Dryad Lake

We woke up at 7am to have a quick breakfast (grab and go) before beginning our trip to Yellowstone National Park. It took us about 2h to get to the south entrance of the park and on the way we were passing a lot of bisons.
After a while of driving through Grand Teton National Park on the way to Yellowstone, we started seeing several cars parked by the side of the road so we stopped as well as we were wondering what they were looking at. As we got out of the car we saw a bear minding its own business, about 20m from the road. We were a bit shocked but very excited and happy to see it. We took a few pictures and then moved on. When we reached the entrance we had to wait for 30 minutes due to the amount of cars that were entering the park. When it was our turn we paid the entrance fee of $35 and found out that the park had been closed the day before due to heavy snowfall.
After this it was time to start exploring the park. First we went to the Old Faithful geyser. We felt excited, but as it erupted and the water exploded up in the air we quickly realized that our expectations were a bit too high. We checked out the other hot springs and geysers, and walked around the trails for about 45 minutes before having lunch in the car (pre-made sandwiches). Our next stop was the Grand Prismatic Spring. As the temperature was around 7 degrees there was a lot of steam rising from the spring, making it a bit hard to see the colors. We were still happy to see it and the other springs nearby, and here we also learned that the entire park is resting on a supervolcano (which is going to erupt sometime, but it’s impossible to know when). We continued to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and when the time was around 4:30pm we had chicken salad in the car that we had made the day before. As the day went on we saw a lot of waterfalls, geysers, hot springs, mud volcanoes, snow, mountains, beautiful scenery, and, most importantly, animals. During the day we saw bisons, a bear, elks, a beaver, an eagle, a wolf, and deers. Sometimes we got very close to some animals and felt a bit nervous as the park constantly emphasized that the animals look lazy but that their behaviors can change suddenly.
All in all it was a good but exhausting day. We did a lot of stops and had good weather at the end of the day, and experienced a nice sunset light over the Grand Teton mountain range on our way back to Jackson Hole. We got back at around 10pm and ended the day with food from Wendy’s drive-through.Read more