As planned, we three friends (Myself , Vidhya and Mahesh) took off on a trip to Yellowstone National park which is simply a paradise on earth. This one was very different from rest of my other trips as this was solely a road trip which spanned for a period of five days filled with lots of fun and frolic.
May 16th
We all planned to start at 6 PM on May16th but ended up leaving at 7 PM (Indian stretchable time). I started off driving and our first halt was at Schaumburg, IL.
My sister Prathiba lives there. I wanted to stop by to say hello to my darling sister. This is of course an excuse. I wanted to just have some good food as the rest of the five days I could only see myself having food at the fast food joints. We landed at Prathiba's place at midnight. Just half an hour behind the schedule for which I blame the Chicago traffic and not my driving skills.
Had good food, fried rice and vatha kulambu. Thanks to my darling sister. I have to atleast say this as she had cooked some pretty edible food for myself and my co-travellers. After our regular photo sessions, we took off at around 1:30 AM and this time it was Mahesh's turn to drive and vidhya was navigating.I was comfortably napping in the back seat.
May 17th:
I woke up at 7:30 AM. Refreshed myself. Thanks to the wonderful rest areas on the road sides.
Vidhya was driving now with me sitting beside and navigating. With nice good songs playing and a very nice and warm weather oustide, it was indeed great to drive. While enjoying the pleasure of driving, Vidhya got slightly tempted to speed a little more and there came a cop beside us. Vidhya was blessed with a speeding ticket from the Minnesota state traffic police. We again continued to drive to our first stop at Bad Land in South Dakota. On the way, we stopped near the Misisippi river. We landed at Bad Lands around noon'ish. Badlands has a beautiful scenery of sharply eroded hill-like structures. We went in for a drive in the badlands and stopped at a couple of walking trails to explore the eroded structures and take a few pictures. This place was too windy. No wonder we have this scenery in place. We took off from Badland to our next destination which was Mt.Rushmore.
After a couple of hours drive, we went to Mt.Rushmore which is indeed famous for the four president faces. It was great to see the sculptures of the four Presidents of the United states. We were near the monument to find out the names of the four presidents. But no where near the monument, we could find the names. An audio tour was available. Taking the audio tour would have probably helped us to better understand the history behind this monument. Never mind...we have google to know more about that place. Having covered Mt.Rushmore we had plenty of time before we could end the day. So we wanted to explore few of the other attractions nearby. We drove to Crazy Horse view point and there was nothing great about it. Could see a lot of dears/elks crossing the roads. Had to be a little careful while driving.
It was now time to call it a day and return back to the hotel for the night. Since we had been driving for a long time, a nice nap was really the need of the hour.
May 18th:
We started at 7:00 AM in the morning after our breakfast. We started our drive to Yellowstone National park from Rapid City ,SD. We planned for a slight detour to Devils Tower in Wyoming.
Its a huge monolithic structure of some volcanic eruption. A lot of visitors usually do rock climbing here. We were only interested in taking pictures with this huge structure.
From Devils Tower we now continued our drive to Yellowstone National Park. Bighorn National park is on the way to the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park. The view of snow capped mountain peaks was breath taking. The whole drive was very scenic. After a drive through the Bighorn National park, we halted at Cody for food. It was around 5'ish and we decided to call this our early dinner break. We continued our drive again to North entrance of Yellowstone National park. We were planning on camping so we went to the camp ground straight and laid our tent for the night. It was quite dark. So had to use the car head lights for some light while laying the tent.
We missed to clear the stones while laying the tent. As a result not a good sleep at night with the stones poking at the back.
May 19th:
Now a little bit about Yellowtone National park. This park spreads across three different states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. Yellowstone caldera is the largest Supervalcano in the continent and you see a lot of volcanism in this region. It has everything to offer like geysers, hot springs ,canyons, wildlife and many more.
We started our day by having typical American breakfast at a very nice restaurant near the Mammoth camp ground. We then took off to view the breathtaking geysers and hot springs in the Yellowstone area. At Old faithful visitor center, we could find the eruption times for most of the geysers. There are some 5-6 geysers in that area whose eruptions are worth watching. Yellowstone has about 2/3rd of the worlds geysers. We started with the Old faith full Geyser which erupts once in every two hours. We were waiting patiently for it to erupt. Then the moment finally arrived when gallons and gallons of hot water was splashed outside to about a 100ft with lots of vapour. My jaw dropped to see this natural wonder in action. I have captured a video of Old faithful eruption. The walking trail takes us to a lot of other geysers in the area.
The ones we saw erupting after the old faithful was Daisy Geyser, Riverside Geyser, Sawmill geyser and so many others. We could also find a lot of hot springs giving out sulphur vapors and a lot of sulphur deposits around. Hot springs and geysers are something that you don't see everywhere. It was definitely a treat to eyes to watch them all live.
After exploring the geysers, we were driving across the park and exploring the other wonders like the Limestone terrace, artist's paint pot ,sulphur caldron's and etc. After a long day we returned back to the same hotel for our dinner and the returned to the camp ground. It was a little cold .We lit up the fire and went back into the tent for a nap.
May 20th:
The day started again at about 8:00. It was now time to explore the canyons. Canyon village offers a lot of huge canyons and also some beautiful water falls. We drove to this place only to find that its been closed because of snow avalanche. We had to drive back and take a another route. We wear able to spot of couple of bears, a lot of bison's and a lot of elks on the way.
We finally landed in the canyon village. The sight of huge canyons and the Yellowstone river flowing down the canyons was simply great. We then stopped to see mud volcano and also we could see a bison charging a gentlemen. But all it wanted to do was to go across the walking trail.
Our next stop was at Yellowstone lake which was all frozen. But we could still find a lot of hot springs near the frozen lake. This completes our stint at Yellowstone. Our next stop is Grand Teton National park.
Grand Teton is 30 miles away from yellowstone. Grand teton offered a scenic view of snow capped mountain peaks. Snake river runs across this national parks. We went for a drive, had lunch and halted at at couple of view points to get some good pictures. This ends our trip in terms of places to be covered. We are now only left with a day long drive back to Columbus OH.
We started around 7 PM from Grand teton back home. Three of us took turns to complete our road trip. We arrive at around midnight on 2lst back home.
Overall 4100 miles were covered on this trip. It was great experience to see mother nature's work in all the national parks.
~Cheers~
Prabha
