Yellowstone National Park 2

Welcome back, everyone.  This blog post will be our afternoon at Yellowstone following blog post, Yellowstone National Park Part 1.  We pick up after a wonderful lunch at Roosevelt Lodge.

We are heading to what will be, my favorite part of the park 🙂  The Mammoth/Norris Country.  First stop, Albright Visitor Center.  This place is its own community!!  It has its own Post Office and looks like a bustling town, it’s absolutely gorgeous I bet even more so in winter.  We managed to find a parking spot near the post office and walked over to the Visitor Center.  This place was great!  We spent about an hour to hour and a half in here getting our cancellations, browsing the gift shop, looking at the exhibits.  I went into the basement to check out more things but my kids were enamored by the buffalo exhibit.  They watched the film of people getting trampled and flung into trees at least a dozen times. Apparently, it never gets old, according to them. Not sure the video was made for entertainment. After we sized ourselves up to the Buffalo we went and rode the bear at the Post Office.  Lol, this kid cracks me up! Our energy is still going strong at this point.

We wandered our way over to Mammoth Hot Springs. We did the Upper and Lower Terrace Loop.  Lots of people but we found everyone to be extremely friendly and patient.  We took lots of pictures here, it was truly like another planet. We loved it so much that I am convinced if we come back we will stay in this part of the park. It was Fascinating!!  We also enjoyed a drive through the backside for more springs and geysers.

Off to the Museum of the National Park Ranger, by the time we arrived, it was closed.  We were only off by about 5 minutes so I am putting a timestamp here around 5 pm.  We are 10 hours into our day already. Next stop Porcelain Basin/Emerald Spring in Norris.

Norris is the area of Yellowstone that was a former US Army outpost. It gets its name from the park’s 2nd superintendent Philetus W Norris. We stopped off at the Norris Information Station/Bookstore for a cancellation and possibly a map of the basin, no luck on the map, we are going to wing it. Managed to get our cancellation.😀

A mile of boardwalks loop through the Porcelain Basin.  It’s past 5 pm and the crowds are dying down, we are almost the only ones out here walking the boardwalk. Porcelain Basin is the park’s hottest basin that is exposed.  We walked to the Museum and through it coming down onto the right side of the basins, here we found the following:

Porcelain Terrace Overlook

Black Growler Steam Vent

Crackling Lake

Whales Mouth

Whirligig Geyser and more:

Now back through the museum and over to the Back Basin area:

Steamboat Geyser

Emerald Spring

Back in the car now and heading South. Next up is Artist Paint Pots. We parked the car and went on a nice .7 mile walk with great views, hot springs, and mudpots.  To our surprise, we met some nice folks from Kirkman, Iowa, where one of my best friends grew up. It’s a small world out there, I love it!! Time to head back to our cabin, it has been a long but beautiful day.

Artists Paint Pots

 On the drive home we pulled in to see the Mud Volcano but no one was interested in getting out except for me!  I would say the day was a success!

Mud Volcano

That is a wrap for this post.  Check back for Yellowstone National Park Part 3!! It gets even better, I promise. 🙂

Bonus:  We caught a Buffalo swimming across the lake on the way back to our cabin that evening!! Highlight of the day 😍😍

Until next time!!