Yellowstone National Park, WY

After a brief shopping trip to buy some more warm clothes we left Idaho Falls and began our drive to Yellowstone National Park where we would stay in a Frontier cabin at Lake Yellowstone. The morning was cold and crisp and we drove through some beautiful countryside. We stopped for a picnic lunch at Island Park State Park, ID and it was the coldest al fresco lunch we have ever had. We drove through Montana for about 10 miles, stopping in West Yellowstone, a really Wild West cowboy town for a warming cup of coffee. All that was missing were the cowboys' horses tethered outside the saloon!

We reached the Park about three o'clock and as we were driving along we had to stop to allow a mother black bear and her two cubs cross the road. It was an amazing sight.

Mother bear and cubs crossing the road in front of us

Yellowstone was America's first National Park, opened in 1872. It has over half the world's geysers, the world's largest high-altitude lake (7735 feet), rivers and waterfalls all sitting on a super volcano. It has an abundance of wildlife including grizzlies, black bears, moose, mule deer, wolves, coyotes, yellow-bellied marmots and a variety of birds.

Again it is difficult to describe in words the beauty of the Park so here are some photos to show what we saw during our time in Yellowstone. It was more wintry than autumnal with snow on the mountains and to the sides of the recently snow-ploughed roads.

Bison resting in our car park

The Grand Prismatic Spring
(The largest hot spring in the USA - temp 160F)

Life and death side by side

Posing with her chilly friends!

A mule deer

Lewis Falls

Old Faithful

Black Sand Basin

If you want to find out more about the Park you should go to www.nps.gov/yell

We left Yellowstone on Tuesday morning and headed south to Jackson, WY.

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