From The Tetons To Yellowstone

It is very strange for us to spend an entire week of vacation the way we spent a week in Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Generally speaking, we crave variety when we travel and spend our days rushing from one different thing to the next different thing to take in as much as possible. Call it attention deficit disorder or a fear of being bored or impatience or wanting to suck the marrow out of life every day we are not at work, but the notion of spending a week focused on just two National Parks is craziness for us. But that's just what we did. 

Not that Yellowstone and Grand Teton are lacking in variety.

We definitely had an agenda. Elk. Moose. Bison. Geysers. We felt pretty sure we'd get all of these and we were right, although the quality and quantity of moose sightings exceeded our expectations and was definitely very much appreciated. But we also didn't want to be too myopic on this trip and lose sight of the big picture. We wanted to see more wildlife than just elk, moose and bison. We wanted to exist in a place that man has left largely untouched. We wanted to be awed and relaxed and forget about how badly our species has messed up this planet. At least for a week.

We got all of that.

One of the reasons we could stand to spend a week out in northwest Wyoming was simple: these places are enormous. There's just a whole lot of territory to cover. And that means that filling a day is easy, especially when some drive times to the places we wanted to go are 2-1/2 hours or more. I knew this before I went out there because I'd spent a little more than a day in Yellowstone nine years ago and missed a ton. But it really hit home when we spent the better part of two days in the Tetons and pretty much four whole days in Yellowstone and STILL missed a ton. Maybe MORE than a ton.

I asked some friends before we left for this trip for some advice on must dos in Grand Teton. A boat trip across Jenny Lake sounded like a can't miss thing to put on our list and then check off at some point in our couple of days in the Tetons. But honestly, we just didn't have time. And it was probably due to the hours we spent down Moose-Wilson Road watching moose and bears. We also missed about half the length of Antelope Flats Road, all of Mormon Row in the same area and a whole bunch of turnoffs and side roads that could have really been worth exploring. We also didn't do any hiking in the Tetons.

I think we did a better job of covering ground in Yellowstone, although we didn't drive between Lake Village and West Thumb (in favor of another pass through Hayden Valley) and the road between Canyon Village and Tower-Roosevelt was closed to all traffic (it's closed all of 2020 and 2021). We missed a side road here and there I'm sure, especially when we were in thermal areas information overload mode. It makes sense we'd cover Yellowstone more comprehensively. We did spend almost three times as long in that Park than in Grand Teton.

I could easily have spent probably two more days, most of it in Grand Teton, than we did. I'm shocked to be writing those words. 

The Teton Range looking west from the Mormon Row area.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park.

So how did we spend our time? Mostly driving around and gazing at the scenery and the wildlife.  Pretty simple.

On the scenery side of things, Grand Teton is dominated by the Teton Range on the west side of the Park. These peaks are so striking and they seem to be visible from just about everywhere you go in the Park. They form a sort of staged backdrop to the incredible landscape in the main part of the Park and they are reflected in the Snake River and other bodies of water you encounter as you make your way around the loop in the south section. They are without doubt the singular most distinct memory I have of Grand Teton.

Yellowstone is completely different. Whereas the Tetons are fairly homogeneous, Yellowstone is like a theme park with different worlds seemingly invented by a park designer to get the visitor the maximum range of landscape experiences. Geyser basins, valleys, rivers, canyons, mud pots, cliffs, mountains, scorched vistas, water containing multicolored collections of microscopic organisms and one really, really big lake. Yellowstone has all of that and way more.

We traveled most of Yellowstone for the first time in the dark, getting up before dawn to get to Hayden Valley or Lamar Valley before the wildlife got moving off the wide open spaces and into the Park's forested areas. It was astonishing to see some of the places we'd driven and how close to the edges of roads with some sheer drops. It sounds like a stupid statement but Yellowstone is way more varied than it looks at night but one of the aspects of Yellowstone that I found fascinating was the fact that we traveled through such diverse landscapes in the dark without realizing it.

The Teton Range reflected in the Snake River near Schwabacher Landing, Grand Teton National Park.

First mountain goat I've seen in the wild. Yellowstone National Park.

The river valleys in both Parks were some of my favorite places to hang out. This year has in many ways been one where we've visited river after river all over the west of the United States and the Snake and Yellowstone and Madison Rivers we saw out in Wyoming were just as striking as any others we've seen. I love the way the valleys are so broad with a lazy waterway winding its way down the middle with mountains or forests on one or both sides. It also doesn't hurt to have a bison or elk or two or three or ten dotting the valley.

I also appreciated the mountains. I mean we were in the Rockies for crying out loud. I loved the very small mountain area of Yellowstone for a number of reasons, not the least of which is we managed to spot a couple of mountain goats hanging out among the rocks. And it's difficult not to gaze in wonder at the Tetons at every opportunity. These things look like God just deposited a series of perfectly crafted peaks on a great plateau in the Rockies. We couldn't help taking picture after picture of these mountains from about every spot in the Park we could see them.

And of course, nothing could be further from the truth about how the Tetons got where they are. They came from below through tectonic action, not from above by divine act.

Fall colors with two elk. Grand Teton National Park.

Coyote. Lamar Valley. Yellowstone National Park.

I also think that visiting in the fall helped our trip. The last time I was in Yellowstone it was as green as can be from the grass in the valleys to the evergreens and deciduous trees everywhere else where anything could grow. In the fall, there are trees here and there with bright oranges and yellows to inject a dash of color into the sameness in the forests and the grass in the valleys is a pale straw color, which among other things is perfect for hiding coyotes.

I don't know why I am still amazed at nature's camouflage. I have watched lions the color of grass and leopards in trees in Africa and marveled at how the colors and shadows of their natural environments hide those animals. I've also written just last month how the color of the bark and the darkness of the trees in Yellowstone obscure animals as massive as elk. I guess I just didn't expect coyotes to be so invisible in the fall grasslands of Yellowstone. Maybe it's the Road Runner cartoons.

Ultimately, we did spend the majority of our time in both Grand Teton and Yellowstone either watching wildlife or moving from one place to the next in hopes of seeing wildlife. I've already written about the moose, elk and bison we saw last month in separate posts because those were the most visible species. But that wasn't all we saw. 

Bald eagle in flight over the Snake River. Grand Teton National Park.

Bear no. 2. Grand Teton National Park.

If there was a hope we had in our animal search in Yellowstone and the Tetons, it was that we would see plenty of bears. By plenty here, I don't mean plenty like we saw plenty of elk or bison. Maybe 10 was a stretch goal? We saw three earlier this year in Rocky Mountain National Park in a single day in a park where bears aren't that common. I felt I was being realistic in hoping to exceed that total in six days in a place where there are more bears. And by that I mean more total quantity (although the precise numbers in RMNP aren't known) and more species (two vs. one). There are more than 700 grizzly bears in Yellowstone alone; Rocky Mountain likely has less than 1/4 of that total number of just black bears. Of course, it's a bigger area. Much bigger.

If there's one thing we pretty much counted on not seeing, it was wolves. Wolves were re-introduced to Yellowstone in 1995 and their numbers as of the date of our visit were reported to be 99 total. I'd seen every species we hoped to see in Grand Teton and Yellowstone before with the exception of mountain goats and wolves. No way did I hope to see either. I didn't even realize there were goats in Yellowstone or the Tetons, or at least not visible from a car, but we saw our first couple ever. But wolves? The odds seemed stacked way against us. Yellowstone was full of surprises.

There were really no disappointments on this trip but if there was an unpleasant surprise, it was that we only saw two bears in the whole week we were roaming around the Parks. They were both pretty poor looks. The best photograph we got of either bear (and frankly they may have been the same bear in the same area of Grand Teton at two different times) is above. We struck out entirely in Yellowstone.

I know. I know. I'm whining. Or Crying. Wahhhh!!!!! I didn't see more than two bears on my week trip to one of the premier destinations in the United States. But it's true. We wanted more bears. We thought we'd see more than two. For the record (and based on the narrative of people around us who may or may not know what they were talking about), it was either a grizzly and a black bear or two different black bears or the same black bear twice. Personally, I'm leaning towards a grizzly and a black bear, although the best photographic evidence of bear no. 1 (the "grizzly") is below. That bear, by the way, was moving fast. Good thing it was a good distance away.

Grizzly or black bear? I'm leaning towards grizzly.

But we did see wolves.

I know I've already said this but I thought there was no way we were going to see any wolves whatsoever. We're talking 99 dogs in an area almost twice the size of Rhode Island. What are the odds?

But we didn't just see one or two wolves. We saw a lot of wolves. On three different days in two separate locations in Yellowstone National Park.

My first tip for seeing wolves in Yellowstone based on our very, very limited exposure is to visit the Lamar Valley in the northeast corner of the Park. I know, it's remote and if you are staying in West Yellowstone, Montana (like we were), you'll need to get up super early to get over there when the wolves are still active in the morning (we left one morning at about 5:30 a.m.). But we were two for two in Lamar. Two visits, two sightings of multiple wolves.

Admittedly, both sightings were at a very great distance. Probably at least half a mile away. The animals were like ants on the landscape, even when using binoculars or the zoom lens on our camera which we have been so impressed with in the past. But they were clearly wolves and it was remarkable to see them move across the landscape as a pack, not in a group like I expected but single file with a really good amount of space between them. I think one of the most remarkable benefits of observing wildlife with your own eyes in a natural environment is seeing behaviors that wouldn't necessarily stand out if you were told about those behaviors in a TV show or something like that. How wolves move is indelibly stamped on my brain from our visits to Lamar Valley.

If you do go to Lamar Valley, or anywhere else in the Park really, be prepared to share space with people with some fantastic and very large zoom lenses and telescopes. Their equipment dwarfed what we thought was the ultimate travel camera for seeing and photographing wildlife. Their gear was much better than ours. Although I wouldn't want to lug their stuff on a plane as cabin baggage. 

Wolves in Lamar Valley. Yellowstone National Park.

Lone wolf. Hayden Valley. Yellowstone National Park.

My second tip for seeing wolves in Yellowstone is to get lucky. I know...it's a terrible tip. But in a way it applies to all wildlife watching. We didn't get lucky with bears. We got super lucky with wolves.

We always have an itinerary for our trips. Most of the time, we follow those agendas to the letter and build in enough float to linger or improvise. Sometimes, we read the conditions on the ground and decide to go a different way. We did the latter in Yellowstone and it completely paid off. Our original plan for Yellowstone had one trip to the Hayden Valley, but after driving through once, we not only adjusted our route back to our hotel to take another pass on the same day but we decided an early morning visit on a different day might pay off somehow. That's where we got to see a wolf at a distance of about 20 feet.

There were a number of wolf false alarms (or was it crying wolf?) in our time in Yellowstone. There were at least four or five or maybe more times when we heard someone calling a coyote a wolf. So on our second day in the Hayden Valley we were not quite ready to believe that the dog-like creature trotting about ten feet off the road just before the sun was really up was a wolf. But after a second or two lapse of brain processing time, it was.

Right there in front of us (and a caravan of 15 or so cars) was a yearling wolf separated from her pack. Super close. Way closer than the 100 yards of separation recommended by the Park for this kind of an animal (although that doesn't really count when you are in a car). Honestly, this was such a thrilling sight that for the 20 minutes or so we followed this wolf, we forgot all about the whole no bears thing. This is one of the apex predators in the Park and it's right there in front of us.

This was absolutely amazing. So amazing in fact that our fellow tourists stopped their cars as close as they could and piled out of their passenger side and driver and back seats to snap the best possible pictures. I'd love to say that we exercised a little more caution (and I think we did - keeping the car between us and the wolf or opening the door but standing on the step of our SUV) but it's super easy to get excited and lose track of what the rules are. I mean it's a wolf less than 30 or maybe even 10 yards away.

Wolf. Carcass. Hayden Valley. Yellowstone National Park.

If there has to be a singular experience that represents this trip (and I'm not sure there has to be), this was it. To get this good a view of a wild wolf is something that's not going to happen each time you visit Yellowstone. It truly was so lucky, although getting up early was definitely a part of making our own luck.

We don't have great pictures of our lone wolf. The lighting was not ideal and she moved pretty fast which made taking amazing pictures with our camera a little difficult. I still think we got a couple of pics that I'm proud of for us to remember what we saw.

Two Parks. Six days. It's still crazy to me that (1) we spend this much time doing sort of the same thing over and over again and (2) that we still missed so much. No hikes. No Jenny Lake. No bears (well...two), no Tower-Roosevelt, tons of missed side roads and drives. But wolves, fighting elk, moose, herds of bison, geysers, multicolored pools and those gorgeous Tetons in the fall? Tremendous. What a week. 

Everyone should go to Yellowstone at least once in their life. If you go, make your own luck. Get up early and stay for multiple days.

One last look at the Tetons. From Mount Moran Turnout. Grand Teton National Park.

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How We Did It

Both Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks are open all year round but access to certain parts of both Parks are severely limited in the winter season. Check their websites for current conditions by clicking the names of each park earlier in this paragraph.

Both Parks charge admission, although there are days of the year when admission is waived. You might also save a few bucks by purchasing U.S. Parks Annual Pass which will get you into all National Park Service properties and a whole host of other sites for free. The Pass, which we purchased last November, costs $80 as of this writing. The 2020 entrance fee for Grand Teton is $35 and you can add another $35 for Yellowstone. It won't take but one more Park visit somewhere else to make buying a Pass worthwhile. The $35 admission fees to both Parks are good for seven days each.

Note there is a large amount of territory in the south end of Grand Teton that is outside of the entrance gates so depending on where you want to go, you might be able to visit Grand Teton for free. You can get to our favorite moose and bear watching spot down on Moose-Wilson Road without paying. Or at least you can if you are traveling from the south.

We found the best places to see wildlife in Yellowstone to be Lamar Valley and Hayden Valley. Get up early for the best sightings or stick around until dusk. We considered hiring a guide for a day to help us find wolves but found pricing to be north of $500 per day. We took our chances on our own and I think we made out pretty well. We actually followed a couple of guided tours in Grand Teton for a while and they didn't seem to have any better luck finding animals than we did. I guess a huge advantage of being with a guide is that they likely have better gear than you do. I'm happy with the $500+ that's still in my bank account.

We also found it really useful to ask what people were looking at. We got a lot of help from strangers pointing out what they were focused on when we were just lost. You might not have that long to see some of these animals. They have a way of disappearing into forests quickly. Ask for help.

You can see that gorgeous Teton mountain range from just about any spot in Grand Teton south of Jackson Lake.

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West Yellowstone Motels

Every so often a trip throws me an unexpected curveball. Sometimes those curveballs lead to disappointment; sometimes they end up being really nice surprises. I never would have imagined I would have found one of the latter when we pulled into West Yellowstone, Montana to check into our second of three hotels on our Grand Teton and Yellowstone swing. But that's exactly what happened.

I may have mentioned once or twice on this blog that I am somewhat obsessed with neon and signs, either separately or together (together is very definitely better). So when we left Yellowstone National Park's West Entrance and turned right onto Boundary Street in West Yellowstone, I thought I'd about died and gone to heaven. Staring straight at me in the early evening light were three vintage motels with their neon ablaze. It was glorious.

My expectations for our time in West Yellowstone were pretty low. I am not trying to put the place down but I figured this was a place where we'd just eat and sleep and get out back into the National Park as quickly as we could. I expected that the place would exist solely to cater to tourists wanting exactly what we wanted at the lowest possible price and I think I was pretty much right. There is little reason for the town of West Yellowstone to offer deluxe accommodations or cutting edge food. The attraction that's going to keep people coming back is the Park, not the town. And the Park's not going anywhere any time soon.

But that reality is probably precisely what has kept in place what I found when we turned on to Boundary Street. No way would these motels with their glimmering, multi-colored, straight-out-of-the-mid-20th-century neon stick around for what is probably 50 or 60 years if West Yellowstone was constantly replacing their hotels with bigger and better and more modern establishments.

Boundary Street is a bit of a tease. We explored the town looking for more than those first three motels we saw when we made that right turn and failed. We found a couple of more motels worth writing about but they were not lit up in the same way. Although one motel could be, they just need to turn the lights on.

So let's start with those couple...

Beyond the initial three motels we saw, we found the Ho-Hum Motel, with the neon owl sign above affixed proudly to the North Canyon Street end of their main block of rooms, and the non-neon Pony Express Motel shown below. I know the Pony Express is not immediately impressive to the eye but there's one piece of fading Americana that amuses me to death every time I see it. We'll get to that.

I photographed the Ho-Hum owl during the day because for some reason (and I'm assuming it was not just the two nights that we checked), the motel does not turn on the lights at night. I would have loved to have seen this sign's colors, even if it had been just the owl lit up (since the rest of the sign does not appear to illuminate). This was super disappointing to me. Maybe it's broken? 

As a side note before we move to the Pony Express here, who names their Motel "Ho-Hum"? It literally means "boring". I'm assuming the name does not affect the occupancy rate.

So about that Pony Express sign...

When we moved to the United States in 1979 and started taking family vacations, I remember seeing the same sign at many of the hotels and motels we stayed at on our trips: "Color TV". Yes, at one time it was common to find only black and white sets in motel rooms (just like we used to have at home when I was growing up) and having a color box could be a real differentiator. Now, of course, the notion today of having anything but a color flat screen television in a motel room is ridiculous. But some motels still have the sign hanging around and I love it when I find these relics.

I know you can't see it well in the photograph below but the Pony Express' "Color TV" sign is in awesome condition, features different colored letters to emphasize that they are really serious about their color television and to top it all off the sign includes "by RCA" at the end. I love this. But like the Ho-Hum owl, it also doesn't light up. So like the Ho-Hum photo, this one is also taken during the day.

Those first three motels we saw when pulling in to town were Al's Westward Ho Motel, The Dude Motel and the Round Up Motel. From a multiple colors of neon perspective, Al's and The Dude are the two best signs in West Yellowstone. Al's mixes script and block capital letters into a simple sign that works well next to the simple, gable-roofed motel office. I love the simplicity of execution here, especially the top of the sign where the "Al's" is featured against what I can only assume is a hat-shaped background.

The Dude sign is better than Al's. It is difficult to argue against the beauty of a sculpted neon sign and while the majority of The Dude's sign is non-neon flat backlit translucent, the dude himself is a work of art in neon tubing. This is by far my favorite sign in West Yellowstone. There's no comparison. I would need the Ho-Hum owl to get lit up to enter any semblance of argument about that issue.

And then there's the Round Up. If there's a better argument for what neon can do to fancy up a place than the Round Up Motel, I'd love to see it. The Round Up's office is about as unremarkable a building as you could find. The only way it could really be less well thought out as a piece of architecture is if whoever designed this thing just left out the windows. But stick an L-shaped (in plan view) neon sign next to and over the top of the brick box and it becomes something to look at and appreciate. 

I love the simple lettering on this sign and the way the "Round Up" is slightly angled and encircled by a lasso rope, reinforcing the name itself. I'm sure this sign cost a pretty penny when it was installed and for me, it's money well spent. It makes the whole building sing.

West Yellowstone will likely never be much more than it is today. It's a town of 1,200 permanent residents serving up to 12,000 tourists per day. But I was wrong about this town. I expected to find a place not worth mentioning in the story of my travels. Ho-hum, if you will. But these motels represent the best of what we found just outside the West Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. And with that statement I'm not setting a low bar. I love these motels. They are a well-preserved throwback to a different time in American history. I hope they keep these things lit for a long, long time.

One more appreciation to close this post. Our last three trips have been mostly focused on nature and I've written a lot about the American landscape and wildlife this year. I appreciate these buildings and these signs tapping into a love of writing about design. Definitely worth a post. Thanks, West Yellowstone!

Close up of The Dude sign with that fantastic neon.

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How We Did It

Since we didn't expect to find what we found in West Yellowstone, this post required no planning whatsoever. It was one of those awesome discoveries that we never expected.

Four of the five hotels highlighted in this post are on Boundary Street, although only one (Al's Westward Ho Motel) has that street address and two of the hotels are actually the same property. At some point, the Round Up and The Dude, merged into a single property called The Dude and Round Up Motel. If you make that same right we made coming out of Yellowstone's West Entrance, the Pony Express is the last of the four you'll come to.

The Ho Hum Motel is not on Boundary Street in any way. It sits on West Yellowstone's main drag of North Canyon Street. Click on the name of any of the hotels in this How We Did It section to visit the hotel's website. The Ho Hum link will take you to their Facebook page; their profile pic is the neon owl all lit up. And all in red, which is surprising.

We didn't stay at any of these places. I'm a Best Western and Hilton guy so we opted to stay at the Best Western Weston Inn, which was fine but decidedly way less exciting in the neon department. Plus, I didn't know these motels were here in the first place.

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Colter's Hell

In 1803, John Colter, born in Virginia (probably) but then a resident of Kentucky, joined up with the Corps of Discovery Expedition led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. The Corps was charged by President Thomas Jefferson with finding a practical route across the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and then further all the way over the continent to the Pacific Ocean. They made it there and back again, although I'm not sure they found a practical route to the Pacific.

Colter was in his early 20s (again, probably) when he signed up with Lewis and Clark. He made it all the way across North America but didn't come all the way back. He decided to leave the company on the return journey to seek his fortune in beaver pelts. His point of separation was probably somewhere in present-day Montana, although that's a pretty big territory to pinpoint his exact departure spot and I'm not sure it really matters here.

Colter's post-Corps wonderings became legendary, although not for his beaver trapping prowess which apparently was pretty unsuccessful. Between an early departure from his hunting pals and a should-have-been death experience at the hands of the Blackfeet, Colter came across a spot which he later described as a landscape with gloomy terrors, smoking pits, noxious streams and an all-pervading smell of brimstone. Nobody believed him. How could such a place exist? They mockingly started calling it Colter's Hell.

But what Colter had seen was real. Eventually, fact merged into myth and then legend and sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century, Colter was given credit as the first white man to lay eyes on what is now Yellowstone National Park. Gloomy terrors? Smoking pits? Noxious streams? An all-pervading smell of brimstone? Yep, they got all that in Yellowstone.

Palette Spring Terrace, Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park.

Colter wasn't the last man to come back from the American west with less than believable stories about Yellowstone. In the 1830s, mountain man Jim Bridger began telling tales of a place in the northern Rocky Mountains that had to be seen to be believed. Bridger talked about waterfalls spouting upwards and a petrified forest where petrified birds sang petrified songs. He also claimed that if you did it right, you could pull a trout from a lake fully cooked and ready to eat. Like Colter, nobody believed Bridger either.

They also didn't believe Joe Meek, another mountain man who'd been saying about the same thing as Bridger in the previous decade. Steam billowing out of the Earth. Hissing craters. Gasses whistling. Scary and creepy stuff. Bridger was a well known liar, or at least a strong exaggerator, so it was no surprise nobody believed him. But they didn't believe Meek or Colter either. Why would they? It sounded like pure fantasy. Or madness.

Eventually, as more and more Europeans pushed into the American west, more and more stories similar to Colter's, Bridger's and Meek's emerged. In 1869, David Folsom, Charles Cook and William Peterson set out from Diamond City, Montana on a self-funded expedition to gather evidence to support or refute the stories coming out of what would later be Yellowstone National Park. Turns out Bridger and Meek and Colter were right. Something strange was going on out on the surface of the Earth out west.

Can you imagine a time where people met stories of geothermal pools, geysers and hot springs with such disbelief and derision? It was less than 200 years ago. I'd like to say that I can't believe that I'd doubt what Colter, Meek and Bridger said but who's kidding whom? I probably would have. By the way, Colter's description is way better than that of Meek or Bridger. It's the brimstone, I think.

John Colter probably never visited what is now Yellowstone. When he narrated his tale it appears he identified a spot somewhere on the opposite side of present day Wyoming where he saw what he couldn't believe. It was only through a literary misappropriation in 1895 that Colter's Hell got stuck in Yellowstone. But it's a cool name so it's the title of this post for that reason.

The walk to Grand Prismatic Spring. Yellowstone National Park.

It might not be Colter's Hell, but something seriously strange is still going on out in Yellowstone National Park. And we made a point of exploring this feature of Yellowstone as thoroughly as we did the wildlife in the Park. Or maybe close to it, anyway.

There are many, many spots on this globe of ours where volcanic activity is perilously close to the surface of the Earth and where an eruption or explosion of some sort would have disastrous consequences for the planet. Yellowstone National Park is perhaps one of the more dangerous of those locations, although the chances of something big happening there is likely extremely remote. Strange that we would go out there knowing all this? Look...if Yellowstone blows, we are no safer on the other side of the country than we are in the Park itself. May as well take in the wonder out there while it's still there. Plus, you can see all this in a National Park for crying out loud.

I have fond memories of visiting Yellowstone's thermal areas during my last trip in 2011 but I also know I missed a whole ton of spots because we tried to do the whole place in one day. Look, there is only so much you can stop at in a place as big as Yellowstone in a single day. This time would be different, I pledged. Sure I wanted to go back to Old Faithful and Mammoth Hot Springs but I also didn't want to miss the spectacular Grand Prismatic Spring (which I skipped in '11) and all the other important geothermal spots in the Park.

We still didn't cover them all. We just couldn't. There are so many big and small geysers, pots of bubbling mud, steam vents and pools, petrified trees and landscapes and multicolored microorganisms in scalding water. After a while, it gets numbing. They all look the same. Or more accurately, they don't look different enough to make you want to linger very long. Another clear and brilliant blue pool? Pass. It's just like the other five or ten that we've already seen.

Canary Spring. Mammoth Hot Springs. Yellowstone National Park.

There were some hotspots in Yellowstone that I really enjoyed and thought were super valuable to visit. There were five in particular that I would definitely recommend to the first time Yellowstone visitor. 

I also thought we went to some places that were not worth visiting ever again. I was disappointed in Norris Geyser Basin's Back Basin area (just too many similar and unspectacular sights) and Mammoth Hot Springs. I almost can't believe that I was disappointed in Mammoth Hot Springs because after my first visit in 2011, I thought it was one of the most impressive sights we saw. I understand colors in geothermal areas of the Park change with the seasons and the years. Maybe October 2020 just wasn't a good time to go to Mammoth Hot Springs. I found the whole place pretty monochrome.

I also think we struck out on one of the most anticipated stops we made: Grand Prismatic Spring. This was my number one spot that I didn't visit in 2011 that was a can't miss for me this year. I'd read about the spectacular colors and the sheer size of Grand Prismatic Spring and was pretty excited to see it with my own eyes. But the viewing angle you get from the boardwalk and the steam coming off the pool obscuring most anything you could see anyway made this a disappointment. To be fair to Grand Prismatic Spring here, I'd also read the best view of this place was an aerial view, which I couldn't get without a helicopter or a drone, neither of which I own or could use if I did. The cover photograph of this post is of Grand Prismatic Spring.

But enough about what I didn't find valuable. Here are five spots I'd go back to if I ever find myself in Yellowstone again. I'm listing them in the order which we visited them.

West Thumb Geyser Basin

We entered Yellowstone National Park through the South Entrance after completing a couple of days at Grand Teton National Park. West Thumb Geyser Basin was the first gloomy, smoking, noxious, brimstone place we came to. So we stopped. Why not?

As a prelude to what was to come in the Park, I thought West Thumb was a great introduction. If you visit here, you'll find a microcosm of what the rest of the Park has to offer in these sorts of settings (without the geysers). There's steam coming out of the land and off the tops of pools; colorful orange and brown thermophiles living in the hot water; bubbling pots of mud; and some ultra clear and still pools like the Bluebell Pool and Abyss Pool.

Maybe West Thumb benefited from being the first place we stopped and if we'd taken a walk around Norris Geyser Basin on our first day in the Park rather than stopping at West Thumb I'd have these two spots reversed in this post. Norris has a lot of what West Thumb has plus it has some geysers, some of which are apparently somewhat spectacular (albeit not very predictable).

The west edge of Yellowstone Lake, seen from West Thumb Geyser Basin.

But there's one thing West Thumb does have over Norris and that's its proximity to Yellowstone Lake, by far the most massive body of water in the Park. Nowhere else in Yellowstone can you see the interaction between hot springs and a body of freshwater quite the way you can at West Thumb. There are spots in the Park where heated water merges with streams or rivers and you can actually swim or bathe in some of these waters (although not in a pandemic, apparently) but not on the scale of Yellowstone Lake. 

Jim Bridger emerged from Yellowstone with some pretty tall tales. His story of petrified birds singing petrified songs is just a straight out lie. But there are some folks out there who think Jim's story of pulling a trout from the water fully cooked if you did it right might have some ring of truth to it. If he did manage to do this when fishing, maybe it happened at West Thumb.

Old Faithful Geyser

If there's one spot in Yellowstone that is probably on every visitor's list, it's Old Faithful. It's the most famous geyser in the place, not because it's the biggest or erupts the longest but because it's predictable and big enough to be spectacular every time. Plus it also helps that it's separated from other geysers in the Park so when it erupts, there's basically no competition for attention.

Old Faithful erupts to an average height of about 150 feet and it does so every 60 to 90 minutes. You can tell how close to eruption time it is based on the number of people gathered along the perimeter path and on the benches which line the sidewalks on the west side. We lucked out and got there probably about 10 minutes before showtime. Full, but we kept walking south and eventually found a clear view which was also sufficiently separated from the rest of the masses.

It's a good show. It's long enough to be satisfying and short enough to not be boring. And the setting on a slight mound away from anything else against the blue Wyoming sky is spectacular. It's simple and it delivers. There's a reason people keep coming. You will likely see more people here than at any other spot in Yellowstone. But it's worth it.

Morning Glory Pool

There are some spectacular colors in the waters of Yellowstone National Park. The colors are caused by thermophiles, microscopic organisms that live unchallenged in the hostile hot water and generate energy from sunlight based on their bright pigments. Different pools throughout the Park have different thermophiles in them. For us tourists, the most spectacular pools are generally those with the broadest range of colors. Say hello to Morning Glory Pool.

There were two colorful pools I was looking forward to seeing in Yellowstone: Grand Prismatic Spring and Morning Glory Pool. Where Grand Prismatic Spring was so large and steamy to be essentially un-viewable, Morning Glory was the exact opposite. It's relatively small (say 15 feet across), has a slightly raised walk around about 50% of the perimeter and is calm and unclouded by steam. Plus the colors are absolutely incredible. We never saw colors anywhere else all together like the greens, ochres, yellows and oranges in Morning Glory. If you want to see vivid, otherworldly colors created by living things, go here.

Morning Glory is at the north end of the Upper Geyser Basin, the same place as Old Faithful. It will take you a while to get there. It's a 1-1/2 mile walk each way along a paved and relatively unshaded path. It's not a difficult hike but it's not super easy on the feet and if it's an unclouded day, you will feel the sun most of the way. There are a couple of colorful pools along the way to Morning Glory. Don't feel like those are good enough. Keep going to the end. Totally worth it.

Beehive Geyser

We got lucky at our stop at the Upper Geyser Basin. We took in the Old Faithful show, walked out to Morning Glory and got back to Old Faithful when it was super packed with people, which meant it was about to go again. We'd get to watch it twice without waiting much either time. So lucky. We positioned ourselves along the west side in the shade and waited.

And then something amazing happened. Off to our left we heard a rushing and when we looked over saw a gushing tower of hot water erupting from the ground. It was not only taller than Old Faithful, it was way more powerful and consistent and lasted way longer. It was like someone turned on a hose pointing straight upwards on its most concentrated setting.

I wrote earlier in this post that one of the attractions of Old Faithful is that it's off on its own with no competition from other geysers. If the Beehive Geyser erupted every 60 to 90 minutes, that wouldn't be true. This was truly impressive. 

It was also truly lucky. Beehive erupts maybe once a day or sometimes twice in summer and less frequently in winter. We just happened to be there at the exact right time. It was way better than Old Faithful. I'd watch this show anytime, but I wouldn't wait hours to see it because there are very few things in life I would wait hours to see.

Dragon's Mouth Spring

We hit West Thumb, Old Faithful, Morning Glory and Beehive on our first day in Yellowstone but continued to probe other spots where we might see some impressive geothermal activity. We were relatively unsuccessful, although maybe that's because we kept seeing the same things that had already wowed us earlier in the week.

A couple of days into our Yellowstone time, we visited Hayden Valley on the east side of the Great Loop and stopped at Mud Volcano after our first pass through Hayden. It was a toss up between Mud Volcano and Sulphur Cauldron just to the north. We decided Mud Volcano sounded less smelly.

This stop is a typical Yellowstone hydrothermal attraction: multiple different types of volcanic activity in a single spot, including bubbling mud, hot springs and spitting hot water and gasses. Most stops like this in the Park have a wooden boardwalk leading you from place to place and most feature multiple route choices. We picked the shortest one here. Heading west into Mud Volcano and then curving around immediately to the north (right) as soon as we could towards a large plume of steam in a corner of the boardwalk. It was Dragon's Mouth Spring.

Dragon's Mouth got its name in 1912, relatively late considering the Park was established 40 years earlier. But the name couldn't be any more perfect. It's a bubbling spring tucked back in a crevice above a pool that bellows steam and makes a noise just like a dragon about to breathe fire. Or at least maybe what Hollywood makes dragons sound like just before they breathe fire. It's the perfect name for a tiny piece of Yellowstone that is very impressive. It's not as famous as Old Faithful or any of the other places in this post, but I think it was worth stopping.

Old Faithful. Alone.

On the average visit to Yellowstone, there are so many choices about what to see and seek out. I could honestly have spent all four plus days we spent in the Park just seeking out wildlife. But I think an essential part of Yellowstone is the waterfalls spouting upwards, the hissing craters and that all-pervading smell of brimstone that Jim Bridger, Joe Meek and John Colter found on their travels about a couple of centuries ago. We may not be terrified of geysers and hot springs the way these three men were but it doesn't make these scenes any less intriguing. I think a visit to Yellowstone should include a little time watching the Earth be angry.

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How We Did It

There's nothing much complicated about how we did this: drive around Yellowstone National Park and stop anywhere you like. Yellowstone is open year round but most entrance roads close at the beginning of November as winter sets in. Check their website for more details.

If you want to see specific geysers erupting during your time in the Park, we noticed signs listing the next likely eruption close to each geyser. Some blow just once a day or even less frequently so if you have a lot on your list, you may be in Yellowstone a long time or might have to do some serious coordination. If you don't feel like personally visiting each site to find out the next showtime, the Park does have an app which lists the most likely eruption time for significant geysers. I assume it's accurate although we didn't use the app for that purpose.

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