Our campground sits outside West Yellowstone, about 30 to 40 minutes from the west entrance, and road construction was adding another 20 minutes on top of that. The places we wanted to see on day two were on the far side of the park. Driving there and back in one day would have been at least eight hours in the truck.
So we did something a little strange for two people who live in an RV. We left the RV behind and booked a room inside Yellowstone, near the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, for almost $300. The idea was to spend the drive time exploring instead, sleep close to the canyon, and see whether it was actually worth the money.
This is part two of our Yellowstone trip.
Fill the tank before you go in
First stop was fuel in West Yellowstone. There is a lot of driving inside the park, and while you can buy fuel in Yellowstone, we expected it to cost even more in there, so we filled up in town.
It came to $101 for about 17 gallons. Diesel was $5.89 a gallon, which is more than our budget had planned for.
We really are curious about this one: what does diesel cost where you are?
No signal, so we went back to paper
It was Friday at noon when we reached the gate, and the line was shorter than on our first day. The ranger asked if we had a map. We did not, so we left with the paper one.
That turned out to matter. Cell signal inside Yellowstone is mostly nonexistent, and the map that had been loaded on the truck screen earlier simply went blank once we were deep in the park. Nathan's joke for the rest of the day was that somebody had taken the map app and printed it on paper. It worked great. It also meant we were watching for picnic signs on the right, because there was no other way to know where the next one was.
Fabiola was driving. On days when we are towing the RV, Nathan drives, but when we are just sightseeing around a park she often takes the wheel, and Nathan gets to be the navigator with the big paper map.
Kepler Cascades, found by accident
We had been driving inside the park for almost two hours when we turned right, mostly because we were looking for restrooms. There was construction on a small bridge, and past it was an overlook we had never heard of.
It was Kepler Cascades, a waterfall dropping through a narrow rocky gorge right next to the parking area. We did not plan it and it was one of the prettier stops of the day.
Lunch was at a picnic area with a vault toilet (the hole-in-the-floor kind, no spiders, and to its credit, it had a light). Food we had cooked at home, eaten in the truck. It was 1:30 by then, and check-in at the hotel was at 4.
On the way we crossed the Continental Divide at 8,262 feet. For comparison, Belo Horizonte, where Fabiola grew up, sits at 2,795 feet. She still says she is used to elevation. We also passed the turnoff for Grand Teton and our first bison of the day.
West Thumb: hot springs on the edge of the lake
West Thumb Geyser Basin was the first place where parking was easy. Everybody goes to Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic. This one was busy but there was no line.
It sits right on the shore of Yellowstone Lake, and the lake is so big it looks like an ocean. Nathan said it felt like a cross between Yellowstone and Lake Superior. He also admitted this was a spot he had zoomed in on in Google Earth about 15 years ago, so standing on the boardwalk was a little surreal.
The best part is that some of the hot springs are out in the lake itself. One of them, marked Big Cone, sits in the shallow water off the boardwalk. Some of the vents make a sound like the last bit of soda going up a straw at the movie theater. The pools are a deep, clear blue, and the smaller holes around them all seem connected underground.
When we asked each other at the end of the video what our favorite stop was, this was Fabiola's.
Mud Volcano, and a word we had never heard
By 3 p.m. we were still at the top of the lake with the whole valley left to cross, so we already knew we would be late for check-in. We stopped for a bison grazing by the road. From a distance Fabiola thought it looked like a lion.
Then it started to rain. We filmed most of the Mud Volcano area on the action camera because of the weather, the first time we had done that with our microphones hooked up to it.
The sign at Churning Caldron says the water is scalding hot but not actually boiling. Gas rises through vents opened by earthquakes, then bubbles up and makes the water roil. Roil. Neither of us had ever heard that word before. By the end of the loop we were calling everything roiling.
The smells change as you walk. One spot smelled like an egg you boiled, put in the fridge, then microwaved until it popped. Another one smelled like wet dog. Sour Lake smells like its name. Dragon's Mouth Spring makes a grumbling sound, which the sign explains is steam and gas exploding through the water and slamming into the walls of a hidden cavern. That one was Nathan's favorite.
The loop is one way, and in the rain half the people were walking it backward. The nice thing about this area is that you do not need a big hike to see strange and beautiful things. The boardwalk loops do the work.
Hayden Valley in the rain
Right after Mud Volcano, there is a sulfur caldron steaming directly under a road bridge. You are driving on top of it.
Hayden Valley opens up after that. The Yellowstone River winds through wide green grassland, with bison far off on the other side of the river. The road runs close to the edge in places and we were both a little nervous. It looks nothing like the Badlands we had just come from. There is so much more green.
We pulled into Canyon at 4:23. On time after all.
Check-in, and what we actually booked
Here is our first tip. When you book a room in the park, make sure you know what you actually booked. We walked in to register expecting a hotel room, and it turned out we had a cabin.
That meant we had carried our bags in for nothing. Go register first, bring your ID, and bring your stuff after you know where you are sleeping.
The cabin was better than we expected. It opened with a wooden key, which we thought was charming. Inside were two queen beds with log headboards, and everything was cabin themed, down to the chairs and the lamps. The Wi-Fi worked great, which after a whole day without signal felt almost funny. The shower had good pressure. There was no fridge, so we used a cooler.
We found the room on Hotels.com. The park's own lodging website showed Canyon Lodge as sold out, but Hotels.com still had it.
Dinner with friends, and a parking problem
That evening we had pizza with our friends from LesBiFit Adventures, who work in Yellowstone. They told us they had seen 40 bears in the park this year. We had been carrying bear spray all day anyway. After that we made sure it came with us to the cabin.
When we got back there was no parking left anywhere near the cabins. There are spots, just not enough of them for every cabin, a bit like airplane overhead bins when everybody brings a carry-on. A few people had also parked badly, which is the passenger with the giant suitcase. Our truck is not small. We ended up parked along the road and hoped for no ticket.
We live in an RV. What were we doing in a cabin? Good question.
Morning two: the reason we slept in the park
Fabiola dreamed about bears, and about sleeping on top of a caldera that could explode. The second one is technically not wrong.
How did we sleep? Not great. We both missed our RV mattress and our own pillows. It was one night, though.
We picked up breakfast in the morning. The dining room is cafeteria style, and our unscientific finding is that a friendly smile gets you bigger portions.
Then came the whole reason we stayed. From the cabin it was a four minute drive to the Lower Falls trailhead. Walking it from the hotel would take about 35 minutes.
Brink of the Lower Falls, 600 feet down
The Brink of the Lower Falls trail drops about 600 feet. AllTrails calls it easy. It does not feel easy on the way back up at that altitude, and remember that every foot you go down, you have to climb back up.
At the bottom you are standing right where the river goes over. It is crowded, the fence feels shaky, and the drop is huge. One of us said it was worse than the drop on the Jurassic Park ride. You have to wait for an opening at the fence to get a proper look. It is worth the wait.
Was it worth it?
Afterward we followed the North Rim Trail, and it turns out you do not have to do the hard hike at all to get great views. The overlooks along the rim show the falls and the whole canyon. The canyon is 800 to 1,200 feet deep, and the yellow in the walls is iron in the rhyolite rock, not sulfur.
We did end up on a longer trail than we planned, again. If you watched our Sunday Gulch hike in Custer State Park, you know how that went last time. At least this one was easier.
So, was it worth almost $300 to sleep inside the park? We skipped a round trip that would have taken eight hours, woke up four minutes from one of the best views in Yellowstone, and did the Lower Falls before the day got long. We gave up our own bed for one night, fought for a parking space, and did not sleep well.
Yellowstone is famous and you will meet people from all over the world here, so expect it to be busy. Come anyway. It is beautiful.
If you missed day one, it is in our Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic post. There is one more Yellowstone episode still to come, and next week's video has horses in it. We also send a short weekly newsletter with where we are and what we are up to.