Yellowstone National Park (Part I - North)

I always loved road trips. That feeling of freedom, just driving away and seeing the views change as you are immersed in them, stopping when you see something curious or interesting or pretty... I know that not everybody likes them, but I love them. And a couple of weeks ago I did a great one: I drove from my house here in Seattle all the way to the Yellowstone National Park, and it was awesome!

Yellowstone was the first National Park and to this day it still is one of the largest. It is quite an amazing park, with so much amazing stuff crammed into it, it's hard to know where even to start. And because of that, I decided that it would make sense to split this post in two: in this one, I'll talk about what I saw in the northern half of the park, and on the next one I show what I saw on the southern part.

For this part of my trip, I stayed at the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, a historic hotel in excellent conditions inside the park itself. It's named after the springs that are next to it, which are a very interesting geological formation: hot water pours our of the ground and makes pools, and the minerals contained in the water then make some unique formations in very different colors. I had read about them before, but this is yet another one of those things on this Earth that you can only fully appreciate when you see them yourself. The rock formations were very beautiful (as you can see in the pictures) and I'm very glad that now they are protected and all the future generations can see them.

Another great thing about Yellowstone is its abundant wildlife. Deer, bear, pronghorn, long horn sheep... the list is too long. One of the most impressive is the bison: once again, it's a creature that is much bigger than you imagine, especially when you see them up close. They wander around the park, protected from the hunting that almost made them go extinct, and as such they live placidly without fear (although humans should fear them: it's highly recommended to keep your distance from bisons). As I was driving on a road on the northern part of the park, I was able to see a herd of them, just chilling under the sun. They kept getting closer and closer, until they finally crossed the road, and all the cars stopped at that point. We all sat there, waiting for the bison to make their way. Eventually, a couple of them walked right by my door: I never imagined that I would see such an immense creature that close.

In addition to all of the above, there were wonderful vistas, waterfalls, birds... it's just too much to talk about all of it. However, in my next post, I'll show what I saw on the southern part of the park.




















Location: Yellowstone National Park, United States

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