Yellowstone National Park

I had heard of Yellowstone before, as I'm sure most of you have (even if you haven't been). I knew it was supposed to be super impressive, but I really didn't know why. Colin was so excited for me to be surprised that he wouldn't let me look at pictures before we went (cuuuuute, I know).  So, I'll tell you right now - you need to visit. ​

We had a full 3 days to visit, but half the park was closed or too snowed in to hike around. So you should plan to spend longer here if you want to see everything that Yellowstone has to offer. We stayed the entire time in West Yellowstone, MT, but you might want to consider staying at a couple of different spots during your time there. The park is huge, so it takes a few hours to drive from one end to the other. Pay attention to road closures though when you book.

There are beautiful springs, geysers, animals, etc. We happened to be there during baby season, so we saw a ton of baby bison (I NEED one!). Probably the most traumatizing thing that happened the whole trip was seeing a group of wolves hunt down a baby bison. The mom bison was trying to fight off all of the wolves herself, and then you could see another ~30 bison from their herd rushing in to help. I couldn't see if the baby made it out alive or not, but the herd circled where the attach had been for at least an hour afterward without moving. A man told us later that he had seen the baby get away, so let's go with that.

Anyway, we also saw a mama grizzly bear and her cub (they were digging a lot of holes... I'm not sure why?), 2 black bears at different times, coyotes, lots of elk, lots of other bison, birds, ground squirrels, beavers, and marmots (I made friends with one, and her name is Lady Marmalade... video of her to be posted soon). To see the most animals, it seems to me that you need to get into the park early. We saw bison and elk throughout the day, but everything else we were able to see before too many people got around. On the last day there, we drove in at 5 AM to see most of the animals. Oh! I almost forgot -- one of the coolest animals we saw was a red fox hunting. Have you ever seen a fox hunt in the snow? It is one of the cutest things (who'd have thought that hunting could be cute?). You need to watch this video immediately. Right now. Watch it, and fall in love.

Ok, can you tell I'm obsessed with animals? All I want to do is cuddle with them, and no one will let me. Anyway... the main difference between Yellowstone and other National Parks that I've been to is that Yellowstone is basically on top of boiling water, and most places are not safe to walk because you may fall through the earth and boil to death. When it's early in the morning and a little cooler outside, the entire ground is steaming. There are several geysers that erupt. One of which is Old Faithful that goes off every 35-120 minutes (which is why it's named Old Faithful). I'll post a video of it soon. I don't think that it's the coolest geyser though (but you should see it because it is still cool). There are prettier ones that you can get closer to even though their eruptions aren't as tall -- make sure that you do the hike that is around Old Faithful. It's a couple of miles, but it has the prettiest springs and my favorite geysers.

​​See our USA photos here.