Yellowstone Day 1

We planned our odd-numbered (2023) Yellowstone and Grand Teton last summer while we were on the road in New York. This meant that we didn’t coordinate with anyone else, so it would be just us spending two days in Yellowstone and two days in the Tetons. Later, we learned that both Jim and Gary were coming to stay at our house. So, at least we had caretakers to look after the garden for the week.

 

On Sunday after church, we packed up the van and left for Grandma’s house. We were excited to have dinner with Grandma and Grandpa because Stephanie was bringing James down, and we hadn’t seen him since February. He is a really smiley, happy baby, so the boys had a great time playing with him. 

Since we were going to be in Yellowstone for Seth's birthday, Grandma made cupcakes for Seth and we all sang to him! It was a fun evening.

James is a great new addition to the Daniels family.

Mark and James love playing together.

The mini chocolate cupcakes were delicious.

It was fun to celebrate Seth with family!

Oldest and youngest grandkids!

 

We were up early Monday, because we wanted to be on the road by 6 o’clock. The drive to the gate was uneventful, though we did spot some bald eagles and swans. The wait at the gate was pretty long for 8 o’clock, but we used our pass to glide through to our first hike. 

 

The Riverside boardwalk was our first stop. This was a short one that we hadn’t done for a long time. We wanted to see if it was worth writing up for the website. It seemed to be more of an overlook than a hike, but we spotted a bald eagle right down by the river.

Up with the sun!

Heading in to Yellowstone bright and early!

Two Ribbons Trail was our first hike!

We spotted this beautiful bald eagle.

We also saw this little goose family!

It was a nice warm up walk!

We turned right at Madison and spotted some elk and bison before turning out Firehole Drive. This is one of our favorite waterfalls in the park. After a short visit, we continued down to Grand Prismatic Spring. This is easily our new favorite hike since it opened up a few years ago. We made the climb up the hill and overlooked the rainbow pool. 

We had to slow down for the elk in the river. See the baby to the right?

Our first buffalo sighting of the year.

We love the Firehole Canyon drive and waterfall. 

Hiking to Grand Prismatic.

We watched this little guy gnawing on his acorn.

It's such a beautiful overlook!

Another stop we hadn’t made in years was Artist Paint Pots. This is a pretty short lollipop hike, and it isn’t a favorite, but we enjoyed the bubbling paint. The white was especially pretty. Just around the corner from the paint pots, we stopped for lunch at a picnic area. 

The last time we were here Dax was a baby!

Bubbling paint!

We love having picnics on our trips.

This was a great picnic site by the water.

 The boys really wanted to hike Beaver Ponds after our incredible experience last year. We saw a lot fewer animals this year, but right as we started, we saw a massive bull elk standing right in the trail. Warily, we approached to a safe distance, hoping that he would get out of our way. Unfortunately, he was slowly using the trail, too. After following him for around 75 yards, we finally cut a corner by climbing the hill and got around him. We really enjoyed the rest of the hike, but there wasn’t much to see other than a few pretty woodpeckers. Still, we thought this hike was great.

The elk was right next to the trail.

He was a big guy!

He also wasn't going to move for us!

Randy tried to herd him off the path.

But he wouldn't budge. So we had to go around!

Beaver Ponds is a lovely hike!

Seth was very color coordinated today!

He found a cute little caterpillar

We didn't see many animals, but the trail was still awesome!

It started to rain right when we hit the ponds.

Baby ducks!

We did see a few elk from a distance on this trail.

We also watched a red-tailed sapsucker fly around her little home!

 Back in Mammoth, we got ice cream at the cafeteria. Then we headed toward our picnic site out by the Undine trailhead falls. The day was marked with rain on and off. We’d seen some on our long hike, and we knew we were in for some more. But it was dry while we made soup on the camp stove. We stayed mostly dry while we walked over to the brink of Undine Falls, though it was misting a little.

Dinner on the camp stove to save time and money!

The kids were excited for a ramen dinner!

Dax drank all of the broth!

We like this little secret hike to the backside of Undine Falls.

Mom and Dax hiking together.

The night was spent doing our favorite Yellowstone activity: bear hunting. We drove across the park to Roosevelt and checked in, and then drove through the area. There is a lot of construction on the road out through Lamar Valley because of last year’s flooding, but that didn’t stop us from spotting several bears. For the first time, we drove all the way out to the end of Slough Creek Campground. No wolves were out, but Mark pointed out a moose and a black bear within thirty seconds of arrival. We watched both for a while.

We spotted a bear on the way into Roosevelt.

He was up in the trees and it started to rain some more.

This mom and cub were right in the construction zone,
so Mom snapped this while we drove by. No stopping was allowed.

The moose we saw at the end of Slough Creek.

This area is beautiful!

We checked into the cabin at Roosevelt. We used the shared bathrooms to get some nice hot showers, and then read our scriptures and climbed into bed. We knew we were in for a cold night because we couldn’t get the fire stove to work. We really had to snuggle up and add the blankets, but we made it through the night fairly comfortably.