I’ll admit it. Yellowstone National Park is one of my favorite places to visit (perhaps only second to Glacier National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada). I love the “out of this world” feeling that some of the areas give. I love the beautiful valleys with the rivers flowing through them. I love the mountains and the incredible forests. After hitting Yellowstone several times last year, we visited again in the summer of 2013. Other than seeing virtually no animals, we had a great time.
This year, we decided to stay in the north of the park in Gardiner, Montana in order to have easy access to Mammoth Hot Springs, which we had only a few minutes at in 2012. Our hotel (Best Western) was right on the river with a great view.
In addition to Mammoth Hot Springs, we also spent time at Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone Falls, and enjoyed seeing all the other falls on the route we took.
We ended by heading out through West Yellowstone where we made a brief stop at the Book Peddler bookstore, a tradition that my wife now has (every time we’ve been to West Yellowstone, she stops and buys something and this fun bookstore).
If you’ve not been to Yellowstone, definitely make it a priority. You’ll remember it all your life (I still remember trips from over 40 years ago).
Here’s a Flickr Slideshow for everything we saw in Yellowstone National Park this year
And the map to Yellowstone National Park:
