The northeast entrance to Yellowstone is the scenic one. And that’s all we needed to hear. So even though we stayed on some free public land in the town of Cody which is located right next to the eastern entrance of the park, we still chose to get up well before the sun and make the drive into Montana in order to enter the park from the north. To be honest, the entrance itself was not as grand as I expected, but the road to get there with the sun rising up in our rearview mirror was stunning. I would do it again. But it should be noted that this entrance is often closed in the winter due to unmaintained roads.

Booking campsites in Yellowstone is something that needs serious planning for two reasons: the park is HUGE and they book up months in advance. Matt and I chose not to book in advance because we wanted the freedom to make changes to our itinerary whenever and wherever, but that made for a not-so-great first day in Yellowstone for us. There are a handful of campgrounds that operate on a first come first serve basis and we had been banking on finding one of these. Little did we know, they were slowly closing for the season and the one we wanted closed the day before we arrived. So we headed to the next one in the northern part of the park to find it was already full. The only other campground option was a 4 hour drive down to the southern part of the park.

We couldn’t just pass everything and go straight to the campground though. We needed to take a breath after our frustrations and start seeing Yellowstone. We did not want to bypass everything only to make the very long drive back up the next day. We only had two days in the park after all and we wanted to see as much as we could so we decided to make our way to the Mammoth Hot Springs. On our way we spotted a large coyote! We later learned that it had been feeding on a nearby bison carcass. I was driving and it crossed the road about 15 yards in front of our car. It was a rush to see him so close! The Mammoth Hot Springs area is a village within the park. In the village we stopped to grab some lunch and picnicked there. This is also the location where we got to see several elk. It was mating season for the elk and for some strange reason, with the massive secluded space that Yellowstone offers, they decided to set up camp and do their mating in the village. Several areas and roads were closed off to keep people away from the often violent bull elk who like to charge at cars and sometimes people.

After our picnic we walked in and around all of the springs. There is a maze of wooden boardwalks that allows you to get close to the springs and the view is almost other-worldly. While the stench of sulfur is prominent, seeing all the rock formations with bubbling and boiling water was a very fun experience. My favorite were the Canary Falls because of the bright colors and flowing water, but the springs are constantly changing and reforming so what was the most beautiful one day may be something totally different in a short period of time.

Spoiler alert, we arrived at the final campground too late. It was full. So we made our way out of the southern entrance to the park where we boondocked in the parking lot of a lodge. The lot seemed to be made exactly for people like us whose plans for staying in the park were spoiled. The lodge had gas, a small convenience store, and allowed us to use their bathrooms. It was a pretty nice setup though we would have much rather been in the park.

Our second day back in Yellowstone we headed for Old Faithful. They are pretty good at predicting Old Faithful’s eruption time, hence the name, so we got to see it erupt right when it was expected. We spent the morning walking on boardwalks seeing a great number of geysers and springs near Old Faithful. After a quick lunch of hotdogs that we cooked on our Coleman stove literally on the side of the road, we went to see the Grand Prismatic Spring. It was quite a site to see neon colors created by bacteria peeking through all the mist coming off the hot water. Again this area is full of boardwalks in order to keep you off the molten ground, but still allow you to get close to the springs. An interesting fact that we learned while we were there was that the wooden boardwalks throughout Yellowstone are rebuilt each year as the springs move and make changes to the earth below them.

We had seen everything we came to see, but we needed to kill a little bit of time before sunset (more on that in a moment) so we headed to The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. I am so glad we didn’t skip this. I have been to the Grand Canyon and I am honestly in the camp of “it’s just a pretty hole in the ground.” But The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was an even more pretty hole in the ground. You could stand on one rim and see across to the other. The river below has a couple large and very beautiful waterfalls. I was a fan. We drove both the south rim and north rim drives stopping along the way at various overlooks to get different views. We got our heart rates up doing a short 3/4 mile hike with a drastic elevation change to stand right on top of the lower falls and it was stunning.

One thing we both really hoped to lay eyes on during this trip was a bear. There was talk throughout Yellowstone of a bear that someone had caught on camera the week before we arrived. You can actually find the video on Youtube, but it is a bit disturbing. The bear was chasing a bull elk into a river and on the video he catches the bear and drowns it. He then drags it back to the river bank where we learned that he sat on it for several days eating and napping, eating and napping. What a life! We wanted to stop by this spot at sunset (when bears are most active) to see if we could get a glimpse of the bear ourselves. Our chances were slim with the amount of time that had already passed, but we were up for it anyway. We actually had a better chance of seeing wolves or coyotes on the carcass scavenging anything that may have been left. After waiting well past sunset, we saw only a swan floating down the river. Regardless it was an exciting adventure to stake out a possible bear.

With only two days in Yellowstone we only saw a fraction of the park. I do hope we find ourselves back again someday to see even more.