Day 4

We woke up in the quaint town of Cody, WY to start our journey to Yellowstone National Park! We ate breakfast, figured out some lodging, and got back on the road. Along the way to Yellowstone, we stopped at Buffalo Bill’s Dam.

We arrived at Yellowstone around 11 a.m. It was a gorgeous day. It did start off a little cool, got really warm on the drive, and then got very chilly, and hot again when we were walking around.

We made some stops along the way to the campground where we had planned on staying the night. Our main stop was Old Faithful. As we were walking up to Old Faithful, we noticed the large number of people sitting around Old Faithful. We looked at the sign that had the predicted time and it was going to erupt any second! Our timing could not have been better. It erupted for a couple minutes and we continued on our way.

We walked around the geysers and even had the opportunity to listen to some enthusiastic geyser gazers who helped us figure out if we should stay and watch Grand in case it erupted. They were explaining the tell-tale signs of a geyser that is going to erupt and recalled accounts of other eruptions they have witnessed in the past. We did get to see Grand erupt and it was absolutely incredible. It shot up 100-150 feet into the air. It erupted for about 5-6 minutes. Then it decided to erupt again! This time it erupted for a couple minutes, but it was just as magnificent as the first eruption. The scene was awesome and we’re both so glad we got to witness it because it was more intense than Old Faithful. All together we saw Sawmill, Daisy, Grand, and Old Faithful erupt.

After we saw Grand, we headed off to Madison Campground. We registered and pitched our tent (well, Lisa and Adam’s tent that we are borrowing-thanks again!). We had some food and Jon took some pictures outside of the sun with some geysers steaming. It was getting pretty dark at this point and we heard a noise, we’re pretty sure a bison, in the woods, so we got back to our campsite.


Other stops in the day included looking at Yellowstone Lake, talking to a park ranger at the Visitor Center, the Fishing Bridge, West Thumb Geyser Basin, passed over the Continental Divide twice, Kepler Cascades, Upper Geyser Basin, and the Grand Prismatic Spring.