Yellowstone National Park, WY

With its unique thermal features, diversity of landscape and density of wildlife, Yellowstone is one of our favorite national parks.

Yellowstone gets a bad rap for being crowded. Yes, it is full of slow moving RVs and the campgrounds leave something to be desired. However, like many national parks if you get up early you can enjoy a beautiful cool morning in the park while most are eating breakfast. Yellowstone is massive, and has plenty of room to get away from the crowds. If you hike more than five miles in you will find no one. We hiked all day and saw two other people on the trail.

First day

We had a late start since we had to move our tent to another site in the Clearwater Campground in the middle of the night. We hiked the Yellowstone Grand Canyon North Rim, Glacier basin trail and brink of the lower falls for a total of 6 miles.

Second Day

After packing up camp we headed to the north side of the park. We decided to hike the Yellowstone River Trail from the Hellroaring trail head. The Yellowstone River was not fordable this time of year so we had to hike up to the Hellroaring bridge adding about 4 miles (14 miles in total).

We saw a ton of wildlife this day. Between hiking and driving we saw a black bear mom and cub, tons of bison, coyote, elk, and an eagle. We saw a bunch of bones and elk skulls on the trail. At one point we heard a pack of wolves up the mountains.

After hiking we set up our new campsite for two nights in the Bridge Bay campground. Most of the campgrounds were not open yet due to snow. Ours was a bit soggy but it was nice and centrally located in the park.

Third day

We wanted to see a different side of the park so we hiked to the Shoshone Lake Trail via the Kepler Cascade trailhead on the southwest side of the park.

This trail crosses the Continental divide at about an elevation of 8500′. Snow covered roughly 4-5 miles of trail making it difficult. But hey, at least it was shaded.

At the end of the trail we were rewarded with the Shoshone Geyser Basin all to ourselves. Molly specifically chose this trail due to the amount of backcountry thermal features.

Fourth Day

We got up early and packed up camp and went to see Grand Prismatic Spring, Old Faithful, then headed to Grand Teton NP.