It had rained a bit overnight, but thankfully when we got out of the tent it had stopped and the sun was starting to shine through the clouds. We hadn’t seen the sun since arriving in Yellowstone two days ago.
We had pancakes for breakfast in the sun as we watched everything around us steam in the sunshine. We then headed out to the Grant Village visitor centre. It had a beautiful view of Yellowstone Lake, and they even had the fireplace going. The exhibits were mainly focused on the great 1988 forest fire. After confirming the ranger walk was still happening at 10:30 at the West Thumb, we headed back a mile back to the campground to pick up shorts for Toby, and then headed to West Thumb. To our surprise the large parking lot was almost full! Thankfully we did find a spot right away as we were cutting it close to the start of the ranger walk with the detour we had to make back to our campsite.
West Thumb has a collection of various “thermal features”, pools, mud pots, hot springs, and geysers. There was quite a crowd for the ranger hike, a lot more than we were expecting. The ranger was very well spoken and walked us around the boardwalk showing us each thermal feature in the West thumb basin and interesting stories behind them for over an hour. It was a beautiful spot right beside Yellowstone lake, and the sunshine through the clouds made it all the better. We saw a group of kayakers on the calm lake. What a place it would be to paddle. There were even geysers peaking above the waters near the shore. All of the thermal features are way too hot to touch let alone go in, and even walking off the board walk could be very dangerous as you could fall through into boiling and sometimes acidic water. The colours of the thermal pools and springs were incredible. There was even one above the lake called Fish Cove, where fisherman used to cook and eat the fish they just caught in the lake. Apparently there are about 700 or 800 geysers in the world and 500 of them are in Yellowstone, and in total there are 12,000 thermal features in the park. Trees will be growing around the area and will suddenly die as the hot underground water or heat moves around. Sometimes deer or elk will fall into the pools and die, resulting in wolves or bears coming to eat the carcass. One pool called the Abyss was over 120ft deep. The thermal features are constantly evolving and changing as some die out, new ones form. West Thumb used to house the main village of the area, but after floors will collapse into the ground with the underground changes the visitor village was moved to what is now Grant Village. We learned from the ranger that the colours are due to the different bacteria that thrive in certain temperatures, and the colours follow the colour of the rainbow as the temperatures go from hot to cooler (but still very hot). Apparently clear or blue water is the hottest as no high temperature bacteria can even survive at those temperatures.
The whole area is actually a giant crater of a volcano that has erupted a few times in the last few millions of years. If it was to erupt it would be the kind of event that would impact the entire world.
After a quick lunch on the nearby picnic tables as we watched the vehicles come and go, we headed up the road near the Old Faithful area for some more hiking. We stopped at the Lodestar geyser trailhead but after finding out it was a 6 mile roundtrip hike we decided that was too much for us this time around. Instead we continued the drive towards the Fairy Falls trailhead. On the way Toby spotted a large lone Bison sitting down maybe about 200 yards away in the grass.
As we got closer to the Fairy Falls trail, it was evident that the parking was going to be chaotic. There were vehicles parked on the side of the road quite a ways out. We took our chances and drove right to the start of the trail. The car in front of us got a spot as another was pulling out, but luckily just as we were about to drive away Katherine spotted a vehicle that was about to leave, and we were able to take their spot. There were about 5 vehicles behind us already. The parking spots literally only sit empty for seconds, and we felt very lucky to have found one right away.
We started the hike towards the lookout to the Grand Prismatic Spring. There were so many people hiking it was quite a scene. There were pools and springs all around us, even beside the parking lot. We crossed a steel bridge and I recognized it as the spot where a Youtube clip was filmed showing a grizzly bear taking down a bison. We couldn’t believe that was the spot. With all the people around it was hard to believe anything like that would be happening today. There was however large amounts of large bison poop everywhere in the fields.
We eventually made it to the top of the hill for the lookout. There were so many people! The colours of the Grand Prismatic Spring was incredible. Just as we got there however of course it started to rain quite heavy, but thankfully it only lasted for a few minutes. It seemed to help get rid of some of the crowd. There was a large group of people trying to get that instagram shot for each and every one of them (and like 20 pictures each with different poses), it was a bit ridiculous.
The overlook was very recently added, as it’s hard to appreciate the large spring at ground level and being so close by with all the steam. There is another trail with a boardwalk that goes around the spring, but from up on the hill the view of the colours of the spring could really be taken in.
After the hike as we were leaving, there was already a vehicle waiting to take our parking spot. We then headed to the Biscuit Basin area for another short hike around the boardwalk (despite the kids protest for more hiking). On the way there we saw the same Bison lying down in a different area.
One thing I forgot to mention is the roads appear to always be under construction in Yellowstone, but thankfully either they are almost done, or because of the weather and the fact it was just the weekend, they hadn’t really affected us. We seemed to be enjoying mostly newly paved roads during our visit for the most part.
Again the parking was quite full, but again we lucked out with someone leaving just as we were arriving. There was a large wooden pedestrian bridge that went over the river right beside the Biscuit Basin. It definitely seemed like the kind of place Grizzly bears would be hanging out, but again with the crowd of people it seemed unlikely. We walked around the boardwalks enjoying all the different pools, springs, and geysers. Some even erupted while we were walking around. It was neat to be walking in the steam, it was so warm and felt like we were in a steaming bath. Again there was bison poop all over the place, and we wondered when the bison would be hanging out around this area (we assume maybe at night). There was an additional hike to go see a waterfall but it was too much for the day, so we headed back to our campsite. On the way back it started to rain quite heavily, probably the most we’ve seen since arriving in Yellowstone. The temperature plummeted from 23 to 13 degrees. The weather has been very unsettled, but we heard that is not uncommon being up in the mountains. The rain eased up for a brief period just as arrived to our campsite to grab our laundry. The rain picked up again as we headed to the laundry/shower building where we cooked dinner on the picnic table under the large building structure. We also did our laundry in parallel to save time. The weather kept alternating between sunshine and thunder and rain. People came and went as we sat there eating dinner. One of the kind park workers stopped by to entertain the kids with some magic tricks. We had a family from France currently living in Massachusetts who was curious with our cooking equipment, home schooling and travels.
Once we finished the laundry and dinner, we got ready to go have our showers. We had got a couple extra showers from someone who overheard Katherine and Mia talking about how we were going to have to pay for our next set of showers on our first night, so now we had 3 more complementary showers left. We were about to pay for two more showers but it was the same kind man who was working at the counter and he winked and just let Toby and Mia in for free.We thoroughly enjoyed our nice showers again, and headed back to our campsite. It was raining AGAIN, so we all just headed into the tent, and afterwards when the rain stopped I headed out to do the dishes from lunch and dinner. The rain had finally stopped. It had rained for all three nights we have been at Yellowstone so far, but we couldn’t complain about the weather too much during the day. We didn’t get too rained on for most of the mite we were out and about and got to enjoy the periodic sunshine. The kids however were not impressed that we were not having a campfire for the third night in a row. We are headed to the Canyon Village campground for 6 nights starting tomorrow and the forecast is looking much better so we promised the kids we would be able to have a campfire at the next campground. We are planning on stopping at the Old Faithful area again which is on the way to our next campsite, so we can complete the walks around the other geysers that we had to skip due to all the rain when we were there yesterday.
Trip Around The World 
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