Day 12: Yellowstone

It was a dry day when we woke up in Gardiner this morning, though a bit chilly. The weather app on my phone indicated that it was about 6 degrees at 7am. Gardiner is at an elevation of 1,810 metres (about 6,000 ft) so it's not quite as high as Bryce Canyon, but still pretty high.

From where we're staying we had a drive of less than five minutes to the northern entrance gate of Yellowstone. This is why it is worth paying $300/night to stay in Gardiner! We passed the Roosevelt Arch, which was built in 1903 at the historical entry point to the park. The cornerstone was laid by Theodore Roosevelt.

Yellowstone National Park is huge – literally the size of a small country – so despite the fact that we were staying so near to one of the entrances, we will still have a fair amount of driving to do over the next few days. Our first stop today was just five miles away, though: Mammoth Hot Springs.

Mammoth Hot Springs is one of the most striking features in Yellowstone.

The hot springs here flow over a series of giant white steps, known as travertine terraces.

The terraces are formed by the calcium carbonate in the hot water that comes up out of the ground; as the water reaches the surface and cools, it deposits minerals which, over time, build up into these unusual formations.

It's hard to give a sense of scale in the photos, but this area is huge. You can explore it via a series of wooden boardwalks and we must have spent around an hour walking around them.

A sign at the car park warned us against stepping off the boardwalks onto any of the thermal surfaces.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to step off the path when you can see actual steam coming out of the ground, but apparently it does happen!

The area is divided into upper and lower terraces. We climbed up a lot of steps to reach the upper terraces. 

I loved the terraces where you could see pools of light blue water.

And just the fact that we could see so much steam coming out of the ground was amazing.

We took a couple of selfies. Towards the bottom of the terraces ...

... and higher up.

Quite apart from the thermal features, once we got up higher the views of surrounding mountains were fantastic.

We realised, after we'd been admiring the views for a while, that we could see the remains of trees which presumably hadn't been able to survive the thermal activity here.

They were really striking!

It was after 9am by this point and the sun was starting to get higher in the sky.

Once we'd finished exploring the upper terraces, we started climbing back down the steps towards the car park. Downhill was definitely easier!

What an amazing place

Our next stop was another amazing place, about 20 miles further south: the Norris Geyser Basin. The drive through the park to get there was really scenic.

We stopped at a viewpoint to admire the mountains.

They didn't look that high to me, but an info board informed us that the peaks were over 3,000m.

Although our journey was only 20 miles, it took quite a while. There was some road resurfacing going on, reducing the road through the park to a single track, so we had quite a long wait before it was our turn to follow a pilot vehicle along the relevant stretch of road.

Just before we got to our destination, we stopped at a scenic overlook from which we could see the Norris Geyser Basin from afar.

Wow, it definitely looked like there was a lot of steam coming out of the earth over there!

Competition for parking spaces at the geyser basin was intense, but we got lucky and managed to get into a space that someone else vacated after only 10 minutes or so of waiting. Then we were off to see the sights!

There are two separate geyser basins here; one called Back Basin and one called Porcelain Basin. I'd read that Porcelain Basin was more visited, so we decided to start with the Back Basin. A 1.6 mile trail led us around it in a loop.

Almost immediately we came to a place called Emerald Pool. There was so much steam here that we could barely see anything.

You could just make out a small amount of the emerald colour in the water if you looked closely.

We followed the boardwalk through the trees. We met groups of other people, including a school trip at one point, but overall it didn't feel too busy.

Our next stop was Steamboat Geyser.

Steamboat Geyser is the tallest active geyser in the world.

When it erupts it can shoot jets of water up to 120 metres into the air.

It erupts quite infrequently and unpredictably – the last time was in February 2025 – so we didn't get to see it today.

It was still really cool to see the steam coming out of the ground here, though.

The geyser gets its name precisely because of these huge clouds of steam.

Next to Steamboat Geyser is Cistern Spring.

Again, I loved getting a glimpse of the bright blue water.

There was lots more to see, so we continued onwards!

The Back Basin is full of geysers which erupt quite infrequently. This one is Veteran Geyser, so-called because it was active back in the 1800s when the Norris Basin was first discovered.

This one was Corporal Geyser, though no idea how it gets its name!

Geysers aside, there was just so much to see here.

We passed bubbling mud ...

... boiling water ...

... and even more splashing mud.

This pool which was shooting boiling water into the air was particularly impressive.

I got excited whenever I saw bright blue pools like these.

I just loved the colours

We even took a selfie with this one

As we finished the loop around Back Basin, we came back to the Emerald Pool where we'd started. I don't know if the wind was now blowing in a different direction or it had just started producing less steam for some reason, but we could now actually see the emerald colour of the water.

I did read an info board with an explanation for why the water takes on these colours – it's something to do with microbes which live in the pools – but we've seen so much geothermal activity today that I can't remember the specifics of everything!

Now that we'd finished the Back Basin loop, it was time to move on to Porcelain Basin.

This one did have a busier feel, partly I think because it's a shorter loop to see everything (less than a mile). It was no less impressive, though.

As we walked down into this basin we passed more incredibly blue pools ...

... and crossed a river which appeared to be bright green!

There was more boiling mud ...

... shooting water jets ...

... and bright blue water.

It was all amazing, but on balance I think we probably both preferred Back Basin.

From the Norris Geyser Basin we drove another 25 miles south through the park, until we reached the car park for a trail that leads to a viewpoint above another impressive feature. It was midday by this point and parking was crazy, with rangers out and about trying to police people parking by the roadside. We were extremely lucky when a nice man in the car park told us he was about to leave and let us have his space.

We were doing a short hike, which initially took us on a bridge across this river.

Then we followed a nice flat gravel trail for a while. It was incredibly busy, but at least that meant there was no chance of surprising a bear!

The trail then led uphill through the forest, until we came to the scenic overlook and got a view of Grand Prismatic Spring.

This is the third largest hot spring in the world and it's known for its dramatic colours. 

The colours are supposed to be best seen in the middle of the day, when the sun shines down on it. Although today had developed into quite a warm day by this point, the sun was a bit intermittent so we didn't get to see it at its best.

As you'll see from our attempted selfie, it was also incredibly busy at this viewpoint. Probably the most crowded spot we've been in a national park so far!

Never mind, it was really cool to see it anyway  It was around 2pm by this point and we were starving, so we drove another 25 miles east to the resort of West Yellowstone to get some food. It was a quaint little town ...

... with plenty of opportunities for entertainment.

We strolled around a bit and found a restaurant with Italian food, where I had a pizza so huge I had to take part of it home in a box ...

... and Tim had a spaghetti dish, which unfortunately included some unexpected mushrooms.

Then it was back into the national park for the 54-mile drive back to Gardiner. Gardiner is in the state of Montana, as is West Yellowstone, but the majority of Yellowstone itself is in Wyoming. So we drove from Montana into Wyoming, then out of Wyoming and back into Montana.

As we passed through the Mammoth area towards the end of our journey, we saw some more grazing elk.

No big bull elk today, though we did see what looked like a teenager just growing antlers.

No bison on the road either today – think we were just incredibly lucky to see one up close yesterday! Before long we were driving out of the Roosevelt Arch and were nearly back at the hotel.

Although all of today has been within Yellowstone, we've still done 131 miles of driving!