Yellowstone

Yellowstone is reopening!!! We got the news that Yellowstone would reopen the South Loop right when we got back from Grand Tetons. They would reopen on Wednesday, June 22nd with a new license plate system. If your plate ended with an even number, you can go in on an even day, and odd numbers for odd days. Lucky us, our plate is an even number and reopening day is the 22nd. Our original plan was that we were leaving West Yellowstone on Tuesday the 21st, but we decided that we should definitely extend so that we can at least spend a day in the park on Wednesday. We moved our schedule around to leave Thursday, and I took the day off Wednesday so that we can spend us much time as possible in the park. Until then, we had time to kill. So, we booked a horseback ride on Monday evening. It was a COLD, rainy day so we were very bundled up!! Despite the cold, It was a great ride through a mountain with beautiful Montana views! We also did some more exploring before our big Yellowstone day. We met our camper neighbors, John and Cathy from Washington. It was really nice getting to know them and for sure will stay in touch. ☺️

The day has finally come, we are going into Yellowstone National Park! 🥳 This was the park that Dean definitely was looking forward to the most, so we were so excited that we were getting the chance to go. The gates officially reopen at 8am, so we decided to head to the gate around 6:30am just to be ready, and one of the first in line in. Well, I guess everyone had the same idea. 😳 When we arrived, there was already a line to the gate at least a mile long. They ended up bringing the line inside the gates to wait until 8am since the whole town was completely backed up with traffic. We were a little worried that the whole day would be that packed and busy, but as soon as it was 8am and everyone could start driving through the park, it spread out quickly. We started the day going the opposite direction most the people did. We wanted to loop around to areas where we would see the most wildlife, then hit Old Faithful later.

Minutes into the park we saw elk crossing the river with their baby. Then, as we drove along we saw bison everywhere. We drove around seeing lots of wildlife and then made a few stops at hot springs and to Lake Yellowstone. We continued our way around the south loop seeing lots of animals along our way to Old Faithful. We did a hike around all the gysers and checked out Old Faithful Inn until Old Faithful was about to erupt. She goes off about every 90 minutes. After that, we headed to hike Fairy Falls to see Grand Prismatic. As we were driving along, we saw people making u-turns in an area that you weren't supposed to. We were wondering what was going on when a guy stopped and told us "There is a grizzly in that valley over there!" So, of course we made a u-turn too, and headed over to see. We pulled into a camping area and climbed up a small hill. Sure enough, a huge grizzly was walking across only about 100 feet from us. He didn't really mind us being around, but he definitely stopped, looked and sniffed our way before making his way across into the woods. That was pretty amazing to see, and we were pretty hyped after that. We made our way to Yellowstone Falls, and Arts Paint Pots before grabbing dinner at a diner in the park.

The rest of the evening we spent driving around and enjoying the scenery and scoping out more wildlife. We saw a wolf, more elk, deer, antelope, bison and even saw another grizzly WAY up on a mountain. We stayed in the park until it was dark and saw wildlife until the last minute. We saw another wolf as we were leaving the park right along the road. I guess they say it's not that common to see wolves or even grizzly bears each time at the park, so we felt pretty good about our one, full day visit. We got out of the park at about 9:30pm. We were pretty wiped out after 13 hours in the park, but it was SO worth it. Yellowstone really is a pretty magical place. We definitely want to come back when it's fully reopened on the North loop too.

The next day we packed up and headed out. We had one more overnight stop in Billings, Montana before leaving the state. We were a little sad leaving Montana. Between Glacier, Yellowstone, and really just all of the surrounding area- We really fell in love with Montana. ♡ We officially hit 13 National Parks since our trip started in April. Not too bad!

I highly recommend everyone put Montana, Glacier & Yellowstone onto their bucket lists.