When you visit Yellowstone during a pandemic, you try to avoid the busiest parts at the busiest times. Louie and I decided that we were visiting, rather than the best of Yellowstone, either the worst or the least of Yellowstone. And we still loved it! Sometimes you think of Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic, but there are so many other magical and beautiful places to go.
I was checking my notes now and I had thought my previous blog post finished up our time at Madison, but NO we still have the Bunsen Peak day to go!
We had decided for our last full day in the Madison area that we wanted to hike up Bunsen Peak and perhaps also to Osprey Falls after that. Well, Louie definitely wanted to add on Osprey Falls but I wasn’t sure, so we decided maybe we’d split up at that point. Bunsen Peak was back north along the Grand Loop Road where we had driven quite a bit the past few days, so it was in familiar territory.
We got to the trailhead easily, but then realized there weren’t any bathrooms nearby and needed to double back to find one. I was worried we’d lose our parking spot but nature was calling! We visited the Sheepeater Picnic area (note to readers, picnic areas always have vault toilets, which aren’t great but ARE useful at times) and one of the most delightful things was that several marmots were out playing around. Another delightful thing was that the toilets had just been cleaned.
I don’t have a zoom lens like Louie does—these were just from my phone. So the picture isn’t that clear, but trust me, marmots are really cute. Don’t get close to them and feed them please, don’t do that with any wild animals.
We headed back to Bunsen (about ten minutes?) and found parking again easily (unlike some National Parks, Yellowstone doesn’t get really crowded until after 10 am, maybe even 11, because it is just so big). And we headed up the trail. It was only about 2. 2 miles up to the top of Bunsen Peak, and you could just go back down, but you can also continue down the back way, and then to Osprey Falls. So we got to the top probably in just over an hour, I can’t remember. Maybe slightly longer. It was fairly scenic on the way up with particularly nice views of the Mammoth area from way up high. The trail was partly shaded, which was nice because it was quite sunny. We got passed by a few people but it wasn’t too crowded at all.
The white part you see towards the middle of the photograph is, I believe, part of Mammoth Hot Springs.
As it seems with many mountains in Yellowstone, there was a radio tower on top of Bunsen Peak as well, along with a little building. You had to walk up though, you couldn’t drive up like Mount Washburn.
At the top we did the usual, reapplied bug spray and sun screen, ate lunch, took pictures, checked email (yes, actually, because you get service up at the top of mountains, ha!)…
Another couple offered to take our picture and I was a bit hesitant, but we wiped down the phone after. Look at that view!
After we spent some time at the top, it was time to head on. The back side of Bunsen wasn’t as well traveled, but still seemed to see plenty of action. There were parts that had obviously burned at some point in the not-so-distant past.
Going up is always tough for me, but going down has its own challenges. I decided I wasn’t going to continue to Osprey Falls because of the elevation change that would be required (it was only about 3 more miles but down and up about 950 feet which I just wasn’t feeling). Louie and I decided to split up at a point when there was a turn. The route back was about 3 very flat miles, so I could easily walk that alone, except for the bear worries.
We got the turnoff and ended up seeing another couple. I asked them if I could tag along on their return trip and they readily agreed, so I didn’t have to walk alone. Louie headed off on his own (the couple were affiliated with the park, naturalists, and they didn’t think he should worry too much about doing that part of the trail alone) and I walked back with them. We stayed a bit apart but chatted: they lived in Gardiner and she worked as a naturalist and he was an engineer working online who also loved taking pictures of birds. They had been out birding on their hike, trying to get good pictures of an Osprey nest.
This part of the hike was doubletrack, an old road of sorts I suppose. People can bike on it as well.
It was nice chatting with people who weren’t Louie (no offense to Louie, simply that we had been spending all of our time together for days and weeks!) and the last miles flew by.
I got back to the car and made myself comfortable to wait for Louie. I read and drank cold water for another 1 1/2 to 2 hours until he got back. He said he really enjoyed the hike and the falls were beautiful, so I’m glad we did our plan.
What next, we thought? Well, we had gone north so many times…it was time to head south and visit some geysers. The south part of the part is where most of the geyser activity is, and as a result, most of the traffic. But it was nearly 4 pm when we got far enough south, and our first stop was Firehole Canyon Drive.
We did a quick stop at Fountain Flat Drive, where there is a picnic area and supposedly loads of wildlife at certain times of day. It was quite hot still so nobody was around, but we enjoyed this small hot spring. It was really neat because well…it was just this one tiny spring on the side of a perfectly normal looking river.
Then we visited the Fountain Paint Pots, which were fantastic. It must have been pushing 5 pm by then and the traffic was really clearing out. We got prime parking in the lot, and though the boardwalks weren’t empty, they weren’t bad, and we wore masks.
(In case you are unfamiliar with Yellowstone’s boardwalks, there are pretty much boardwalks everywhere you are walking over hot spring or geyser areas. It is great to see all the features from a safer setting.)
Then we hit up Firehole Lake Drive and saw more amazing hot springs and thermal features. Geysers erupt occasionally, hot springs are hot, paint pots bubble, there are all of these different technical terms, but the gist is: they are amazing with all the various colors and textures and smells.
Firehole Lake Drive is fun because you drive and park and drive and park and get out a bunch, and we kept running into the same people at each stop. I imagine during busier times of day the parking might be more difficult, but it was after 6 pm and for Yellowstone, that’s the end of the day and so many people have left.
We didn’t catch any eruptions really, but we weren’t worried about that. Maybe another time, when we feel like just sitting and waiting, but Louie and I aren’t that into geysers so much as just seeing all the different weird pools and run offs.
Anyway, after that we decided to head back to have dinner and relax.
It was our last night at Madison Campground, and we weren’t too sad about it either. You can see how crowded things were, and it had been some time since we had had showers.
We decided to visit the Old Faithful area early in the morning. We got up very early the next day and headed over—it was probably only about 20-30 minutes drive.
We definitely beat the crowds. It was around 7 am when we got there and hardly anybody was around. We wandered the boardwalks looking at the dozens and dozens and dozens of geysers in the area. I believe one could spend all day just at this one stop, but we never do! We had seen Old Faithful erupt on a previous visit so that wasn’t our goal this time.
Grotto Geyser above
Hmm, this might have been Castle Geyser?
A sign for the times, for sure!
We were lucky enough to catch Daisy Geyser erupt but we were a little bit away and I didn’t take any good pictures. Next we made a quick stop back to Fountain Flats Drive and did a short hike to Ojo Caliente, probably about 1/2 mile each way. And then we went to pack up our tent and go to West Yellowstone.
We are kind of experts at tent camping now (haha) and got packed up quickly. It was about a 20-30 minute drive to the West Entrance of the park and West Yellowstone, and I wanted to do laundry before we did anything else, so we found a laundromat first. We decided to eat lunch while we were doing laundry so we got takeout from a nearby place called Ernie’s. It wasn’t crowded but the people in the kitchen weren’t wearing masks we could see, but we decided to risk it anyway as it was right within walking distance of where we were and we didn’t want to try to find something else. Sigh. I enjoyed a nice salmon sandwich, if I recall, with potato chips and a Diet Coke.
After lunch and laundry (it’s always nice to start fresh again with clothes on a long trip!) we headed a bit north to visit the Earthquake Lake area. I’d read it was an interesting place to visit to learn about the Hebgen Lake Earthquake from 1959 where 28 people from a campground died. I didn’t realize there was a whole driving tour with various stops, so we started making the stops and had a nice afternoon learning all about the earthquake. The scenery was beautiful, the stops were interesting, and the story is just tragic and awful. To me, it always seemed particularly terrible to die while on a vacation, and there were just some awful stories from the survivors. And here we are, on vacation during a pandemic…I found it all very emotional and difficult but I’m really glad we made the stops.
The trees are where the lake took over: there wasn’t a lake there before the earthquake.
We took a slightly different route back to West Yellowstone after finishing the tour (it ends at the Visitor’s Center about 30 miles from West Yellowstone) and I didn’t realize we would go into Idaho! This was exciting for me because I didn’t think I had been to Idaho before, so we made sure to stop and get out of the car briefly.
Then we headed to our hotel for the night in West Yellowstone. I’d reserved a historic room at the Historic Old Madison Hotel. The downside was that our room only had a tub, but the upside was that there were showers in the hall one could use. That was our first stop the showers!
After we got ourselves presentable, we went to walk around town and get dinner. We had dinner from the Taco Bus, a place where you go into a bus to order your food…it’s sort of a Taco Truck but a little different. We sat at a picnic table outside to eat. Then we had ice cream after dinner, and then hung out on the lovely balcony upstairs at our hotel and enjoyed watching the traffic go by and the nice air.
There was another woman outside as well, and she was friendly enough, but we overheard her on the phone with a friend complaining that the hotel didn’t even have TV and that she didn’t like Yellowstone as much as the Black Hills because all they did was sit and wait for Old Faithful to erupt and it was super boring.
I think that’s a good place to leave you for today! Looking ahead: wolves and bears and more hot springs!