You might have noticed that our “scenic route to Yellowstone” blog post went up a day late, and that we haven’t posted since then. Well, that’s because Yellowstone and our accommodation there has TERRIBLE internet and NO phone reception. And we don’t mean terrible when compared with the rest of the internet we’ve experienced in the US (which, by the way, is so much better than Australia’s). Oh no, we mean really, truly terrible. Like slower than dial-up. Like if Kurt was trying to load a simple Google search and Nicole wanted to open an email, it would poop itself and take 10 minutes.

So anyway, that’s our excuse for this inexcusably late blog post. Well, that and we went fly fishing yesterday, so our arms were too tired to even consider typing.

All of that means this blog post is (once again) coming to you from the road, this time while we are driving towards Winnemucca, Nevada. Don’t bother Googling it – it’s just a pit-stop on our way towards Yosemite. This will be a longer blog post, so feel free to go for a bathroom or drink break now if needed. Go on, we’ll wait.

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Ok, now we’ve weeded out the weak, let’s get to it!

Mesa Falls
We had some falls near our accommodation, and travelled there one day during our stay. Honestly, we weren’t expecting much considering it wasn’t very tourist-y and no one had mentioned them to us, but we were very pleasantly surprised. This is them!

Rexburg
Island Park (where our accommodation was) isn’t what we would call a town. At all. It was undeniably peaceful and very pretty, but the “town” comprised of a petrol station with limited basic supplies and a bank. Weird combination, and not overly useful, really.

So when we needed some groceries and other supplies, we headed into Rexburg. It is about an hour and a half south of Island Park (away from Yellowstone) and is the closest kind-of-city in the area. By kind-of-city, we mean it had a few bigger chain stores… it was still a small town, really.

Turns out Rexburg is a Mormon town. No big deal… unless you want to buy something on a Sunday at anything but Walmart, or if you would like any kind of alcohol served to you on Sunday. We weren’t fussed (Walmart is a bit of a novelty to us) but it was a strange realisation when we finally read an explanation of why so many stores were closed on Sunday in an online review of one.

Once again we took the scenic route when it was presented to us, and found ourselves winding through some gorgeous farmland and rivers on our way back to the accommodation. That said, a couple of the properties we passed were flying Confederate flags, so we weren’t super keen on photographing them. So have a shot of some pretty horses by the river!

 

Yellowstone
… was pretty full on! We crammed in as much as we could in the time available, and managed to see the geysers, lake, wildlife (more on them below!), falls and sulfur pits. (Sadly there was some back-burning going on so the direct road to Mammoth Hot Springs was closed and we didn’t have time to go the long way around to see them.)

Wildlife
This was honestly the part of Yellowstone we enjoyed the most. Although we didn’t get to see wolves or bears, which we had hoped for, we did see a coyote, mule deer, several bison (or buffalo, maybe, we’re not clear on which was which) and some trout.

Coyote

Bison (or buffalo… whatever, just look at the pictures)

Deer

Trout

And here is the stream we saw them in:

Upper Geyser Basin and Old Faithful
Another highlight of Yellowstone. Naturally, we waited to see Old Faithful erupt — and it was really cool. Such a strange phenomenon! It erupts every 35 to 120 minutes and each eruption lasts between 3 and 10 minutes on average. We arrived about 30 minutes before the eruption. For the first 15 to 20 minutes of our vigil, only steam emerged from the admittedly less-than-beautiful hole that is Old Faithful. In the last 10 minutes before the eruption, little spurts and bubbles of water would occasionally tease us, but when the eruption truly began, there was no mistaking it. Water shot up and steam streamed from it, creating a pretty little rainbow and a lot of awe from the audience.

After Old Faithful erupted, we wandered around Upper Geyser Basin to see the other geysers and hot springs and thermal pools in the area. Apparently the different colours mean different temperatures and/or minerals.

The Sulphur Pits
Yeah… so they’re essentially bubbling pools of really, really smelly mud. Like a thousand rotten eggs, the smell hits you the moment you step out of the car. Convinced we would get used to it and that prettier areas must be just around the corner, we decided to do the walk around the sulphur pit area. Not going to lie, that was not our favourite part of the trip. Turns out, we did not get used to the smell and many of the pits looked exactly the same. We felt this area of Yellowstone fell into the “once you’ve seen one smelly bubbly mud pool, you’ve seen them all” category.

Another strange thing about the sulphur pits is that since then, once or twice a day, the car has mysteriously become re-infested with the smell. It seems to follow meal times and somehow the windows get locked when it occurs, causing Nicole to almost pass out before a laughing Kurt manages to get the windows unlocked. So. Not. Funny.

The Falls and Canyon of Yellowstone
Very pretty, and relatively self-explanatory!

 

Leaving Yellowstone
Leaving Yellowstone National Park at sunset was stunning, and because we were stuck in a 20-minute bison-based traffic jam (there was a bison next to the road and every tourist was stopping to take a picture of one close up… it was honestly infuriating) Kurt managed to get a pretty cool shot despite being the driver at the time.

We’re going to leave you there for the night. There are more pictures of Yellowstone in the gallery (on the side of the blog). Enjoy!