Yellowstone National Park

In 2001, I threw my laptop and a bag of clothes in my two seater convertible (MR2-Spyder) and drove across country. I was aiming Colorado Springs with a stop in the Seattle area. While en route, I tried to stop and see as much as I could along the way. I earned my first stamps that year and thus began my lifetime journey to see everything and collect them all. 

Yellowstone was an interesting leg to the Summer of 2001 trip. I limped in on a flat tire, had to get a hotel room without a reservation and only about a handful of decent hours to actually visit and tour. I knew the place was too big to really visit it properly, so I was thankful for what I saw knowing I'll be back someday to do it correctly. The best part was when a Bison (or is it Buffalo?) decided to cross the road, right in front of my match box sized car. The size of the beast was INCREDIBLE! I'd never been that close to an animal that big in my entire life. Very awesome.

For the 2022 Summer Road-trip with Kahlan, Avery, and William, the primary goal was to see the Grand Canyon. Once I started putting that trip together I realized we do an epic adventure loop to a great amount of the official 63 National Parks including this crown jewel of the National Park system. Originally we were going to camp for the night inside the park on the northern side at the Moraine Campground. Then historical flooding slammed the northern side Yellowstone forcing them to shut the campsite and northern areas of the park down as well as reduce daily visitor capacity. We pivoted to camping in Grand Teton National Park and heading into Yellowstone first the next morning.

As we drove through the park, a herd of Elk was the only real wildlife we saw. Our first stop was the mud-pools and hot-springs while we waited for Old Faithful to erupt. It was the first time I would get to see the eruption after missing it during my visit 20 years ago and it didn't disappoint. I will say that calling it Old "Faithful" is quite the misnomer. It will faithfully erupt throughout the day, but apparently the intervals for the eruption happens between every 30 to 90 minutes. That is not nearly as accurate as folks lead you to believe.

With the whirlwind planning of the 2022 trip I knew we wouldn't be spending the kind of quality time Yellowstone deserves so we took the scenic drive, picked up stamps, and kept an eye out for the scenery and wildlife. In one of our future visits I'll be sure we get a least a week in the area to do some proper hiking and see so much more of what the park has to offer.