Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park is the oldest national park in the world, at around 3500 square miles it is huge and covers forests, meadows and gorges. It is full of wildlife , but is probably most famous for its geothermal activity and its geysers, the most famous of course is 'Old Faithful'. With the park being so big you have to pick your places based on the time you have in the park. We had a couple of days so went for the obvious tourist spots and also picked a trail to get away from the crowds for a while.

On day one we decided our first stop would be to visit old faithful, probably the most famous feature of the park. A very busy tourist attraction, with ample parking, restaurant and bar and the obligatory souvenir shops. The Geyser itself has a viewing deck that runs around at a safe distance as the water that is ejected out is close to boiling. When we arrived we headed straight for the viewing deck and joined the wait for the geyser to blow. Apparently Old Faithful erupts around every 90 minutes, but can be anywhere from 44 to 180 minutes, so we waited for our show.

Following the eruption we took a walk around the Upper Geyser hill Trail, a large area of geothermal activity that surrounds Old Faithful. The full trail extends to around 4km, and has lots of interesting and colourful geothermal pools and smaller more geysers that erupt more frequently. This trail also allows you to leave the crowd behind as many visitors linger near Old Faithful for the chance of another photo.

Following Old Faithful we drove over to the Fountain Flats Drive/Freight Road Trailhead carpark as we had decided to link a few trails together. We started out crossing the Firehouse river where there was hot spring water colouring the banks and turned immediately to the right along the Sentinel Meadows Trail. The trail takes you away from the river across an open meadow where you have to cross a few wet spots even in summer and then on towards Mound Spring, a geothermal spring that has risen about the surrounding landscape. The walk across was great as we were literally the only people on this trail, there was however one solitary bison sitting near the spring.

The trail passed Mound Spring and turned into the wood that had flanked the left of the trail across the meadow. This is where the sentinel Meadow Trail changes into the Imperial Meadow Trail. After a short walk through the wooded area you come across Imperial meadow and a huge area of geothermal activity. This area is amazing. It has an array of bubbling pools ranging from deep blue through all colours of the rainbow and the trail takes you straight through the middle of the activity. I managed to get some really good aerial shots of these pools.

We followed the trail through the pools and over a log bridge over fire creek and then a short distance farther on turned right onto the Fairy Falls Trail. This trail takes you through more meadow, a few more areas of geothermal activity and past a few areas of scattered woodland before bringing you out at Fairy Falls. There is an option along this trail to take another right walk up to Imperial Geyser, this would add another mile or so to your hike, we opted to carry on straight to the falls.

The falls are quite impressive, even in the summer and at around 200ft high are supposedly one of the more impressive waterfalls in Yellowstone. From the falls we continued along the Fairy Falls Trail passing through thicker woodland scattered with dead trees until we arrived at the Fairy Falls Trailhead. This is just behind the Grand Prismatic Spring, however here we turned left and continued to follow the Fairy Falls Trail. The return journey to the car was quite direct, again through open meadow, small clumps of broken woodland and skirting the edge of goose lake

After returning to the car, we left the park for the day as the round trip we took was around 10 miles. We left through the west entrance and stayed in West Yellowstone for the night.

The following morning we returned through the west entrance and had a drive down to the Grand Prismatic Spring, an incredibly colourful and large spring that attracts as many visitors as Old Faithful as it has a dedicated car park and a small looped trail, the Midway Geyser Basin Trail that takes you right to the edge of the Grand Prismatic spring and the surrounding geothermal activity. The whole trail is less than a mile long but gets you up and close to the beautiful colours of the spring.

From the Grand Prismatic Spring we drove south for just over a mile to the Fairy Falls parking lot and again followed the Fairy Falls Trail, but this time from the other end. The trail runs around the back of the Grand Prismatic Spring and after about a third of a mile you can take a path to the left that takes you up into the wood and on to the Grand Prismatic Spring overlook. This position gives you a stunning view of the spring.

After the great view of the Spring we returned to the car and took quite a long drive over to The Grand Canyon Of Yellowstone. It is quite a drive at around 40 miles, but worth the time to visit. We parked up on the Artist Point Trailhead car park and took the Artist Point Trail. This is only a short trail, but offers you outstanding views of the gorge, the Yellowstone river and Yellowstone Lower Falls. The lower falls are the largest volume falls in in the whole of the Rocky Mountains and cascade over 300ft to the river below.

Finally after the Canyon we drove over to the East entrance to leave the park. We followed the Yellowstone River out toward the exit and were treated to large numbers of bison grazing in the meadows beside the road. We stopped for a while to watch them and one of the herds crossed the river and came really close before moving on again, then slightly further down the road the traffic had to stop as a number of bison were blocking the road and walking amongst the traffic. When the traffic got moving again we continue on and left the park to find somewhere to stay before traveling on and into Wyoming and Devils Tower