We love Yellowstone! We try to go a few times a year for hiking. Mark and I decided to plan a Valentine's Day/Anniversary trip in the spring. We had an awesome weekend! We hiked 27 miles, and saw amazing animals and scenery! We covered the north section that we didn't get to last summer.
Norris to Mammoth
We started off in the Norris Geyser Basin. We walked the 2.5 miles around the trails that go through that area.
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| We saw a cute little rabbit! |
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| I made a friend at Sheepeater Cliff! |
Our first hike was Bunsen Peak. We loved it! It was 4 miles, but it pretty much went straight up! the view from the top made it totally worth it!
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| This is Bunsen Peak. |
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| About half way up gave us an awesome view of the Mammoth area. |
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| Don't mind my crazy hair! It hailed on us, and was pretty windy at the top. |
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| The view in these pictures doesn't do it justice. So gorgeous! |
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| You can't get views like this from the car! |
After our Bunsen Peak hike, we headed to Mammoth hot springs. We walked a couple miles around the touristy part of Mammoth before we started our next hike.
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| Mammoth |
From Mammoth, we did the Beaver Ponds Loop. It's a 5 mile hike that we loved! We got up close and personal with lots of elk and deer!
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| We saw TONS of elk! At first we were nervous to walk that close to them, but we soon realized that they could care less that we were there. Some of the time, they were walking along the trail with us. |
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| On the Beaver Ponds Loop, we had a great view of Bunsen Peak in the background. Gives a good perspective of how high up we were. |
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| Elk Selfie! |
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| We made it to Beaver Pond, but didn't see any beavers. |
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| On our way back, we had a great view of Mammoth. |
Mammoth to Tower Junction
Once we finished our hike, we started the Mammoth to Tower section. We saw a black bear with 2 cubs along this road. We watched them for awhile through the binoculars. So cute!
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| Undine Falls |
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| We did the short hike out to Wraith Falls. |
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| The petrified tree. |
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| These were the only antelope we saw the first day, but we saw a bunch the second day. |
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| All the bison babies were so cute! |
We drove back to West Yellowstone in a big rain storm, had dinner, and spent the night in a little cabin.
We kicked off day 2 with our favorite hike of the weekend. It's a 4 mile hike to Hellroaring Creek. It was so pretty. A mile into the hike we crossed a big suspension bridge over the Yellowstone River. Shortly after that we saw a badger! I had never seen one before, so that was cool.
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| Hiking down toward the river. |
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| The suspension bridge. |
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| The river was a long way down, and the bridge would bounce when we walked across it. |
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| We made it to Hellroaring Creek! |
After that hike, we had an exciting drive. We saw 2 bears within 200 yards of each other. First, we had to stop the car in the middle of the road because a black bear crossed right in front of us! We got out and watched him for awhile. He went down a hill to drink in the creek. We saw a bunch of people parked right up the road, so we figured there was another bear. We pulled off there, and watched a cinnamon black bear for awhile.
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| A black bear crossing the road. |
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| This is the other bear. I wish I would have brought my camera, but all I had was my phone, so I couldn't get good pictures. |
Our next hike was the Lost Lake Loop. It was about 4.5 miles. The first half was great, but we hated the second half. We literally climbed up the side of a mountain.
That would have been fine if we were expecting it, but we thought this was going to be a nice easy flat one, and our legs were already shot. It was so hard!
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| We found the Lost Lake within the first mile. |
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| When we got back from our hike, we saw a cute little fox! |
Tower to the Northeast Entrance
The drive out to the northeast entrance of the park is amazing! The Lamar Valley is gorgeous, and there are so many animals!
We had the hardest hike of the weekend remaining, and our legs were already so tired! We wanted to hike up to Fossil Forrest. It's an area with several fossilized trees. It was only a 3 mile hike, but straight up to a ridge on a non maintained trail.
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| The top of the mountain in the middle of the picture is where we were headed! |
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| We made it to the first fossilized tree! Don't be fooled, I looked happy, but I was really thinking, "Are you kidding me! I hiked all the way up this mountain just to see this stupid tree?!?" Haha, just kidding (kind of). We ended up finding lots of other trees, and the view was so amazing! The hike was worth it. I just wish we could have done it on fresh legs! |
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| We kept seeing animals down below in the valley and thinking they were bears (one had been spotted up there earlier in the day). It would freak us out, but we'd look through the binoculars and realize they were either elk or bison. |
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| You just had to search along the ridge for the trees. We found this big one! |
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| This picture gives a good view of how hight up we were. |
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| The trees were pretty cool. They felt like rock, but you could see all the rings, and even the sap on some of them. |
We had one short hike out to Trout Lake left. We didn't really want to do it, but we knew how far we were from the West Yellowstone entrance, and knew we would not drive out there again just for that hike. So we did it, and it ended up being really nice.
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| Trout Lake was really pretty, and we met a lady there that showed us a herd of mountain goat through her binoculars. |
The one animal we really wanted to see, but didn't, was a moose. We were a little disappointed about that, but then there were some cars pulled over when we were almost out of the park. We stopped, and sure enough, there was a moose! Perfect way to end our Yellowstone weekend!
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| The moose was huge! |
We had a great weekend! Can't wait for late summer and fall to go again!
