Yellowstone, Day 1 – Tower Fall & Mammoth Hot Springs

Yellowstone has been one of my dream destinations for a while. We seemed to be stuck on going to Europe each summer, and Yellowstone had to wait. Finally, this year, Alex had no conferences in Europe, and we were free to go anywhere we liked. I chose the Yellowstone National Park.

One of the reasons we always postponed visiting Yellowstone was its location in the middle of nowhere. The closest large airport is Salt Lake City, and it is about 7 hours away from the park. Another reason was the popularity of the park. We read that it is usually packed with people during the summer months and that traffic in the park may take hours. I tried to mitigate these inconveniences as much as I could by renting a large and comfortable SUV and planning the trip during a shoulder season (May, in this case).

We had an early flight to Salt Lake City and planned to leave for Yellowstone at around 11 AM. However, it turned out that the line to pick up a car was huge, and we wasted an hour just waiting to get our car. Fortunately, we did not plan any sightseeing on the day of the arrival, so we were not too frustrated.

We took the fastest route to the park, through the west entrance. It still took us about 7 hours to get there.

West Yellowstone, a small town just on the border of the park, had some nice restaurants and a grocery store. We were already somewhat late, so we just bought some groceries and coffee to go. Our kid was super tired and kind of unimpressed with the journey so far. To be honest, so were we. However, after a short while in the park, our mood changed. The park was beautiful, and the first hot spring that we saw, even a small one, looked exciting.

Even though we were very excited and impatient to start exploring the park, we were tired. The park exploration was postponed until the next day. We checked into Canyon Lodge and decided to wake up at 6 AM to start the day as close as to sunrise as possible to catch the best morning light.

Of course, we woke up later than the planned 6 AM but still early enough for the morning light. I looked outside and saw.. nothing. Fog covered everything. I felt extremely disappointed, but there was absolutely nothing I could do. The sightseeing had to continue regardless of the weather conditions.

On the first day we were planning to visit Mammoth Hot Springs, Tower Fall and the Canyon (or as the Park calls it, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone).

Tower Fall

Tower Fall is located on Grand Loop Road, and it was on our way to Mammoth Hot Springs. When we arrived, however, the fog was so thick that it made no sense to stop. We went ahead but as soon as we made a turn we saw an amazing view. Rocks were rising from the fog like mystical towers from a fantasy novel as the raging river made a sharp turn around them just before the waterfall.

Mammoth Hot Springs

Mammoth Hot Springs are on the North West end of the park’s ring road. The area has a couple of restaurants with limited food selection. This is the usual situation for Yellowstone.

The hot spring themselves are spectacular. I took more images than I could edit. Therefore, here are just a few selected views.

The next one was taken on one of the upper terraces.

I tried to avoid looking at other people’s pictures of Yellowstone park so as to try be original, but I think it is quite a challenge with the number of tourists visiting this place each year.

Thankfully, by the time we finished our walk around the springs, one of the restaurants has opened, and we had some burgers and even got some Internet reception.

Tower Fall in the Afternoon (on our way back)

Around 2PM we decided that this is a good time to go back to our hotel to rest a little. However, we made a couple of stops on our way back.

Petrified Tree

The first one was a site of the petrified tree. It is a place where a giant redwood forest stood before a volcanic eruption obliterated most of it. Several trees were left transformed by volcanic deposits into a solid rock.

There is also a side benefit of visiting the petrified tree site. It has good Internet signal! Maybe it is because of the high iron fence around the tree.

Traffic in Yellowstone

We knew that Yellowstone has traffic. However, the only traffic we encountered that day was the traffic due to cars stopping in the middle of the road to observe some animals (like bisons). Of course if that animal is a bear, then the traffic can be huge. It looks something like this:

However, while being stuck in that traffic we were able to take a picture of a bison. It is not as much of a prize as a picture of a bear, but at least we had something to do while waiting.

Tower Fall (in the afternoon) & Calcite Springs

In the morning fog prevented us from seeing the Tower Fall so we had to make a stop at the site again. It looked a little bit plain to my taste after a few trips to Iceland; however, other sites surrounding it were quite pretty, like Calcite Springs.

This is the end of the first half of the first day of our trip to Yellowstone. It was a long day! 🙂