Below was our route for today.

On the trip we had Dean, Chris, and Greg.  Chris and Greg had never been to YellowStone before, but Dean and I had.  Our other 2 brothers Tim and Paul (Strasser arrives late tonight) weren’t able to make this trip to Montana, but they were with us in spirit.  Tim had work and Paul stayed home to care for Kris who was recovering from Covid-19. Within a minute of entering the park through Lamar Valley, we are driving along side a massive bison.  Literally I could have reached out and smacked its butt we were so close.  Very cool experience for all of us.  It was a beautiful drive in Lamar Valley where you can see the animals in their element.  We estimated we saw over 500 bison during our drive through Lamar Valley.

After leaving Lamar Valley, our plan was to drive south in Wyoming towards the canyon but the road was closed.  So we drove across the top of the grand loop into Mammoth Hot Springs.  Since this wasn’t one of the places we planned to spend much time at and their were a ton of people, we just kept driving south towards Old Faithful (video).  On the way there, we made several stops at: Undine Falls, Fountain Geyser and Paint Pots, Midwest Geyser Basin which has Excelsior Geyser Crater, and the most popular thermal The Grand Prismatic Spring aka “The spectrum of life”.

We arrived into Old Faithful and missed the eruption by about 10 minutes so we headed to the gift shop for some souvenirs and had lunch at the Grill.  We then walked around towards the back of Old Faithful near the lodge and setup for photos and videos.  The last time the family and I visited Old Faithful many years ago in late June, the video was masked by all the snow.  Well this time I got a great video and the guys got their photos and videos as well (see links below). It truly is a fascinating geologic event!

By this time, we were about 10 hours into our trip and we were all ready to head back to Montana. We headed east down the bottom of the grand loop passing the Yellowstone Lake and River up through Hayden Valley to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Although everyone was ready to be done, I made one last stop because I wanted them to see Uncle Tom’s Falls.  After seeing it, everyone agreed it was a great idea and one of the most amazing sights of the day.   We cut across the middle of the two loops and backtracked to Mammoth Hot Springs.  To avoid all the switchbacks in the mountain at dark, and save a bit of time, we had decided to leave through the north entrance above Mammoth Hot Springs and take I-90 back to the cabin. Within minutes of leaving the park, the same way we entered it, we had another bison run right along side the vehicle.  One of the memorable quotes from the trip originated here –  Big Swinging D. complements of Greg. Here are some cool videos from this YNP trip as well as my previous trip.

• Old Faithful
• Uncle Tom’s Falls
• Mud Volcano (stinky mud)
• Black Cauldron
• Dragon’s Mouth

All in all, it was a very long day but our crew definitely got to see all the amazing parts of Yellow Stone National Park.  We arrived back to the cabin for some hot tub time and more firepit stories and then all tuned in.  Tomorrow is another early morning (6a) as we float the Yellowstone River fly fishing.