South of Montana is Wyoming, home to America's oldest and most unique national park: Yellowstone. I stayed at a free campsite in Montana by a fast-moving creek on national forest land near West Yellowstone, MT. The park is mostly in Wyoming, but bits of it extend into Montana and Idaho.
Yellowstone National Park is located in a geothermally active area that was the site of an ancient volcano. The land has many features - boiling lakes, geysers, sulfuric structures, wildlife, mountains, etc. I feel like this park is best explained through pictures. Adjacent to Yellowstone is Grand Tetons National Park, which has stunning jagged stone peaks.
Many of the geothermal features were colorful (from thermophilic bacteria that thrive in the scalding hot water) and beautiful:
Yellowstone Lake sits at 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, making it one of the highest lakes in North America!
This feature was fun to watch. Water from the puddle above would drain and shoot out of the puddle below! Then the pressure would subside as the water level dropped to nothing and the puddle above filled back up again. I took this picture after the lower puddle had erupted and the water level was dropping as the puddle on top filled back with water.
Another fascinating feature was steam vents where water and gasses laden with sulfur emerged from the ground. Over thousands of years, sulfur deposits built up to create some pretty wild formations!
There are geysers throughout the park, but of course none as famous as Old Faithful, which erupts roughly every 90 minutes. There are other geysers that are even bigger, but do not erupt nearly as often. Some geysers will sit for years between eruptions. I took these photos from separate locations during different eruptions that day:
Yellowstone National Park is not without its wildlife. Here are some that I saw:
(The picture on the bottom right was a Chinese guy rushing to take a photo of the 2 white parents with their kids in hiking backpacks. It was so cliché I couldn't resist.)
Yellowstone also has its fair share of just plain natural beauty. There's the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone" with waterfalls:
A hike up Mt Washburn (over 10,000 ft at the summit) brought stunning views, a fire tower where an employee would live for months at a time, and the trail was partially covered with snow (yes, even in mid-June!).
When I parked my car for the hike to Mt Washburn, I was sitting around 9,000 feet. I noticed that the air inside a bag of potato chips I had bought in Oregon (close to sea level) had expanded so much from the elevation change that it looked like it was ready to burst! Science is cool.
After a couple of days I said goodbye to Yellowstone and headed south to the adjacent Grand Tetons National Park. This park's best feature is its jagged grey stone peaks which strike an imposing figure on the surrounding area. I passed a "bear jam" - that is, a traffic jam of people trying to catch a glimpse of a bear. Of course I had to stop and take a look also - and wayyy in the distance I could see a sow with her 2 cubs.
You can't see them very well, but they were at least 200 yards away.
Continuing towards the Tetons, I stopped to cook some dinner with my camper stove with a view of the sun hitting the Tetons from a low angle at dusk. Photos do not capture just how beautiful this was:
I found a nice camping spot in the National Forest a few miles east of Moran, just outside the National Park. The only downside to setting up my tent at dusk was all of the mosquitoes that attacked me while I was doing it! In the morning, I drove to some lookout areas and also stopped to photograph this epic view that really captured my feeling of being out on the open road:
Continuing deeper into the Tetons, I headed to Jenny Lake. This lake sits at the base of the Tetons, and it is possible to take a boat across. However, you can also hike around the whole thing, which is about 7 mlies. That is what I chose to do. It was a beautiful route that took me past the cascading Hidden Falls and even some climbers climbing up the side of the rock face.
Jenny Lake Hidden Falls Between Jenny Lake and String Lake
After a day in the Tetons, I emerged from the National Park into the town of Jackson Hole. This is a resort town where everything looked rather expensive, so I just strolled around the central square for a bit before continuing my journey.
So many antlers in Jackson Hole central square! Jackson Hole
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