One of the places we wanted to visit, that prompted the eastbound direction of travel in our second month, was to visit Yellowstone National Park. We didn’t know much about Yellowstone other than what you see a lot of people share: Old Faithful and Bison. For example, we did not know that Yellowstone is 4 times the size of Yosemite. It is massive. Because of that, we did not know that you can’t see everything in the park in two days, because you have to drive 45 minutes to get from one thing to another.
Despite not seeing everything, it was 100% worth visiting for two days. We stayed at the Canyon Campground because it was the only campground site available when we made reservations. There are quite a few different lodging choices in Yellowstone, all managed by Xanterra like the Grand Canyon. There are big lodges, hotels, and campgrounds. Traveling with a dog definitely limits your options because not every option allows dogs. Our campground had bathrooms and another building with laundry facilities and showers, although the showers were closed due to Covid.
We came in the west entrance, from Idaho/Montana. In our short time in Yellowstone, we tried to see a good amount of the park while also enjoying the campsite. Our Yellowstone reservations were on non-work days for me, so I was looking forward to enjoying our time without worrying about cell signals (which were very limited). We started out driving around the park on our first day there. That loop down to the geysers, over to the lake, and back up towards our campsite was pretty long. We stopped occasionally to check out different spots, but we had Teddy with us so we had to be mindful of where he was allowed to go. We didn’t realize when we started the drive how long it would take, but we were glad we did it the first day and then could think about what we wanted to see on the second day.
On our second day, we got up early to see Old Faithful and took a short hike on the trail near there for a view. We did get breakfast from the lodge near Old Faithful. Only some restaurants are available during Covid, and some are not open to everyone, instead, they are only open to guests of the adjacent lodge. But the Old Faithful one was open for take-out food. So we got our food to go and sat on the benches waiting for the geyser to go off at its regular interval. Later that day, we also asked the staff for trails our dog was allowed on. One of the staff pointed out how we could walk from our campground to the rim of the canyon. It turned out that our campground was called canyon because it was near a huge canyon, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We took that trail and the views were amazing.
When we left the park, we drove out of the North entrance. We were so glad we did because it was full of different terrain and impressive views as well. 2 days is a short tie for such a large park, but we really enjoyed all of it.
Have you ever been to Yellowstone?
I never realized how big it is. I took a half day 😅 to explore it/see Old Faithful during a road trip from Glacier National Park down to San Diego several years ago. I’d definitely like to go back and explore more one day!