Date de dernière mise à jour : le 30 July 2018
We arrive in Yellowstone Park after having met animals but hopping to see others!
The park is huge and much visited. We need at least 3 full days to see it.
We arrive by the end of the day and go to have a first view of the first kilometers of the park.
The sunset offers great colors of a nature during the fall.
On the road, we first meet a bison and a little further, an elk. It is the bellowing season and the meadow allows us to have a perfect view. We stay for a while, enjoying the song of the elks.
Even if it is the end of the touristic season, the park is full and the campgrounds inside the park do not offer any room for our van. We need to go out of the park for the night.
The day after we decide to visit the north-east of the park. The sky is full of dark clouds but it looks just even more beautiful like this.
We discover our first geysers, hot basins and acid water. The landscapes are just unreal. It smells like rotten eggs. No way that we put a finger in the water. The signs are everywhere to remind us that, nevertheless the amazing colors, sometime with a lighter blue than the sea, these are not thermal baths!
So we stay on the tracks!
Between two geysers, the forest and the meadows are everywhere. The animals are at home and it is lunch time for some of them.
There are also mountains in the park with picks and deep valleys. There is a beautiful canyon that gives us a first view of what we may encounter more in the south.
And there are some bisons. Yesterday we saw one. Alone. But today, there are dozen of them. They seem calm and nice.
Despite these appearances, they are wild animals and sometimes very impulsive ones. So when we get stuck in a “bison jam”, we wait patiently.
The boss of the team is just in front of us. He walks toward us. Again. And get very close.
Duel of looks (well, yes we are 3 but I close my eyes. Yes both of them, it is safer…). Duels of looks so. And finally, Steph, master of hypnosis, wins. The bison let us drive further.
It is getting dark, we decide to leave the park by the north and drive a small road, pull off and stay for the night.
In the morning there are animals. Not in the van but a few meters further on the road. And in the village. They are everywhere!
The rain starts and the temperature is lower than the other days. The perfect weather to take a bath in the river!
In the north of the park, there is a special place built for the tourists to enjoy the hot springs that arrive in the river. We have to stop there.
It is a strange atmosphere. The fog, the rain, the 10 degrees water and the hot springs at 60 degrees. Before we find the perfect place in the river, we are frozen and burned at the same time… But after, it is just perfect!
After an hour, we decide to go out and get dry. It is raining. That is a sort of big challenge. We lose. We arrive completely wet at the van.
We go back on the road for the south of the park. The landscapes are different again and very impressive. That is crazy to see such a variety of landscapes in the same park.
From geyser to geyser, the day passes. We visit third of the park and go south to find a campground that we hope may offer a small place for Tikal (if not, we will have to go out of the park again). It is good for the night!
In the morning we decide to visit the south of the park.
It is raining. Since the beginning of the day. And the temperature goes lower and lower. Then rain becomes snow…
On the south-east road, there are some people on the side. Sign that an animal is not so far. And not a bison, otherwise you do not get off the car.
And yes, on a tree, there is a great owl.
It is getting dark and the snow finally stays on the ground.
The animals seem a bit surprised by the earliness of this first snow.
We finally drove all the roads of the park. We decide to go south and sleep outside the park.
Tomorrow, let’s go to Grand Teton National Park.