Yogi Bear where are you? Yellowstone National Park Wyoming – Thursday, 3-9th June 2010

Well, Yellowstone is a huge and very diverse national park. We would need to be here for a year to walk all the trails but will probably be here for about a week. There are four distinct areas to the park and we have started off in the Lake area at Bridge Bay. The weather is not real good at the moment and can change through all seasons in a day (just like Melbourne). We’ve managed to get quite a few different hikes in, sometimes we got wet and sometimes we didn’t. The only thing the weather hasn’t done yet is snow but there is still plenty left on the ground from a few weeks ago. We’ve been to see the biggies like Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone which is pretty awesome. By looking at the walls of the canyon you can see why it was called Yellowstone but I’m afraid that the pictures don’t show the true colour of the rock. The Yellowstone Falls both upper and lower are also spectacular. Yes, Perry we did hike down the 328 steps to get a fantastic view of the falls. It really wasn’t a hard hike. We’ve seen some wildlife including a grizzly bear but most of the bears are way off in the distance and I don’t think we will get another close encounter like the one we had in Bighorn Canyon. We were very fortunate.

Old Faithful goes off about every 92 minutes

Spot the mouse

We camped in the Canyon campground and wouldn’t you know it we were next to some Aussies from Adelaide who have bought a caravan and a Ford truck just like ours and they are planning to export it back to Australia after they have travelled about for a year. And we thought we were the only ones who had ideas like that.

Distant view of the lower Yellowstone Falls

             The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the walls are very yellow but it doesn't show in the photo

Lower falls from the bottom of a 328 step steep trail

The bison just wander about willy nilly and often walk through the carpark or just up the road and the cars just have to follow them till they get out of the way.

We’ve been to Mammoth Hot Springs and they are just beautiful. We were lucky enough to get a sunny day which makes all the difference to the colours. We also did a 5 mile hike while there to the beaver ponds. Didn’t see any beavers but saw elk and nearly stepped on a snake about 3 feet long. I was told later that it was probably harmless.  Maybe we'll see beavers somewhere else.

Mammoth Hot Springs

We then moved down to Madison which is on the west side of the park near where Old Faithful is. We went for a drive to see some more geysers but there were so many bison on the road that the traffic was at a standstill for over one and a half hours so we returned to camp and did a short walk to finish off the day.

So far three good days weather wise out of six so I think we should be pleased as there has been a lot of rain predicted.

All in all a magical place