Summer/Fall 2023, Nine State Tour, 8.20.23 - 9.25.23, Part 1 of 9: Yellowstone National Park

If there was one word to encapsulate what this trip was all about, I would have to say variety. We travelled through nine states over thirty-seven days and went through an amazing array of experiences. We hiked at over eleven thousand feet, we camped in the backcountry of the desert and met up with various friends and family along the way.

So let’s start at the beginning. Bridgit and I hit the pavement on Sunday, August 20th in the Navibahn with Jeep in tow. Late summer is fire season and we hit thick smoke from several fires before even crossing the Cascades to eastern Washington. Near Spokane we had to take a detour around a fire that had closed a section of I-90. Including lunch, dinner and gas stops we put in a ten hour day to Quartz Flat Campground right off the interstate a couple of hours east of Spokane in Montana. The smoke was barely detectable by the time we arrived and we were excited to get to Yellowstone the following day.

An eight hour drive the next morning got us to the northern entrance to Yellowstone. It had been drizzly on and off throughout the drive but it really started dumping between Livingston and Gardiner. There was no line at the north gate and the rain stopped as we entered the park. This was my fifth visit to Yellowstone and Bridgit’s third. It never gets old. Since we planned to be in the park for five nights, we reserved a spot at Fishing Bridge Campground because it is the only campground inside the park with hookups. It is geographically convenient for traveling throughout the park but I didn’t like the campground much at all. They just pack you in next to each other and we didn’t even have a picnic table. Not my kind of campground but we didn’t spend a lot of time at the rig so it was fine.

The ranger at Fishing Bridge said that the grizzlies had been very active just east of the campground all the way out to the east gate, especially around dusk. This area was also where we had seen grizzlies the last time we visited Yellowstone so once we were settled and fed we hopped in the Jeep and drove east past Pelican Creek and up to Lake Butte Overlook. We were on high alert the whole way and stopped at a few spots to look around but didn’t see any wildlife.

**Yellowstone Lake from Lake Butte Overlook**

Each time we come to Yellowstone we see different things. On our previous trip we had been unable to visit Norris Geyser Basin due to ice on the boardwalks. We were looking forward to seeing this area, the most thermally active and hottest place in the park, which includes the world’s tallest geyser called Steamboat Geyser. We were up and out at six-thirty and drove up through the beautiful Hayden Valley. At sunrise there was hardly any traffic and we were one of the first cars to park at Norris Geyser Basin parking lot. The basin has two loops. One is called Porcelain Basin and the other is called Back Basin. I think to do both is roughly two and a half miles of walking.

We wandered through Porcelain Basin first and then did the Back Basin Loop to get back to the Jeep. In the early morning, the steam from the thermal vents really gave the whole area a mystical feel. We were glad we did it so early in the morning as it can get pretty crowded as the day progresses.

We expected rain but after Norris it started getting sunny so we headed up the west side to Mammoth and then out towards Lamar Valley. We hit three long construction delays and the third one which was out past Slough Creek looked to be a really long wait so we turned around and drove over Dunraven Pass to get back to Fishing Bridge. This pass was closed on out last visit and we had never been over it. As you climb out of the forest and get up to timberline it becomes extremely scenic. We stopped near the top at the road up to Mt. Washburn. It doesn’t go all the way to the top but it gets you to the highest point in the park you can drive to. A trail continues to the summit but we weren’t feeling it so we dropped down the other side back to our camp.

A nap, some dinner and we were ready to head out again to look for bears. This time we drove east again but went all the way up to Sylvan Pass before turning around. We made a stop at pretty Sylvan Lake where we met Shauna and Shane from Massachusetts who were also out looking for bears. They were just one of many couples we met on our trip. We love meeting new people and it is certainly one of the great things about traveling.

Our second full day in Yellowstone had a good weather forecast so we spent the entire day exploring on the west side of the park. We watched Old Faithful go off, hiked through Upper Geyser Basin, Black Sand Basin, Biscuit Basin, drove through Fireehole Canyon Drive and walked through the Fountain Paint Pots. We would have stopped by the Grand Prismatic but there was just an insane amount of people there and since we had been there before we skipped it this time.

I really love Upper Geyser Basin. It starts at Old Faithful and has a ton of geysers, fumaroles and springs. The incredibly beautiful Firehole River winds through it all. It is just a really magical place. I was hoping to get a shot of Lion Geyser erupting behind the lovely Heart Spring. This is one of the “predictable” geysers. I even got there shortly before it was predicted to erupt but I gave it close to an hour and nothing ever happened so I moved on. We passed by one of our favorites, Sawmill Geyser, that seems to shoot high sprays constantly. I also really like Beauty Pool and Chromatic Spring. At the end of the hike we came to Morning Glory Pool which we had missed on our last visit. Wow! What an unbelievable sight! The colors are so vivid and the pool is so clear it is hard to comprehend. Other than the Grand Prismatic, it is the most impressive pool I’d ever seen.

On our way back to Old Faithful we stopped at Riverside Geyser. It was predicted to erupt about a half hour after we arrived so we waited. Riverside is just that. A geyser located right on the far bank of the Firehole River. You know it is getting close to eruption time when the pool inside the geyser cone fills up with water and begins to pour over the side down into the river. We watched the whole thing from before the pool filled up and almost right at the earliest predicted time it shot up a good seventy-five feet and it lasted for almost twenty minutes!

**Sunbathing bison at Fountain Paint Pots**

So this whole day was leading up to the hope of capturing a particular event at sunset. We had been to a geyser along Firehole Lake Drive on our first visit to Yellowstone. It is called the Great Fountain Geyser and it is especially beautiful due to having a large circular pool surrounding it. I had seen photos of it erupting at sunset where the photographer positioned the setting sun right behind the spout of the geyser, resulting not only in the spray being lit up by the setting sun, but also seeing the pool a brilliant orange color from clouds reflected on the surface of the pool. I wanted that shot! I at least wanted a shot at that shot!

So the first obstacle was that for the past two years, Firehole Lake Drive has been closed due to road damage. It is only a mile to walk out to the geyser so we figured we could handle that. Then we heard that along that stretch of closed road has been an active grizzly area. Okay. Not to be deterred, we put our headlamps in our day packs, took the safety off our bear spray and hiked down a lonely, empty road to the Great Fountain Geyser around five o’clock in the evening for a seven o’clock sunset.

When we got there, much to our surprise, there were several other people already there. One family was just there for a few minutes and then left. The other two couples are what I like to call “geyser geeks”. There is a whole community of people that live for studying geysers. They have their little notebooks out and they are constantly on their walkie talkies with other geyser geeks watching other geysers. But they do know their shit, I’ll give ‘em that!

The Great Fountain Geyser is what I would call semi-predictable. It goes off roughly every eleven hours but even that’s a rough estimate. Similar to Riverside Geyser, the middle pool fills up with water and then the outer pool slowly fills to where it flows over the edge of a really cool outer ring. After that happens, it might erupt within an hour or two. Well we waited and waited. While waiting, I walked down about a quarter mile to another geyser that is much more predictable and reliable. Every half hour the White Cone Geyser goes off. It went off right after I arrived which was nice. I like the cone geysers because they look like volcanoes.

The inner pool of the Great Fountain Geyser wasn’t filling at all and the two geyser geek couples gave up and left. This left Bridgit and I completely alone in the middle of one of the most popular national parks in a very beautiful setting. Just us and the bears. We waited all the way to sunset. We knew it wasn’t going to erupt but I thought at least I could get some nice color in the pool and I did. As a bonus I even got a nice shot of the Great Fountain Geyser with White Cone Geyser erupting in the background. So it wasn’t a total bust by any stretch.

**Great Fountain Geyser and White Cone Geyser**

Once the sun had set we thought it might be prudent to get back to the car before total darkness. Clutching our bear spray, we marched back down the road to the car. Thankfully we didn’t get eaten by any bears and I have to give huge kudos to my spouse. There are not a lot of wives out there that would agree to hike a closed road as darkness approaches in a known grizzly habitat. She’s got spunk that girl!

In the morning we drove back over Dunraven Pass and out through Lamar Valley. We stopped at one crowd supposedly looking at a grizzly through their scopes but we saw nothing and moved on. After stopping in Cooke City for a great breakfast sandwich at Cooke City Coffee we drove up the Beartooth Highway all the way to the Montana border before turning around. If you’ve never been on this road, in my humble opinion this might just be the most beautiful drive in the country. I’ve been to the Beartooths several times and even spent a whole week hiking there a couple of years ago. The road winds up past gorgeous lakes, takes you above timberline and tops out at 10,947’ Beartooth Pass. I would love to get back there and do a week of backpacking. The Beartooth Plateau holds more than three hundred lakes. The place is a paradise.

To get back to Fishing Bridge we made it a loop by driving south over the Chief Joseph Scenic Byway to Cody, Wyoming and then following Highway 14, the Buffalo Bill Cody Scenic Byway west back to Yellowstone. This byway is also extremely scenic. Bridgit and I agreed we could camp around Cody and spend a few days just in that area exploring this stretch of road.

Our last day in Yellowstone was a rest day. We slept in, drove up through Hayden Valley to Artist Point to gaze at the incredible view of the Lower Falls of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and then parked at the Nez Perce Ford for a picnic lunch. We took one last short hike out to Storm Point which is an easy trail east of Fishing Bridge out to a point on Yellowstone Lake. We never saw any bears or wolves on this trip but we also didn’t see very many people. I was pleasantly surprised at how quiet the park seemed for late August. Other than huge crowds at the Grand Prismatic near mid-day, we never had any problems parking. Spots like Artist Point were strangely quiet with very few people up on the viewing platform.

It was a great five days in Yellowstone. We may go back sometime in May. I have read that this is when we would have the best chance to see lots of wildlife as they are all waking up from winter. But now we were ready to move on to our next adventure which will be in the next installment of our Summer/Fall Nine State Tour.

Summer/Fall 2023, Nine State Tour, 8.20.23 - 9.25.23, Part 1 of 9: Yellowstone National Park

Spring 2024 Southwestern Swing, 4.01.24 - 5.06.24, Part 16, South Coyote Buttes

Summer/Fall 2023, Nine State Tour, 8.20.23 - 9.25.23, Part 2 of 9: Dubois, Wyoming