Yellowstone: Hot Springs are Wonderful Things!

It must be tough to be Yellowstone National Park: first national park in the world, greatest collection of wildlife outside of Alaska or Africa, home to three-fifths of the worlds geothermal features, beloved vacation destination for generations of Americans (and non-Americans!). That's a LOT to live up to. Yellowstone is indeed a (if not THE) Big Kahuna of the National Park system. And, it happened to be one of the centerpiece stops on our cross-country trip. As one of our bucket list attractions, I took several days off so that we could really dig into this place and get to know it. 

Saturday was magical! We made our first foray into the park early in the morning and found that we weren't the only ones who'd heard the hype. The line at the entrance gate made us feel as if we were driving into Disneyland! Fortunately, this was still the shoulder season, and almost as soon as we passed through the gate, we were surrounded by peace and quiet. This is a BIG place, so even a large crowd thins out pretty quickly.

We soon had our first major wildlife encounter - a bison just strolling along beside the road.

No doubt this was a rare and amazing encounter for a family from Southern California. It really says something about the park that after a few days we'd see people pulled over to take pictures of a bison herd and think "well, there's another wildlife jam." Even the most wondrous things can become routine after a while.

Sure enough, just an hour or so later we arrived at the historic Army post at Mammoth Hot Springs and saw an entire herd of elk lounging next to the visitor center.

The Mammoth Hot Springs area is one of the most built-up sections of the park, with a lodge, cafe, general store, and other amenities. Fortunately everyone was wearing their masks!

The village also happens to be directly adjacent to the hot springs themselves, which made for an easy stroll to our first scenic area.

In keeping with the day's theme, we then headed over to the Norris Geyser Basin to see an amazing collection of geysers, hot springs, and other geothermal features. We even saw our first erupting geyser! It wasn't the most epic geyser, but it was our first, so it was special.

After that, it was time to return to our little home away from home and a good night's sleep.