Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming

Day 4: Yellowstone National Park

Cody Cowboy Village Lodging has plenty beautiful cabins. When we woke up to find light snowfall outside. That instantly made our day being Floridian 😛 We clicked pictures and had breakfast at the lobby.

We were hoping that it won’t rain or snow heavily, otherwise it would be hard to drive on slippery road in the Yellowstone National park. We left around 8:30 AM towards the east entrance and kept taking stops by the turn outs around North Fork Shoshone River to take pictures.

View of Shoshone Canyon and Shoshone River

We also got to see lovely Aspen trees during these stops.

We reached the east entrance. There was an entry fee of $50 (7-Days pass) which covered both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National park.

East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park

As we moved along the elevations, weather changed drastically. It started snowing and the road became slippery. Our vehicle started skidding as NK applied brake or when gas pedal was used. It was around a curve and on elevation where it started to skid. On our left side was a deep valley and a vehicles coming from the side whereas on the right side was the mountain wall. We got really scared as it was the first time we experienced such a situation. NK quickly stopped hitting the gas pedal or brake to avoid further skid, turned the direction of the vehicle away from the left side of the road and towards the mountain wall using steering wheel. The vehicle skid for few more feet but stopped eventually by the side of the road. At this moment, we just stopped for a while and took a long deep breath.

Fortunately, we didn’t hit anything while changing direction towards mountain and halted safely. After 5 mins, as other vehicles passed by, we started to drive again slowly with 5-10 mph speed following the tracks of vehicles ahead of us. It was around 7-8 miles we had to keep down the speed of our car to 5-15 mph to be in control.

Finally we passed by the danger zone and reached to a beautiful lake named Sylvan Lake. It was snow everywhere with long woods and trees around the lake making the view mesmerizing.

We took lot of pictures and on our way to Yellowstone Lake, we visited a visitor center that was closed for winter. Behind the visitor center was another scenic view of the lake.

View of Yellowstone Lake from behind the Visitor Center

Another View of Yellowstone Lake from behind the Visitor Center

The Yellowstone Lake is vast. From some places, we could only see the lake spreading miles and miles with no sign of land. It was all water on one side of the road while land on the other.

Yellowstone Lake View From Another Location

Driving the scenic route alongside the Yellowstone Lake, we reached the West Thumb Geyser Basin around 2:00 PM. We spent more than an hour here walking on the boardwalks and going around various small and big sized geysers. It again started to snow lightly when we were taking a walk around geysers.

Blue Bell Pool at West Thumb Geyser Basin

We left from the West Thumb Geyser Basin to the Old Faithful Geyser around 3:15 PM. As we moved along, weather started getting better and the sky cleared. We reached Old Faithful around 4:00 PM and fortunately the next eruption was in 10 mins of our visit. I said ‘fortunately’ because, Old Faithful eruption frequency normally ranges from 45 to 120 mins and lasts for around 1.5 to 5 mins. The prediction times are usually posted in the buildings around. If we had missed this, then we had to wait for another hour or so to see it erupting.

We saw a huge crowd around the Old Faithful waiting to see the geyser erupt. We parked our car and quickly rushed towards the geyser. The eruption started and lasted for around 2-3 mins. It erupted to huge heights.

After the eruption stopped, we went around some small geysers near Old Faithful and clicked pictures.

View of Upper Geyser Basin from Old Faithful

We then started from Old Faithful to Grand Prismatic Springs. We reached there by 5.30 PM.

It was all smoky and most of the times we could only see the smoke out of the geysers. As the wind blew, it used to give a view of Grand Prismatic and other geysers/pools. The overlook that gave quiet an aerial view of the Grand Prismatic Springs was closed for construction, so we had to view it from the boardwalks beside the spring. We kept waiting for the smoke to clear so that we get a clear view of the colorful Grand Prismatic but as we were too close to the geyser, it didn’t appear that great. We managed to take a few snaps and started walking back to the parking lot.

This was our last attraction of day 4 and we headed towards the hotel located at the West Entrance of the park. On the way, we found another attractions with many smaller geysers. As we had time, we decided to take a stop and went to see the geysers.

We spent time till it was dark and captured the beauty around the basin as sun started setting.

We reached the hotel – Yellowstone Lodge – around 8:30 PM local time. This was one of the day, we reached hotel early and had sufficient time to rest.