Yellowstone National Park and a Visit From My Sister!

While we were camped outside the town West Yellowstone for our Habitat build we took the opportunity of being so close to Yellowstone National Park to spend one of our days off doing a little exploring there. Tom and I have both been to the park before and so instead of visiting some of the popular (read: crowded) places, we thought we’d drive the loop and make a few random stops as it suited us. Our last such stop was at Isa Lake, which spans the continental divide, meaning that half the lake ultimately drains to the Atlantic Ocean (interestingly, the west side) and half to the Pacific (east side). Other explorations included walking along the Yellowstone River and a couple segments of Yellowstone Lake. We also passed a small herd of bison lounging on the side of the road during our travels.

I attempt to surprise Tom by coming up behind him to take a selfie and I’m the one who ends up looking like a dork:

Our second visit to the park however was way better because we met my sister, her husband, and son Gabe who were visiting the area on their vacation! This was kind of the best birthday present ever. Despite it being rainy and chilly, we enjoyed elk spotting, photographing the Firehole River, seeing the Midway Geyser Basin (which sadly was mostly obscured by steam being blown around that day), and Old Faithful. It was seriously awesome that their vacation coincided with our stay in West Yellowstone since I don’t get to see them very often; I definitely enjoyed catching up with them.

Lastly, we stayed in two different national forest campgrounds during our 2 weeks, the latter of which borders the national park. I caught a couple beautiful evening skies during dogwalks on Hebgen Lake as well as a pelican sighting on the Madison River our last evening there: