Gillen Family: Day 2, Part 2 - Yellowstone Trip

Day 2, Part 2. Finally! We are in the Yellowstone National Park! How very, very exciting!! We could barely sleep this first day so we were on the road by 7am. We had high ambitions too because we figured we could do the top part of the park in one day and the next part the 2nd day. Boy did we underestimate the time it would take! We didn't get back to the hotel until almost midnight that first day. So, here goes. (note: the above photo is the only one of the 3 of us that someone else took for us).
We entered the park at the East entrance. It's a windy road up a mountain. There was water running down the rocks, but not a lot of snow.

Then we rounded a corner, and instantly knew it was a good idea we didn't camp!

This is one of the first pull-offs we did.

Vinson was as excited to see the park as we were!

I think my photos turned out pretty well, but imagine what a professional with a professional camera could have captured! It was just beautiful.

Katelynn did great in her seat, and only really got fussy around nap times.

Our very next stop was along a frozen lake.

We pulled over because there were some park rangers and a crowd of people.
At first we thought everyone was stopped for the buffalo.

But look closely at this photo, do you see what I see??

Look closely at the hill...here, let me zoom in for you!

It was a grizzly bear!!!! One lady in the crowd said she's been coming to Yellowstone since the late 60's and she's never seen a bear...well that made us really excited! We watched him for awhile, and then when back over to the lake.

Good thing I thought to pack her winter coat!! We got the dogs out and let them walk for a bit too. All of the trails in the park are no dog trails, so we would get them out at certain pull-offs and let them stretch their legs and pee before going back in the car.

We got back in the car and headed up the road. Saw more buffalo on the side of the road, and it started snowing again. Some of my photos throughout the blog will have a smudge on them - darn snow/rain mix.

Then we came upon an entire heard of buffalo!

There were even babies in the group!

They were pretty far away, so we got out and took some photos. Katelynn loved them.

When we started driving again, one of the buffalo decided to cross the road. Good thing the speed limit in the park is only 35 to 45. These things could do some serious damage!

Then he turned and strolled right by our car...

Our next stop was "Mud Volcano." This was an area of about 5 or 6 different "volcanos." There was a boardwalk that circled around all of them, and of course no dogs. We got out the backpack and started up the one side. The 3 of us at the start.

The area as we approached.

And the "mud volcano."

Just to give you an idea of what this area was like there was a sulphur spring across the road so everything smelled like rotten eggs. The above mud volcano was actual mud and it looked really thick like cement.

There was a dragon mouth spring that was pretty cool. It made a load hissing noise.

And it put out a lot of steam...look out Chris and Katelynn!

There was a grizzly fumarole...

Then we headed up a crazy amount of stairs on a hill...

Only to have a buffalo on the path ahead...can you see him? It had started snowing/raining again by this point. We turned around because this was more then close enough to a buffalo for me!

We decided to head up the other side of the path to see how far we could get before running into that buffalo again. There was a "Mud Caldron" at the start of this side.

And lots of "hazards" on the trail...

There were buffalo on this side of the boardwalk too, but there was a huge drop off separating us, so we kept going.

We got to the top and were hit with lots of steam...

And yes it stank!

When we got through the steam stuff, look at what we saw! Now that crazy Dad and his wife and kids walked right in front of him, but we turned around and went back down. Seriously - those buffalo are huge! We'll just stay away thank you!