Yellowstone Park - the last part, I guess...

Click here to see - Yellowstone Park - upper half of the Mammoth Hot Springs - Part 8

It was already around 2PM and we were tired. We had some lunch and refueled ourselves. But it didn't help much. We were full of impressions, overwhelmed by the places we saw and could hardly take more of it. So the rest of that day was kind of fuzzy and foggy.

 

Yellowstone Park - upper half of the Mammoth Hot Springs - Part 8

Click here to see the bottom part of the - Yellowstone Park - Mammoth Hot Springs - Part 7

As I mentioned earlier, 10 minutes to drive and we stopped at the upper parking lot not really that far from the place we just left. We walked a few steps on the boardwalk and froze... Because everything around was covered with bright white snow... Snowy fields.... Hills of snow... but... how could it be? We took a closer look and found out that it wasn't snow at all, but salt and minerals. 

 

Yellowstone Park - Mammoth Hot Springs - Part 7

Click here to see the morning start - Yellowstone Park - on the road from here to there - Part 6 

At some point we found ourselves heading out of the park. No, we didn't plan to leave just yet, but we wanted to see the gate in the Montana entrance. And... I have to say the gate looked really worth driving an extra half an hour to see it.

 

Yellowstone Park - on the road from here to there - Part 6

Click here to see - Yellowstone Park - Grand Prismatic Spring and Old Faithful - Part 5

It was a long day full of impressions after a mostly sleepless night so the following night we slept like a log (or better to say as a wood-pile ;) ). Next day in the morning we left the hotel early and were on the road again. First we stopped at the Upper Falls again and stayed there listening to the sound of crashing water...

 

Yellowstone Park - Grand Prismatic Spring and Old Faithful - Part 5

Click here to see the previous part - Yellowstone Park - a very alone buffalo and more geysers - Part 4

We left the Fountain Paint Pot area and drove down the road. By this time the weather changed. Mild and even warm midday turned into a chilly afternoon. So when we stopped next time we found more steam and white fog covering the ponds, lakes and geysers.

 

Yellowstone Park - a very alone buffalo and more geysers - Part 4

Click here to look at Porcelain Basin - Yellowstone Park - Porcelain Basin - Part 3 

We left a Porcelain Basin and moved further. It was close to midday and the chilly morning was replaced by a nice and warm, almost Summer, day. We stopped here and there for just a few minutes and returned back on the road.

There are a lot of waterfalls in Yellowstone Park and every one of them look unique. The next one we found on the side of the road was striped.

 

Yellowstone Park - Porcelain Basin - Part 3

Click here to looks at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone - Yellowstone Park - buffalos and waterfalls - Part 2 

The roads in Yellowstone Park are good. And it's a real pleasure moving from one place to another so we really enjoyed it. There are some sideroads running out here and there so we took one of them to discover something outside of the main road. We were rewarded with another waterfall we could see not far away.

 

Yellowstone Park - buffalos and waterfalls - Part 2

Click here to see where it started - Yellowstone Park - lake, river and Dragon's Mouth - Part 1

We left Devil's Kitchen (mostly because no one offered us breakfast so we had no reason to stay longer) and moved further. We had something like 150 miles of the road to cover and multiple spots to see. And 150 miles is only the main road... Totally there are over 300 miles of accessible roads in the park. And don't forget they also have a lot of dirty roads and off-road trails. Not to mention hiking trails... But because we had very little time, we only counted to cover the main road so... 10 miles later we were stopped by a traffic jam caused by buffalo's herd walking on the road.

 

Yellowstone Park - lake, river and Dragon's Mouth - Part 1

Yellowstone park is one the the most beautiful and unusual places on Earth to visit. It's easy to spend days and weeks exploring and you never are going to get bored. Our trip there was way too short - just two days. What can you do there if you have two days? Not much... just make a drive around the park on the main road and stop on the main viewpoints. But it is still worth doing even if you have not enough time for hikes or to look at anything outside the main route.

Early September is a really good time to take a trip to Yellowstone National Park. Why? For many reasons and the first is the weather - it's already not toasty hot, but also still not freezing cold (we, actually, filed for an exception and got one ;) but we'll talk about it later). Another reason is the crowd - there are much fewer people here in September when students return to school. So we started from Denver late Friday and planned to drive 500 miles overnight. We wanted to see the sunrise in the park... and we got it! It was around 6AM when we reached the south entrance and was driving along Yellowstone Lake...