Yellowstone National Park

I really hyped this park up before arriving.  It was the great Yellowstone, the very first national park.  Everyone has heard of it, everyone talks about it.  And after my experience at Theodore Roosevelt National Park I was overly excited about the wilderness that this place was going to offer!  Oh my, I got a reality check.  If you stick to the main areas, which I did because I was new to all this, Yellowstone National Park is a tourist nightmare.  Signs constantly saying “don’t deviate from trail” and just car traffic galore.

One of my favorite photos from this time was of Old Faithful and the crown (see the last image in the album below).  It really shows how many people and how many photos are taken each time Old Faithful erupts.

After the unexpected results from the first day I had a hard time figuring out what to do on my second day in the park.  I had to sleep in my car overnight due to freezing temperatures and rain/sleet forecasted all night.

After visiting a visitor center, mostly for the heat, I took off to hike Mount Washburn. Supposedly a hard hike but very few miles.

Halfway up the mountainside I met up with a family who let me join them.  At the top we couldn’t see much with a storm rolling in but I was glad I had company on the way down when it started thunderstorming and raining on us.