Travel Diary: Tour Thru WY, ID, NV, UT & CO, Part 3

We got into Yellowstone just after sunrise. We had visited once before, but our time there was cut short due to a major rainstorm. Apart from the wildfire smoke, the weather forecast looked great this time. With its wide range of natural features Yellowstone National Park never disappoints! When we arrived, we headed west after coming through the south entrance.

Our first stop in the park was the Old Faithful Inn. It’s a massive hotel lodge made up of mostly of pine logs and stone. It’s quite a wondrous site to see. If you’re visiting the park, it’s worth your time to check out the lobby and its enormous fireplace. Outside is a boardwalk that takes you along many different shapes, sizes, and colors of small thermal features and hot springs.

Old Faithful Inn is amazing!

Next to the lodge, of course, it the Old Faithful Geyser. This is something that is synonymous with Yellowstone. The geyser erupts approximately every 45 minutes. This reliable timeframe allows for some time to explore the lodge/boardwalk/exhibits if you arrive just after the geyser’s eruption.

Old Faithful with a view of the Inn

We left the lodge and stopped next at Grand Prismatic Spring. It’s the largest hot spring in the USA. This is another must-do at the park. Not only can you take a boardwalk around and over the spring, there is a short hike up to an overlook. There you can get a really nice view of the bright, vivid rainbow colors of the spring. We didn’t take the overlook hike during our previous visit and regretted doing so. It’s a pretty special view from there.

Grand Prismatic Spring from overlook

Our next stop was Gibbon Falls. You can get a really nice view of the 84 foot falls right off the parking lot.

From there, we drove north skipping some sites we had visited the time before. We stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs. Located here, apart from the mind-blowing springs, is a little village where you can use the restroom, grab a bite to eat and do some shopping. One of the park’s visitor centers is located here as well. The Mammoth Hot Springs are another site to behold. There are a number of otherworldly thermal features here that are unlike anything anywhere else in the world. There is another boardwalk here that allows you to explore the area.

Mammoth Hot Springs is not to be missed!

It was getting late in the afternoon by then, so we decided to venture out the park’s north entrance to search for a spot to camp. At the north entrance is the Roosevelt Arch. The cornerstone to the arch was laid by Theodore Roosevelt in 1903. Inscribed at the top of the arch are the words "For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People". This is a quote from the legislative act that created Yellowstone National Park.

Amazing bucket list drive for anyone who enjoys National Parks!

We drove through the quaint little town of Gardiner, Montana before heading into Gallatin National Forest to find a free spot to camp for the night. After 90 minutes or so exploring the forest and mountains, we settled into a nice spot up on a hill surrounded by trees. While we had been cruising through Gardiner, Brakayla’s turn signals began acting up. I did a little diagnosing to find our turn signal relay had failed. The internal contacts weren’t touching anymore. I rigged up a piece of our recently-expired National Parks Pass to add tension to one of the contacts. That’ll be the fix for now. After a bit of repair, we had a nice, quiet and relaxing evening camping in the forest.

In the morning, we decided to head back into Yellowstone to explore some of the areas we had missed out on during our last visit. I noticed the BRAKE warning lamp had come on when we left camp. I just figured I must have pulled a wire or something during the turn signal relay repair (more on that in the next blog entry). We stopped at Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone to take in some of the remarkable views. Largely carved by the Yellowstone River, the canyon is around 24 miles long and is up to 1200 feet deep.

Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Before we left the boundaries of the park, we paid a short visit to Canyon Village. There we grabbed snack and did a little shopping. There is a small grocery store there if you need to pick up any food items. We finally left the park and drove west into Idaho.

We had a lovely drive through eastern Idaho passing a number of farms and scenic meadows. We arrived in to the Swan Valley area (about 45 miles west of Idaho Falls) in the afternoon to see about a place to camp. We had been tipped off on Instagram about some nice riverside camping at the Falls Campground on Snake River Road. Before we could take the gravel road back to the campground, we had to wait for 30 minutes or so for some ranch hands to clear some machinery. After the wait, we drove through the campground to find every riverside spot taken. Since we were in Caribou-Targhee National Forest, we decided to explore further for some free dispersed camping. Amazingly, we found a spot just down the road! It was in a clearing behind some trees right off the road. We appear to be camping on land that had a lot of cattle traffic due to the large amounts of dung scattered on the ground. The smell was a bit off-putting, but the scenery made it worth putting up with. We actually got used to the smell after a while and didn’t even notice it. Right before dinner-time, we had a visit from two cattle strolling through camp. Imagine relaxing by the fire with a beer in hand only to look up to a giant cow coming your way! We see some wild stuff on the road!

We cooked some burgers on the grill that night and gazed at the stars before “hitting the hay”. We were off to Craters of the Moon National Monument in the morning. Part 4 is coming next.

—Thanks again for reading

Andrew

If you like what you see, check out our map on NanoWhat. You can download a Google map of our roadtrip to The West straight to your phone!