We were up and at ’em early from our campsite alongside Hebgen Lake with the GPS set to what is arguably Yellowstone National Park’s most popular and famous landmark: Old Faithful. The geyser erupts roughly every 90 minutes – give or take 10-15 – and can get absolutely packed with crowds during the middle of the day, so we aimed to catch one of the first daytime spouts for our first day in the national park. We rolled out of the Rainbow Point Campground right as the geyser was blowing its top, so with roughly 70 minutes of driving ahead of us everything looked like it was going to align… Even at 7AM there were already quite a few people deep into the park, but we arrived right on time and only had to wait a few minutes before Old Faithful treated us to a sky-high tower of boiling water!
Yellowstone National Park is massive, stretching across an astonishing 3,472 square miles/8,992 square kilometers. There’s 10,000+ hydrothermal springs and more than 500 active geysers inside the park boundaries. We had no intention of covering the entire park in a single day, so targeted the Old Faithful, Norris Basin and and Canyon Village areas on day one. Even in those three areas we had to pick-and-choose the spots we wanted to hit, starting with the boardwalks through Midway Geyser Basin and the Fountain Paint Pot Trail as our first walking adventures of the morning. The crowds were pretty astonishing: even at 8AM on a weekday the parking lots for both spots were jam packed, with only roadside parking followed by a short walk to the trailheads unless we wanted to sit in a line of cars leading into the lots.
We were treated to a lone bison by the side of the road – the first of many we saw – on our way towards Midway Geyser Basin. They’re such behemoth animals, it would have been amazing to see the plains hundreds of years ago covered with millions of them. I don’t think any of us were prepared for the gamut of stunning colors as we walked across the Firehole River and up to the Grand Prismatic Spring: the bacteria and thermophiles growing in the superheated water from the springs emptying into the river created blankets of bright yellow and red, and the springs themselves were such an incredible turquoise blue. Reminded me a lot of the water color underneath the Mendenhall Glacier when we were in Alaska in 2021, such incredible colors…
We stopped by the Fountain Paint Pot Trail as we motored north through the park, very cool to be able to get up-close-and-personal with the Silex Spring, with its slowly boiling, crystal clear turquoise water. The bubbling mud pits of the Fountain Paint Pots themselves were also a favorite with the kids. It was a picturesque drive back to the western park entrance and past thundering Gibbon Falls before we made it to Norris Basin (and another hike into the trailhead due to the incredibly crowded parking lot!).
Norris Geyser Basin is Yellowstone’s hottest, oldest, and most dynamic thermal area, with features dating back at least 115,000 years. The basin holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in a Yellowstone geothermal area, where at one spot the ground was measured to be 459°F/237°C (!). Most of the features within the basin maintain their steady state temperatures above boiling point and are very acidic, the smell of sulphur in some spots literally made our eyes water… Steamboat Geyser is in Norris Basin and on occasions when it spouts – which only occurs once or twice a year – it shoots boiling water up to 400 feet/120 meters into the air.
Given Yellowstone’s size it can make for a lot of time in the car getting from one area to another… Unlike Glacier – which boasts an almost endless array of stunning hikes across the park – Yellowstone was a bit more limiting when it came to worthy adventures on foot. I did find a hike that took us along the charging Yellowstone River via the South Rim Trail and past Upper Yellowstone Falls. The power of the water in Yellowstone River was incredible, we could feel the rapids moving the air around us as we walked nearby. Both the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls were pretty awe inspiring, their size and the amount of water cascading over the drops dwarfed anything I’d seen seen in recent memory (except for maybe Shoshone Falls in Twin Falls). The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was stunning as well: amazing to think how much water and how many years it would have taken to carve the 1200 foot/375 meter deep canyon into the rock.
We scooted past the steaming cauldrons and bubbling mud volcanoes of Hayden Valley to finish up our first day, keeping an eye out for elk and buffalo – we saw a handful of buffalo in the distance – as we drove through the picturesque grassland on our way east. The Yellowstone River winding through Hayden Valley on its way to Yellowstone Falls looked like a fabulous place to throw in a line, but there’s only so much time in a day (and Wild Man was dead to the world when we passed through [see below!]). Both kids slept most of the way from the park as we cruised east out of Yellowstone, over towering Sylvan Pass and along the Shoshone River into the plains of eastern Wyoming.
Our destination for the night was Cody, the ranching town on the eastern edge of the Rockies founded in 1896 by the one and only William “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Buffalo Bill first passed through the area in the 1870s and was captivated by its potential for development, with rich soil, scenic beauty, abundant hunting, and its prime location as a gateway to Yellowstone National Park. He returned in the mid-1890s with a group of investors to establish the town. I really wanted to see a rodeo while we were in the Mountain West, and Cody hosts one every night from June through August, acting as somewhat of a proving ground for top ranked amateurs on the circuit. Campgrounds were pretty limited within a reasonable distance of town, so we bunked in for the night at a real stinker of a spot next to Buffalo Bill Reservoir a short drive from town (the view was nice, but it was only a few hundred feet from the adjacent highway, which made ear plugs a necessity…).
The town of Cody itself was a real treat, we felt like we’d been plunked onto a Western movie set with gun shops, leather goods stores, classic saloons and a generous helping of Harleys along the main drag. Max bought himself a spring-loaded pocket knife as a souvenir and we enjoyed watching a reenactment of a Wild West gunfight out front of Buffalo Bill’s Irma Hotel as we strolled (and Dad enjoyed a $3 beer from the bar!). There were no shortage of food options as we explored, but we eventually settled on something authentically Wyoming: Legacy Butcher sold meat during the day – everything from bison to elk to beef – and morphed into a scrumptious burger joint each night. We tried an elk, bison and beef burgers between us, some great food with waffle fries to die for. The experience was made all the more memorable by the local rancher who treated me to a beer because he was so encouraged to see a family sitting at dinner talking to each other without having noses glued to smartphone screens (sadly an all too familiar sight in this day and age…)!
The rodeo tradition in Cody began with Buffalo Bill Cody himself: he held tryouts for his Wild West Show in the area, and after his death the first official Cody Stampede Rodeo was founded in 1919. Since then it has become a key part of the town’s Fourth of July celebrations and is one of the longest-running professional rodeos in the US. In 1938 the Cody Night Rodeo was established and, along with the annual Independence Day Cody Stampede, has earned Cody the nickname “Rodeo Capital of the World.”
It was a ton of fun, with all the standard events – bronc riding, calf roping, barrel racing and bull riding – on show. The MC kept things moving with clockwork precision, and the antics of the rodeo clowns gave the kids plenty of laughs throughout the night. I think Lilia enjoyed the night the most out of the three of us, no doubt partly due to multiple reminders to keep her eye on the arena instead of the young cowboys prepping the chutes below us. It was a slog to drive to Cody and back from Yellowstone, but well worth the effort, such a great town and I have no doubt the kids will remember their first Mountain West rodeo for many years to come.
After a bit of a rough night’s sleep next to the reservoir we made our way back to Sylvan Pass and over to Yellowstone Lake again. The almost mirror-like surface of the massive lake and steaming geysers along the short was a stark contrast to the afternoon before, when the wind was whipping up ocean-sized waves across the surface. West Thumb was our last main area of Yellowstone to explore, another stunning collection of crystal clear, turquoise colored springs and bubbling mud pools on the fringes of Yellowstone Lake. Max and I couldn’t let the enticing water of Yellowstone Lake pass us by so enjoyed a refreshing albeit icy dip just before lunch, after which we continued south along Highway 191 over the Continental Divide and out of the park.
I’m glad we looped in Yellowstone to our tour of the Mountain West, although I think Glacier was much more the family’s cup of tea. Yellowstone is spread over such a massive area, which made for a lot of time driving between sites. It also didn’t have the grandness of the Glacier mountains, although the endless array of stunning hot springs and bubbling mud volcanoes were indeed very memorable. It would have been amazing to see it 20+ years ago before wolves were reintroduced and herds of elk and buffalo were more prevalent. I’m glad we went, but I think if we return to the Mountain West anytime soon we’re much more likely to revisit the Rockies of Montana.
It’s only a few miles from the southern edge of Yellowstone to the northern boundary of Grand Teton National Park. Jackson Lake with the towering Teton Range as a backdrop was truly a sight to behold, as we drove south I kept pulling over to take pictures at almost every pullout, much to the chagrin of the groms. Each stop was more grand than the last, and in hindsight I should have just waited until the southerly Snake River Overlook! We put our legs to work with a few miles of hiking and swim at Taggart Lake, a very pretty walk through the woods with the Grand Tetons encircling the trail. (The kids weren’t overly pumped with another hike so I had to bribe them with the promise of a Frosty each from Wendy’s later that day…)
Post-hike we braved a mile-long traffic jam as the afternoon vehicles from the national parks attempted to make their way into Jackson. Last time I visited was as a teenager on a winter trip to Jackson Hole and I was surprised how many of the spots on the iconic central town square jogged my memory (the grey matter is still alive and well, it seems…). Jackson had a decidedly more tourist-centric feel than the Wild West environs of Cody the night before, but fun to stop in nonetheless (I don’t think I need to go back anytime soon though, I’m getting too curmudgeonly in my old age for that many tourists in one place…). I delivered the promised Frostys and we high-tailed it west into Idaho for a night on the banks of the Snake River to finish up our tour of the Mountain West. What an amazing couple of weeks!
More games of That’s Your House, Blackout, Guess Who and Guess This Song as we made our way across hundreds of miles of high desert between Wyoming and the Sierra Nevada. We did manage a very fun morning ride on the City Creek trails of Pocatello above Idaho State University on the way home though, a great way to break up the long drive (I need to get back to Pocatello some day, looked like a very fun town…). By the time we rolled into Soda Springs last night the 4Runner had clocked 3,005 miles/4,840 kilometers since we’d embarked on our journey a couple of weeks prior. She performed well, no issues with the rig and all the camping gear we put together was excellent, as was the new fridge and electronics setup I built for the trip. I was also most impressed with the 23Zero swag I purchased for the adventure, much improved compared to my sleeping quarters at rural parties when I was teenager and university student. So comfortable, in fact, that I managed to get through an entire book under the stars each night (The Race to Be Myself was great). Only major mishaps were a single flat tire on Max’s Ellsworth and one snapped bike rack mount as we motored north through Montana.
Lots of good memories from this loop, for sure…
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