Yellowstone National Park

I’m back again.

I had the opportunity to go to Yellowstone National Park on an all-expenses-paid day trip. My roommate Katie works for a company called Delaware North, which owns lots of different companies around the country, and one of them is Yellowstone Vacations. Katie and I had planned on going to Yellowstone on January 15th, because it was one of the free admission days for national parks. We did not realize that to go into the park, you must go on a tour. No cars allowed. Katie was talking to her boss about our upcoming trip, and her boss told her that she could get us on this snow coach tour of the park. At Yellowstone Vacations, there are three different tour options. There are snowmobile tours and then there are two snow coach tours; one called Canyon Explorer and one called Old Faithful Explorer. We took the Canyon Explorer tour. We had to be at Yellowstone Vacations by 8 am, which meant leaving Bozeman at 6 am. We drove an hour and forty minutes to West Yellowstone and watched the sunrise. We checked in at Yellowstone Vacations and boarded our snow coach for the day. We had eight other people on our tour, and we had a very friendly tour guide named Judy.

We started off going into the park and making stops to look at the beautiful scenery and wildlife (mostly bison). The morning started out very cloudy and we weren’t expecting the sun to come out. About thirty minutes into the drive the sun decided to make an appearance and the lighting was absolutely perfect. We stopped to take pictures of a female elk (I think), drinking water from the Madison River. Our next stop was Gibbon Falls, a place that I have visited and photographed before.

I have a thing for trees with snow on them because they are just so pretty to photograph. While we made a stop at the falls, I spotted what we think was a weasel. It kept popping out from its hiding hole to check out why everyone was pointing a camera at him. Afterward, we drove towards our lunch stop, but we ran into a bison backup. There were about six bison on the road, and we actually got to see two of the male bison start to fight, which was a first for me. After lunch, we stopped to take pictures at Artists Point, and then we went up to the northern summit and looked at the Lower Falls from a different angle. We drove towards Norris Geyer Basin, which was actually one of my favorite stops. The lighting was perfect, and the steam coming out of the geysers created this mystical -like landscape. The trees hung low from the weight of the snow and it was very pretty. We walked on the boardwalks, careful not to slip and fall into the hot thermals below. Judy, our tour guide, handed out Yaktrax to anyone who wanted them.

Instead of sticking with the planned itinerary of heading towards Beryl Spring, we went to Firehole Falls, which Judy said was much prettier and more photogenic.On our way back to West Yellowstone, we thought we spotted a wolf, but it was really a coyote. It looked like it was waiting for dinner. We also saw a bull elk on the side of the river just resting and eating.

Altogether the tour took about nine hours and it would have been definitely been worth the $130/person. Our snow coach had heat and music and we were able to choose how much time we wanted to stay at each place. If we thought it was a good place to stop for a while and take pictures we could. If we thought it was good for just one picture, we would all just pile back onto the bus and head out. I have been to Yellowstone three times prior to this visit. This was my first visit during the winter, and it definitely made me fall in love with the park again. Although visiting in the summer is warmer and you can actually drive into the park,  you avoid most crowds by visiting in the winter. The only people that can drive into the park are the tours, so fewer cars, fewer bison and elk backups, and more sightseeing. I think it would be super fun to do the snowmobiling tour next. You can hit a lot more places in the nine-hour time period because you are able to go 35 MPH instead of the 25 MPH that snow coaches.

Until next time.