Yellowstone 2021: Day 2 - One week in one day

On our way to Yellowstone Brandon and I told the kids about all our other trips to the park.  Here's a quick run down for you. (And there are links to blog posts where available.) 

1988 - Brandon's first trip with his family.

1999? - Brandon's second trip with his family

2002 - My first trip with my family

2008 - Our first trip together for our 1st anniversary

2010 - Our second trip together. My sister Emily and her husband David went too.

2015 - My trip with all four kids without Brandon. (He was at an Army Training) My sister Hillary came with and helped.

2017 - Living in Yellowstone for the summer.

When I wrote about the 2015 trip on this blog I ended it with this paragraph. 

The only sad thing about the whole trip is that Brandon couldn't come. But I've already promised him that we will come back when the kids are older and then we will really explore the park. But until then, I'm glad that we did this trip.

I delivered on that promise when we lived in the park.  But I really delivered on that promise with this visit to the park.  

When we lived in the park Charlotte and Lydia were 6, Derrick was 5, and Veronica was 3.  This time Charlotte and Lydia are 10, Derrick is 9, and Veronica is 7. Veronica is older than Charlotte and Lydia were when we lived in the park.  All four kids have all grown up a lot and are able to do a lot more each day. 

So what I'm trying to say is that we crammed a lot into every day in the park.  Our ability to cover more ground combined with our level of familiarity with the park meant we were able to see and do a lot more than we'd ever been able to do on any of our other trips. 

Time-wise this posts covers one day - Saturday September 4th.  But sightseeing wise it's something like a week.  I hope you are ready. 

I woke up in the morning with the biggest feeling of happiness.  We'd done it! We were back in the park. The day was amazing before I was even out of bed.  I heard an Elk make their bugling mating call. This was one reason I'd always wanted to come to Yellowstone in the Fall. I wanted to hear that call. 

The kids woke up and I took some of them on a bathroom run.  We saw an elk walking through the campground while we walked to the bathroom. (And of course I didn't have a camera with me.) This was such a fun way to start the day.

We are not foodies on vacation so we kept our meals pretty simple.  Brandon boiled water and we had instant oatmeal and hot chocolate for breakfast.  There was also some fruit and some granola bars. 

 

We packed up all the food and the camp stove in the car and then we were on our way.  It was barely 8:30.  Our first stop of the morning was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  We went straight to Inspiration Point. We spotted the Osprey Nest that's been on a spire of rock for years.  (Though it looks like it's abandoned this time of year. 

And then we took in this breathtaking sight. Oh I've missed this. 

And then because we knew we could we took a quick jaunt down the Red Rock Trail.  Other hikers were like, "hmm, where does this trail go? How long is it?" And we just turned and went on it without a second thought.  I remember taking Derrick and Veronica on this trail as a nice little evening activity one night.  So I knew we could all handle this early in the morning. 

The trail goes onto some boardwalk/stairs and leads to another view of the waterfall.

A nice tourist took our picture at the bottom. 

And then we went back up the stairs.  This was a little more strenuous than any of us were used to.  But we did okay.

We drove back to Canyon Village and stopped at the visitor center to use the restrooms there.  

And we looked at the trail I used to walk on between work and the employee campground. 

Then we drove over to the employee campground to see what our site looks like these days.  It was occupied with a little trailer. 

The structure next to our site used to have snowmobiles under it, but now it has trailers.  

And we looked at the other side of my trail. Walking through that meadow was like a gift every day. Gosh I was so lucky that summer. 

We left the Canyon area and drove 12 miles to Norris Geyser Basin. Our plan for today was to do as much as possible on the Northern Loop. 

We decided to do Norris first because hopefully it would suck less if we hadn't seen the other, better geyser basins. I've repeatedly gone on record as a Norris Hater.  You can read my official blog post about it here. (TL;DR I say it's akin to Hell.)

But I do know some tricks for how to make Norris better.  Read the full post if you want them all, but one of the best tricks is to go early in the morning. We were there close to 9:00 and the air was still really cool. That meant the geysers, hot springs, and even little fumaroles were sending out lots of steam. Everything looked amazing. 

And I mean AMAZING!

Maybe it was because this was our first geyser stop, maybe it was because we were there early in the morning, or maybe I was just super excited to be in Yellowstone again - but this was hands down the BEST visit I ever had to Norris Geyser Basin. 

Just look at these pictures of the Porcelain Basin.

I seriously have so many pictures, but you don't want to look at every single one. So just trust me. It was all very awe inspiring. 

We walked out of the Porcelain basin and went over to the trail to the back basin. 

Here's Steamboat geyser. This geyser is the tallest in the park, but it erupts infrequently. When we lived in the park it didn't erupt at all, but it did erupt several times the next year. 

The walk around the Back Basin was more how I remember Norris.  Long trails with features that were mildly interesting. But it was still early enough in the day that we had a good time walking around. 

The highlight, as always, was Vixen Geyser.  Vixen Geyser erupts roughly every seven minutes so we knew to stop and wait for it.  Because we stopped other people on the trail stopped too.  They were all happy when Vixen Geyser erupted and they thanked me for showing them a fun geyser. 

We were all happy when we were done with the Back Basin.  We went back to the parking lot and saw a big line at the rest rooms.  I was pretty certain there were some other restrooms further back in the parking lot so we went that way and I was right.  And there was no line.  Yes!

After leaving Norris we drove north towards Mammoth.  On the way we passed Roaring Mountain,

Bunson Peak,

the  . . . hmm I actually don't know the name of this waterfall.  It's by the Golden Gate so maybe Golden Gate Waterfall? (Brandon just looked it up, its Rustic Falls.)

Here's the Golden Gate. 

And then we went by these cool rock features. 

And finally we popped out in the terrace above Mammoth.

We went on the upper terrace drive which for some reason always reminds me of a drive through zoo, only with geysers outside the windows.

We got out for a second at  . . . crap, I'm blanking on this name too. Orange mound?

We also saw this beautiful terrace. 

We drove down to the lower parts, but the parking lots were jammed so we didn't park near the hot springs.  It was kind of too hot to go climbing all over the terraces anyway. So we went into the building part of Mammoth and found a parking spot across from the hotel.  There was a big grassy field and we spread out the picnic blanket and had lunch there. The kids liked looking into this sink hole. 

We could hear Elk Bugling and then spotted one crossing the street. I was able to zoom in on it with my camera.

Gradually we noticed Elk in other places around the buildings.  I've heard some crazy stories from some of my co-workers who worked in Mammoth.  They talk about being chased by Elk.

How would it be to see this every day?

Everyone needed to go to the bathroom so we walked over to the visitor center to use the bathrooms there. 

The bathrooms had these fun tiles. 

Then we looked at the displays.  Since we never saw a bear in the park (on this trip) here's a picture of the display bear.

After we left the Visitor Center I told everyone I wanted to show them something in the Hotel.  The Mammoth Hotel had been getting remodeled most of the summer when we lived here, so we never went into it as a family.  But I'd been here for a work training one day. I wanted to show the kids the map room.  So we went in there and looked at this really cool wooden map of the United States.  

The room had some other nice amenities too.  There were comfy chairs and fancy tables with power outlets built into the backs. 

There were also chess sets.  The kids sat down to chill out and I pugged in my camera battery charger to get some juice into one of the batteries.  

Brandon sat down and took a nap to get some juice into his batteries.  Derrick and Veronica played some games for a second, but then they wanted to explore some more. 

We went up the spiral stair case to the second story. 

There are conference rooms up here.  This is where I'd had my work training.  

Derrick was still in an exploration mood.  Veronica stayed in the Map Room while Derrick and I went for a walk along the main road.  Those are the hot spring terraces in the back ground. 

We walked passed the Dinning Hall Building and went to the General Store. Then we walked some more.  We made it to where some Elk were hanging out. 

When we walked back to the hotel we noticed the cages around the flowers.  This is so the Elk don't eat the flowers.  

We ran into Veronica in the hotel Lobby and she convinced me to let her and Derrick ride in the elevator.  Then we went into the Map Room and checked in with Brandon.  Charlotte and Lydia weren't there, but we soon found them in the gift shop. 

I just have to say, there is an odd level of familiarity that comes with living in a National Park.  There were hardly any other tourists hanging out in the hotel. There were people EVERYWHERE on the street and in the other buildings, but I guess they didn't realize the hotel was accessible too. 

By this point it was early afternoon and Mammoth was feeling a little too hot and a lot too crowded.  So we decided to go somewhere else for a while and come back to Mammoth in the evening.  

So we drove East towards Roosevelt. Here's Lydia chilling out in the car.  You can see we had much more room now that the tent and other gear was out of the way.

We drove to Roosevelt Lodge which was where I worked the second half of the summer. 

Roosevelt has had some changes this year.  They put in a huge new parking lot about 200 feet from the main lodge.

And they replaced the old parking lot with a grassy knoll.  When I worked here, I heard so many people talk about how they wanted this to happen, but everyone said it was highly unlikely. So it was great to see that it had happened. 

From the parking lot we walked up a sidewalk by some of the cabins.  Roosevelt is closed for the season, and I heard there the cabins were closed this year anyway, so I didn't worry about disturbing anyone. 

We stopped by the cabin that was my office. This was such a cool work space and I've missed it a lot. 

Then we went on a little hike up to the waterfall. I think it's Lost Creek Falls . . .maybe.  The falls were hard to see from the trail and the kids were disappointed.  

But they got over it when we let them play in the water. 

Hanging out at the creek was much more fun than dealing with all the people in Mammoth. We had to leave when Derrick brushed up against some poison oak or something and started getting little bumps.  So we headed back to the car where the first aid kit was.   On our way we passed the grassy knoll again.  Oh it's so much better than a parking lot. 

Oh and I took a picture of the HR Cabin. This is where I'd signed my exit paperwork and turned in my name badge on my last day of work. 

I took this picture of the parking lot because I was just so impressed by how much bigger this one is than the last one. This is such a good change. 

And then we went and took a picture of me with the gate.  Yep, I'll be back again as soon as I can.  (If I didn't have a year round job I'd definitely come back to Roosevelt every summer.)

If we'd been there about a week earlier we could have taken the Dunraven Pass down from Roosevelt to Canyon.  I drove this road 4 days a week to get to work and I love every hairpin turn.  But the road was already closed for the season.  

We also could have driven northeast into the Lamar Valley. Lamar is the best place to see wildlife in Yellowstone.  But we weren't really interested in that.  So we turned around and headed back to Mammoth.  We could see the triangle shape of Hell Roaring Mountain.  I considered this my mountain because I saw it every day on my way to Roosy. 

We still had some time to kill before I figured Mammoth would be less full of tourists so I told Brandon I wanted to drive on the Blacktail Plateau Drive.  This is a one-way dirt road that is about 6 miles long.  I've always wanted to drive on it, but have never had the time.  So we turned off onto the turn off for that road. It was a really pretty drive. 

Here's the dirt road. 

We saw some cars stopped ahead of us and I told Brandon, "if they are stopped their must be an animal around here somewhere."  We looked around and sure enough we saw something off in the distance.  I thought it was a wolf.  When Brandon zoomed in on it with the camera it looked like a coyote. Then we changed our minds and decided it was a wolf.  I'm still not 100% sure if it was a coyote or a wolf, but we are going with wolf because that's a cooler story. 

After seeing the wolf we kept our eyes peeled for more wildlife, but we didn't see anything else.

The road rejoined the main highway and we started driving back toward Mammoth.  Along the way we saw a bison leading a huge line of cars.  There were so many cars stuck behind this bison. 

We stopped at Undine Falls. This waterfall is very pretty and super easy to see from an overlook on a pull out.  Its one of the best, "side of the road" waterfalls in the park. 

We made it back to Mammoth a little after 5 and it was a completely different area.  Most of the cars were gone.  

Here's an elk walking by the hotel.

We were able to park by the hot spring terraces and then walked over to see them.  This is liberty cap.

And here are the terraces.  They were so pretty.

There were still a fair amount of tourists, but nothing like how many there had been in the afternoon. We were relatively by ourselves as we walked up the many steps to reach the different terrace levels. 

Here's part of Minerva Terrace. 

I loved how everything looked in the early evening light. 

Charlotte and Lydia had Antler and Cubby secured to their water backpacks. 

We made it to the top of the terrace. Derrick wanted to keep going to an area on one side of the terrace, but Veronica was pretty adamant that she could go no further. I stayed with Veronica while Brandon took the other kids to the other area.  Brandon took the camera with him.

They saw some cool stuff.

Veronica and I sat on a bench and looked out over the valley.  She kept pointing out shapes on the mountain on the other side of the valley and trying to get me to see them too.  I could kind of see what she was talking about. A guy came and sat down by us.  I'm trying to figure out a way to describe him appropriately. But I'm sure this is completely offensive in some way.  He looked like he was from the country India. Most recently though he was from Oregon.  He and some buddies from all over the country had met up in Salt Lake City and then drove up to see Yellowstone.  His buddies were walking all over the terrace, but he was tired so he sat on the bench with us.  He had fun trying to find Veronica's crazy shapes.  At the end we all could see the foot that she pointed out on the mountain.  It was a fun little moment of connection. 

Brandon and the kids came back and we all started walking back down the terraces. 

Here's the view from the parking lot.  

We drove back while the sun set. 

The kids were so tired.   

I spent most of the drive trying to make a plan for doing laundry.  The laundry room would be closed by the time we got back to camp so doing laundry that evening was out of the question. I'd hoped to get up early like around 6:00 and do laundry while everyone else slept.  But according to the campground map the laundry room didn't open until 8:00. If I started laundry at 8:00 it wouldn't be done until 10:00 and then we'd be stuck trying to sight see with all the other tourists.  

I briefly considered taking our laundry to the laundry room over at the employee campground.  This had the benefit of being considerably cheaper, but I would feel bad if an employee had been planning to do laundry and my stuff was taking up all the machines.  

I talked it over with Brandon.  While we was talking about it Lydia piped up from the back seat. "Sunday is the day of REST so let us sleep in tomorrow!"

That sealed the deal.  I'd just wait to do laundry until the laundry room opened at 8:00 the next morning. 

We had new neighbors at our campsite.  When we got out of the car the dad from the next site over came up to us and asked us how long we'd been in the park.  Brandon said, "less than 24 hours." The guy said, "Oh then you must not have a lot of advise for us."  And Brandon said, "Actually we've been here a lot."  So then we started answering the guys questions.  He was very appreciative. 

We'd stopped at the camp store and ponied up $9.50 for a box of firewood.  (It was cheaper than trying to find somewhere to fit firewood in our car on the drive to Yellowstone.) The kids lit a fire (I think with Brandon supervising) and soon we were roasting hot dogs for dinner. 

We had a really fun time sitting around the fire and talking.  Brandon was saying movie quotes and we were guessing the movies.  

After we were done with the fire we went to the bathroom and made sure everyone brushed their teeth.  Then it was back to the tent.  The kids were super tired and were asleep pretty quickly. 

Here are Derrick and Veronica. They were on an airmattress that had an open sleeping bag laid over it.  Then they were both in their sleeping bags with a big quilt over them.  They were very warm. 

Charlotte and Lydia had the same set up.  Charlotte kept coughing and I sent Brandon to find the cough syrup in the car.  But before he could find it I put a hat on Charlotte and she fell fast asleep. So she never needed cough syrup. 

And here is Brandon and my bed.  We have really warm sleeping bags so we didn't need anything between the sleeping bags and the air mattress.  We did have a quilt over us, but honestly that was overkill for about half the night. Our sleeping bags are so warm I don't even need socks when its cold. 

We got into bed and rested our tired bodies.  This was only day one.  We still had two and a half more days in the park.