Day 38: Exploring Southern Yellowstone

Today we were greeted by a small herd of elk off in a field when we entered the park. We opted for a much less hiking and more driving today.

We hit Mystic Falls at Biscuit Basin. We had the choice between a three mile out-and-back and a four mile loop, with the longer one also adding 400 more feet of elevation. Nicholas wanted the shorter one, but once we got out there we were able to tackle the longer loop. The timing ended up being perfect to view Old Faithful erupt from the overlook. As Rob pointed out, it was probably more of a ‘can see’ Old Faithful versus ‘should see’ it since it was almost three miles away, but it was the perfect reason to take a 10 minute rest to wait for it before heading back down the trail.

Next we headed to West Thumb Basin and Yellowstone Lake. We had the perfect lunch along Yellowstone lake on our picnic blanket, where we also enjoyed putting our toes in the lake. The boys were thrilled to get to play in some sandy dirt for a while too.

West Thumb Basin was our next stop, which involved a boardwalk hike of less than a mile. Overall it was pretty underwhelming, but did provide more views of the lake and a cool chance to see how the hot springs and geysers interact with it. We also crossed the Continental Divide along the way.

The final stop for today was Grand Prismatic Spring. Yesterday the line of cars was blocking the main road to get into the parking lot, but today we were able to park within a few minutes. The Excelsior Geyser Crater was the most impressive one there. It pumps 4,000 gallons of water a minute into the Firehole river, and its coloring is amazing too. The view of Grand Prismatic wasn’t as impressive compared to our overlook view the day before, but it was still fun to get to walk the boardwalk and be so close to it.

We ended the night with dinner and bike riding around the park. Time to pack up and move to a new campground tomorrow.