National Parks Road Trip Part 2 - Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park gets it very own blog post.  Mostly because it is where we spent a lot of time and  also because of the the amazing things contained within the park.

I should note that beforehand we purchased a Annual Pass to all the National Parks/Monuments/Forests/Rec Areas etc for $80.  This got us into all the places we visited for FREE! This saved us some cash as it was anywhere from $5-$25 to enter the parks.

We found and awesome free camping site just south of the south entrance of the park. See pic 1.

The first day, of course, we visited Old Faithful.  It is the best known feature at YS.  As we were waiting for the geyser to go off a bison leisurely strolled passed us. AWESOME! Our first wildlife sighting!

We took a short walk around to some of the other close geysers and hot springs to kill some time.  Finally, we made it back to Old Faithful just in time to see it erupt.  Gallons of water heated by earth's thermal activity came hurdling out of the ground, that was a super cool experience. 

I didn't realize there were soooooo many geysers and hot springs in the park until we started hiking around the area.  We spent an entire day and 8 miles of hiking seeing all the major thermal sites at the park and we still didn't get to all of them.  Each of them however looked different or behaved in a different way.  One of the geysers would begin erupting and sometimes would continue to erupt for 10-24 hours, whoa!  

  Some of the hot springs would just simply continuously boil causing water to flow over the edges and slowly left behind deposits that left behind a formation like the one below.

This next picture is one of the prettiest hot springs at the park.  The different water temperatures allow for different bacteria and algaes to live and grow.  The coolest (but still scalding hot) water is where the orange is while the clearest/bluest water in the center doesn't allow for anything to grow. 

Everywhere you looked you could see steam coming up from the ground!

We also we able to see a fabulous sunset at the lake one evening. 

The following picture is of yet another site where the thermal activity in the earth has created beauty.  These are calcite travertines.  The water runs over the hill and slowly deposits calcium which creates these snow white formations.  I saw a similar yet larger travertine in Pamukkale, Turkey back in November of 2011. You could walk through the travertines in Turkey.  The water here was WAY too hot and of course it's America where you cant touch or climb on anything.  

Dad and I at the travertines. 

Yellowstone park has many many waterfalls but the two largest ones are almost back to back on one river.  The most amazing part was that you could hike right up to the edge and look over.  It was an eerie feeling, one, because of the amazing power and beauty and two, because I have a little issue with heights. 

I'm not photoshopped into this one I promise I was actually there. 

The bison have no manners.  They just stand in the middle of the road and walk SLOWLY right now the middle...probably laughing internal bison laughs at all the tourists. 

Yellowstone has so much to offer and to see and to do.  We only spent 2.5 days and we saw a lot but we didn't see nearly all of it.

If there is one place I suggest you see in the USA, it Yellowstone National Park.

National Park Roadtrips Part 1

Im sitting in a campground (with wifi for the first time) in Manitou Springs, CO.
Our original planned road trip changed quite a bit but definitely for the better.  We went from 2 weeks to what's looking to be about 2.5 weeks total.
After Taos, we went to  Canyonlands, UT. This place was awesome!  The views were spectacular.  We hiked some various trails alongside the major driving tour which took us to some awesome outlooks, rock formations, and historic trails.
We headed to Arches National Park next.  Another great site and one where I actually FOUND my camera to take pictures. See pic 1 and 2.  Ill have to steal dads photos from Canyonlands.

After Arches we drove on over to Dinosaur National Monument, this was an on the way stop to Yellowstone and gave us a place to stay over and break up the long drive.  Dinosaur is an amazing collection of dino fossils.  Apprarently, there was a river in the area when dinos were wandering around and that river dried up which led to a lot of dinos dieing in the area.  They bones left behind were swept away with the rains and river returned and at a certain point along the river there was a natural logjam which collected all these bones.  The bones became fossils over time and were covered up, the erosion slowly began to uncover this mass collection of dino bones!  Basically, there is a huge hill full of all different kinds of dino bones.  Nerdy awesome!  See the below pics. 

While at Dino National we did a little hiking to see some old petroglyphs.   We also camped out right by the river. 

The Adventure begins

Road trip!

I will be leaving Sunday morning to drive to Taos, NM to pick up Dad and start our road trip.  That first day will be a long 12 hour drive, but after that it should be relaxing shorter drives to each place. 

Here is a link to our current route: http://goo.gl/maps/Necdm

We will spend the majority of the time in Yellowstone National but have several stops on the way to and from there. Including: Arches National (1 day), Dinosaur Monument (1 day), CO, Big Horn Canyon (2 days), Rocky Mt National (2 days), and where ever else the wind my take us!

I am also hoping to meet up with some friends that live in the areas.  Some I haven't seen in many years.  I always love reunions with old friends.  If I haven't contacted you and you are along the route give me a shout!!

Most of the campgrounds are first come first serve which adds a little excitement to the whole thing.  Wondering where exactly you will be sleeping the next day is always an adventure. Some are even FREE! That fits nicely with my budget. 

:-)