Well it wasn’t an overall success but it wasn’t a complete fail either. I wanted to go to Yellowstone since before I went to college. The hype you see in magazines and books and in documentaries is just awe inspiring. However I think I have learned that preparation is more important than actually getting there. We did a good job of picking out our campsite staying in Grant Village next to Yellowstone Lake. This particular campground is just one of two that has showers. It also has a nice dump station. The line to the dump station before 12:00 is pretty long because that’s when everybody is supposed to leave If you don’t want to stand in line you need to go the dump the night before and dump your tanks because there’s nobody at the dump station from 3:00 PM until 9:00 PM.

If you study the map of Yellowstone you’ll find a couple dozen things that you want to visit to get aa good experience the Lamar Valleyis the place for wildlife, there RE Many waterfalls, The tons of geysers, and pools, the The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and the many visitor centers with all the information they have on the park and its history and many changes. If you’re like me and you really wanted to go to see the wildlife then you have to bring a lot more optical equipment. One of the things one of the Rangers told me as I was getting fairly fed up with driving hundreds of miles to see nothing but Buffalo was that one of the things you do is don’t look for animals look for the”spotters” that find the animals and these are people that start the traffic jams with the long “spotting scopes” that have very high power zooms of 30-80x magnification and they can see way far across the fields and see kills and animal activities that you can’t see with your eyesight. Most of these spotters are very friendly and will be more than happy to let you look into their spotting scopes to see what they’re looking at. I saw a very impressive white wolf standing on top of a dead bison as he protected the kill from ravens and coyotes. It would have been a little more interesting to see how the pack killed this Buffalo but the wolf packs in Yellowstone are big, 8 to 12 dogs and have an incredible kill capacity. It’s hard to believe that dogs can bring down a bison. But it’s all about strategy and patience. Even the grizzly bears don’t mess with the bison.

Another place that you might wanna look at or visit is West Yellowstone which is the village outside the western edge of the park it has a typical tourist attraction vibe to it. But what would you expect! There are RV parks there that have full hookups that make for a good base if you don’t want to stay at the primitive sites in the park. An attraction we missed was the geyser basin. We drove through the Norris Geyser Basin several times but never stopped because it was always so crowded It’s where all the bubbling mud pots and and the steaming geysers are. Amazingly, Most of the days we were at Yellowstone we slept pretty late so we didn’t get anywhere early and that really cramped the possibilities of what we could park near and walk around, the other thing is of course is you can’t go anywhere with a dog so I didn’t really want to leave Akela in the car in the sun so we looked out the windows of the car and drove on.

Another feature we wanted to stop at was Inspiration Point which used to be called Promontory Point back in the 1800s but the name was changed in 1887 to Inspiration Point But is it is an observation point over the rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. I knew a person who had blown up a mobile oil co. inc. refinery in New Jersey and was burned over 45% of his body and because of the drugs and treatments he had to undergo for all these burns he became kind of a down in the dumps drunk and was considering suicide and he traveled Yellowstone to commit suicide but when he went to Inspiration Point he said he was so inspired by its beauty its he decided work to make a better life and learn from the lessons that he had lived through so he started a business promoting safety and warning other people not to do stupid things and to take responsibility for their own safety and he was a really nice guy. His name was Charlie Moorcraft and he owns a business called Phoenix Safety and did a video called “Remember Charlie!” which many people have seen to further the cause of safety in a factory. So I was sorry we didn’t see that part of Yellowstone but we’ll go back when we’re better educated on all the things I want to see.

So spend some time on the nps.gov website and check out all the things you want to see and do at yellowstone. There is much more park there than you realize. Also , try to spend at least a week there, or you will be sorry you left early. And as you leave, go to Jackson hole and the tetons. you won’t regret it!