Road trip to Yellowstone National Park

We did a week-long road trip from Seattle to Yellowstone National Park during the last week of August 2012. We started on Saturday morning, Aug 26th, from Seattle. On our way, we stopped at the Snoqualmie falls on I-90. The waterfall was an amazing sight - green surroundings, a huge drop, and a hotel-with-a-view by its side. The mist generated by the falls was so dense that we could see multiple rainbows. From what we have heard, the hike to the bottom of the falls is a must do, but unfortunately it was closed at that time due to some construction work.

Snoqualmie Falls

Continuing on our way to Yellowstone, we decided to take a not-so-short detour to go see the Palouse falls. Palouse falls is in the middle of nowhere. As we drove towards the state park, we weren't really sure if we were driving in the right direction. We couldn't find any signs on the roads and it was so dry everywhere that we could not imagine that there was a big waterfall hidden somewhere in the area. Finally we saw couple of cars coming from the opposite direction and we were assured that we were on the right path. The falls were interesting - after a pretty high drop into a huge "pool", it flowed through the surrounding canyons. The timing of our visit was not great though. We were there right after summer and the water level was at a low. I think spring might have been a better time to visit these falls. There are couple of barbecue grills in the park area and after a quick picnic at the park, we got back on track towards Yellowstone.

Palouse Falls

Canyon around Palouse Falls

We covered almost 600 miles on the first day and stayed at Butte, MT that night. Starting again next day at 8 am, we reached Yellowstone around noon. We entered through the West Entrance of the park. Since we planned our trip pretty late, all the lodges within the park were full. The hotel we booked was at Cooke City, just a few miles outside the north east entrance of the park. So instead of checking in the hotel right away, we decided to see the Geysers that day and check in at night.

Right after we entered the park, we were greeted by some elks and a big lazy bison. As we went south from the West Entrance, we started seeing Geysers one after the other right by the road. It was the first time we saw such hot geysers and so many of them. The distinct smell of sulfur reminded us of the science experiments from our school days. The geysers had an amazing palette of colors from orange to yellow to green to blue. And with the change in color, the temperature of water changes. The park has different times for a guided tour to these geysers which are quite informative and interesting. The most famous geyser in the area is the "Old Faithful" which erupts every 90 minutes or so. If you arrive there early, try to watch the documentaries at the theater in the Visitor Center. They are quite informative.

Elks

Bison

Silex Spring @ Fountain Paint Pot Trail

Turquoise Pool @ Midway Geyser Basin

Old Faithful

The next day was the waterfalls day - Lower falls and Upper falls. We drove through the Lamar Valley on our way to the falls and made a number of stops to see the wildlife. At one of the shoulder stops, we took a trail through the valley to get a better view of huge herds of bison. We also saw deers and antelopes in the valley.

Bison

Lots of Bison!

Pronghorn Antelopes

The Lower falls looks pretty amazing flowing through the Yellowstone canyons. On Artist Point Road, there is a hike called "Uncle Tom's Trail" which takes you to the bottom of the Lower falls. The hike is pretty steep, but it is worth it. There are also good view points for the Upper falls. Inspiration point also gives a beautiful view of the canyon. On the way back to our lodge in the evening, we saw a mommy bear with her two cubs far away on a mountain. We were quite happy seeing so much wildlife on the second day itself.

Lower Falls

Lower Falls view from Uncle Tom's Trail

Bears in the distance

On the next day, we went to the Mammoth Hot Springs and the Norris Geyser Basin. We walked quite a bit on this day, doing number of trails at Mammoth and Norris Geyser Basin.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Mammoth Hot Springs

Elks at Mammoth Junction

At Norris Geyser Basin

At Norris Geyser Basin

We had covered most of the things in our first three days at the park and were hungry to see more wildlife. If you are interested in wildlife, Lamar Valley is the place to be. We rented binoculars for a day from Silver Gate Grocery Store in the hope to see the wildlife better. We decided to wake up early on the fourth day at Yellowstone and drove back to Lamar Valley. We got to see 5-6 wolves. We had never seen wolves in the wild and that too howling. It was super fun! We spent 4-5 hours looking for wildlife that day, went back to hotel and rested. We took it light that evening and did couple of small hikes. We saw number of mountain goats at the Barronette Peak. It is quite difficult to locate the goats, but just look for small moving white objects, and those are the mountain goats. :). The binoculars helped us locating the goats.

Howling Wolf

More wolves!

After our great morning of wildlife viewing on the earlier day, we decided to checkout of our lodge early and do some more wildlife viewing on our last day. But we were not as lucky and did not get to see much of wildlife. We took a different route on our way back to Seattle. We went to Craters of the Moon, another interesting place. Stayed at Boise, ID that night. We spent next couple of days at Columbia River George, going to waterfalls, fruit farms and then to Portland for some tax free shopping and reached Seattle on Saturday night.

Lava @ Craters of the Moon

Indian Tunnel @ Craters of the Moon

Llamas!

Accomodation  - We stayed at - Super 8 at Cooke City . It was okay place, nothing great, nothing bad. Though we highly recommend staying at Canyon Lodge inside Yellowstone. It has the best proximity to all interesting places in Yellowstone. Better book it in advance.

Connectivity - There is not much cellular network in most of the park other than Canyon Lodge and a little at Mammoth Lodge. Our hotel had WiFi service, but it seems they got exhausted with their bandwidth for the month, so no internet either.

Food - There are couple of restaurants in Cooke City, but being vegetarians our options were limited. We had pizzas at Miners Saloon in Cooke city which was quite good. In Yellowstone park, there are couple of restaurants which offer veggie burgers, sandwiches, etc.

If you love outdoors and wildlife, Yellowstone is a must visit! And plan for at least 4 days to be able to enjoy it well and see all the different things.