Yellowstone National Park

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This post is basically adding to Samir’s earlier post on Yellowstone.

We went to Yellowstone National Park this long weekend and it is a beautiful park to goto. We flew into Salt Lake City and drove to West Yellowstone (a town right outside the park). The drive is about 5-6 hours (including breaks).

You can also explore flying into closer airports to Yellowstone (could be a bit expensive). It does not really matter whether you enter Yellowstone national park thru East, West, North or South entrances.

But the West Entrance seems to be the popular one. We stayed at Old Faithful Street Inn in West Yellowstone city and its a good place to stay and a good price too.

There are 2 loops in YNP. North and South. Each takes 1 day. (Hopefully you can leave the hotel early by 9.30am to take full advantage of the things to do).

Yellowstone has lots of Bisons, Deer like animals, Hot sulphur springs, Geysers, Streams, Waterfalls. So you will catch glimpse of these without making much effort. However If you are lucky you may catch glimpse of bears, owls, coyotes, moose, fox, etc. We were lucky on second day during our north loop drive to have seen 3 bears at different locations. This location was basically the Lamar Valley.

As soon as the hint of some animal is nearby the road is suddenly filled with activity. Cars stop by the roadside and people climb out with binoculars to view the animal. Somehow magically the rangers also appear and try to control the flow of the cars. They are helpful and they are not there to drive people away but just making sure that the viewers dont do something by which the animals will spring some surprise.

Yellowstone has good signs all over the park (about scenic spots). So you can make stops as you wish. There are parking lots and pullouts. And restrooms are in plenty too (some of them are non-flush variety).

Its well commercialized in the sense that there are wooden walkways at important spots. So you can take stroller along. The weather was great when we went and there was just a little snow at top of mountains. But it seems that it can rain anytime. So be ready with umbrellas.

Take some time out to do some natural hiking on dirt pathways rather than walking on standard wooden pathways. Yellowstone has many streams and meadows and just being among nature should be exciting enough.

On the way back, We took a scenic bypass which led us thru the Maze Falls. Its a nice falls if you have the time. Then we stopped at Yellowstone Bear World in Rexburg Idaho. This place is sort of like a safari where you drive your cars and bears will be moving around you. They have plenty of bears here. So if you did not see any in YNP, dont worry. Here you will seem them pretty close from your car. They have some good rides for the kids also.