Yellowstone National Park (Part II - South)

If you haven't read yet the first part of my road trip to Yellowstone, I recommend you go there first, so you can appreciate the whole trip. So, having spent some time on the upper half of the park, I went south, to see some more of the many amazing places that Yellowstone has to offer. That also involved switching hotels: this time I stayed at the Grant Village Hotel, which is next to Yellowstone Lake (yeah, Yellowstone has lakes too - this park has everything).

Among many other things, Yellowstone is famous world over for its geysers: two thirds of all the geysers in the world are in this National Park. They are all over the park, and to me the most impressive was the Norris basin. This is a basin in the middle of the park with an enormous concentrations of geysers in a terrain that is constantly changing because of them: there are old geysers, new geysers, big, small, fumaroles (they just let go steam), bubbly mud... It's the closest I've ever seen of a alien landscape from Science Fiction movies. At the basin there are numerous boardwalks and you can see all the geothermal activity. And also smell it: to put it politely, the basin smells... intensely.

Separately from those there is the most famous attraction of the park: the Old Faithful geyser. It is considered to be the most predictable geyser in the world, precisely having an "eruption" of water at times that you can count on. However, I'll be honest: the section of the park around Old Faithful is the most developed one in terms of tourism infrastructure, but to the point that it reminded me of the theme parks from Florida. It has a huge paved parking lot, there is an amphitheater around Old Faithful, and there is a hotel right there as well as restaurants, visitor center, etc... It's also crowded. Despite that, Old Faithful itself is very cool, I was able to see two "eruptions" and they are quite impressive.

Finally, there are so many other things to see... there are beautiful waterfalls and canyons and vistas from mountains and trails... Also there are more geysers beyond the ones I quoted above. I could spend two months in this park and I wouldn't have seen everything. Nevertheless, it's an incredibly beautiful place, a true jewel of the natural world in this Earth, and as such it deserves to be visited by everyone. I would say, if nature is not your thing, but you would like to visit one place just to have a taste of it, this is the place I would recommend.























Location: Yellowstone National Park, United States

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