Yellowstone National Park

 On June 24th & 25th, we visited Yellowstone.  It truly is a magnificent park.  

Since the park is just north of Grand Teton National Park and the roads had been cleared of snow for about a week, we were able to enter from the south.  

The American Bison (mistakenly called Buffalo - it has since been proven that they are genetically unrelated to Buffalo and should be called Bison) were numerous and, unlike their ancestors, unafraid of humans.  They were grazing next to the parking lot and ambled within a few feet of the interested tourists.

Because we were with a tour group, we only were able to see what could be observed from the main road and the observation points.  This is the Upper falls of the Yellowstone river.  The observation point was immediately adjacent to the parking lot where the Bison were grazing.

This is the Lower falls of the Yellowstone river just a few miles north and east of the previous observation point.

These are mud pots.  The signs indicate that the Native Americans would build their winter hogans close to the mud pots to utilize the thermal energy.

This is only one example of the sulphur caldrons.  There were barriers to keep tourists protected and signs indicating that if one fell in, the heat and the sulphuric acid would kill a person within a few seconds.

Even though it was late June and the roads had been cleared, the snow at the higher elevations was still evident.  The road appears in the lower right portion of this picture.  The head of an average person standing next to the would come just above the striations in the lower portion.

We were able to view "Old Faithful" in all of its glory.  

Bear!!  We were able to see a bear up-close.  We saw Bison, Deer, Elk, Eagles, and Condors.

As we left the park by the East entrance, we followed Yellowstone Lake for several miles.


The park is so immense that one could spend an entire life in the park and not see it all.  We spent two nights at Grant village and drove most of the approximately 100 miles of roadways within the park.