The first week of June we were supposed to go camping in Yellowstone for 4 nights. I hadn't been there since I was a little kid, so I was really excited to go again, and especially to take our kids. However, the shutdown changed all that. Yellowstone announced that campgrounds wouldn't be opening until at least June 15, so they cancelled our reservation. Up until the end of May the entrances closest to our house were even still closed. However, right before our trip was supposed to be, the entrance in West Yellowstone opened. One morning we woke up and I decided we were just going to go for it and make a day trip. I packed some snacks and sandwiches, and we headed out.
With only one day in the park we figured we should start with the area around Old Faithful since the geysers are really cool. So we headed down that way.
This waterfall was along a scenic byway road. It was pretty!
We saw a TON of bison. If you look closely at the photo below, there was a whole herd out in a field.
These photos aren't altered AT ALL, and if you imagine that things always look even more colorful and amazing in real life...you'll get an idea for how colorful and amazing these places were. It was soooo cool!
At one of the hikes there was a LOT of steam because the weather was still kind of cold. Colby calls fog "frog" and that's what he thought it was. It freaked him out a little bit that the steam kept blowing over and obscuring our view of where we were walking, and feeling like a blast of humidity to the face. He kept crying and saying "The frog is getting us! Here comes more frog! I don't like the frog!" it was pretty sad/funny.
It's really too bad that cameras can't catch the colors in real-life. The photo below is of Prismatic Lake. Or Spring? I don't remember. But anyway, even from far away you could see that the steam looked like a rainbow. The colors of the rock and water were reflecting on the steam, so it looks like the steam itself was actually colored. I've never seen anything like it.
When we got to Old Faithful it was about 3 minutes past the expected eruption time, which was perfect so we didn't have to wait very long. There were hardly any people in the park because of the closures, so we got a front-and-center spot on the boardwalk to wait for it to erupt.
We ended up having to wait about 15 minutes(ish). Andy ended up being underwhelmed - he expected it to be bigger and also stay bigger for longer. But the kids thought it was the most amazing thing they'd seen.
After Old Faithful we stopped at a few other boardwalks to see some more smaller geysers. It eventually got cloudy and started raining, but luckily we had brought sweatshirts!
I'm not sure why Skyler can't just take a normal photo.
Colby loved that he could see the river running under the bridge through the cracks.
This guy was right next to the road, which was so cool!
We would've loved to stay for a couple more hours and go up to another part of the park, but the rain got wetter and colder and we figured we better head out before all the kids got way too grumpy. We'll just have to go back again someday!
Colby ate a few bites of his sandwich and then fell fast asleep with a mouth full of PB&J.
...And this is apparently what happens when two kids get their hands on the phone in the car...
