Yellowstone is known for Old Faithful, The Grand Canyon of theYellowstone (and the waterfall), its hot springs and for its wildlife. On the first day we took a drive to Mammoth Hot Springs, and hoped to at least see some Elk when we were there as that was “Elk Country”. On the way up north we even passed “Bear Country”, but we saw neither elk nor bears at the hot springs – only hot springs with the yummy rotten eggs smell that goes with them.

When we came back that evening to the campground we had to stop for two Elk (not bears, luckily) that were crossing the road up to our campsite. Go figure.

The next day we decided to take an easy day in the Canyon area where our campground was. We left the campground around lunch and managed to get a good spot at a pullout, just 10 miles (16km) south of the campground, with the back door open to a meadow with lots of bison grazing (and crossing the road, stopping traffic).

Now we had seen Moose in the Tetons, and Elk and Bison (lots of) .. we’d better be satisfied. Anyway, after lunch we went to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. After having been in Yosemite in fall a number of times we didn’t expect much water in the fall, but there was indeed a lot.

The third day we went to see Old Faithfull – which does “the show” almost on the clock every 90 minutes. Ok it is impressive, but not as impressive as the crowd. I would say that there were more than 1000 people watching Old Faithful do its thing. The sky was gray, and it was not picture weather. On the way back to the campground we stopped at Biscuit Basin to look at more (smelly) hot springs.

On the way out of the park we saw a bunch of people looking at a hillside and pointing with hands, binoculars, cameras etc in one direction. We stopped and Sabine hopped out to ask what the excitement was about – someone had spotted a bear on the other side (still would like to know who was the first one to see that one, as it was quite far and not easy to see). Most of the time it was just laying down, but a few times it looked up enough to get a picture where you actually can see its face.

In Yellowstone there is a lot of “wild” life, that just crosses the paths of humans. The Elk just wandered over the campground and many people didn’t stay the required 25 yards (meters) away. The Bison just don’t care if there is a road or a ton of cars – they just wander around as they like even if that is on the road in front of lots of cars. At one point I think the bison herd had created a mile long backup.