His View 

Yellowstone - Feliks' perspective

Yellowstone National Park - I’ve heard so much, I’ve seen so much, and I was really excited to finally get there myself. First of all it is not a park. It is the size of a small country. The place is so big that you could literally spend an entire day just driving from one side to the other. We arrived Saturday morning, and as we expected the line of people getting into the park was pretty big. Once in the park, it became apparent that we did not research or plan enough to make the best use of our time. After a quick regroup, we decided to break the park up into two sections that we would do in two days. The first part was the most popular attraction, Ole Faithful. The first round of geysers were definitely awesome. I still can’t get over how it’s possible for there to be so many different colors created by hot water coming out of the earth. The rock formations and hot pools were definitely unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I remember seeing pictures of the geysers on the web, and they definitely did not do it justice. It is something you do need to see with your own eyes. We got lucky and saw some of the geysers acting up and spewing water all over the place. One geyser in particular even sounded like a jet. 

The second round and third round of stops for random geysers were just as cool, but definitely started to be repetitive. Again we got lucky, and got to Ole Faithful about 30 minutes prior to her expected show. As we sat and watched her spew water some 50 feet into the air, creating a huge cloud of steam, it was mind-boggling to think that this was all happening naturally. It seemed fake. After the show we took a short walk around the geyser and were lucky enough to see a bison less than 100 feet away grazing and drinking water. On that note, there were so many bison at this park that at times it got a little frustrating, because the two-lane highways would get backed up from people stopping in the middle of the road to take a picture. If you see a bison and you have to take a picture, please do everyone a favor and pull to the side of the road. Normally we would only have had a 15-mile drive to the campsite where we were staying, but due to a road closure we now had an 85-mile detour. Now 85 miles is not that bad, but with 35 MPH speed limits, that can turn in to a 2.5 hour drive. Now throw in people stopping in the middle of the road to take pictures, or just going slow to see the scenery, and it easily turns in to four hours. Needless to say, it took us close to three hours to get to our campsite. 

We decided to take it easy for the night and rest up for the next day. As we headed out for the campsite we made random stops along the way for the marked attractions, and some that were barely marked. Again, with some of the road closures our trip took a little bit longer than expected. We stopped at pretty much all of the main junctions and villages and did the attractions there, but as I’m sure Caywood pointed out in her write up, seeing the bull elk at Mammoth Spring was the highlight of the entire trip. When we first rolled up into Mammoth Springs, there were elk grazing in people’s back yards. We tried to get closer to the elk by driving into the residential community, and realized this was not necessary as there were about 20 elk hanging out in front of the visitor’s center. Among them was a bull elk. I’m guessing it was at least a 15 point rack. This thing walked around as if it owned the place, and it was fun to watch the rangers supervise its stroll through the village. Caywood got some great pictures and I think the best part was hearing this thing yell, which sounded something like an alien out of a movie. Mammoth Springs were pretty cool, not so much the crazy colors of the springs but the rock formations that resembled white stairs. 

Overall, Yellowstone is not something you can do in two days. I would say you at least need two weeks. Personally, I think the state of Wyoming should just be called Yellowstone because the park is that massive. I feel as though they could have been more informative about the hikes and trails available, because the maps they gave us barely had anything on them. Some of the signs we drove past were not even marked on the map. I would almost recommend buying an insider’s tour guide at a gas station before you get to the park. Be prepared for long drives and slow tourists, especially if you go during peak season. I imagine that being ten times worse. The roads were pretty good, twisty and windy as you’d expect. Parking was definitely on the difficult side. There was usually plenty of room in the RV sections of the parking lots though.