DAY 6 OF 10 OF OUR EPIC SUMMER JOURNEY
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK ~ PART 1!!
DAY 6 - Yellowstone Part I: Lower Loop
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| Sights on the Lower and Upper Yellowstone Loops. There are many maps for referral. HERE is another really helpful one. |
The hardest part during our planning process was essentially just trying to figure out what we wanted to do, how to spend the day in the parks and where to lay our heads at night. After quite a bit of research, we decided we could traverse Yellowstone for 2 days and that would give us enough time to see the majority of its highlights. Day 6 would be spent on the Lower Loop and Day 7 on the Upper Loop, since the Grand Loop Road in Yellowstone is laid out in a figure 8 pattern.
Island Park was only about a 30-minute drive to the West Yellowstone Visitor Entrance and then there's about another half-an-hour drive to he Midway Geyser Basin. Again, we found it was SO much less expensive to stay outside of the park, especially with our big group.
First Stop: Midway Geyser Basin! It's an easy boardwalk loop that leads you past a few smaller geysers to the Grand Prismatic Spring, which is the largest hot spring in Yellowstone. You definitely don't want to miss all the hydrothermal features here!
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| Satellite Map of the Boardwalk Loop |
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| Firehole River |
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| Opal Pool |
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| Sapphire Pool |
I was amazed at the beautiful flowers that grow around the geysers!
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| Excelsior Geyser Crater |
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| Grand Prismatic Spring |
So many beautiful colors in these geysers!!
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| Sapphire Pool |
More beautiful flowers!!
After we spent some time at the geysers, it was off to see the first one in the park to earn its name (in 1870): Old Faithful! As implied, it has "faithfully" erupted every 44-122 minutes since 2000. To my surprise, we didn't have to wait but maybe about 30 minutes after arrival to witness its spectacular show!
There were many geysers in the area and while we were waiting patiently on Old Faithful, we saw others erupting over the trees in the distance.
By this point, we'd had a big day exploring Yellowstone's Lower Loop, so it was time to head back to Island Park. The next day, we decided to tackle a Tower Falls hike on the Upper Loop and end the day at Mammoth Hot Springs before heading to Bozeman, Montana, where we would finish our journey.
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| I found this map with driving times to be extremely helpful during our planning phase and navigating how we should spend our 2 days in Yellowstone National Park. Count on at least 4 hours of drive time (only) for the Lower Loop and at least 2.5-3 for the Upper Loop (4-7 total with no sightseeing). |
Seriously... all 6 days of windshield time during our trip was exceptionally beautiful!
Our AirBNB in Island Park was in a pretty remote location and while we watched a little TV, the majority of family-time the 2 nights we stayed there was spent working on this awesome 1,000 piece Canoe Lake jigsaw puzzle. I won't take much more credit than placing a piece or two, because I finished reading Sycamore Row by John Grisham (the book I started on the plane). He's one of my favorite authors and I loved his novel, A Time to Kill.
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| Night 1 of working on the jigsaw puzzle. |
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| Trying to finish up before heading out for Yellowstone Day 2!! |
It was a huge group effort, but the puzzle was finally finished the morning of our departure. After ALL that work and hunting high and low around the dining room table, it came to be that there was a single missing puzzle piece!
And then!! During our last cleaning sweep before walking out the door (with most of our crowd already in the cars), lo and behold... what was on the coffee table?!
WE FOUND THE MISSING PIECE!!
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| LeAnn putting in the missing piece... |
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| The finished project!! (I hope our AirBNB family framed it; we left it on the table for them) |
Stay tuned for Day 7 of 10 of Yellowstone Part II: Upper Loop!!
Cheers, y'all!!
xoxoxo
(See Day 1, Day 2 {P1}, Day 2 {P2}, Day 3 {P1} Day 3{P2}, Day 3{P3} Day 4 and Day 5)
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