The next day we packed everything up to move north to a campground in a more central location to see the “northern loop” of the park. We get out of the campsite in record time but had to make a few stops on the way. We finally get to our target location in Indian Creek campground at around 1:00 only to find out that it was already completely full. This is one of the last campgrounds to fill and even the ranger was surprised that it had already filled. But he did let us know that Mammoth Springs campground had a few spots left. Well we were not very optimistic knowing that this is a popular spot. Pulling up to the campground they still had not posted the full sign so we crossed our fingers and walked up to the registration booth. Sure enough there were two sites left, not campsites but spots normally reserved for RVs. Well we took it and made plans to switch spots the next day. We quickly set up camp and headed into town to visit the hot springs terraces, one of the most well-known attractions of the park. It was beautiful but it was unfortunately very dry making it less spectacular than usual. We stopped off at the grocery store to buy some drinks for the aperitif before heading to a guided tour by a ranger. This was very cool because she gave some history to how the park was formed and the issues that it had in the beginning of its existence. Apparently when the park was first created there were no laws so there were people coming in to poach, to take remnants from the natural sites, and basically there was nothing to protect the nature in the park. Well it took a long time to establish law and they had to have special law enforcement in the park. Because of the poaching during this time period the number of bison was reduced to only 23 in the entire park. Thankfully today those numbers have dramatically increased and now there are over 3,000 bison in the park.
The next morning we moved our campsite to one that was in a more ideal location, further from the main road. Today we had made plans to head down to Canyon village which was the most popular area in the park. We stopped along the way at Tower Falls and hiked down to the river level, it was beautiful.
We had lunch here before heading up to Canyon Village. Our first stop was the visitor center which was giant and had a great exhibit explaining the super volcano that sits dormant underneath Yellowstone. We grabbed a Gatorade before heading out to see the best falls of the park. There is a hike that goes along these falls all the way down to the second set of falls further downriver. We wanted to do the whole hike along the shores of the Yellowstone River but it was blocked off on the trail to the bridge to cross the river. Well we considered that it was safe enough to walk though anyhow and were on our way. This was our best hike! Not only did we have spectacular views of the two sets of falls and the river but the walk itself was majestic. We went all the way down to “Uncle Tom’s Trail” which is a steep set of 293 stairs down to the river level to have an unmatched view of the falls. This was definitely worth the hike and was an incredible Stairmaster workout coming back up!! We then headed back up to our campsite taking the loop in a direction we had not yet seen. It was a great drive and one of our best hiking days so far!!
The next day we headed to a nearby hike called the Beaver ponds Trail which was a short drive from our campsite. It was a somewhat steep climb at first up the mountain but the views were unbelievable and there were lots of wild flowers and butterflies for Elisabeth. The trail looped around which made for a little over 5 miles, well it took us about 4 hours to do the trail which was pretty exhausting since we were trading off carrying Elisabeth and it was a very hot afternoon. But overall we really enjoyed the hike and saw the small ponds that the trail is named after, including a beaver dam.
At the end of this we were very hungry and thirsty so we got some food from the store and some drinks and had lunch at our campsite. We took it easy the rest of the afternoon and went down to Norris to visit the ranger museum and the famous Norris geysers. We relaxed the rest of the evening at the campsite playing badminton and petanque. At our campsite they have ranger presentations on a different theme each night. We attended the one on the forest fires the first night, the second night was on the wolves and the third night was on the super volcano that sits under Yellowstone. The presentation was very good but only gave a realistic view on how fragile the national parks are. There was one picture that the ranger presented showing the deforestation which completely leveled all the forests right up to the borders of the park. Not too mention all the threats which are presented to the wildlife in the park, for example the bison carry a disease which could potentially kill whole herds of cattle. So the park is obligated to slaughter any bison that, following their normal migration routes, go outside of the park boundaries while grazing in the winter seasons. It is very difficult to find a good balance between maintaining a natural environment within the parks and the industrial pressures and changing environment outside of the park. This is the ongoing challenge for the park and is in fact a very sad reality.
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