we saw many hot springs and geysers going crazy! By the time we were leaving, lots of cars were waiting to park – so another stop to try and get to fairly early. If you get an early start in the park like we did, you can get to quite a bit before the crazy parking situation starts!
Gibbon Falls is an easy stop off the main road through Yellowstone. It is a quick stop, so parking seems easy anytime of the day. Get out, see the falls, and move on to the next place. Quick and fun stop!
Mammoth Hot Springs was our last stop out of the park. Unfortunately, the kids were getting tired, so we didn’t explore as much as I would have liked -which is a bummer because it looks like there were lots of cool trails. However, there was a nice drive around Mammoth Terrace drive where you could see many things and many sights could be seen on the main road! Next trip, we’ll spend some more time in this area – perhaps we’ll start here!
We LOVED Yellowstone and it is in our top 4 favorite National Parks now! So many AMAZING things to see! We will be back again some day!
