Yesterday was an odd drive. It was one of our shorter days of driving in terms of distance, but also the only day we’ve had to drive in the dark.
We woke up in Ashton, Idaho in the middle of that potato farm by the river. We had a nice, peaceful morning. We took our morning meetings, and then read a day of Revelation by the river. Those two dogs came back to study with us too.
Then we took off for Yellowstone.
I’ve been dreading writing this blog to be honest. It’s hard to explain the raw beauty of Yellowstone in just one blog post. Even with Tay’s awesome pictures! At the end of the day, we pretty much drove the whole thing. There are 251 miles of roadway.
We definitely got our money’s worth and spent almost the whole day driving, hiking, and staring into pure nature.
We tried to come up with a word to describe it all: magnificent, gorgeous, breathtaking, etc. It was hard to nail down just one word to encompass the essence of pure nature. It was almost like this was the closest we could get to the pure, raw beauty of God’s original creation.
I don’t know how you can look at the scene and not be filled with thoughts beyond yourself. It was amazing.
Most people think of Yellowstone as just the Old Faithful geyser. Those people are missing out.
It’s so much more than a silly old geyser (though it was a really cool sight too)!
As you drive the whole thing you pass all sorts of epic geysers, sulfur boiling pools, amazing prismatic springs, and pure blue water you want to jump in but would be boiled alive if you did.
How on earth is there a pool of boiling water in the same place you find a lake that averages temps of 40 in the summer? It’s insane!
Then you watch that same boiling water pour into the river running through the whole park, making the river water the perfect temp for swimming. Except you’re not allowed to.
As you drive, you pass flat plains, grassy hills, crazy rock formations of all sorts of colors, snow-capped mountains all around, and even drive by the snow yourself.
In June there is still snow.
Our first stop was the Grand Prismatic spring. The spring itself is much cooler online when you can get an aerial shot of it, but the multicolored steam coming out was a true spectacle.
The coolest thing by the Grand Prismatic Spring was not actually the spring itself. Instead, there was a crater geyser with the most crystal clear blue water we’d ever seen!
The geyser first exploded in like 1888 or something, creating this massive crater! How epic of an explosion! So much bigger than Old Faithful, but it’s also only gone off once since 1888, so there’s a lot more waiting involved than Old Faithful.
I can’t tell you how many times God has helped us on this trip. Old Faithful was just one more of those times.
The geyser’s name comes from its character. It goes off roughly every 90 minutes without skipping a beat. We were on a tight timeline (sort of) and hoped we wouldn’t have to wait the full 90 minutes before seeing it go off.
We parked the car, ran to the bathroom, and walked up to see what time it was going to go off, crossing our fingers it wasn’t long. I kid you not, right when we walked up it started going off!
We got our photos, did a hike around some more pools, grabbed ice cream from a gas station (because the normal cafe was an hour wait), and went on our way. Praise the Lord! It was great!
It was at this point we had a tough decision to make. We were 2 hours from our final stop in Cody, which would get us there around dinner time. But we really really wanted to see Lamar Valley, and the road to get there quickly was closed.
We made the best decision ever. We drove all the way back around the park the long way and went through the valley! It added an extra 2.5 hours but it was beyond worth it.
Not to mention the insane scenic bypass when we left the park as we drove down the mountains into Cody.
I talked a lot about the scenery of Yellowstone, but the wildlife was also spectacular!
Along Lamar Valley, we got to see massive Elk, bison with their little kiddos (nicknamed red dogs), and almost saw a grizzly bear!
Bison are huge!
Then we got to stop and watch something really special. Probably a good 400 or 500 yards out, we watched as a wolf stalked some Bison. He kept sticking around in the distance, then he’d walk into the herd and be quickly ushered off by a massive behemoth.
It was so cool!
Lamar Valley is so worth it and we plan to go back as soon as we can. We’d love to actually spend some time camping out there. I can’t imagine how gorgeous the starlit sky would be on a non-cloudy night.
We left the park and then for the next hour and a half weaved in and around the amazing mountains in Montana and Wyoming. We were also like the only people out there as the sun set over the crest of the gorgeous mountains.
We miss it already.
Just pure, raw beauty. God’s original creation preserved for all to see! Praise the Lord for this amazing world!