Yellowstone Nat’l Park

Thursday - We drove into the park this morning and headed north to Mammoth Hot Springs in the north west corner of the park. This is a large area of mostly hot springs. A display at the visitors center said that the rocks are too soft for geysers. The pano was taken from the road above the springs and you can see the hotel and visitors center on the left. 

This was along the lower boardwalk. The feature on the right was brilliant white and the orange on the left had water running through. 

Further south, we stopped at a pool and the was a vent where steam poured out continuously. It was loud enough to drown out the traffic noise. 

We then headed for a trail that led to the Grand Prismatic overlook but a huge herd of bison were blocking the trail. We drove south to the Fairy Falls trailhead as that was the other end of the trail. It was very crowded but we were lucky and nabbed a parking spot when a Jeep pulled out.

This was the view from the overlook. Well worth the hike. The “normal” view is from the boardwalk on the other side of the feature. 

Total walking today was 13k steps. This is still much less than a Disney World day but the elevation is all over 6000’.