We had a full travel day from Glacier to Emigrant, MT, where we stayed overnight to get closer to Yellowstone. 

Unfortunately, we all had a terrible night’s sleep in our Emigrant hotel. The room was small, the AC unit was loud and on and off all night, and everyone was hot. 

Peter woke us all up at around 6 am, our earliest hour on this trip, allowing us to get a good start down to Jackson Hole via Yellowstone. 

After all the majestic mountain ranges we have seen on this trip, it was fun to go to a National Park with a little something different to offer. We could smell the sulfer a ways away from Yellowstone, and it was cool to see how interested all three kids were in the park’s geology as we entered one of the world’s largest active volcanoes. 

Peter and Elizabeth were both relieved that we didn’t have any hikes planned for the day, and one of Yellowstone’s charms is that you don’t have to be super fit or outdoorsy to enjoy it. There are boardwalks built to most major sites, and there are very few steep grades (none we encountered). This accessibility also makes Yellowstone an extraordinarily crowded place. 

Still, all its pockets are fascinating – boiling hot springs and plopping, popping mud pots; steam escaping randomly from the earth, waterfalls, canyons, and, of course, geysers. 

Our first stop was the visitor’s center, where we got the Jr. Ranger books for the kids to work on in the car as we drove. (Interestingly, Yellowstone is the only national park we went to that charged for the books ($3).) From them, the kids learned that the rainbow of colors in the Grand Prismatic Spring is actually due to microbes – Cyanobacteria – that thrive there, and that the hotter the spring, the bluer the water. We also learned where the steam and water from the geysers come from, and that Old Faithful is currently blowing water deposited from snowmelt and rain that fell in the late 1400s. 

After stopping to see a few steam vents and the hot spring that cascades Devil’s Thumb, our first stop was Yellowstone Canyon, or, “the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone” into which a massive waterfall pours. The Yellowstone River is the most peaceful part of this highly active volcano, and although it’s not the focal point of this park, the canyon itself is pretty impressive. 

Peter fell asleep on the way to the Grand Prismatic Spring, but woke up just in time to get out of the car and see it. The pools around the spring itself are eerie, steaming and bubbling like cauldrons. By comparison, and if it weren’t so obviously dangerous, with hot steam rising up and covering it like a blanket of fog, the prismatic spring is quieter and even pretty, as its yellow, orange and red outer edges give way to green and turquoise in the middle. 

Elizabeth was adamant that Peter stay on the boardwalk everywhere in the park, but she was especially protective of him at the Grand Prismatic Spring. She’d taken the signs stating that, in places, Yellowstone’s water and steam is hot enough to melt the soles of shoes, very seriously. It was nice to have another set of eyes on him. 

For the kids to get their ranger badges, they were required to go to a ranger talk at a stop along the way. Because we are a little lazy, and we have a four year old, we always choose the shortest talks on the schedule. Conveniently, several twenty minute sessions were offered by Old Faithful around the time we would be getting there. 

Whenever we have to be somewhere on time, Claire’s our clock-watcher. She was also super excited to see Old Faithful blow, so her job of keeping us on schedule was pretty easy for her. We weren’t allowed to linger too long at the prismatic spring! 

We made it to the ranger talk just in time. At the end of it, though, a storm broke and officials emptied the seats near the geyser due to concerns about lightning. It would have been more fun to see Old Faithful blow outdoors, but the sheltered viewing window was much drier and safer. The geyser’s explosion was worth the wait, and the kids had fun predicting when it would happen. 

By the time we left Old Faithful, it was around 2:30, and all the restaurants we tried to go to for lunch were either outrageously busy or closed. At the beginning of this trip, I packed a grocery store’s worth of staples – peanut butter and honey, almond butter packs, popcorn, applesauce, nuts, etc. We’d eaten a good bit of it by the time we got to Yellowstone, but, even though it wasn’t ideal, there was still enough left over that we could make do with for lunch. 

Andrew and I were in a pretty rotten mood by the time we were leaving Yellowstone. We’d each gotten, maybe, four hours of sleep, and no amount of coffee or tea would make that better. The kids were dragging, too – acting wild and wired because of their exhaustion, and still slightly hungry. To make matters worse, the ranger station at our Yellowstone exit didn’t have any Junior Ranger badges (we can mail off for them with a completed workbook), sparking a complete come-apart by one ragged little five year old. 

We arrived in Jackson Hole in time for dinner, where the kids ate their weight in whatever the hotel restaurant had to offer, and we settled in for the night, slightly delirious, but thankful for another full, fun day and more comfortable quarters.