On roadtrip day 5, we did the Grand Loop and saw so many beautiful sights throughout the park: Hayden Valley and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone in the middle of the park, Lamar Valley toward the northeastern entrance of the park, Mammoth Springs in the northwest corner of the park. Even starting in roughly in the middle of the park by being at Lake Yellowstone Hotel, it was 10 hours in the car. A friend recommended the app GyPSy Guide which has a Yellowstone & Grand Teton guide. It was $10 very well spent. As we drove, it had history and background, told us the "must stops" (there were a lot of those) versus the "nice tos" (a lot more). It was set up so when you traveled opposite directions on the same road, you heard different commentary. It was a great guide. I will say we tired of the Hayden Valley commentary after our 6th time hearing it since all routes led in/out of there!
Our hotel fronted the lake, but there wasn't an access point so we didn't get into the water at all.
Our first stop was Uncle Tom's Trail where we saw this guy! There are black bears and grizzly bears, but black bears can also be brown, so I never knew which we were looking at except Bear! After seeing the bear by the road/parking lot, we did the quick walk to the Lower Falls waterfall, looped around on the trail to see the now sleeping bear, and then got back in the car to continue the loop. I can't remember if the actual trail/staircase from the south rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was closed or if our guide app just said don't do it.
Next up was Artist Point, where we got a good look at the canyon and the Upper Falls. This was a crazy parking lot, so John dropped us off for a photo op and peek around. Just as we were getting ready to go back to meet him, he showed up at the rim and joined us! He lucked into a parking spot so we got some family photos, too.
For lunch I wanted to eat at the Roosevelt Lodge. Tower-Roosevelt is the intersection where the loops meet and we were going to head over into Lamar Valley which is even more remote. This is where I realized we weren't well prepared for lack of food options. The dining room at the lodge was full and would be an hour wait plus likely an hour to eat, so we didn't want to wait. Instead we head into the tiny general store next to the lodge (the general stores at Canyon and Lake Yellowstone - where we got our roadtrip snacks that morning - were MUCH larger). We ended up buying a package of hamburger buns, a carton of Oscar Meyer lunchmeat, and some cheese sticks and making sandwiches to eat with the roadtrip chips we had left. We are way too used to having a Starbucks every mile.
After refueling with our picnic lunch, we head into the Lamar Valley and the first thing we see is this pronghorn at another picnic area. It was molting, which I didn't know if that was normal or this guy was "off." But we were soon to see another "off" animal....
Minutes up the road we encountered traffic at a standstill. We were already familiar with cars lining the sides of the road for wildlife viewing, but we had not yet encountered a buffalo jam. Turns out this wasn't a herd of buffalos crossing....it was one bear. And we were about to see him very, very close up.
Since he sniffed our bumper instead of climbing onto the car, we avoided being a State Farm commercial....but it got the adrenaline going and he lingered in front of the car and then lumbered off into the woods! I assume the river was behind these trees, as well, but the view that I got of it was safely down the road.
This stretch was a constant wave of pulling off the road to see animals. Cars on the shoulder, people standing around (some too close to the animals) and other cars driving by. We didn't stop for any buffalo in Lamar Valley since we had already spent so much time with our neighborhood herds in Hayden Valley. But it was a misty day and we got some cool (creepy?) photos of the animals and landscape from the car.
In the two photos below there are actually a bison (on the left) and a bear (on the right) that at various times were walking toward each other. It was definitely a highlight of the day! The rule follower and nervous mom in me didn't want us to get any closer than we did. And I was also annoyed at John for pulling over on the wrong side of the road and taking our low to the ground Audi rental car almost into a ditch. All was well: no animals attacked, no traffic tickets were issued and we were able to rejoin the flow of traffic with only some minor delays.
I'm not entirely sure where the afternoon went to....the road, I guess. I don't see to have photos but we stopped at the petrified tree area. It was cool but a much longer hike from the parking lot than I was expecting. But when we got out to "the tree" there was a bear down in the valley so we were focused on that instead! Our Yellowstone "must see" hierarchy was Bears, Bison, all the other big animals, the awe inspiring nature, little animals, and then petrified trees.
It was 5 p.m. before we made it to Mammoth Hot Springs Terraces. When I first heard about this area, I was envisioning actual hot springs - as in get out and swim. Instead these terraces are almost ice-like in appearance. It was very cool to look at but we were quite exhausted after our adventures to this point. So we didn't stop in the town at all and just drove with through the terraces with a quick walk on a boardwalk. There is a new hotel in that area, so if we returned it would be cool to stay there and really explore the area more on foot. I would also have liked to go through the North Entrance at Gardiner, MT, to see the town and the Roosevelt Arch. But we were 2+ hours from the hotel driving straight through so didn't want to detour.
We saw some other beautiful scenery and a few more animals as we continued south toward Norris before cutting across east to Canyon Village and then down to the Lake hotel. The only big animal we didn't spot during the day was a wolf and we thought we saw one back in Hayden Valley. Turned out to be a coyote, but it was really fun to watch it prance and hunt through the field.
When we got back to the hotel we showered and ate again in the dining room. There was also a cafeteria style dining at the lodge building down the road but we were too tired to get back out again. It was a LONG day in the car. And for as much sitting versus hiking that we did, we were sure tired! Plus, we had to get to bed. Our big hike was coming up the next day!
