Road Trip ‘21: Part 3
Yellowstone
Day 4
Yellowstone
At this point, we felt like we’d already been away for a week with how much that had happened. Despite arriving late the last night, we woke up fairly early. The detour we had to take due to the blocked road would affect us all day, so it was best that we get a head start.
Our first stop of the day was the nearest clinic in Mammoth, an hour and a half away. Thankfully, Vatsal got away without any broken bones!
We took it easy after the insanity from the day before. Gardiner, only about 20 minutes from Mammoth, is a small town with wifi and a hot spring, so we decided that it would be the best place to chill.
The Wonderland Cafe & Lodge was super cute and the food was pretty great. It seemed to be very popular since we had to wait a bit to get seated.
The hot springs were only a short drive away. There were different pools with varying temperatures, but all were nice and relaxing for our aching muscles. We would go back and forth between the hot and cold pools, finally deciding on one to sit in until it was time for us to go to dinner
For dinner, we drove up some narrow roads to a ranch about an hour away from Gardiner. There were some great views of pastures and I think it was all of our first times having a Cowboy Cookout dinner. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, there wasn’t a huge selection of vegetarian food.
Although it added some time to our drive, the detour allowed us to drive through Lamar Valley every day. Most people purposefully take a trip to Cooke City to pass through and see the gorgeous hills and bison aplenty. Driving the extra 1.5 hours to go home, despite the narrow roads and lack of rails (at what seemed to be vital sections), was my favorite part of the trip to Yellowstone.
It was a long day, so we did a little self-care and went to bed.
Day 5
Yellowstone (Again)
We took advantage of our chill schedule and slept in — starting our sight-seeing at around 9AM. It was going to be a long day of driving since the northeast section of the road was closed for construction. In total, we drove around 7 hours back and forth.
We reached our first stop, the Grand Prismatic Spring, at around noon and it was equally beautiful as it was terrifying. Before you have a chance to be enchanted by the rainbow of colors in the water, you are heavily warned to stay within the path lest you suffer from severe burns or even DEATH. There weren’t many guard rails which was not comforting and some paths were a bit crowded. We slowly made our way around the boardwalk and took a short hike uphill to see a better view of the spring before driving to Old Faithful.
We arrived at Old Faithful around 2:45PM. It was quite crowded but we were still able to find seats right in front of the geyser where we waited for about an hour. At 4PM, Old Faithful erupted for around 3 minutes and it was a sight to see! We joked about how there’s probably a man underneath pressing a button every 75 minutes since Old Faithful gets its name from how predictable its eruptions are. There were some other hot springs around the area just like our last stop, so we walked around a bit before grabbing a bite to eat at the visitor center.
Our final stop before heading back was at the West Thumb Basin where we saw both hot springs and the regular temperature water that we’re used to at home. It was a nice, short trip around a boardwalk and at 6PM we decided to start our trek back home.
Lamar Valley
I’m honestly so grateful our hotel was in Cooke City (which is so out of the way considering there are actual accommodations in Yellowstone) because we were able to pass through this road both nights and saw countless bison and other animals. We reached Lamar Valley around 8:30PM, leading to such beautiful photos of the rolling hills and bison grazing in the sunset. We made so many stops on the way just to take pictures, though we never actually exited the car.
We finally arrived back home around 9PM where we grabbed some pies at the local saloon (one of the only restaurants in town that’s open late). We goofed around while waiting before heading back to the hotel room to eat. To make things interesting, we made a bet with Darshan that he couldn’t eat a certain number of slices within 45 seconds. Will he conquer the pizza? Watch the video and find out…
