Yellowstone 2014

We camped in Yellowstone National Park for our one-year anniversary and loved every minute of it. About an hour's drive before hitting West Yellowstone, the trees condense and meet the road and the sky grows more blue every mile north. It is amazing. Thunderstorms every afternoon kept everything bright green while also flooding our tent. It was an experience.

The park is full of natural color which obviously calls for too many pictures.

Most pictures are from a roll of 35mm film with a few iPhone photos.






Note to everyone: Old Faithful is only mildly impressive and the atmosphere around the geyser is similar to that of Disneyland. The geyser goes off about every 90 minutes, and there are hundreds of people on top of each other trying to get a picture of it. No offense, but Asian people will take a million pictures at whatever cost. I'm convinced that there is a statistic relating ethnicity and the number of people gored by a buffalo in Yellowstone. NO OFFENSE.




The park is centered on a supervolcano that is literally boiling water to the surface of the earth. These pools are filled with 120 degree+ water and foster the growth of thousands of species because they are rich in nutrients. Yes, we drove out of Yellowstone as enlightened geothermal scientists.




This orange creepy stuff is called a bacterial mat where living microoganisms create slimy stuff (don't quote me).




We hiked down billions of steps to a look-out at the bottom of this waterfall. The double rainbow was worth the billions of steps back up.



It was stunning to be immersed in such heavy forest with beautiful views and valleys. We saw hundreds of bison and Kyle stopped for EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM ;) It was really neat to watch them crossing the rivers to join their friends. It was also really neat to watch one charge at a dummy (not Kyle) who was right in his face taking pictures. We also got to see herds of elk and antelope, two black bears up close, and one grizzly bear far away.







A few take-aways:
Go see the hot pots and geysers in the mornings. It isn't hot yet and there aren't as many people.
Hayden Valley is where all of the wildlife is- go in the morning and make friends with an old man that has binoculars and/or a scope so you can see grizzly bears that are far away, then go back at night to see these amazing sunsets.
Don't be fooled by the everything-Huckleberry trend. The frozen yogurt tastes like mint.
Bring a waterproof tent.